Iacocca

deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own.

But I don’t think he would have been wrong in the long run

By their very nature, financial analysts tend to be defensive, conservative, and pessimistic. On the other side of the fence are the guys in sales and marketing—aggressive, speculative, and optimistic. They’re always saying, “Let’s do it,” while the bean counters are always cautioning you on why you shouldn’t do it. In any company you need both sides of the equation, because the natural tension between the two groups creates its own system of checks and balances

I would travel up and down the East Coast from city to city like a traveling salesman

Charlie was a street fighter and a strategist, always thinking ahead about what he could do next

He could also be direct: “Make money,” he used to say. “Screw everything else. This is a profit-making system, boy. The rest is frills.”

Following Murray’s lead, I used to give the dealers a few tips myself. I would explain that they had to “qualify” a buyer, to ask the right questions that might lead to a sale.

Remember this: Anybody who ever buys anything—a house, a car, or stocks and bonds—will rationalize his purchase for a few weeks, even if he made a mistake.

One of his little tricks was to call up every customer thirty days after he’d bought a new car. Murray would always ask: “How do your friends like it?” His strategy was simple. He reasoned that if you asked the customer how he liked the car, he might feel obliged to think of something that was wrong with it. But if you asked him how his friends liked it, he would have to tell you how great the car was.

Some people think that good salesmen are born