Rugs or computers, it's all the same: if you lose yourself in your customers' problems, you will usually make the sale.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: [on] MANAGEMENT

We were in the market for a rug. My wife, definitely the leader in this sort of endeavor, took me on a grand tour of all her regular places. I'm not usually included in these trips, but it was the holidays and what the hey (1)

But it turned out to be very worthwhile as I learned some things I didn't know about selling. Even at my advanced age, I still have a keen interest in how people sell things. Or better, how people serve their customers.

So off we went to find the right one. The first couple of stores came up empty, but the third was very interesting. Great rugs! The salesperson was doing what I thought was a great job. But then the owner came over, probably thinking that we needed something that his salesperson wasn't giving us, and launched a class on "everything he thought that we needed to know about Persian rugs."

At first it was pretty interesting, all about knots per inch and quality and how it takes four people at least eight months to make a rug. But it quickly became a boring monologue, and we sort of just lost interest.

Salespeople who think that medium-length speeches are an effective sales tool will sadly never reach their real potential. I've done some research, and everyone, including the offending salesperson, knows when they are talking too much. But they can't seem to stop.

We found a way to politely leave, promising to call back, and we went to the next on the list.

The next place looked the same to me, but the salesperson handled things much differently. After a few opening questions about what we thought we were looking for, the salesperson suggested that we sit on one pile of rugs while she and her helpers flipped through about 150 rugs in another pile next to it, and we were supposed to just make comments as they worked their way through.

So we did that, making 100 comments as they progressed through the pile, while the sales-person didn't say very much except to clarify our observations. After, the salesperson said, "Your comments have told me a lot about what you are...