For Rapid City auctioneer Jud Seaman, who is preparing to compete for the International Auctioneer Championship title, it's not just a lot of fast-talking. It's all about rhythm.

"As babies, we're taught words, but in auctioneer school, we start with numbers, always in rhythm, in scales from zero to 100 and back to zero again."

He said the chanting auctioneers do is a learned skill. "It's really just a high speed type of communication," he said. "The purpose is to speed up the selling process."

Seaman is the reigning state champion auctioneer, a title he won at last year's South Dakota State Fair in Huron.

He will be in Nashville Friday, July 11, to compete with more than 90 auctioneers from throughout the world at the 20th International Auctioneer Championship. Competitors will be judged on their presentation, chant, voice quality, body language, and other elements of effective auctioneering.

The winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize and a trophy and will become spokesman for the National Auctioneers Association.

Before auctioneering, Seaman already had a long business career, starting at the age of 12, when he began working in the meat industry. He said that after graduating from high school in 1975, he set a goal for himself: to own his own meat business by the time he was 21. In 1980, Seaman accomplished this by buying Rapid City Western Meats, a company he ran until 1999.

In March 1994, Seaman decided that a change was in order, and he took a two-week course at Western College of Auctioneering in Billings, Mont. Unlike most auctioneers who work part-time, Seaman has built his company, Quality Auction Services, into a full-time business, conducting 150 to 175 sales a year.

He sells at the weekly Black Hills Auto Auction, is associated with Bradeen Real Estate and Auctions of Custer, and has taught a one-day business course covering "the initial meeting with the seller up until the first item is sold" at his alma mater, the Western College of Auctioneering, since 1995.

Seaman travels extensively, including to Harrisburg, Penn., Ogden, Utah, Mandan, N.D., and to the Philippines, where he has auctioned machinery on three separate occasions, selling in Philippine pesos rather than U.S. dollars. He has auctioned off items including tools, farm machinery, cars, antiques and live buffalo. He has gone, at the invitation of Wieman Machinery Auction, to Marion, where he auctioned 1,400 pieces of farm machinery in one day.

According to Seaman, auctioneering is much more than simply calling on the day of the sale. In some cases, depending on the wishes of the seller, it begins with the contract and ends with the closeout, doing all of the duties in between, including making up sale flyers, boxing up items and knowing the value of what is to be sold.

"Auctioneering is a service business, and the most important part of the job is done prior to the day of the auction, when pretty much the only thing remaining to be done is to determine the buyer and the price," he said.

Seaman's business experience lends itself well to a vital part of auctioneering - knowing the value of the items on the auction block. "The goal is to get to the selling price as quickly as possible by reading your audience and knowing the value of the item. It's a learned skill that comes with experience," he said.

Online auctions such as eBay have affected Seaman's business, but not adversely. "We have the ability to do Internet auctions in which we offer live online bidding, and it's really starting to catch on here, especially with farmers," he said. "The biggest difference between those bids and traditional ones is the two- to three-second delay that you get online."

How will a downturn in the United States economy affect the auction business? Seaman believes that it will only make it better. "I had an auctioneer tell me one time that when the economy is good, our business is good, and as the economy gets worse, our business gets better," he said.

That's good news for Seaman, who likes to keep busy and stay on the road. "I've been very fortunate," he said. "Experience and word of mouth have been good for my business, but I'm always hunting another sale."

Seaman said auctioneering has clearly been a good fit for him. "I just made a decision to be my own best employee ever," he said. "I'm happy with that, and that's what really matters, isn't it?"