I can still remember to this day, the very first sale I ever made. It wasn’t the first prospect I had ever talked to but it was my first sale. I had already been through Apple”s technical training program so that obviously made me qualified to talk and sell computers.

At that time, technical knowledge was literally replacing an IC (Integrated Circuit) for a particular symptom. The trick was knowing which symptom was caused by which IC. Oh, there was the occasional disk drive that was out of alignment, and no video, but those kind of repairs were very mechanical oriented and really didn”t take any ”technical” knowledge.

My dad had literally put together a talking paper. It had 18 boxes on it, with a selling point in each one. I can’t remember what the contents were, but I knew how to explain every single one of those points.

In walked a man and a wife. He was wearing his work clothes, as he worked some kind of a construction job, and the wife was modestly dressed. They were wanting to look at the computer to see if it could help them with her day care business. I can still remember thinking to myself, there is no way these people can afford this $2500 computer system. But nonetheless, I proceeded to explain all the points in the boxes on that piece of paper. As it was so long ago, I can’t remember all the finer points to the presentation, but I specifically remember when they left, my father came out and said that he was impressed by the way that I went through all the features and benefits laid out on that paper. I was of course ecstatic to hear that but told him… they didn’t buy. He said that’s ok, if you continue to present like that you”ll make some sales. Read the rest of this entry