Share with me your best and favorite sales stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m contemplating the writing of a story that centers around a mythical, giant, egotistical but most of all brilliant salesman told in the manner of a folk tale. The story is to borrow a few pages from that of the legendry sonuvabitch Bill Brasky(!) but will be much longer than one of those sketches and feature more development.

My brother, brother-in-law and myself are all salesmen as a matter of fact, and so I also have some personal insight into the sales culture that I’ll be giving. For one thing, sales has a lot of colorful characters. Because a lot of sales jobs and careers are commission based and promotions and hirings are based on skills and previous experience, it’s one of the few, strange feilds in which a person can be highly, highly successful and wealthy but still be as dumb, uncultured, loud, and tactless as a drunk banshee. In fact, some of the BEST salespeople I’ve ever know have been drunk banshees. Funny come to think of it…

Anyways, I’m looking for stories that illustrate skill, bravado, character (or lack thereof), technique and anything that’s just damn funny.

Off the top of my head, I have two sales stories. The better of the two is not my own, and the second one is true but has more to do with strange coincidences than it does salesmanship.

  1. I read this story somewhere else online and am now unable to find a cite for it. So, I’m rewriting it from what I remember. Sorry. Anyways, it stuck with me for some reason.

Some years after Cameron Crowe had directed Alien, it was pretty well expected that he was wanting to make a sequel, and he was going to be asking for money for it. Only problem is, while the first Alien movie had been accepted as a breath of fresh air for the horror genre and a fine accomplishment, it hadn’t exactly pulled in the numbers the film studio had wanted. And so the time had come in which Crowe had gathered some Studio executives in a room to make his plea. While waiting for Crowe, the excectuives talked amongst himselves about how he wasn’t going to get the money, it wasn’t a wise investment and how it just wasn’t going to happen for this project.

Cameron Crowe then walks in and he takes a look around the room. He then turns back around and write’s the word “Alien” on the dry erase board. He turns around and looks for reactions. He then turns back towards the board and adds an “s” to the end of “Alien”. “Aliens”. He checks for their responses again and sees them smiling. Then Crowe turns back to the board, and puts through lines through the “S”. “Alien$”, it now read. Crowe turned around and with a large grin looked at the investors.

Crowe got his sequal.

  1. Before I was hired by Expedia as a concierge and after I sold cell phones out of Costco I tried my had at Orlando Sentinel newspaper subscription sales. While this sounds pretty pathetic and while the work was staggeringly dull, newspaper sales actually paid extremely well for those who were good at it. The sales pitch was roughly 20 seconds in length, and we would make between $5 - $35 for each newspaper subscription sold. Many of my coworkers would make between $400-$1000 a week. The work consisted of standing at a podium near a grocery store entrance, asking customers if they wanted to sign up for a free drawing for a $50 “shopping spree”, and then making our pitch as they filled out our small sweepstakes tickets. One day as I was doing this a payphone nearby started ringing off the hook. At first I ignored it and the call went away. I asked more people if they wanted to enter our drawing for a $50 shopping spree. No dice, slow day. Twenty minutes later it came back. I’m a curious guy, but I was trying to make money and so I had to ignore it…but damnit if it wasn’t tempting to pick it up. I ask more people to enter our contest…not getting many bites. The phone, for the third time, rings again! Finally I picked it up:

“Hello?”
“Yes, Hello. I am calling on behalf of the Orlando Sentinel to inform you of a new special subscription deal for Florida Residents. Are you a Florida Resident, sir?”
“…yes, yes I am”
“Oh, good! Well then you’ll be glad to hear that you can now save $x.xx on a year subscription at–”
“Uh, actually that won’t be neccessary.”
“No?”
“No. you see, you’re actually calling a payphone at an Alberstons and I’m here trying to sell the exact same thing you are…the Orlando Sentinel.”
“You’re…trying to sell the Orlando sentinel too. Oh…I…see…Umm…Well…would you like to subscribe anyways?”
“Uh…maybe sometime, but I’d rather subscribe with myself so that I can make some commission on my own sale.”
whispering to someone else “He says he would buy from himself…ok, well what are you selling it for?”
“We’re selling it for 0.15 cents a day, plus an extra 0.07 cents for delivery.”
“Really? That’s not bad.”
“Oh yeah, we got a pretty good deal going here. Hey, want to sign up with us?”
laughs “I think I’d better not…Well, ok. You, uh…have a good day.”
“You too”
click

2

About 20 years ago my roommate set up some sort of a deal with a representative from Bose. “He’s coming over on Thursday night to give us a free demonstration.” As we were both musicians, I figured that we were going to see some nifty pro audio stuff.

As it turns out, it was a sales pitch for the Wave Radio, which was new at the time. The guy spent a good 3 hours showing us how awesome this thing was. I was still interested in it from a pro audio perspective, figuring that I could use it to mix down multitrack songs.

“Where are the audio inputs?”

“No audio inputs. Everything you need is built right in!”

“Oh. Where is the option to turn off the Dolby?”

“Why would you want to do that? You get Dolby all the time! It’s great.”

“Where do I plug in the headphones?”

“Headphones would defeat the purpose of the amazing speaker technology. You don’t need headphones with it.”

“I see. And what if I want to play a CD instead of a tape?”

“You can get a CD attachment for free. All you have to do is sell three of these babies to your friends, while I collect the commission.”

“Uh huh. So it’s a $700 boombox that doesn’t do anything I want? And if I want to play CDs on it, I have to do your job for you? No thanks. No deal.”

He got upset at that. He went on a rant about how he came all the way out there and we made him waste his time. He was basically trying to guilt me into buying. I was thinking to myself “What sort of weak-willed ninny would fall for that crap? You’d have to be a moron to cave in to this asshole.”

My roommate, visibly uncomfortable with the guilt, ran to get his checkbook.

3

I have a feeling you’re misattributing your first story. Ridley Scott directed Alien, and James Cameron directed Aliens.

4

Not trying to threadshit but Ridley Scott directed Alien and James Cameron directed Aliens.

5

I’m unsure whether this qualifies but, since it is fresh in my memory, I’ll quote from a piece in yesterday’s Times.

Link.

6

Apparently Barnum and Bailey had a little problem with their travelling circus. They had so many animals that cleaning up the poo became a real chore – it was more than they could handle. They tried hiring locals to haul the stuff away, but no matter how much they offered, no one was willing to clean it up. So instead, they advertized “Free Fertilizer.” People cheerfully hauled the poo away for free.

7

The real Aliens story:

8

Three months late reply? I think that’s still fashionably late.

Got caught up in school. Sorry!

No developments in writing the story for anyone who’s interested, I’ve been working on other projects, but it’s still something I’m trying to assemble in my head while I collect ancedotes and stories as inspiration so if anyone here has any more stories pass them along!

Good lord. I hope you gave your friend a nice hearty slap to the face after that. Sadly enough, more people than you’d ever think (or even want to think) respond to these tactics.

Gah! Really? It seems you’re right. Well then in that case I REALLY wish I knew where I drew that story from. I didn’t find anything last time I looked but if it sounds familiar to anyone let me know!

A wonderful story. Thank you. :slight_smile:

Fine. Just allow the truth to step all over a perfectly good story!

9

Back to the original topic, two stories come to mind.

Back in the early days of office PC’s, a salesman walked into our office, uninvited and proceeded to start his pitch about how we were only one PC repair away from bankruptcy, but he would be happy to sell us extended warranties for our entire office. Since it wasn’t a busy day, the office manager decided to play along. I had written the specs for our original PC purchases, so she asked me to call the vendor and get a price on extended warranties. The vendor quoted a price that was far below what the salesman was trying to sell.

The office manager told the salesman his price was way too high, and he immediately said, “What’s your other bid? I can beat it!” The office manager told him she didn’t do business with people who came in with high-ball, high-pressure sales pitches.

The salesman replied that the high-ball was his company’s tactic, not his personally, and that he really respected our company for obviously being a straight shooter. Then he pulled out a resume and starting telling her that he was a great salesman who would really thrive with a straight-shooting company like ours.

We had a tiny piece of business with a very, very large insurance company. My boss had taken the client out to lunch and the client happened to use a technical piece of insurance business jargon. My boss jumped on it to demonstrate that he really understood their business, and cited an example that was completely opposite of what the client was talking about. The client gently told my boss he misunderstood the meaning of the jargon, and gave a non-technical definition.

Without so much as a blink, my boss looked her in the eye and said, “Exactly my point!” and cited a different example incorporating the new definition.

10

I used to sell timeshares - made some good money at it too.

The two examples that jump to mind…

  1. It was a quiet day, one couple came in that already owned a timeshare. Normally these people were shown the door, however that wanted to look around so we had no option. It was my turn in the shute so I got “lucky”.

Showed them around, but none of the managers wanted owners on their personal stats - sent out a fellow salesman to do the signoff. The couple ended up buying TWO weeks from us. This was the ONLY time that ever happened in the entire history of the office.

  1. I got one couple that were highly sceptical of timeshares, showed them around - they were bullying me the entire way and being difficult. Took them back to the closing room where about 7 or 8 others were in the final stages of the presentation. My couple pitches a fit, starts shouting loudly in the closing room about rip-offs and con merchants and blah blah blah.

My manager was PISSED at me, thinking I had blown everybodies deals - turns out that it was the most successful day that month

11

Along the lines of not judging a book by its cover…

Back when I was a broker, a young couple came in - he was around 23, her more like 21. They were dressed somewhat scruffily, and the “broker of the day” (gets first crack at unsolicited calls/visits) was very old school. He took one look at them and asked my colleague if he wanted the meeting. My colleague agreed, and took the couple, who it turns out were newlyweds, into a conference room.

Turns out they had both worked for one of the dot coms since pretty much day one. Amazon I think, though I certainly could be wrong there. They were off on honeymoon for a 4 month trip, and wanted to diverisfy out of the stock they had built up through options/stock grants. So my colleague, young & pretty new to the business, suddenly had clients with a net worth just south of $15 million, the vast majority of which they were looking to sell and reinvest.

12

Back when my old friend Dave was traveling around Georgia fixing misbehaving cash registers, he got to know Charlie Daniels.

No, not the musician Charlie Daniels; this Charlie was an area rep for Bunn-O-Matic coffeemakers.

Once, Charlie said, he checked into a hotel, and he turned around to find a dozen people eyeing his suitcase and his heavy-duty equipment case, both marked Charlie Daniels. He started to pick up the suitcase, and they peppered him with questions. The musician Charlie Daniels was playing there the next day, and this gaggle of fans simply would not believe that Charlie the salesman wasn’t a road manager for Charlie the musician.

Dave said, “So, what did you do?”

Charlie smiled broadly. “What else? I sold 'em three coffeemakers!”

13

Not my story.

Young, rather goth looking girl is at a luxury car dealership. No one wants to attend to her thinking she couldn’t possibly be buying a luxury car. Give the girl to the lowest salesperson on the totem pole. She buys 2 of their high-end models with cash.

14

I don’t want to hijack, but this really caught my attention. I’m a month or so away from 21 years with a company that goes by 3 initials that just happens to be the world’s largest timeshare exchange company. I happen to be a business analyst for that company, and I can tell you confidently that the very best prospects are current timeshare owners. They understand what they are getting into, they understand the product, they have already taken the plunge before and apparently are happy with the decision, and they came to you to see what you have to offer. Offer them a decent product at a good price and how can you not make the sale?

I assume you were on-site at the property. If you were treating your exchange inbounds and your existing owners as lepers you were really missing out.

Really, I’m interested to know how this perception became the norm in your office.

Sorry for the hijack… just made as much sense to me as someone saying the Yugo was far supperior to a Rolls Royce.

15

RE: Predictably Irrational

As quoted above:
The third helpful insight comes from behavioural economics. Professor Dan Ariely calls it relativity. “Most people don’t know what they want,” he writes in his book Predictably Irrational, “until they see it in context.” And he provides an example. When Williams-Sonoma first introduced a home bread-making machine for $275 they couldn’t shift any. No one knew what it was, or whether it was really worth the money. So on the advice of a marketing company, Williams-Sonoma introduced a rival. This machine was larger and much more expensive. Sales of the orginal began to rise. Consumers now saw the product in context.

Predicatably Irrational is overall a good book, but Ariely does not explain his interpretation of “context” very well. In marketing, this often means the environment in which a product is intended to be used. For example, seeing the breadmaker on a kitchen counter with a happy consumer buttering a warm slice of fresh baked bread with the Sunday Times tucked under their arm. The second meaning of context is where the breadmaker falls on the spectrum of other competing products, in particular on the price spectrum.

It is a tried and true tactic to attract the consumer’s attention with a fancy, high priced product that helps educate them about the product category, and then sell them a more reasonably priced alternative (which seems like a bargain by comparison). So, Ariely is mixing together the educational aspects of showing a product in its physical context with the comparative value of showing a lower-priced product in the context of higher-priced alternatives. The first helps a consumer “decide” if they need a breadmaker, and the second helps a consumer “decide” which breadmaker they need.

A subtle difference, but important for marketers who make a living separating people from their hard-earned dollars. :slight_smile:

16

I was based in Christchurch New Zealand, selling a new resort in Fiji plus moving resales. It was the "resales that I moved to the couple. In the market a good resale unit could be had for less than $5k, we were selling our resale units at $10k. Would you buy?

Plus, if you’re wid the exchange company, we pushed bonus weeks BIG TIME, why would someone want three weeks?

17

That makes sense then. My first thought (but I didn’t want to say it) was either they are selling a hell hole, or it is way over priced. I’m a bit surprised that a project in active sales is also pushing resales. Kind of shooting themselves in the foot (and yes, I’d buy a resale as well).

As far as bonus weeks go… you have to be a bit more flexible in where/when you travel, but yes they are a great way to travel on the cheap.