Few would dispute that Da Vinci was a great artist, he created great art and amazing innovations across several mediums, a creative genius. What is often missed is his technical skill, engineering, anatomy, and at a very basic level, his skill with a hammer, chisel and paintbrush.
Which came first, the art or the science? Probably neither, each nurtured the other. Da Vinci’s determination to reflect the body accurately in his paintings led him to risk his life and liberty by dissecting bodies to get the anatomy exactly right.
How you may ask, does that relate to sales?
The most effective sales people I have seen do two things:
- The build relationships that last
- They close.
One without the other is of little use, the first produces no revenue, the second without the first produces only a one-off transaction, and wastes an opportunity for an ongoing commercial relationship.
This all takes expensive sales time, so increasingly automated marketing tools are being substituted for sales people, adding to the science, but making the art all the more important, as nobody wants to be sold to by a digital robot, so the people need to understand when to intervene, and take control.
