Good salesmanship is about solving the customer's problem.
But even more effective salesmanship is about drawing the customer's attention to the right problem, rather than the one he is superficially addressing.
Two instances come to my mind.
First - as part of a team managing a college fest, we had rented out food stalls. A location assigned to a vendor somehow got occupied by someone else. So when this guy showed up around lunch time to set up his stall, he came to us and complained. We spent around 15 min arguing on the 'Why' part of things until one of my friends came up and pointed out the right problem - the location really doesn't matter, but if he is not setting up his stall during lunch time, he IS going to lose business. Problem solved.
Second - more recently, I made a trip to Chennai with my parents. We just had to rent out a hotel room to spend one night, so we didn't need anything to luxurious. We considered a modest hotel. I went on to ask the attendant whether they had hot water running in their bathroom. And he pointed out to me - we were in Chennai! Nobody would ever use hot water there. Once again, addressing the real problem behind the question, thus helping us choose the right factors in making our decision easy.
