After watching the State of the Union speech and the loyal opposition’s response, I was reminded of one of the central truths of salesmanship and how each side chose to follow it. I am talking about the real estate salesman’s motivational ABC dictum — Always Be Closing.

There are two types of closes — hard, asking for the business/sale, and soft, seeing whether the client wants to move forward. Some examples of soft closes:

Wouldn’t what I am selling be an improvement over what what is being done/used now?
If this solves these problems, would you take it?

The loyal opposition approach seems to be constantly asking for a hard negative close on their competitor’s products — in other words they ask the public to reject its competitor’s proposed product sale. They don’t often focus on a hard sale close of their own products, since they rarely have anything hard to sell. In the software industry, this type of sale close for a non-existent product is called selling vaporware. Continuous, high pressure hard sell tactics don’t often work. Good salespeople do not sell. They help others to buy.

The old 20th century hard sell and counter sell approaches simply don’t cut it with today’s hyper-informed, media-driven consumers. With the transparency and availability of information online, buyers are far savvier than they used to be. Today’s ABC is more appropriately defined as Always Be Communicating (or Twittering?). Because let’s face it, it’s far easier to keep existing clients (base or voters in political parlance) than to spend considerable amounts of time and effort on looking for new ones.

Real estate sales guru character played by Alec Baldwin in the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross delivers his ABC monologue

Cruise the edges of city land
Then go across railroad tracks
And past where a viaduct looms
You’ll see porch-sitting birds of doom
Chilling as they smoke their crack
There are no secrets in these streets of winter trashcan fires
Neath drooping internet, cable and telephone wires
Hey dudes, you know, they thought
Good times are never coming
We’re never getting it back

Past tidy city squares, past the Talmadge bridge
Past the river docks, past vacant factory smoke stacks
From the north a gathering storm came
A tall orange haired man
In a dusty black coat
A real estate man

He wrapped em in his arms
Told em that they were all good boys
He’d rekindle all their dreams
It took the others a lifetime to destroy
He’d reach deep into the holes
And heal their withering souls
Only he could make happen what the others couldn’t do

He’s a demagogue, he’s a man
He’s a snake, he’s a reality TV guru
They chanted his name
Throughout the country land
But hidden in his coat
Was a real estate man

You didn’t have any money?
He’d get you some
You didn’t have a job?
He’d get you one
You didn’t have self-respect
He’s where hope and the future intersect
Well, don’t you worry, folks
‘Cause here he comes

Through trash filled alleys
Through slums, past overflowing garbage cans
Shadows fled from wherever he stood
Wads of promised cash came soon after
They passed his great big tax plans

Foes see him in their nightmares
See him in their dreams
He appeared out of left field
Telling us he ain’t what he seems
They see him in their heads
And on their TV screens
Hey, folks, they’re warning
Us to turn him off
He’s a snake, he’s a demagogue
He’s a man, he’s reality TV guru
We’re all stuck in a coastal bog
Tarred to an unstoppable plan
Designed and directed by
This real estate man

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