My Manipulation

So i'm going to try to keep this brief.

I've been thinking lately and noticing more and more how work has changed me. I've noticed that i've learned how to become manipulative of people. It's actually kind of scarey to think about it like that, but to keep it simple and at it's basic level that's really what's going on.

So maybe some clarification of sorts is due cause that would probably be a bad place to leave this post. Manipulative is probably a horrible way to put it with all the negative connotations involved but a quick trip to dictionary.com only left me with a list of words that didn't really fit, but it did give me wily which is just fun, so we'll go with it...

Perhaps it's just who i am, but i've always been someone that others could consult easily (whereas the converse of that involving me opening up is generally a much longer process we'll side that for another blog post in and of itself). And not to jinx that it's just that i am genuine in what I do and understanding it's just something that comes naturally to me.

So now we start to bring all that in. As this is something that has always been there for me, and let me tell you this is a killer skill for an intense game of mafia, i have just worked on using what i got.

I find that when i go in with customers i now have a process. First i have to prove myself to them. Walking in people assume they know everythign and since, as they say, i'm as young as their kids, they assume i must only know what their kids know. Well they are wrong. and after i show them i know my stuff.

With success I now proceed to step two: Getting them to open up. This is where the magic starts. The nature of my job is to fix things and generally just help the customer with their job. So they have to confide in me for them to be helpful. The hard part of this is that i'm a salesman and they know that, and they put up this wall which makes the job hard sometimes. going back to people easily opening up to me i'm able to hurry this part along quickly.

Next we start to part three: convincing them that I know somethign that they need to know. People are fickle. We are all selfish and if we are all honest, despite how we want to be and act, we end up investing resources in those that have something we want. If i can't prove to them that i can fix their problem they aren't going to have me around that often, and without that i get no sales...

that's about all their is to the steps that i go through that are pertinent to this blog.

So now we will lead with some example. In my current big account, i have been able to position myself with the side of the customer so that they empathize with me for being the young person on the account, and to keep the story short having the customer side with me in what you would easily call a big bully small kid scenario.

Who know why it works like this, but the part that is scarey to me is that i find myself using this as an advantage often these days, such as when i take my car to be serviced so that I get bumped in line for faster service. It's like a super power, it's crazy.

Anyways, that's my thoughts, thought i would share since there's been a personal type blog here. What do you think is it wrong that i'm using that as an advantage. I mean in the instance for work, i really do have the customers best interest out there as I want to solve their problems, and there has been times when i've referred them to the better solution in which i make no sale. I know i can still sleep at nite and look at myself in the mirror when i wake up, so worse case i've just lost all remorse...

thoughts?

DISCLAIMER: This could all just be made up for story purposes...