I always smile when I hear how foolish sales people can be, and it isn't always the young or inexperienced ones.
Very early in my career as a welding supply company sales person I learned an invaluable lesson. A customer came into our store wearing the dirtiest bib overalls I had ever seen and boots covered in what had to be five pounds of mud. He looked like he was too poor to buy lunch and hadn't been near a shower for weeks.
My boss and the owner of the company, who happened to be at the counter, treated him exactly like he was our biggest account and I wasn't sure why. After he completed his business and left the owner told me "Mr. D may not look like it, but he could buy this place with his petty cash and never look back".
He owned a fairly good sized coal company but had others do the office type work he hated while he was out in the field with the workers who produced the work that he valued highly. I learned that day, and never forgot, that first impressions are not always accurate and judging anything on looks alone will simply prove how foolish you are. That customer eventually became one of my accounts and over the years purchased an average of $100K in goods annually allowing me to make a pretty good commission from his business and did so for nearly all of my 40+ years in the business.
