Let me explain what I mean by this- I used to sell Cutco knives back in the day and nothing I’ve done since has given me the same “jolt of learning” with regards to salesmanship as that first visceral first experience of sitting in my neighbor’s kitchen with my stomach in knots and asking him to shell out nearly a thousand dollars for a set of knives and then having the guts to ask for a list of all his friends so I could try and sell them too. Many people that know me are well-aware that I used to slang cutlery because odds are that if they were friends with me back then, they got the pitch at some point. It was one of those “MCI Friends & Family-type” arrangements where as the salesperson you would supposedly raid your own address book, pitch all your friends on these knife sets and then at the end of the demo try to get them to give you referrals so you could go and try to sell knives to their friends. Theoretically you could network like this indefinitely and make good money on commission. BTW, the knives are actually extremely good quality (or at least the Manchurian candidate brainwashing we received in our sales training is still effective because I actually still have my set and use them daily ten years later). You can’t sell something you don’t believe in and I actually had the honor of “Fast start Record Breaker” having sold $3k worth of knives in my first week. ooooohhhh, ahhhhh so yea I believed in the product. Lemme tell you though that there is nothing more scary than sitting down for the first time with a complete stranger who has let you in his/her house on a friend’s recommendation and then trying to convince that person within 30min to purchase $683 worth of cutlery from you (why $683 you ask? well this magic number is forever imprinted in my brain as being the sale price before tax of the Homemaker +8 Classic handle knife set – the big kahuna that you always go for when closing a client before you try to upsell with gift sets and extras). Anyways, I promise I do have a point with where I’m going in all this…

So I’m on chapter five now of my Fasttrac book digging into the section titled “Entering and Capturing the Market” and it’s talking about basically all the steps involved in sales- the process of identifying your market, analyzing the segments, how you market to each differently and how the sales funnel works and ultimately how you close deals. One thing it has not mentioned though is the role of humor in diffusing awkward moments. When I sold knives, I worked directly under this guy Don Gerould who happened to be the kingpin for the west coast (like zone division manager or something). He was a phenomenal sales person and one thing he did well was utilize this technique I call “over-reaching and retreating” to diffuse a potentially-awkward situation. So a typical scenario would go like this:

Don – “Great, so I’m glad you chose to buy three of the Homemaker +8’s… there’s just one other thing I could use your help with…”
Customer (incredulous at this point) – “ummm, yeaahhhhh…”
Don – “Well as you know I work on referral. You obviously found value in the knives I showed you here today, if I could just get you to fill out my notebook with 100 names of your closest friends that would appreciate…”
Customer – “100 Names!?! Are you crazy!!!”
Don – “Awww, alright I’m just kidding. Ten will be fine.”
Customer (scratching head) – “Oh is that all? Well, yeah, I suppose I could do that.”

That technique alone translated to probably fifty extra customers for me. Granted, it would be out of place if you had not established good rapport by that point in the conversation, but I can tell you that the value of that type of initial expectation-setting and then retreat is something that I will never forget. Had I gone in asking for the ten names each time, I’m quite sure that I would have been turned down many of those times. Using this tension-shattering technique was priceless. And really if you think about it, nobody ever wants awkwardness- neither the salesperson nor the buyer. Like any technique, delivery and appropriateness for the moment is everything – used correctly it discharges the tension that builds like static electricity during the closing when you are asking someone to pull out their checkbook or give you referrals. Here’s another quick example:

This lame sign was probably responsible for 30% of the total take from a yard sale I threw two weeks ago. I finally moved out of my house and turned it into a rental. I had six years of accumulated junk in the garage (stuff like napkin dispensers, computer parts, roommates’ hubcaps and these weird wrought-iron holders of some type that I don’t even know what they were, but they sold). My house was a good five turns off the main road and in running this yard sale (even though I had an article in the paper, a post on craigslist and signage everywhere) a real concern of mine was that people might bail after the third turn out of boredom trying to find my place. I made a progression of strategically-placed signs that created a dialogue with the buyers before I ever even met them. There was probably 300 people in all that showed up that day and I must have gotten 20-30 different comments from people on how much they liked the signage. The simple, light-hearted curve ball that was tossed to people as they snaked their way through the turns in my subdivision was enough to put most people in a good mood and create a favorable buying environment. The lesson I extracted from that day was that even minor efforts to humanize the buying situation by using conversational English and humor can result in massive returns- and this undoubtedly applies to ecommerce and not just face-to-face sales. Think Flickr before Yahoo acquired them as a good example. And forget what your high school English teacher might have told you about the importance of formality- if the message is for public consumption then the strengthened connection you have with the buyer from using informal, conversational style trumps any type of alleged respect you might garner by demonstrating that you can write near-Shakespearean-style prose.

Of course there are a bunch of other great sales techniques I learned that summer from Don but this is probably enough rambling for one night. What are some anecdotal sales experiences that you have?

© 2005 Lights Out Production – All Rights Reserved Worldwide

I had my second night class last night of the FastTrac Tech program put on by Stealthmode Partners in Phoenix and so far I’m impressed. I missed their kickoff class because I was still down in Mexico but the first two classes have already yielded some good ideas and solid connections. This is actually the first time this particular program has been offered anywhere – the course materials we received last night were _literally_ "hot off the presses" (they were still warm from the printers). In a true agile fashion they had xeroxed draft copies of the first two chapters from the book and distributed them and as well put their instructors through accelerated facilitator training to offer the course as early as they did.

The written content thus far has been good and fairly consistent with what I’m getting from the Rhonda Abrahams book Simple Business Plan (which is also very good). The speakers though have exceeded my expectations. The qualifications for presenting at FastTrac are apparently that you must first be a successful entrepreneur yourself. The combination of their anecdotal stories and the ability to ask them questions during class and chat with them afterwards is priceless. There’s also the benefit of being exposed to this material in the presence of fifteen other like-minded individuals who are there for the same reason you are. You get to see the questions they ask and hear about their business ideas and, as our teacher Ed Nusbaum says, "you can see the water in their fishtanks and it gives you insight into what’s in your own."

Last night we conducted an interesting exercise: At the first meeting I attended we had gone around the room and had to give our 20sec elevator pitch for our idea. When you’ve been working very close on something it’s extremely difficult to distance yourself enough to provide a concise, memorable soundbyte that summarizes the idea to an outsider. I floundered with mine a bit at the first meeting and rattled off something that was probably a bit to technical and convoluted of the guts of Grid7. Last night in a surprise twist we were told to point at a random person across the room and ensure that we were their only pointer. We then went around and had to summarize _that_ person’s business. It was interesting because it showed just how much (if anything) other people took from that person’s first pitch (mine was clearly very unremarkable as the guy who summarized mine thought I was a media production company). We then were asked to give our refined spiel. The exercise helped cement this notion that "your pitch is only as good as what other’s are able to retain and regurgitate." My partner Kimbro gave a bangup verson of the pitch and unfortunately neither one of us remember what he said. My second was much better than the first:

Grid7 is an incubator for startup ideas that takes advantage of the “unutilized work cycles” in the same way that grid computing exploits unutilized CPU cycles. It allows internet professionals to participate early in ventures and break out of the “renter’s dilemna” and instead receive compensation primarily in the form of equity.

On a completely unrelated note- I learned a major lesson yesterday on the ABC extranet project. It’s been a 5mo contract thus far to develop a massive extranet for them and simplify the process by which they house homeless mentally-ill people. My role in the project is to handle legacy integration and that means writing the code that interfaces with four legacy systems from their social workers, housing providers and federally-mandated HMIS system. We had built something which essentially automated the process of data entry and would connect to an AS400 to grab all housing applicants and sync them with our internal database. Unfortunately the 3rd-party company which we’re dealing with (they will remain nameless) announced yesterday that this initiative no longer met their "strategic priorities" and had therefore been suspended indefinitely. What a shame… a few hours worth of work on their part would mean a MASSIVE improvement to the process and eliminate the repeated volleys of faxes that is the current process. This unfortunate development severly undermines the system we’ve created. We still have some ideas on how to salvage the project but the lesson learned is this: "when doing a project for a client that will require participation from a 3rd party in order for it to work, you MUST get total commitment from that 3rd party first and make sure the right people on their team are convinced of the value of the project to THEIR organization." Anyways, we will persevere on the ABC project- it’s just a major setback and the timing is crappy as we just finished the XML integration of this piece. I suppose the upside is that exercises in oppressive beaurocracy like this one just fuel my passion for the Grid7 model that much more.

© 2005 Lights Out Production – All Rights Reserved Worldwide