To my beloved Nastya. To the person to whom I sold nothing.
I have never been involved in marketing. I just loved my customers.
Zino Davidoff
This entire book will be dedicated to the idea that sales without love are impossible. There are no guaranteed “tricks,” “scripts,” “words,” “phrases,” “questions,” or “techniques” that can compel a customer to make a purchase decision. Any word spoken by a salesperson can be delivered with love or without it. And the outcome of the negotiations will depend solely on this.
Nowadays, few people associate sales with love. More often, terms like “struggle,” “victories,” and even “combat hypnosis” are used. In the public consciousness, sales are often seen as something bordering on fraud and deception. However, in reality, trade is inextricably linked to the concept of love for one’s neighbor. Wild animals do not trade; they simply take by force whatever they can. Trade emerged in human society at the same time that concepts of justice, mutual aid, and trust appeared.
The most archaic forms of trade were not related to economic gain at all. Initially, the exchange of surpluses had a symbolic nature, signifying friendship, peace, and love between two individuals or their groups. As labor productivity increased, this exchange began to provide not only symbolic but also real economic benefits. Instead of sporadic gift exchanges, regular trade emerged, which spurred further specialization and division of labor, setting in motion the wheel of human civilization.
A good fisherman no longer needed to gather fruits or hunt—he could always count on selling his catch and buying everything he needed. His well-being largely depended on the prosperity of those he traded with, because if they were doing poorly, they wouldn’t be able to pay him a good price for the fish. Trade connected people with bonds of mutual dependence, just like love does. Unlike war or competition, trade benefits both parties.
The specialization of people, once it emerged, only deepened. Professionals appeared in every industry. Of course, a weaver could take care of his own harvest, and a winemaker could probably manage to produce cloth for his family. However, specialization turns out to be more economically advantageous, even when a household is capable of performing all the necessary tasks for itself.
Let’s imagine a weaver’s family and a winemaker’s family. The weaver spends 15 hours to produce one meter of cloth. If he wanted to, he could also make wine, which would take him 20 hours to produce a bottle. Meanwhile, let’s say the more efficient winemaker takes 5 hours to produce a bottle of wine. At the same time, he can weave cloth even faster than the weaver, taking only 10 hours to produce one meter. Under these circumstances, it seems that the weaver should go bankrupt: his potential customer can provide his family with the necessary amount of fabric for making clothes. And he also produces a bottle of wine much faster. But let’s do the math.
For example, the weaver exchanges a meter of cloth for a bottle of wine, saving 20 – 15 = 5 hours of his time. At the same time, this deal is also beneficial for the winemaker, even though he could produce both wine and cloth faster than the weaver due to his efficiency. The fact is that he can buy a meter of cloth for just 5 hours of work, while he would take 10 hours to weave it himself. So, just like the weaver, he saves 5 hours with this transaction.
Both parties benefit. Even if the winemaker can produce both products faster than the weaver, specialization still makes it relatively advantageous for the weaver to focus on weaving and for the winemaker to concentrate on wine.
At the same time, every weaver wanted to earn more for the cloth they had woven, and every winemaker hoped to sell their wine as profitably as possible. Alongside mastering a specific trade, everyone also had to know how to negotiate. Naturally, trading skills gradually evolved into a separate specialization: professional merchants and traders emerged—people who had stocks of various goods and were capable of facilitating mutually beneficial exchanges. They appropriated a portion of the price difference in the production costs of goods from specialized producers and earned a profit for the services they provided, also becoming specialists in a particular field—sales.
When people lived in small communities, and sellers, just like suppliers, were visible to everyone, there was little incentive to cheat or deceive. On the contrary, the most successful intermediaries were those trusted by the community. They allowed other members of the community to focus on their own work by providing them with goods that they did not produce themselves.
Unfortunately, today sales are no longer seen as a tool that unites society, like the cement in masonry, but rather as something that opposes unity, effectively excluding it. The very noun “salesmanship” carries a negative connotation, and the word “to sell” is almost synonymous with the verb “to deceive.” When someone is said to have “fallen for it,” it only hints at their lack of insight. The sales counter is a frontline, and the salesperson is viewed as an enemy of society. Despite the high demand for the profession, the craft of selling (or “salesmanship”) is positioned at the very bottom of the professional hierarchy, somewhere near that of a goldsmith or a thief.
Now, when a person chooses which side of the counter to stand on and decides to go into sales, they approach it as if going to war. A salesperson is inevitably someone with an active life stance, who doesn’t shy away from difficulties, knows how to fight, and strives to achieve their goals—a wolf that is fed by their own efforts. The romance of sales, supported by movies, has become a romance of struggle. “Are you man enough?” asks the real estate agent in Alec Baldwin’s character in the film “Glengarry Glen Ross.” However, struggle is always destructive; it is always a confrontation. People who see struggle as the ultimate goal of their lives are rarely successful. Struggle is futile, and the idea of it, instilled in us from childhood through heroic tales, is nothing more than an attempt to glorify or, rather, justify the actions of a fortunate soldier who became a king. Most successful people view life as a game rather than a struggle. Think about that.
Reflect on love instead of struggle. After all, love is nothing more than the feeling that your happiness depends on the well-being of another person. In a small, primitive society, where the interdependence of people’s well-being is evident, effective and mutually beneficial exchange of goods was essentially the realization of the love people have for one another.
Right before our eyes, the historical spiral is completing its turn, and we can see the paradigm of struggle giving way to the paradigm of mutual aid and love. In today’s world, there is less and less room for cunning and intrigue. Thanks to the internet and social media, everyone knows almost everything about each other today—or can find out by simply Googling for a few minutes. In such conditions, any tricks and schemes gradually stop working, and sincerity and transparency come to the forefront.
What does the seller, who views their work as a struggle and the counter as a front line, hope for after this? Trust from the buyer? But how can one trust an enemy? How can one trust someone whose job is to deceive? Is it possible to find the truth in a war where propaganda replaces information, where intelligence is preferred over transparency, and where disinformation and maneuvers take the place of genuine intentions; where black is substituted for white?
This book is about White Sales. It discusses an approach to sales that restores their original role — the role of cementing society. I’m not saying anything new when I assert that deception is wrong. However, I don’t just claim that we should be open and sincere; I explain how and why this is beneficial. First and foremost, for the seller. Today, one simply cannot be successful without being open and transparent. White Sales is the only sales tool that is relevant in the 21st century.