The Tree of Life: Reflections on Consultation
Homer's Iliad, In Latin and Greek, 1477
Sales people are now often referred to as Sales Consultants...or, they refer to themselves this way...particularly on their business cards, just as life insurance sales people refer to themselves as 'Financial Consultants.' There are any number of reasons for this, none of which I will pursue in this entry.
Referring to oneself as a consultant, in my mind, presupposes a degree of objectivity, sensitivity, and knowledge.
I do not refer to myself as a consultant...although that is what I think I do best: I genuinely enjoy helping people decide what vehicle is best for them...and some people do need help in this decision.
What is most important to me is that my clients expect that I really will help them in as objective a way as possible, including the possibility that the vehicles I sell are not the best for them, or that they should wait to purchase when it is financially to their advantage.
We simply owe this to each other. Yes, I will make a persuasive case for the vehicles I sell. And, yes, I will be as persuasive as I can, but there is a line that cannot be crossed. It is a line that runs through, or should run through, all of our relationships.
Some refer to the far side of this line as pressure. I call it force.
"Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway." Simone Weil, from The Iliad, Poem of Might.
Description of Illustration: Johannes Rossos wrote the Greek text and Bartolomeo San Vito the Latin of this codex of Homer's "Iliad" and a companion version of the "Odyssey." The illustrations, by a north Italian artist, draw on the archaeological scholarship of Paduan antiquaries to represent the Greek and Trojan heroes in convincingly rendered ancient armor and costumes (though the ship and tents in the middle of the Latin page are clearly modern). Here we see the priest Chryses, rendered as an ancient pagan, spurned by Agamemnon and avenged by the god Apollo, who shoots down the Greeks. Sadly, time or funds ran out, and most later images in the series are either merely sketched in or entirely omitted. The illustrations shown summarize Book I of the Iliad.