Closing the sale the Cambodian way. This happened to me last week wandering through some souvenir stalls close to Angkor Wat. A young boy, who was somewhere between six and ten, walked up, looked me in the eye, held out several multi-packs of postcards, and then kicked off into his sales spiel.

"What do you want to buy?"

"I'm o.k, I'm fine. Don't need anything. Just having a look around"

"Where you from?"

"England"

"England. Capital city, London. Population of London 7 million. Population of England 55 million. UK is England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales..."

"That's good ! I'm impressed. I'll take a card. How much for one?"

"No one. Can only sell pack. One dollar"

"O.k I'll take a pack then..."

"How about two dollars then ? Extra dollar for me to go to school..."

Chutzpah, charm, intelligence, reasonable command of a foreign language, drive. Granted it's a case of different environment, different circumstances, but I'll place all of my hard-earned folding on the table that there'll be no British child of a similar age able to pull all of these off. Unimaginable.

After a pitch like that there's only one thing: hand over two dollars for ten cards I really did n't need (and now can't find) and tell him it's probably business school he needs to be going to.