The Treasure

I have been a salesperson for as long as I can remember. I have sold at the highest levels of the corporate world where strategy means everything and  the art of the negotiation is key. I wore the suit, flew on planes across the country, had lengthy "strategy" meetings and in the end when I was successful I couldn't tell you a thing about my clients real life. It was just not a key component to the sale in many instances and it didn't mean I wasn't good at what I did.

Today I get to sell to people with no account plans, no forecasting but what I do get is an opportunity to share some wonderful stories and at the end of the day I feel like we truly do know something about each other when the sale is done. Some days the stories take on a very special significance and recently in Scottsdale that happened again for us. We used to live in Arizona when we were just starting out and some of the first pieces of art Steve ever sold were there to friends and acquaintances of his then mentor, a man who encouraged him to seriously pursue art as career. The pieces were sold for next to nothing since Steve was just happy to see someone wanted to have his artwork at all. Where these pieces ended up 25 years later we would never know, or would we?

On Saturday a lovely couple came into our booth to look at our work. They loved the style of the work and remarked to each other how much it would blend with the pieces that they had been lucky to have found at an estate sale awhile back. The pieces that they had purchased had  just been sitting in the house and not getting much attention but the colorful buffalo really caught their eye and after some time they were able to negotiate a price they could afford and bought it along with two smaller pieces. They had no idea who made the work but they loved the colors. Now they found themselves in our booth and it suddenly felt the same way it had when they were at the estate sale. The booth was fairly crowded but Ashley's mom walked over to a stack of greeting cards we had and when she turned over a box to see the price they were all stunned to see their buffalo looking back at them! They had found the artist of the mystery artwork from the estate sale! No wonder they liked this work so much and they all agreed to come back the next day.

On Sunday they returned and we all proceeded to talk about the estate sale. I shared with them the story of our start there and how the work probably ended up there and I walked them over to show them that the Lonesome Bull of which only one remains is now the most expensive thing we have. The story brought back memories of Steve in his early years trying to start out doing this. The time we all spent together as they picked out two new pieces became a really special time for everyone. Their collection has grown, we have added new friends, and we now know that life has brought us full circle. Priceless.....