老太太去買菜，路過四個水果攤。
四家銷售的蘋果幾乎相同，
但老太太並沒有在
最先路過的第一、第二家購買蘋果；
卻在第三家購買一斤！
更離奇的是在第四家又購買兩斤。
1、攤販一：
老太太去買菜，路過水果攤，
看到有賣蘋果的攤販，
就問說：「蘋果品質如何啊？」
攤販說：「我的蘋果特別好吃，又大又甜！」
老太太搖搖頭走開了...
（只講產品賣點，
不探求需求、都是無效介紹）
2、攤販二：
老太太又到一個攤子，
問:「你蘋果什麼味道的？」
攤販措手不及：
「我早上剛上的貨，沒來得及嘗，
看紅紅的表皮應該很甜！」
老太太二話沒說扭頭就走了...
（對產品瞭解一定是親自體驗出的，
親自體驗感受出的才是賣點。
只限於培訓聽到的知識，應對不了客戶）
3、攤販三：
旁邊的攤販見狀問道：
「老太太，您要甚麼蘋果，我這裡種類很多！」
老太太說：
「我想買酸點的蘋果」
攤販答道：「我這種蘋果口感比較酸，
請問您要多少斤?」
老太太說：「那就來一斤吧」
(客戶需求把握了，
但需求背後的動機是甚麼？
喪失進一步挖掘的機會，
屬於客戶自主購買，
自然不放大銷售）
4、攤販四：
這時他又看到一個攤販的蘋果
便去詢問：「你的蘋果怎麼樣啊？」
攤販答道：「我的蘋果很不錯的，
請問您想要甚麼樣的蘋果呢？」（探求需求）
「我想要酸一些的」老太太說。
攤販說:「一般人買蘋果都是要大的甜的，
您為甚麼要酸蘋果呢？」（挖掘更深的需求）
老太太說：「媳婦懷孕了，想吃點酸的蘋果」
攤販說：
「老太太您對兒媳婦兒真是體貼啊，
將來您媳婦一定能給您生一個乖孫」
（適度恭維，拉近距離）
「幾個月以前，
這附近也有兩家要生孩子，
就是來我這裡買蘋果」
（講案例，第三方佐證）
「您猜怎麼？
這兩家都生了個兒子」
(構建情景，引發憧憬）
「你想要多少？」
（封閉提問，默認成交，適時逼單）
「我再來兩斤吧。」
老太太被攤販說的高興了
(客戶的感覺有了，一切都有了）
攤販又對老太太介紹其他水果：
「橘子也適合孕婦吃，
酸甜還有多種維生素，
特別有營養 」(連單，最大化購買）
「您要是給媳婦來點橘子，她肯定開心！」
「是嘛!好那就來三斤橘子吧。」
「您人可真好，媳婦有您這樣的婆婆，
實在太有福氣了！」(適度準確拍馬屁）
攤販稱讚著老太太，
又說他的水果每天都是幾點進貨，
天天賣光，保證新鮮 (將交易做實，讓客戶踏實）
要是吃好了，讓老太太再過來 (建立客戶黏性）
老太太被攤販誇得開心，
說"要是吃的好讓朋友也來買"
提著水果，滿意的回家了。
(老客戶轉接新客戶，
客戶滿意，實現共贏！）
GLOBAL MUSIC: Yo Yo Ma (on R) in a performance of the Silk Road Ensemble. (Courtesy of Silk Road Ensemble)
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Yo Yo Ma (in Chinese, a double-friendly horse) has traveled a long journey, culturally and musically, to present what has become an epitome of his work—the Silk Road Ensemble.
On Ma’s official website, the Silk Road project is described as “a collective of internationally renowned performers and composers from more than 20 countries.
“Each ensemble member’s career illustrates a unique response to what is one of the artistic challenges of our times: to maintain the integrity of art rooted in authentic traditions while nourishing global connections.”
Prior to the Silk Road Ensemble coming to Philadelphia (the Mann Center on Aug. 11 and the Kimmel Center on Oct. 17), The Epoch Times interviewed Mr. Ma. He talked about his cultural background, parental influence, and college experience. He described how all of the above played a role in defining who he is today: a human being first, a musician second, and a cellist who takes stretching boundaries as a constant, third.
Mr. Ma was born in Paris in 1955. His Chinese parents (a musician father and singer mother) left China to escape the chaos of China’s wartime, which was exacerbated by the rising communist threat. A child prodigy, he began playing cello at the age of 4 and moved to New York with his family when he was 7.
THE BIG BREAK: Yo Yo Ma (at age 7), with his sister Yeou-Cheng Ma, is congratulated by Leonard Bernstein at the Kennedy Benefit Concert in Washington, D.C., attended by President Kennedy and wife Jacqueline. (Courtesy of Marina Ma)
Shortly after he landed in New York, he performed at the Kennedy Center at a fundraiser hosted by Leonard Bernstein and attended by President Kennedy and his wife. He enrolled in the Julliard School at 9 and studied under Leonard Rose.
At 17, he chose Harvard over music school in order to study the humanities. The Harvard experience provided him two lifelong gifts: a mind enriched by a broad liberal arts education and a wife, his first love.
Mr. Ma, 55, is considered the world’s greatest living cello player. He has won 14 Grammys and has performed on five continents at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Sesame Street.
He lives with his wife, Jill Hornor, and their children, Nicholas, 18, and Emily, 16, in Cambridge, Mass.
The Epoch Times: You’ve lived on different continents, in different cultures, and have traveled extensively around the world. How has this influenced you and defined your character?
Yo Yo Ma: The most important thing with music, with an artistic thing, is to start from the inside. It’s like someone inviting you into their home. … Having traveled around the world, I’ve had many experiences where people take me inside, and once they take you inside, you can look at how someone looks at the world from inside another place.
Then you have different perspectives. The more places you’ve been taken inside, the more perspectives you have, which means you can possibly have many answers to the same problems.
Epoch Times: What is your greatest source of inspiration and strength when it comes to taking risks to expand music beyond conventional notions?
Mr. Ma: Two things, I think, give you inspiration: one, developing an imagination and a very consistent and rich and disciplined imagination. When it comes to taking risks, if you can fully imagine what you’re risking and where you want to go to with that imagination, that’s one source of strength.
Another source of strength comes from what you’ve practiced in terms of going from a concept to reality. So for an architect, the more times you have drawn something on paper, you know it can actually turn into a building, and it doesn’t fall down.
The more you have practiced that muscle, the more, for a musician, you’ve practiced … imagining something, and it actually turns into a musical building … so those two things, the concepts and reality, and the strength of the imagination, are things that can hold you in good standing when you want to take a risk: Do I dare cross into this territory that I don’t know anything about?
Epoch Times: Confucius said, “At 30, I was able to stand on my own feet; at 40, I was no longer befuddled; at 50, I knew the mandate of heaven; at 60, my ears were attuned to cosmic wisdom.” Can you please share the two most important stages in your life that have had the greatest impact on you as a person and as a musician?
HARVARD DAYS: Yo Yo Ma with Jill Hornor before their marriage. (Courtesy of Marina Ma)
Mr. Ma: I think you can add 10 to everything, so my 50 is Confucius’s 40. At 50, I see things a little more clearly, but I hope that when I’m 60, I’ll know what the mandate [of] heaven is.
In terms of two important moments, I think they both have to do with probably the first one, probably going to college because I had played cello for many years by that time—for at least 10 years. So to go away to school and to be with other young people who are so passionate about what they’re doing, and to see how they think and act differently from me, but they’re very serious about what they’re doing—it was like traveling to 500 different countries but in your dormitory.
It’s like traveling the world because each person was a very well-formed individual but coming from a very different place, and I think that exposed me to a much larger world than I knew before. Whether it was psychology or anthropology or astronomy or literature, suddenly, oh my goodness, you could look at the world in so many different ways. And that’s something that was a very powerful stimulus to my thinking.
And I think the second thing was probably having children. I think once you have a child, you’re, one, no longer immortal. In your 20s, you think you can live forever. And two, you’re not the center of your own world anymore because there’s a child there, and I think you learn in a different way the meaning of love.
It’s a very different sense of caring, and in a sense, having the child makes you care differently about the world because whatever I did before, well, if I died, then fine. But suddenly, it’s like, no, wait a minute. If I died, that’s not good for the child, and also my actions—if they have bad consequences. Forty years ago, for example, if I throw away plastic, I’m going to be fine, but I think maybe [it’s] less good [for] a world for my child. And so I think about education differently. I think about the way we live on our planet differently.
Epoch Times: Can you please share your music education when you were very young?
Epoch Times: Can you please share your music education when you were very young?
Mr. Ma: My father was a very good storyteller, and he would tell us stories all the time: “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,“ legendary figures Zhu Geliang, Cao Cao. He gave me a very good background on what were valued priorities in cultures, all the Confucius [ideals] like harmony, filial respect, and with a slight [amount of] Daoism and Buddhism thrown in—those kinds of thoughts and values.
I never lived in a Chinese society, so it was really having this parental background and taking Chinese history in college, where we studied some of the literature, and traveling in Asia. Japan was one of the first Asian places where I could see Confucius at work.
‘A long journey is a testimony to a horse’s stamina as it is to one’s character.’—Chinese saying
Epoch Times: The Chinese character “Yao“ (medicine) is made of the character “Yue“ (music). The creation of the character for music is based on a legendary story about Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, using music to heal and to call back the souls of dead soldiers in a war. Please share your views about music and its role in humanity.
Mr. Ma: Chinese culture has always talked about music in a very special way. It’s reflective of something very powerful and [has] a spiritual influence on people. For music, sound is energy, and energy is like touch, and we know how powerful touch is in healing. Even when someone can’t speak and you hold their hand, that’s very comforting.
Mr. Ma: Chinese culture has always talked about music in a very special way. It’s reflective of something very powerful and [has] a spiritual influence on people. For music, sound is energy, and energy is like touch, and we know how powerful touch is in healing. Even when someone can’t speak and you hold their hand, that’s very comforting.
If someone can’t speak and can’t react, but you talk to them in a soothing voice, to a very old person or a sick person or a baby, those things can make a lot of difference. A lot of people are now talking about music therapy, and I think music is a type [of therapy]. It does give not only comfort, but can in fact promote healing.
Epoch Times: Freedom is very important to artists. Under the communist system, artists were forced, through censorship or self-censorship, to direct all forms of personal expression to a single end: glorifying the communist regime and its achievements. What would you like to say to artists who are striving to stay true to their mission regardless of the adversity and risks they are facing in communist societies?
Mr. Ma: I think the whole purpose of any of the arts is to express something that has deep meaning. I’m very interested in what causes creativity. What makes people say, I want to write this down, I want to paint this painting, I want to write music? There’s always a reason, and it has to be a very strong reason.
In terms of expression, I think often creativity comes from dissonance. In other words … you live in one world, and then you move to another world. And you probably … are always thinking, What would it be like in China now?
And if you’re in China, you’re thinking about what goes on in the U.S., right? It’s the idea that if you’re trying to combine a number of different worlds into one world view, as in a work of art, that’s the kind of thing that is often one of the motivations in the creation of artistic works.
YO YO MA AND JILL: Cellist Yo Yo Ma and his wife, Jill Hornor, attend the Walt Disney Concert Hall opening gala in Los Angeles. (Carlo Allegri/Getty Images for LAPA)
So you could put it in political terms, you could put it in social terms, you could put it in any kind of discipline’s terms. I think, in a way, you’re always trying to experience something that’s bigger than yourself.
Epoch Times: You spent lots of time traveling and performing. What percentage of your time is spent with your family? When you are with your family, what’s your favorite thing that you do together?
Mr. Ma: I still spend half the time traveling and a little bit over half the time away. I think that actually over the last 30 years, I probably spent 20 years away from home, which actually put a lot of the burden of raising a family on my wife.
Mr. Ma: I still spend half the time traveling and a little bit over half the time away. I think that actually over the last 30 years, I probably spent 20 years away from home, which actually put a lot of the burden of raising a family on my wife.
I think what she did with Nicolas and Emily is she never made me feel bad when I was away, going away to work, and she always said that was the important thing to my children. So they’re very grounded because family was the center. I always came back, tried to come back as often as possible, and I think the favorite thing that we like to do together is to laugh and have fun.
Epoch Times: Who is your role model in music?
Mr. Ma: I think my first cello hero is probably Pablo Casals because he said—something that I felt was so beautiful that I never forgot it—that he was a human being first, a musician second, and a cellist third.
Mr. Ma: I think my first cello hero is probably Pablo Casals because he said—something that I felt was so beautiful that I never forgot it—that he was a human being first, a musician second, and a cellist third.
I really like that and I completely believe that. I know he certainly lived and made his decisions like that, and I think that in that sense he was a really great model for me.