Seduction

Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), has an insightful couple of pages on Tom Gau. Gau is or was a financial planner in Torrance, California. He has all the standard tools of a great salesman - - communication, drive, empathy, etc. He also has something extra. And it is a big extra.

Gau makes the argument that what separates a great salesman from an average one is the number and quality of answers they have to the objections commonly raised by potential clients. Gau put together a book - - questions or statements along with their answers. He provided this to his staff of other financial planners. Rather technical and rather standard.

But, and this is a really big but - - the script book of questions and answers alone gets you nowhere. Gau had, according to Gladwell, "some indefinable trait, something powerful and contagious and irresistible that goes beyond what comes out of his mouth, that makes people who meet him want to agree with him." It's energy. It's enthusiasm. It's charm. It's likability. It even goes beyond these attributes - - it is the really, really hard things and mysteries we still don't yet understand - - the subtle, the hidden, the unspoken. It is the seduction of another individual - - with words, with trust, with physical movement - - and the truly gifted can do this in 10 minutes where most people would take hours or days.

Gau - - it is a gift.