It's Not the Same

Things just aren't the same as when Les was a lad.

IT'S NOT THE SAME

It was different in my day, but then of course it would be. I was reading recently the comments from one of our local Doctors. It appears that "they, the powers that be", would like the title of General Practitioner to be replaced by goodness knows what. All of this reminds me of my insurance days when I started life as an Insurance Agent and on a bicycle as it so happened. And as far as I was concerned that's how I finished up, still an Insurance Agent. In between I was called a number of things, some I can repeat here, Financial Consultant, Intermediary, whatever that was.

Today before you can go out into the big wide world to sell insurance you have to pass a number of exams, which in it's self seems a good idea. What's wrong with knowing as much as you possibly can about the product you are selling? Well nothing really so long as you know a little bit about the people you are suppose to be selling to and passing exams may not help you much in that direction. Our Doctor friend tells us for example that when he sometimes makes a diagnosis his "Sixth Sense" plays a significant part; well I wouldn't have thought he learnt much about that at medical school.

I can well imagine a car salesman impressing a husband as he bombast's him with all sorts of technicalities, only to find that the dear lady wife quietly interjects with the sale destroying observation, "We are not having that, I don't like the colour". If only our dear salesman had taken a tip from our Doctor and used his sixth sense then he would have known what the dear lady was thinking. That's the trouble with so much of today's thinking. They think you can learn all you want to know at the training school and if you emerge with a bag full of diplomas then you have the world at your feet. Well it doesn't always work that way! I have come across a lot of people who have more brains in their little finger than I have in my entire body, but you try and get them to sell something and they couldn't sell themselves out of a plastic bag, even if it was Christmas time.

How many times do you hear of people who couldn't pass their eleven-plus but went on to start their own businesses? And where are they today? Playing their part on the world stage and they got there by using their initiative and enterprise. I just wonder if we do enough to help people to get on the first rung of the ladder in whatever field we are talking about or are we still far too interested in not what you are but who you are?

Les Lawrence