2003 OCTOBER 29 #302
With me, I take pleasure in people's throwaways. I have all my life. When I was a kid, my father would dump cardboard at the incinerator then the city dump, and he'd scavenge through the piles of trash looking for stuff of interest. That's how I first got into music at the age of 5. My father brought home a box of 45's that were all scratched to hell, but I didn't care. It was just neat to have them. He bought my first record player, but most of the subsequent stereo gear I got from finding old stereos and taking bit and pieces and putting them together. My "studio" these days is some older radio studio gear that I got from my last job in radio, cart machines, a console, a couple mics and a turntable. Not a bad lot and it works well.
When I saw this record one morning at a flea market I was at, I did my best Les Nessman "oooooooooh" imitation from WKRP. Talk about excited, the old cheese factor kicked in overdrive. What can be more cheesy? A salesman course on a 2 record set that someone may have decided didn't work for them, and decided to get rid of, but you know, I have a use for it and consider it worthy to be included here.
What's featured here is almost an entire side and a entire section of the "course". Millard could be considered to some degree an early version of Tony Robbins and the rest of those motivational speakers that get paid big bucks to motivate people to do things. As I'm now in customer service, with some sales background before I even got this record, comparing the training I received and the sample for you here, it's incredibly similar. Just goes to show you how even after some 40 years (I suspect this record is from the early-mid 60's) people are people and while times change, basic selling skills remain the same. Give this a play before the next time you head to a car dealership or any store you suspect might have those high pressure sales people, and it will make you a smarter shopper, and might even save you a few bucks. At the very least, it's delightfully campy.
- Scott Snailham, http://www.geocities.com/snarfdudes
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(Image courtesy of Scott Snailham)