For a short time I sold Fuller Brush. This company sold exclusively door-to-door. I was a young married guy trying to find a way to support my wife and sales seemed like a good way to go. After all, you just needed enthusiasm, a good product and a skin thick enough to accept a lot of rejection. Fuller brush provided the good product. In fact as far as I know, anyone who tried the products found them to be excellent. I learned quickly how thick my skin was. Enthusiasm was there for the first few days. But here is what happened.The territory I was assigned was the Oakland hills. What I didn’t know about this affluent community was that in order to canvas from one home to the next, you had to go up the steps, ring the doorbell to find no one home, go down the steps, go up the street, go up the next steps, ring the doorbell to find no one home and so forth. The ratio of doorbells answered for the effort was about 1 in 10 during the day. It took about four minutes to get from one door to the next. That meant I could only visit three or four prospects an hour. With a closing ratio of one per every eight calls, that meant about one sale every two hours for a commission of about $4 before taxes. I wasn’t prepared to do the task at night for a couple of reasons. First of all, I had a beautiful wife ready to greet me when I came home. Secondly, folks are reluctant to answer the doorbell after dark. Finally, ringing doorbells at night is deemed unprofessional.
In spite of these obstacles, I worked hard and made a few sales. Not enough to feed the family and the car, but enough to know that I could sell, develop rapport quickly and make good on a promise. The order had to be taken with the money, to be delivered later. That took a bit of faith on the part of the buyer. While I only sold Fuller Brush for a week, I delivered the following week after picking up the order from my distributor. One lesson learned was that being the distributor was easier than being the salesman.
Another sales job was for the phone company cold calling. I was given a list of customers and asked to call them to offer new phone services. We were in a big room and had half a day of training on the products. Here I only lasted one day. This was before the introduction of the “do not call” list or caller ID. Folks were usually less than enthusiastic about hearing my pitch. We were supposed to use a script. However, the script seemed pretty canned. Depending on how friendly the voice answered appeared helped determine the approach. Early in the call we were to identify that we were calling from the phone company, which was a monopoly back then. We then told the listener that we had some new products about which we wanted to inform them. Most of the calls lasted from 20 seconds to 40 seconds. Sometimes there were abrupt hang-ups. Occasionally, someone really was nice, indicating that they appreciated my call but were not interested in new telephone products. Then there were the people who were downright rude. Swearing and letting me know what a dolt I was to interrupt them in whatever they were doing was fairly common. In the course of my one day employment with the phone company, I made one sale.
Having been trained as a classical violinist, I didn’t have much education about how to sell myself. That was not taught as a part of my advanced degree studies. So learning that skill took me to a professional job development company. They met with me several times and ran a battery of tests to find out what I’d enjoy doing. They then helped me refine my approach list so that my interview targets would be narrowed with each appointment. Finally, they explained the negotiation process. This was one of the most valuable parts of my education. As a result of that training, I found a job with the San Francisco Symphony as their Educational Activities Coordinator. It was right down my alley with my love of music and interest in both administration and sales.
Part of my job with the Symphony was to sell the Wednesday night subscriptions to college and university students. We had campus representatives do the on-campus work. They were rewarded with subsidized seats and invitations to post-concert receptions with visiting artists. During those five years I got to personally meet with some internationally known artists such as Arthur Fiedler, Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Alicia de Larrocha, Andre Watts, Michael Tilson Thomas, Seiji Ozawa and others. My job was the equivalent of a sales manager. Once again, I had an excellent product and my longevity of five years with the symphony was a reflection of the satisfaction I had in that position.
Another part of the San Francisco Symphony job was taking the orchestra into the neighborhoods. The symphony no longer has this program for a variety of reasons. During my tenure, however, we sold the program to the principals of the various schools throughout San Francisco. Some of these administrators had no idea of the value of what I was presenting to them. I sometimes had to convince them that these musicians were world class and that having them in the school was an amazing no-cost privilege. I was always a bit surprised whenever this free enrichment program had to be sold.
After I left the symphony I sold several different items. First, violin lessons. Next video tape-recordings and video inventories. Then I managed a club which involved selling parties, hotel rooms and athletic memberships.
My longest tenured sales came in insurance. After learning the basics of insurance, one of my tasks toward achieving an agency in 1985 was to have one thousand “x-dates”. It didn’t matter how I got them, but in order to earn an agency position I had to do whatever it took to get them. An x-date is the date when a prospect’s policy expires. This is important in sales, since that is the time when someone is most likely to be interested in buying. Unlike today, where x-dating is forbidden due to the do not call lists, back then, I’d spend each day phoning right out of the phone book. After several months I hired someone to help me make the calls. With practice, we’d get about 1 in 8 to give us the x-date. That formed the basis of my agency when I was starting out.
Now as a mature agent, most of my new business comes from referrals and from providing great service. A portion of new business comes from Internet searches as well. However, what I’ve found about those prospects is that they don’t always understand how important it is to have an agent advising and educating them about coverage, how to make their insurance dollars work harder for them, or even understanding the concept of risk transfer.
Selling has been a big part of my life. It has led to my being able to help others in tangible and intangible ways. It has provided for my family. It has helped us achieve a standard of living which is the envy of much of the world. I truly believe that the lessons I have learned from selling Fuller Brush to violin lessons to insurance have all contributed to a better world. Selling is crucial to a viable society.
©Frank Bliss All rights reserved
November, 2009
