Learning to love the salesman

Selling stuff to people is not the easiest thing in the world.
As a salesman, you have to smile as the door slams on your face. You have to learn to live with a lack of trust from a constant suspicion that you might sell stuff that is not necessary or is not worth the price you ask for.
But what can explain why the best achievers are all wonderful salespeople in their own right?
People who constantly sell themselves and their ideas to hard nosed men in power who got there the same route stand out from those who want recognition and do nothing about it.

But then the life of a salesman is never easy.

I only had to attend the public lecture at LSE by Prof. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Business School who happens to be the convenor of the Copenhagen Consensus to find out.
Before I get ahead, the Copenhagen Consensus is a get-together of the 30 best economists in the world, with experts on the biggest problems that the world faces today.
A 'dream-team' of eight (of which four are Nobel laureates in Economics) decide on the problems that have to be prioritized first. These are on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis, thus if you had one dollar where would you put it to get the maximum benefit is the question they sought to answer.
To quench your curiosity, the four were
1. HIV/AIDS
2. Water Sanitation
3. Micronutrients ie providing the world's poor with sufficient vitamins and minerals
4. Malaria
Notably missing were Global Warming and lack of education, primary and secondary.

His effort is undoubtedly noteworthy as seen from the popularity the consensus has with mainstream media, including the economist magazine. However, it was a bit of sight as he was pulled apart by the other two on the panel.
Questions from the audience, which included comments on him being more of a statistician, an accountant, a PR guy and a number cruncher did not help the image either. The image of a salesman who just had the door slammed on his face that is.
After all, He was trying to sell his ideas on saving the world and it did not seem he found many buyers at LSE.
Me, on the other hand did find myself a buyer, even if rather reluctant initially.
The whole thing might seem simplistic to those with an intellectual bent of mind - Those who firmly believe no problem can be solved in this world without finding the complex roots of a nth order differential equation, but I beg to differ.
I liked the idea of putting all the world's problems in a simple table with costs in one column and benefits in one column.
Atleast the politicians will know something about it, not having to read through a billion pages of abstract papers and best of all, if they get their act, we will get somewhere in solving some of the world's worst problems. They might not be first four of the world's worst problems but they will be somewhere in the top 10 and that would be four already dealt with.
All because someone decided to do what most consider a rather dreary job of selling these ideas to the most powerful laymen in the world - the leaders of the world. He might fail to sell big when he has to deal with intellectual might of academic institutions that will inevitably be reluctant if anything at all, to buy his ideas. In the end, all that matters is he get the big fish, even if he misses out on the small ones.
Much better than Dr M Singh commissioning a study on what we need to deal with first, when there are problems staring at you in your face - you only have to walk on the road, which he has has probably not done after getting into government.
Twenty one years in India can only make you think- Before our bureaucrats get our act together, the list will probably change only for another PM to commission yet another study and so on it goes.