Steve Jobs Was NOT an Innovator. He was a Master Salesman.

But salesmen don’t become legends. Because, you know, sales.

Just like people often overlook Mick Jagger’s skills as a great businessman, we didn’t realize that Jobs was a salesman. Jagger studied finance and accounting at the London School of Economics. He is an extremely shrewd businessman who runs a very profitable company, The Rolling Stones.

We prefer, instead, to focus on Mick’s music and stage presence. On the art.

The same goes for Steve Jobs. There’s been at least one book written about his brilliance at presentations, and people wax poetic on his skill as a communicator.

You’ll notice, however, that almost no one uses that loaded word, sales, the very what and why behind those communications and presentations. He wasn’t speaking just for the art of speaking, people.

(This article could just as well be a sequel to Everything you think you know about Apple is wrong.)

Jobs took you to a place you didn’t even know you wanted to go… and when you got there, conveniently, there were our products—the perfect resolution of the journey.

Steve is associated with innovation because of the technology he brought to the world—but he was not the innovator.

Back in 2007, Jobs persuaded AT&T to adopt this small device called an iPhone from this very tiny company called Apple and put it on their network. He had to sell the CEO of AT&T in Atlanta, Georgia, on taking on this crazy little device—and on his terms.

Jobs negotiated a landmark revenue share deal with AT&T, essentially getting the company to stop, drop their standards, and adopt ours.

Without that, the iPhone would have never been born.

That’s not innovation. That’s master selling.

But we wouldn’t have worshiped a salesman—because of the way we see sales. We prefer to focus on the art.

Sales, however, is an art.

In Live from Cupertino: How Apple Used Words, Music, and Performance to Build the World’s Best Sales Machine, I reveal the art behind the sales at Apple, based on my 22 years at the company.

Each of these elements has its role: Rehearsal, Storytelling, Listening, Words, Rhythm, Improvisation, Soul, Orchestration, and Magic. Get your copy today on Amazon or at your favorite bookseller.