No One Likes a Know-It-All
Shortly after returning to north-central Florida in 1994, my girlfriend asked me to teach two of her co-workers to dive. I promptly drove to the dive store closest to where the students lived, to see what they carried in the ways of masks, snorkels and fins. (Hey, I’m a good guy; I wanted to be able to recommend something my students’ local dive center actually carried.)
I immediately saw that the store carried a popular brand of adjustable fins that was a best-seller at the store I managed in Hawai’i. I was curious, though, as to whether — in addition to flimsy snorkeling fins — the store carried any of the better-quality full-foot fins favored by the majority of divemasters aboard the boats I’d captained and crewed in south Florida and Maui. (Not that I necessarily wanted my students to get these; I was just curious if the store carried them, so that my students could see the difference.)
However, when I posed that question to the pimply faced, adolescent “salesperson” who waited on me, instead of an answer, I got a sermon. “We don’t recommend full-foot fins for scuba diving,” this lame-brain pontificated — as if I was a moron for even bringing up the subject. “Scuba divers don’t use full-foot fins.”
Mind you, this kid could have easily gotten himself off the hook by saying, “No, we don’t carry that type of fin. There isn’t a lot of demand for them in this area.” I was already planning to recommend my students get the perfectly acceptable adjustable fins his store did carry.
Instead, this pathetic excuse for a dive-industry “professional” seemed more interested in proving he knew better than I did what was and was not adequate for scuba diving. “Why is it, then,” I asked, “that of the more than 50 dive instructors who worked for me in Hawai’i in the last two years (whose combined experience, by the way, eclipses yours by a factor of 500 to 1), only the two who regularly taught classes off the beach used adjustable fins?”
The “expert” didn’t have an answer for that. In fact, as the conversation ensued, his responses just got dumber and dumber. Not surprisingly, I had the students drive a few extra miles to buy their adjustable fins at the next closest dive store, where the sales staff seemed genuinely interested in listening to them. (Wouldn’t you like to have this guy working for you? Or not…)
There’s a saying in sales that goes, “You have two ears and one mouth. That’s to tell you that you should listen twice as much as you talk.” Listening gives you power. Listening helps you sell. It’s that simple.
::: TOP ::: CONTACT US ::: ABOUT US :::