“I don’t know how he does it,” my coworker Shane said as we stared at the weekly sales figures, a long roster of the 40 of us who worked in the Apple Store and tabulations of how much cash each of us had brought in. In front of Shane’s name, and in front of my name, there was a long line of zeroes. But next to another guy’s name there was a stream of digits and dollar signs. One of our managers had taken a highlighter pen, covered this guy’s name in pink, and drawn an arrow to where he had written, “Go, Naked Man!”

Naked Man’s name was Leon, and in the past week he had sold several computers and all sorts of added-on warranties and extra “attachments.” He had even sold these add-ons “naked”—that is, to people who did not ...

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