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In Business Week is an article titled Death of a Pushy Salesman where it talks about a Silicon Valley chip company called Altera Corp.  However, this isn't your ordinary chip-making company.  The owner of the company has adopted a training system that emphasizes empathy.  Empathy is a word that seems foreign to most salespeople, especially to people who work for a computer-based company that focuses on speed and technology - not all that "touchy-feely" stuff. 

For those of you who have trouble distinguishing between empathy and sympathy, I'll give a couple quick definitions:

Sympathy involves identifying with another person's emotions.  Saying something like, "I get mad when salespeople ignore me too!" is a sympathetic statement.  On the other hand, empathy is acknowledging and affirming an emotional state - "I understand that you feel angry about the bad service..." would be an empathetic response.   

Altera Corp requires their salespeople to go through four weeks of this empathy training which some of them have trouble acclamating to.  For about 10% of new employees, the training is too much to bear and they end up quitting before the training is over. 

Besides the intensive training, another thing that makes Altera so successful is that they hold weekly advisory councils wherein they fly in about 15-20 customers who offer feedback and provide presentations on their strategies and needs.

It's no wonder last year Altera became one of the fastest growing chip companies in Silicon Valley.  The company's sales jumped 11% to $1.1 billion!   Keep an eye out for this company....They get it.