Why newspaper vendors make amazing salesmen

What stars! What role models! They’re our friends. We look forward to seeing them. And we can hardly wait to give them our business.

They’re cheerful, they’re helpful, and they’re there, come rain or shine, selling us our newspapers and our magazines.

As we drive into town along Uhuru Highway we look forward to greeting them, and there’s no one to whom we’d rather give our money.

They understand traffic flow better than any policeman, knowing exactly where to position themselves and when to run up or down the lines.

When we’re still dithering over which of their tempting products to buy as the traffic begins to flow once more, they’re faster than Usain Bolt in racing along to catch up with us again.

And when you tell them “no, not today thanks”, they never seem disappointed.

I don’t know if like me you have your favourites, who are particularly pleased to see you after a break (“you are lost!”), and who in those few seconds before you rev off again chat with you about the weather, the traffic, the daughter who needs a job.

And I don’t know if like me you feel so badly if you haven’t bought anything from your friend for quite a while that you shell out for pricey magazines you know full well you’ll have absolutely no time to read.

I even stretch to the Harvard Business Review if the gap has been too great, and I part gladly with the over Sh2,000 it costs.

How did these young men, full of great energy and greater humour, develop this extraordinary culture? How does it persist intact over the years?

It’s as if they have some unseen virtual leader, high above those clogged up lanes, coaching them and cheering them on, keeping their morale at an unwaveringly high level.

They support each other — with change, and with the issue you want that only their friend has tucked under his arm.

Yet they compete with one another too, for each is an entrepreneur, looking to maximise his market share.

Each runs his own mobile business; each earns honestly; and what drives them all — and makes them succeed — is concern for their customers.

I could eulogise these heroes of the highway forever, but I don’t really need to, as we all know them, and we all sing their praises.

The big question is why they’re so unusual.

How come they’re the ones who understand so perfectly how to delight their customers?

What makes them so consistently exceed our expectations, when most other salespeople fall woefully short… with equal consistency?

If I knew the answer to that I’d be a really happy — and probably very wealthy — man.

But short of possessing the secret of what lies behind their stunning success I could just take sales teams along with me in my car and have them absorb the style.

“See the warm enthusiasm,” I would say, as one of my roadside friends makes the sign for me to roll down my window. “Watch as they show off their wares, pointing eagerly at the date on the publication to show it’s the very latest,” I would add.

Not for these open air vendors the luxury of sales training or big conventions or fancy incentive schemes. Just joyous slog for a few coins. Natural. Unspoilt. Locked in and permanent.

So let’s consider another question: why do so few other salespeople we come across manage even a fraction of what the newspaper boys exude? What holds them back?

We Kenyans are a naturally exuberant and friendly lot, full of good humour and entrepreneurial zeal.

Yet so much of all that fades away among too many whose job it is to deal with customers.

And let’s face it, one way or another that means most of us.

Brilliant answers

Yet again I must confess I don’t have any brilliant answers.

But whatever ails these other people, surely they can be counselled: lose your inhibitions; find your smile; think of each customer as a friend you really want to please; explore and get to know their needs; run the extra mile after them.

Don’t always expect to make the sale — and when it doesn’t happen don’t take it personally and maintain your cheerfulness.

The more you think about it, the more you’ll conclude that much of what determines the difference between success and failure is attitude.

Your attitude to yourself, and your attitude to others.

We all like to be around cheerful, willing people, who are interested in us and our needs.

Admittedly we live in stressful times, with tight money and heavy competition, with quarrelsome politicians and terrible traffic.

But are the delightful young men on Uhuru Highway protected from all of this? Of course not.

The difference is in how they react to it, how they cope with it. We have so much to learn from them.

It’s nice also to mention their counterparts who, with equal lightness and joy, sell us bunches of flowers as we head home or out for dinner.

The phrase “say it with flowers” is wonderfully appropriate for them.

And again, how often don’t we allow ourselves to buy from them not because we had been intending to, not because of some immediate purpose, but simply because their very presence has made us happy, and because we want to thank them for being as they are.

My last word is for Joseph, who sells me my Business Daily at the end of James Gichuru Road, just before I plough into the morning jam on Waiyaki Way.

He’s as delighted to see me as I am to greet him.

So Joseph, thanks for your service and for your lovely open smile.

I really appreciate you, for how you launch my day.

(I’ll be buying him a copy of this paper today!)

meldon@symphony.co.ke