People-Reading Skills Take Me from Bottom-Rung Salesperson to Sales Superstar

At twenty-three, Zhang Liang left Yushu, Jilin, for Beijing with three diplomas and 2,000 yuan in his pocket. As a junior salesperson at Maisi Medical, he was too afraid to even call clients. But by noticing whether their shoes were scuffed and what trophies they kept in their offices, he figured out how to “read people by the traces they leave behind.”

When others stole his sales, clients looked down on him, and his ex-wife betrayed him, he gritted his teeth and filled ten notebooks with client profiles: learn someone’s character from their watch, understand their needs from their catchphrases, and guess their weak spots from their decor. From a 50,000-yuan order from a township hospital to a multimillion-yuan contract with a top-tier hospital, he spent ten years climbing to the role of vice president of sales, turning “paying attention to details” into a systematic sales bible.

At thirty-three, he took his business global. He knew how to save face for Southeast Asian clients, and his cross-cultural knack for reading people helped Chinese medical equipment sweep across 120 countries. Some called him an opportunist. He only smiled. “The essence of sales has always been understanding people.”

This is the story of a poor young man who used his “mind-reading skills” to turn his life around, going from instant noodles with pickled vegetables to running a multinational business empire. Your needs are already revealed by the details you leave behind.