What Can Green Eggs & Ham Teach You About Sales
Since 1980, I’ve been actively involved in training, with the past 30 years focused on conducting training sessions for my consulting clients. Over time, I’ve developed a few unique techniques, including one that’s become a staple of mine: reading Green Eggs and Ham aloud with each new class of agents. This classic book is actually a fantastic sales training tool, from start to finish. If you recall, the story centers around two characters, one trying to convince the other to try—or “buy”—something he initially resists: green eggs and ham. Through persistence and creativity, the “salesman” character, Sam-I-Am, finally persuades his counterpart to give the product a chance, and to everyone’s surprise, he loves it.
Sam-I-Am demonstrates the art of overcoming objections through an unwavering, friendly persistence:
Sam-I-Am:
- Would you eat them in a box?
- Would you eat them with a fox?
- The Buyer (whose name is never given):
- Not in a box,
- Not with a fox.
- Not in a house,
- Not with a mouse.
- I would not eat them here or there,
- I would not eat them anywhere.
- I would not eat green eggs and ham.
- I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.
- This exchange illustrates an essential sales mindset: “What if we tried this? Or maybe that?”—keeping up the friendly energy and exploring every option. With only 50 unique words over 70 pages, Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet in 1960, and it’s been a model of persistence and sales creativity ever since.
In today’s training environment, especially with sales and customer service, memorable techniques like this can quickly get the point across and make training effective. If you’re looking for top-quality agents for sales, lead generation, or customer service, I have trained agents in Jamaica available for just $7-9 per hour. Phillip Duff 904-347-5901 Call me for quality agents.
