{"id":100,"date":"2010-01-02T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T21:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batchat.net\/?p=100"},"modified":"2010-01-02T16:09:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T21:09:00","slug":"are-these-the-best-salespeople-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/02\/are-these-the-best-salespeople-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Are These The Best Salespeople on Earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having visited the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul the week before Christmas, I\u2019ve got myself convinced that these are the best salespeople on the planet. Granted they\u2019ve had over 500 years to hone their craft, but these guys are GOOD. They\u2019ve got the basics of good salesmanship covered\u2026never ask a closed end yes\/no question, learn about the prospects needs so you can personalize the pitch etc. But these guys have taken a skill and turned it into an art form.
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Anywhere else in the world, if you make eye contact, they\u2019ve got you. Here, they almost assault you from all sides before you can even look around\u2026\u201dyou American?\u201d, \u201cHere, come to my shop, it\u2019s very near,\u201d \u201cOf course you\u2019re in Istanbul to buy a rug, some come see the best.\u201d But assault is probably the wrong word\u2026it may feel that way to a Westerner initially, but you\u2019ll find out pretty quickly it\u2019s more of a personal invitation. Courtesy according to the guidebooks, dictates that if they do get you, you have to go to their shop, have some tea and small talk and then get down to the important business of the day\u2026 home d\u00e9cor. It\u2019s not an unpleasant experience but the concept of \u201cNO\u201d has no meaning other than, \u201cyou haven\u2019t addressed my real need yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still and all, visiting the Bazaar is a real trip, it\u2019s well organized chaos and if you\u2019ve been there you know the oxymoron makes sense. There are sections dedicated to category\u2026leather, rugs, silver, gold, antiques and street maps with vendor locations are available. In fact, the streets in the Bazaar are better marked than many cities I\u2019ve been in. <\/p>\n

A funny thing happens when you sit down for a cup of tea, or better yet, Turkish Coffee (which I was humored to find out was called \u201cGreek Coffee\u201d in Greece). Nobody bugs you. It\u2019s like there\u2019s this unwritten rule that if you\u2019re on the move you\u2019re fair game. But if you\u2019re eating or drinking, then your personal space is inviolate. And while there are Starbucks and Gloria Jean\u2019s all over the city, there are none in the Bazaar and that means\u2026.no cardboard \u201cGo cups\u201d. If you\u2019re going to have coffee you have sit down, relax, engage in conversation (and smoke\u2026everybody smokes everywhere there). It is very civilized approach I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having visited the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul the week before Christmas, I\u2019ve got myself convinced that these are the best salespeople on the planet. Granted they\u2019ve had over 500 years to hone their craft, but these guys are GOOD. They\u2019ve got the basics of good salesmanship covered\u2026never ask a closed end yes\/no question, learn about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7k1BV-1C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}