Making Rain

I am very wary of celebrity autobiographical tell-alls.  These tawdry tales are often filled with narcissistic self-pity or ironic condescension or self-congratulatory grandiosity clothed in ersatz humility.

Not so the new autobiography of Andre Agassi entitled “Open”.

One of my jobs when I was younger was tennis pro and I’ve continued to follow tennis over the years. Even before this remarkable autobiography, I admired the grace, artistry and passion of Andre Agassi.  I admired his calm, his court savvy, his fierce spirit.  Barbra Streisand called Agassi “the Zen Master”.  While I agree with Barbra Streisand about very little, I do agree with her about this.

Last Sunday (November 8, 2009), I was deeply touched by an excellent interview with Mr. Agassi conducted by Katie Couric on “60 Minutes”.  In addition to being a fine piece of broadcast journalism, it limned Agassi’s spiritual journey with a superb dramatic arc.  For me, it was compelling television.  But more than the skilled professionalism of the piece, what stood out for me was the authenticity of Andre Agassi.

The interview was hyped on the revelation that Agassi admits he used crystal meth for a year during his tennis career and lied about it to the powers that be.  However, this rather minor revelation of a young man’s sin, to me, was not what made the piece extraordinary.  What made the interview powerful was that without real guidance or education (Mr. Agassi never graduated high school), he willed himself to become a deeply and profoundly authentic person – a person he didn’t even know he was when he began his journey.  His pilgrimage from liar, fake and lost soul to authentic human wholeness struck me as particularly heroic in that it was largely internal, solitary and autodidactic.  A profoundly lonely but determined odyssey.  While direct and confessional, Mr. Agassi was clear-eyed and without self-pity.  Admirable.  Even astonishing — and even more astonishing for the fact that he chose his path from a place of unanchored anomie: ungrounded in faith or family.

So you may say “How can you know Andre Agassi is not just a big ol’ self-absorbed phony out hyping his book”?  Well, I guess I can only point to the judge, who, when asked to define pornography simply said “I may not be able to specifically define it, but I know it when I see it”.  Me too.  Which brings me, rather elliptically, to sales.

I’m a salesman and my company, Corporate Rain International, is a sales company that specializes in c-suite sales, mostly of services.  For me, the key to successful salesmanship is simply authenticity.  That soulful core is the pure essence of good salesmanship.  A good salesman is authentic.  He knows who he is.  He tells the unalloyed truth from a centered space and people respond.  I hope I am neither a naïf nor disingenuous when I state with absolute sincerity that authenticity is the key to selling.  But you have to be authentic before you can sell authentically.  Though not a salesman, Andre Agassi is a remarkable case study and example of achieved authenticity.

So thank you Andre Agassi for becoming yourself.  You are, as Barbra Streisand so aptly put it, “the Zen Master”. Bravo, Andre.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Barbara Streisand, Katie Couric, 60 Minutes, Zen Master, Andre Agassi, Salesmanship, Corporate Rain, Salesman, Business, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.