Sales Laundry

 

I have literally taught hundreds of people “how to sell” over the years, but I still find myself amazed because selling is one of the first things we put into practice as a baby.

 

Several years my very young daughter reminded me of that fact at a well placed moment in time when I thought I was a master sales trainer, having just helped a young man close a sale that only a few months before he and I both would have said was impossible.  I should clarify that in saying I gave some instruction, but he did the heavy lifting in front of the customer.

 

Arriving home, swelled with the pride of a father who just watched his son achieve his goal and feeling pretty good about myself my wife brought me back to earth by asking me to feed my little girl (and clean up after the food stopped flying.)

 

Knocked from my high horse, I set about putting my daughter in her high chair and inspecting the nights fare.  There was some sort of green glop next to some brown glop next to the only thing I recognized on the plate, which was apple sauce.

 

Ever the dutiful father, I scooped up some of the brown stuff, opened my mouth wide, trying to coax my daughter to do the same and inched the spoon forward.

 

She was smiley and happy to see her daddy.  She was hungry and ready to eat.  In went the spoon and a trained hand maneuver later the spoon was out, clean as a whistle and ready for another dose of the brown stuff.

 

My daughter’s face was telling a different story.  Her little face was scrunched up and then she was holding her mouth half open like she was undecided as to what to do with the glop in her mouth.  All the while she was looking at me like I had betrayed her or at the very least put a beat down on her favorite teddy.

 

Then, as quick as it went in, Pluuuaaahuha, it was out with amazing velocity and residing on me.

 

OK, that went well.

 

“Let’s try the green stuff.  Yeah, that looks yummy.” I said, or something like it I am sure as I crept ever closer with the spoon.

 

My daughter, now not so trusting, but hungry none the less, looked at me much more suspiciously and only half heartedly opened her mouth.

 

I saw my opening and took it.  In went the green stuff, but the spoon was barely out of her mouth when the green stuff, now mixed with baby slobber, came flying back out at a speed close to the sound barrier I am sure.  This time I jumped to safety and let my chair take the split pea carpet bombing intended for me.

 

Cleaning the chair up, I soldiered on, this time with the apple sauce.

 

My daughter looked at me with complete distrust in her eyes.  Nope, not going to open up, no way.  I had to resort to a face she loved to make her giggle, then, like lighting, I was in there with the spoon, back out and under the table waiting for the fruit fallout.

 

Then nothing.  Just baby noises.  Peaking out, she looked at me like “Hey Dad, how about some more of that stuff?” bouncing back and forth in her seat, visibly excited.

 

“Well, one more bite of apple sauce, that won’t hurt anybody.”  So, in went another bite of applesauce and more happy bouncing and happy baby clapping commenced.

 

I was a hero again, so I thought I would test that new goodwill with a quick shot of the brown stuff.

 

As soon as I got close with that spoon, the nose wrinkled and she started breathing in and out of her nose like a hand air pump filling up a bicycle tire.

 

It seems she had already equated brown with bad and it was the same for green I soon discovered, but yellow…

 

Yellow… big bright eyes, a smiley face, nearing hyperventilation. I realized my daughter was exhibiting a sales skill that Madison Avenue has mastered but that your average Joe Salesguy misses entirely.

 

The lesson?

 

Selling something is more often about what the person doing the buying is going to get out of it, not a feature set.  It is about explaining how they are going to feel or be better off if only they have your product.  Most of the time a new sales guy will simply and sheepishly rattle off a bunch of product features and smile awkwardly at the strange silence when he suddenly realizes he has nothing left to say.

 

Madison Avenue, or the commercials they come up with, rarely sell you on features of the product, almost all of the time is spent telling you how you are going to feel or by showing you images they want you to associate with the product/brand.

 

Coke doesn’t sell itself as brown sugar water with high fructose corn syrup, the message is you will be refreshed, you will be so happy you will want to buy a candle and stand on a hill somewhere singing “I would like to teach the world to sing.”

 

What I thought I had done such a good job teaching, my daughter demonstrated a mastery of while still filling up her Pampers with the “other” brown stuff.

 

My daughter’s version was a little more direct.

 

Brown stuff in, yuck, bad daddy, you should feel terrible for subjecting a defenseless baby to that yucky stuff.

 

Yellow stuff in, yea!  Happy baby, happy daddy, smiling, giggling, clapping, bouncing, all is right with the world and another fairy somewhere gets her wings or something like that.  I feel good.

 

What’s more amazing is she communicated that message without using a single word, just her facial expressions.  OK, and some projectile puree, but you could simply call that a very effective three slide PowerPoint presentation.

 

What happened?  How did that skill get lost in the shuffle of puberty? 

 

More importantly, which one are you?  The Baby or the Bonehead?  Are you selling based on a list of features, or are you selling based on the emotions, concerns, fears, wants and needs of your potential customer?

 

Think about it.  Visualize your product in a 1 minute commercial, how would the boys and girls on Madison Avenue spin your product to convey some sort of buying emotion?

 

If you come up with a commercial, leave me some feedback describing it.  I am still a student of sales, as it is a school you never seem to graduate from.