Out & About
A baby praying mantis, perfectly formed with
adult features, looks for it's meal
****************************************
While walking in the garden, I took this picture of
a tiny, baby praying mantis. Did you know that
baby praying mantis are called
nymphs? An egg sac has around 200 nymphs
and when they mature, they are perfectly formed in
every detail.
The nymphs need to eat every day to grow, and
they will concentrate on catching wingless flies,
small
caterpillars and other plump insects for their daily
meals. Perfectly
formed, they know exactly what to do to catch their
prey to survive and thrive.
Now here's the exciting (or gory, depends on
which
way you look at it!) part about the praying mantis.
When they grow up, the males court a female
and come together to reproduce. After a while,
horror of horrors, the female swings around lightning
fast and grabs the male's head and immediately
begins to devour it! Oh well, I suppose anything
within reach is a good meal!
Of course, they do it as they're programmed to
do it.
It's a survival instinct so that the females have a
ready source of protein to nurture their eggs.
What's the difference between what the mantis does
and
some salespeople? Not much! I've been out lately
looking to
buy a camera.
So many salespeople act like the
female mantis...they entice you in with their
gaudy
shops, ranges of sparkling shelves overladen with
goodies
and they put on a couldn't-care-less look as if THEY
are doing you a favour!
They proceed to show you
the first thing that you mention you'd like to
take a
look at, then almost immediately begin to pounce on
you to close the sale (a la eat you up!).
And if you
manage to escape their deadly grasp with a lame, "I'll
need to think about it", boy...do they then look
nasty! If they were a mantis, they'd have eaten you
up without a trace of emotion!
Well, there's a saying about don't bite the hand
that
feeds you. Obviously some poor species of
salespeople haven't heard of it!
When will these poor behaving salespeople ever
learn
that the very first thing to do is to find out what the
customer's needs are, not to sell them whatever
they think is fancied.
And when the sale doesn't
eventuate, for the salespeople not to show their
long, black faces who look like a praying mantis that
let their meal get away!
Selling is a relationship. It's connectedness that
brings in a customer to buy something, in my case, a
camera. I can buy the same camera at a
multitude of
shops, but the salesperson who can look after my
needs by being professional, courteous, advisory,
knowledgeable about product and behaviour, with a
fair price, gets my business everytime.
Businesses and organisations can advertise all
they like. But in the end, as Winston Churchill
said, "the truth is
incontrovertible. Malice may
attack it, ignorance may deride, but in the
end...there it is." It's the moment of truth when
a
customer meets with the salesperson. That's crunch
time. Treat the customer badly, and you lose the
sale and the opportunity for the customer to come
back to you the next time.
So the next time you get together and have an
interaction with a salesperon, just make sure
you've got a rapid escape route! You could lose your
head!
