I think this has a lot to do with the fact that business is a team sport. We’ve been around awhile and we’ve probably heard some of the jokes that have been made. They can be funny, but they also have the effect of making everyone else in the room laugh too.
That’s a lesson that I think is worth repeating: You should never take any of your business partners seriously. We all need to remember that.
In the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time someone makes a bad joke about business, you just laugh and think about it.
We all need to remember in business, you need to treat everyone with respect. That means that people need to treat you with the respect that you deserve.
Theres a tendency for business folk to take the joke as a personal affront so when someone is taken as seriously as a business person, it makes business people feel even more unappreciated. When the joke is taken so seriously, they feel like the joke is not taken seriously enough and they are embarrassed for being laughed at. Business people also tend to have a habit of acting like the joke is funny and this makes others feel even more like they are the joke.
In his first business meeting John is given a business card that reads: “John Doe, Salesman.” He is told that John’s job is to sell his company’s products. John replies with “You’re one of those salesmen.” John is told he is to be treated as a salesman. This is not actually a joke; it is a fact. The joke is on John. He is not a salesman. He is John Doe, Salesman.
The joke gets even funnier when his boss comes back and says, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to take you off my list.” This is the moment that anyone who has been in business for any period of time, has probably had to deal with. This is a perfect example of how businessmen tend to think. They are not just selling you things, they are selling themselves.
We’re not actually expecting anyone to just walk in the door with a blank stare and a list of products and tell us they want to sell to us. We’re actually expecting them to be able to sell us their own business. We’re not asking them to pay us to sell anything, we’re giving them all the tools to sell themselves. They will be able to do this by themselves, on their own.
I could be wrong, but I do believe that if you know what you are selling you can get away with saying things like “I’m a businessman, I am selling my products.
It’s difficult to go into business relationships with someone who is completely clueless. If you haven’t noticed, the majority of the people I know who have managed to buy products from me over the years are not the typical “man in a suit”. In fact, they are far from it. They are a whole bunch of different types of people. The two most common are business men.
