Are you that person you hate?

Ever met a crappy salesperson?

I just met one last night, at a national massage chain that shall remain nameless.

She sat me down on the couch and reviewed my paperwork.

“So, why are you here?”

I fell off my bike last week onto my arm, and every muscle in my body is now whining.

“Do you feel like that even when you haven’t had an accident?”

No. I’m an athlete. I move around a lot. I usually feel good.

“Ah, but then you need massage even more.”

Oh, brother. Here we go…

[insert generic sales spiel here. Capped off with: “but we can talk about that later. Now is your time to relax.”]

When you are a certain kind of person, becoming THIS kind of person is your worst nightmare.

Bludgeoning other human beings with your insatiable need to sell them.

Ugh.

Given that I run my own business and sales is what puts food on our table, I now LOVE IT when other people sell me.

I wait for it. I study it. I study myself (“how does this make me feel?”). And I learn from the stuff that works on me… and the stuff that I would NEVER want to do.

Use it all, right?

And here’s what I’ve learned: I LOVE spending money with people I think are awesome. Who are really getting after it in their business (and life). Who aren’t at all needy, desperate, or attached to whether I say yes or not.

And I love buying from people who I know. And who know me.

See, before I got onto the interwebs, I was all about living what I called a “human sized life.”

I love riding bikes. (Cars are too fast to stop and talk with people or pet dogs.)

I walked (or rode) to work.

I bought raw milk and grass fed beef out of the back of my farmer’s truck.

I worked at a community art center.

I’m the kind of person who avoids big box stores. I hang out in local coffee shops. I frequent indie bookshops.

I get that it costs more. But my life is way more interesting and rich if I don’t let price be the sole determining factor in where I shop or what I buy.

Also, I am a sucker for the real. The human. The imperfect. The serendipitous. The sloppy. The alive.

Side bar: I have a theory about good food. It either costs more – farmers market, Whole Foods – or it costs way less – Asian groceries, street vendors, food carts.

Avoid the middle of the road. Stick to the edges.

This is pretty much my feeling about a lot of things. The mainstream isn’t where the action is.

Live and swim in the tributaries.

But I digress.

What I’ve come to see is that a lot of people don’t agree with me on this. They WANT the big numbers. They WANT to be a household name. They WANT to be part of the mainstream. Generally liked and understood. Appealing to the greatest number.

I don’t.

I never have.

I never will.

I love quirkiness. I revel in having friends and neighbors who are characters. And with whom I feel some invisible, magical bond that I can’t quite put into words.

But I feel in my heart.

We get each other.

And so, even more than falling off my bike and landing on my arm, I register injury when someone treats me like a nameless, faceless unit in a sales conversation.

It makes me feel sad.

It makes me feel unseen.

And I get a weensy bit pissed. (Hey, I’m no saint!)

What lights me up and causes me to press on – even on the days when I don’t feel much like getting out of bed – is that my people are out there. My peeps.

Those humans I feel connected with. That the sheer simple thing of being in relationship with them makes me feel like all the hard stuff you go through is worth something, in the end.

And I’ll tell you something else – my business is brimming with these people.

I feel like we are in cahoots on a clandestine mission to make the world a better place.

That’s my kind of mischief.

And I found these people in a lot of ways. Events. Referrals. Word of mouth. Speaking. Emails. Summits.

But the way we’ve gotten to know each other is through a thread that runs through everything I do.

I send a newsletter.

I believe that an email newsletter is the online version of having an old-fashioned run-into-your-favorite-neighbor-on-the-street conversation.

It grows a relationship.

And the moral of this long tale is simply this: if you believe in connecting and living locally and being a citizen and living your values, and you aren’t sending a newsletter… are you asking people to buy from you without letting them get to know you and what you stand for?

It’s all about growing a relationship. It’s all about flipping that switch in your head that says “I have to” write to “I can’t wait to share this with people!” It’s about making a commitment to relate to people who will become your clients… and doing it on a regular basis.

Until you do this, you may be in danger of being like the lady at the massage place, who doesn’t give a s*** who’s sitting in front of her. She just wants to close a sale.

Mighty thanks to Steve Johnson flickr photostream for the switch.