“…I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it’s not natural to me. So I don’t take it for granted ….” — David Duchovny
As a rookie seller in the eighties, I would spend hours preparing to make cold calls, only to quickly hang up when someone actually answered. Thank God this was before the invention of caller i.d! Presentations could tie me in knots, my confidence often dissolving as soon as I opened my mouth to speak. I envied those “natural” salespeople–you know who I’m talking about: the ones who always seemed to be “on,” or at the very least, not on the verge of passing out!
What was I lacking? After all, everyone said I was “good with people” and “would be great in sales.” What did these “natural” sellers have that I didn’t; and how could I get my hands on it?
Despite dozens of sales training programs, it wasn’t until I took an acting class that my sales career blossomed; it was there that I learned techniques which would help me break sales records, sell successfully to Fortune 500 companies and eventually lead a national sales team in New York. Acting led me to this discovery: Everything I needed to be a “natural” seller was already within me; it was just a matter of how to access it.
Famous actors like Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep and Al Pacino were not born great actors. Though they may have been blessed with great potential, it was only through years of dedication and training that they came to epitomize what we consider great acting today. And like anyone who is great at what they do, they make it look natural.
Over the years, I’ve worked with, coached and met hundreds of sellers who, like me, felt they lacked some innate talent for sales bestowed at birth to a select few. Just as great actors are made, not born, I believe that we sellers have the potential to be great by discovering and harnessing our own unique sales talent. I found that acting provided some of the best training for this. Here’s why:
- Acting requires strong communication skills
- Acting is goal-oriented: What do we want and how do we get it?
- Acting is about relationships: How do we get what we want from our scene partner?
- Acting is about taking action!
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