by Mike Brunel | Nov 21, 2022 | Sales
Showing people how they can personally profit from your product can be one of the more creative parts of the sales process.
Consider the Dream Room at Gardner’s Mattress & More store. The Dream Room is a private mattress-testing room that allows a unique opportunity to try before you buy.
The room is essentially a sleep sanctuary adjacent to the showroom. The space is private and void of salespeople and other customers, so you can snuggle in and get comfortable. Gardner’s is the only mattress store in their area that offers such an experience.
I have never heard of any other mattress company offering such a service. You make an appointment, pay a $50 deposit, and spend time in Gardner’s showroom with one of their sleep consultants.
The consultant helps you narrow your mattress options to the one you feel best suits your sleep needs. Their team encases your mattress in a proper allergy- and bedbug-proof zippered cover and tops it off with extremely high-quality, fresh sheets and pillowcases, all for you.
Once you enter this Dream Room, you quite literally take a nap. This is your opportunity to “try before you buy.” The proprietors encourage you to bring a good book and relax. For couples, they encourage cuddling, although they ask that the bedroom activity stop there; out of respect for the room and future sleepers.
You can even bring pyjamas and your pillow and sheets if you want. This is a very creative example of the lengths that a business can go to in presenting its product.
For them, every sale is well worth it. Gardner’s average mattress costs around $4,000, and prices go up to a staggering $18,000. How do they do that? What they have created in their business is a sleeping experience, not just a price experience.
By now, their system will sound familiar. They know their product, match it up with the client’s needs, offer customised advice to each client, and make a presentation that clearly shows the customer what’s in it for them.
From here, they have to ask for the business and negotiate a price. If you look at their website, I challenge you to find prices anywhere.
The dollar signs are not there. Gardner’s strategy takes you out of the price war and into your personal experience.
There are, I am sure, plenty of mattress companies all over that town that sell off the floor at cheaper prices. Make no mistake; those stores have a purpose; what they sell and how they sell is fine.
Wouldn’t you still want to improve the experience and have more chances of building a relationship?
Positioning your business this way tells the consumer what you sell might be special.
Would you not want your client to know you offer an exceptional experience? The customer-savvy company has a better chance of selling their mattresses than the person down the road.
They get a commitment from you when you make an appointment in the Dream Room, strengthen it with a small deposit, chat about what you want, and then take a nice cosy nap.
That’s a sales commitment. More importantly, that’s the best presentation you can make.
PLUS, whenever you are ready…here are ways I can help you grow YOUR business.
1. Join my free Facebook group
My favourite thing is to show you what’s working right now. It’s not as good as being a client, but it’s close.
2. Take advantage of a FREE 45-minute consultation
Need some sales support? Please make an appointment, and let me take you through the past, present, and future templates.
3. Work with me one-on-one.
If you want to take your product or service from face-to-face to virtual selling, then I have a product that may be able to help you. You can get started for as little as $250 a month. If you’re interested, email mike@mikebrunel.com and put ‘Virtual Selling’ in the subject line…tell me a little about your business, and I’ll get you all the details.
by Mike Brunel | Nov 14, 2022 | Sales
In my blog The right advice at the right time, I talked about qualifying a client as part of your sales process before presenting your product or service.
Sometimes, it’s also important to develop a script for shorter or elevator pitches. These, too, help you to qualify a client.
The so-called ‘elevator pitch’ came out of Hollywood.
An aspiring actor or actress may have had only one chance to pitch an idea, and that chance may well have come in an elevator ride with a Hollywood executive.
They had the length of the ride to talk up an idea for a film, a role, or a script, so their story had to be quick and clear. These days, you’re unlikely to find yourself making an actual elevator pitch, but you still need to be succinct with any proposal, especially if time (or attention) is short.
If someone asks you what you do, you must engagingly describe your business so that by the time they leave your side; they want to become a customer themselves.
I recall doing an exercise for a senior leadership team that directly illustrates the concept.
We divided a room full of executives into teams of two and gave them questions to ask each other during an actual elevator ride.
They asked each other, “What do you do?” and “Can you tell me clearly what you offer in benefits at your business?”
The responder’s job was to get the questioner excited about the company and show how it could solve their problems.
The elevator rides were very revealing. Every story was different when the doors opened, and the riders reported on the responses. Every one.
It was pretty eye-opening because it was my company they were talking about!
The executives weren’t getting the right message across, and the message itself was inconsistent. They needed to learn to tell the company’s story, to feel comfortable even bragging a little.
As I say to my kids, if you’re telling the truth, it’s not showing off.
More Secrets
While there is no absolute formula for creating an elevator pitch, I’ve adapted the work of a well-known marketer, Eben Pagan, to illustrate the importance of emotion.
Like Pagan, I believe using the right words can help you focus on the emotional needs behind the client’s desires.
The key is to talk about helping, describe who you help, explain what they will achieve, and suggest what they need to do to get started.
Say, for example, you offer a weight loss program; your elevator pitch might sound like this:
“I help overweight women who want to lose more than 20 pounds get rid of their fat in as little as 90 days without starvation and without torturing themselves with a military exercise. Do you know any woman who would want to lose more than 20 pounds quickly?”
Here’s another example, if you offered debt consolidation services. Your pitch is a little different, but the pattern is the same:
“I help people with $10,000 or more credit card debt. I cut their monthly payments in half, and then I get them completely out of debt. Do you know anybody with credit card debt who would like to cut their payments and eliminate their debt in less than three years?”
For Mike Brunel, The Sales expert, I would say:
“I help salespeople who do want to come across as salesy. They want to be authentic and find out if their product solves a problem for their clients. If it does not, that is okay. Do you know anyone who has a problem like that? Anyone who would like a no obligation, free sales training audit?”
Who could say no to offers like these?
Develop your elevator pitch.
Use this template to create your elevator pitch. The principles behind the elevator pitch work across many formats and situations, but it is important to know what kind of environment you will be presenting in, so you can gear your content to your audience.
Have fun, and good selling!
For more content like this, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
PLUS, whenever you are ready…here are ways I can help you grow YOUR business.
1. Join my free Facebook group
My favourite thing is to show you what’s working right now. It’s not as good as being a client, but it’s close.
2. Take advantage of a FREE 45-minute consultation
Need some sales support? Please make an appointment, and let me take you through the past, present, and future templates.
3. Work with me one-on-one.
If you want to take your product or service from face-to-face to virtual selling, then I have a product that may be able to help you. You can get started for as little as $250 a month. If you’re interested, email mike@mikebrunel.com and put ‘Virtual Selling’ in the subject line…tell me a little about your business, and I’ll get you all the details.
by Mike Brunel | Nov 7, 2022 | Sales
In this week’s blog, I talk about one of my favourite salespeople Joe Ades.
Sadly Joe passed away a free years ago, but this story is a great lesson for us all. We are all in sales, and Joe, the millionaire Potato Peeler seller, was just one.
A Showman Selling Potato Peelers on the streets of New York.*
“In the early 1990s, a man named Joe Ades began showing up in the bar at the Café Pierre, Manhattan’s famously posh hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 61st Street. Joe liked the crowd at the Café Pierre, but the real draw for him was Kathleen Landis, the dimpled, piano-playing house chanteuse who still entertains there five nights a week.
Joe was also a five-nights-a-week man, always seated at the same round table with a front view of the baby grand and a back view of Landis. He drank only champagne and was never alone. On most nights, he casually ordered a bottle, which always appeared with two champagne glasses—one for himself, the other for Landis.
Even by the standards of café society, Joe cut a noticeably soigné figure in his classic, British-made Chester Barrie suits and bold shirts and ties from Turnbull & Asser. The clothes went well with his English accent and late-period Sean Connery salt-and-pepper beard.
He looked so distinguished and was so free with the bubbly that the Café Pierre crowd, Landis included, had him pegged as one of the “owners”—the tycoons who live at the Pierre in stupendously high-end co-op apartments.
The Café Pierre was way off about Joe, or so it decided after some probing. If no one was brave enough to ask him where he lived, quite a few people asked him what he did for a living.
“Holding his glass of champagne by the stem, ” Joe said simply, “I sell potato peelers.” The probers had a good chuckle over that. “Right,” they all said. “Now pull the other one.”
While walking the streets in the months that followed, some of the probers, who may have still doubted him, came upon Joe in the middle of a spiel with a crowd gathered around him at some busy corner.
He sat on a campstool, peeler in hand, and performed all manner of surgical wonders on carrots, zucchini, and Idaho potatoes. A long slab of Lucite served as his worktable, which rested on storage bins filled with all his produce.
The table and his campstool were so low to the ground that he worked from a perpetual crouch, like a catcher.
Meanwhile, he kept up a constant patter, belted out at the top of his lungs in a scratchy, theatrical Cockney singsong.
After three or four minutes—not before—he announced the price of his “machine,” as he called it, produced a wad of bills from his left coat pocket, and began dealing peelers as fast as he could to the outstretched hands flapping money in his face.
As if all this weren’t astonishing enough, he had on his beautiful café attire, only now bits of potato peel flecked his lapels.
He bowed his head low over an operation; sweat from his brow coursed its way down the bridge of his nose and dripped onto the cuffs of his Turnbull & Asser shirt. Joe is still working the peeler in New York.
This past December, he turned 72, but unless there’s snow on the ground, he’s out pitching. Joe loves the peeler, which he sells for $5. “I love it for several reasons,” he says.
“It’s portable; it works; I never get a complaint. Never. When people first see it, they don’t believe it. They buy it sceptically and cynically. They can’t believe it will do what I say it’ll do, but they take a chance and buy it.
And during the sale, somebody will walk past—always do—and say, ‘I’ve got one of those. They’re great!’ And it’s true—they’re not shills. You don’t need a shill with something like this.” The Swiss-made article is a gleaming frame of stainless steel that fits in the palm like a carpenter’s plane.”
Joe is the only one in the city who has it—a true boast he saves for that moment in the pitch when he names his price, and the wad comes out (in the street game, a moment known as “coming to the bat”). In private, Joe says,
“The Company in Switzerland that makes the peeler will only supply people who can demonstrate the product. You have to buy a minimum number, and the minimum quantity is far more peelers than one store could handle in 20 years. If you saw the peeler hanging up in a store—for a dollar—you’d walk right past it. It has to be demonstrated.”
His selling locations have no fixed pattern. One never knows where Joe will turn up. “I like to be an event,” he says. “Boredom sets in when people expect you.”
In part, Joe is making a virtue of necessity. He has no license to do what he does, and he often gets moved by the cops, who all know him. “All of them have nicked me in the past,” he says. Joe pushes his gear through the streets on a hand truck, which he calls a trolley in his English way.
He and the trolley are often stopped by strangers, ready with a heartfelt line: “Sir, you’re the greatest salesman in New York!” He likes the recognition and is never ungracious, but privately he quibbles over the word “salesman.”
“I couldn’t sell one-to-one,” he explains. “I couldn’t sell real estate or cars, for example. What I like to do is a pitch to a crowd, draw a crowd together, and have them give me their money.” —Reprinted with permission from
“The Gentleman Grafter” by Howard Kaplan, Vanity Fair, 2009.
This is an inspiring story about being a professional conversationalist. A Salesperson. A potato peeler in New York selling $5 kitchen tools to a crowd of people on the street. He lives a full and wonderful life, where he dines out on the fruits of his profession with his beloved every evening.
Joe was not a salesperson but a performer. His stage was the street, and he worked hard. He knew people would buy it if he put on a dazzling show that solved their problems.
Never forget that selling your stuff can also be a show.
Sales take many forms, but we always do it one way or another.
Have a great week, and talk soon.
PLUS, whenever you are ready…here are ways I can help you grow YOUR business.
1. Join my free Facebook group
My favourite thing is to show you what’s working right now. It’s not as good as being a client, but it’s close.
2. Take advantage of a FREE 45-minute consultation
Need some sales support? Please make an appointment, and let me take you through the past, present, and future templates.
3. Work with me one-on-one.
If you want to take your product or service from face-to-face to virtual selling, then I have a product that may be able to help you. You can get started for as little as $250 a month. If you’re interested, email mike@mikebrunel.com and put ‘Virtual Selling’ in the subject line…tell me a little about your business, and I’ll get you all the details.
by Mike Brunel | Oct 21, 2022 | Sales
How do you coach your salespeople to have fun selling?
People can learn to ask open-ended questions. I do a great exercise with salespeople called “What’s in my pocket?” One of my best staff members, Stephen Pead, taught it to me.
You secretly put something unusual in your pocket during a training session. Be careful not to choose objects that are too easy to guess, like keys or a handkerchief. Instead, pocket something slightly out of the ordinary, like a wedding ring or a bottle top.
What’s an Open Question?
The setup clearly explains the difference between open and closed questions. Available questions invite discussion, while closed questions usually elicit a “no” answer.
The team is instructed to ask ten closed questions first to identify what’s in your pocket. You can only answer “yes” or “no” as a trainer. The team never guesses it this way.
Open questions are the next part of the exercise. Have the trainees ask ten available questions to ascertain the treasure you have hidden away.
What’s a Closed Question?
An example of a closed question might be, “What do you have in your pocket? Is it useful?”
The answer is either “Yes, it is useful” or “No, it is not useful.” That response doesn’t get you a lot of information.
An open question might be, “What can you do with the object?”
You can answer these questions any way you like. The salespeople usually get it right within five or six questions.
The answer to this type of question will give you more to go on. Just switching up a few words makes all the difference. Constructing good questions pays off, but people are reluctant to take the time to develop them.
Asking open questions might make some folks feel stupid, weak, or uncertain. My challenge to any salesperson is to assume leadership by asking the right questions.
Model it for your staff. Take the time to train your sales team. Your team must understand that the client is not always ready to buy.
Sometimes you have to have a conversation to get them alongside. Salespeople need to know—and practice— the difference between open and closed questions long before the customer walks in the door.
For more content like this, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Have a great week, and talk soon.
PLUS, whenever you are ready…here are ways I can help you grow YOUR business.
1. Join my free Facebook group
My favourite thing is to show you what’s working right now. It’s not as good as being a client, but it’s close.
2. Take advantage of a FREE 45-minute consultation
Need some sales support? Please make an appointment, and let me take you through the past, present, and future templates.
3. Work with me one-on-one.
If you want to take your product or service from face-to-face to virtual selling, then I have a product that may be able to help you. You can get started for as little as $250 a month. If you’re interested, email mike@mikebrunel.com and put ‘Virtual Selling’ in the subject line…tell me a little about your business, and I’ll get you all the details.
by Mike Brunel | Oct 3, 2022 | Sales, Strategy
Photo – Austin Kleon- Steal like an Artist
“Are Sales contingent upon the attitude of the salesperson? Or the attitude of the prospect”
I get to hear good stories from all over the world about how salespeople make a difference in people’s lives.
In many situations, businesses worldwide are feeling (according to them) the pressure of not getting their numbers, the market is tough, it is not like it used to be, people are simply not buying like they used to, and the excuses seem to go on and on.
I want to debunk that; it simply is not true. I know that if you offer value and are committed to your customers, they will buy from you.
Money is still there.
The truth is that the money is always there, it may be less for some, but it is always there; it just moves around. It might move from your business to another, but the facts are that retail revenue is up in countries like NZ and Australia.
It might move from your business to another, but the facts are that retail revenue is up in countries like NZ and Australia.
The thing is that businesses have to do things differently; they need to think about how their clients are purchasing their products.
I can guarantee that in most homes these days, television and other media are not the main sources of entertainment or information.
The internet has become a big part of our lives.
Clients do research your product along with your competitors before they even venture into your store or place of business.
Information is Power.
Many business owners I have worked with worldwide have come to terms with a changing market.
The ones I notice that are doing well train their staff regularly, keep them up to date with all the new products or services, and help them make the decisions; this is usually done at least once a week.
In any business, product knowledge is based upon attitude; what happens if you visit a store and a staff member does not know their product?
You lose confidence, unsure if they are to be trusted, and you might retreat and go off to someone else.
Want a secret to more Sales?
Product knowledge and information about a product have an invisible benefit. It gives the salesperson the “right attitude” it rubs off. They get confident, and the clients feel that confidence.
Try these simple exercises that work.
Here are two exercises you can do in your business to get your team to buy into product knowledge training.
- POP QUIZ- write up 10 benefits of your most popular products, and list what you think is the #1 benefit for the customer if they buy this product.
- TEST ONE ON ONE, OR IN A TEAM MEETING – Give each of your staff a test on every one of those products. You can do it in written form or as part of their one-on-one meeting.
These simple tests can give your business a foot up, and you might get an extra share of the money.
Have a great day selling your stuff.
Mike
PLUS: WHENEVER YOU’RE READY…
Here are 4 ways I can help you make more sales in your business – whether your business is big or small.
1. Want to become a Sales Mindset Blueprint Member? You get access to an exclusive coaching session with me and full access to my sales programme every month. Get the deets here.
2. Try the new ‘7 Days to Sales Success’ framework. Make more sales in 7 days. The framework of everything you need to start making more sales in your business. The Sales Success Framework is based on a simple 7-day challenge. Click here to find out how you can grow your business by making more sales.
3. Join our private Facebook group – The Sales Mindset Inner Circle. Get all the latest up-to-date sales ideas. Every week we do Facebook Live updates on all things sales. Tips, ideas, free coaching, and much more. Join me by clicking here
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Good Selling
“Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesperson, not the attitude of the prospect” –William Clement Stone.
by Mike Brunel | Sep 20, 2022 | Sales, Uncategorized
All Systems Go- The Journey Begins.
In my last blog, I talked about Selling what you can’t see, and how Doug Gold, my business partner and previous owner of the More FM network came up with an idea to sell media inventory that went on to dominate the direct media sales world for well over 20 years.
After his first launch of the Gold Key Programme in Wellington New Zealand, we knew we were on to something special. The product and the problem had changed, as had our approach. Spots and Dot selling were out, and membership was in.
Looking back, it was revolutionary, no one was selling media this way. Subscription-based selling had been around for 50 years, now everyone thinks it’s the ‘new new thing”. All we did was apply that model to selling inventory on media companies.
I was initially invited into the company as a consultant, but when I saw what Doug had created, it was as if a light went on, I knew that if I could build a sales system that could duplicate the concept he was presenting in that room in a hotel in Wellington, I could leverage it.
I sat in on all the presentations as an observer for a week, and watched how all the salespeople sold. I monitored how the clients bought. I recorded the presenter’s speeches and analyzed all the ways that they presented the product. Then I went away and created the first Image Plus programme. A predictable lead generation product that would pretty much guarantee a result. Then I took it to my partner who had just gone to Australia to set up our consultancy services, the wonderful Mr Duffy.
I think we are onto something”
Brian Duffy trusted me to package it up and take it to a client of his in Hobart, Tasmania. I went in and said, “If you follow this system, I can write a million dollars in revenue for you guaranteed” We launched the program and generated $1 million in four days. In today’s money that’s around $4.5 million. Our cut was a commission fee on the revenue generated.
Boom! We were smoking! I remember at the time watching Brian writing on a small business card how many we had sold each session, after the third session, he came over to me and said. ” I think we are onto something, I count thirty gone of our allocated 100 memberships and it’s only day one, I’m excited”!
Success is Natural
People look at that success and assume it takes a team of natural salespeople to develop and execute such an idea; they don’t believe they can do it themselves. Granted, I have a passion for business, but I came from a very small country where nobody was doing this sort of thing. We had some brave, courageous risk-takers as our first clients.
The early adopters in Hobart said, “Yeah, we’ll give it a go” and we were grateful. You may not think you are a salesperson, but if you are in any kind of business, you are just as much a salesperson as Doug, Brian, and me, and you can find clients willing to take the leap with you.
Practice Makes Perfect.
Of course, the journey that NRS Media took has not always been easy. I remember one time I was presenting near Lincoln, Nebraska, expecting 300 people to attend our seminar. Five turned up.
When something like that happens, all you want to do is hide. If you could, you would actually crawl in a hole, pull the cover over the top, and not come back out. Sometimes it seemed like I was on my own and the rebuffs were never-ending. I had a bit of natural resilience, but it really is a lonely place, selling in America is a tough gig. Many people avoid sales because they fear rejection.
Sell something you Believe in.
What you have to remember, though, is that if you are doing something you love, selling something you believe in, then you are performing a service. You are not ripping off the customer, or doing the wrong thing by them. Someone is going to buy it from you. As long as you remember that, you can lift your head back up and start again.
Take Flight from Fright
You should realize that most people don’t take naturally to selling. I often see people so frozen they’re afraid to pick up the phone. Folks freeze with fear, unable to make the call. They’re paralyzed with fright. Excuse my language, but they’re sh*$$!ng themselves because they’re so afraid of the reaction. Many people find selling terrifying; it’s a natural human reaction. The thing is, this fear comes through in their work and makes them less effective.
If you own a product, service, or business, you have to sell. If you’re passionate, believe in that product, and know that your customer should have it, then don’t be afraid to go and present it.
Try not to think of it as asking a yes-or-no question. Instead, picture yourself helping the customer through the decision-making process. Simultaneously, you come to comprehend their needs, wants, and desires. If you can honestly say, “Look, this is my product. I believe in it. I think it’s right for you,” and you come from a position of integrity people will respond. All it takes is a shift in perspective. Stop thinking, “I’m not in sales.” Reframe that thought.
Call it Something Else.
Call it something else. Recognize it for the relationship-building process it really is. Changing my mindset has helped me personally banish the fear of rejection. At first, I tried half-heartedly and then gave up, just like anyone else. I realized, though, that if I didn’t change the way I thought about sales, I was going to lose. Today, I help salespeople change their frame of mind so they’re working steadily toward a reward rather than flailing about trying to avoid failure.
I remember working with a new salesperson on this issue. He was seriously afraid of going out and talking to people, so we gave him some new words to practice just before the sales call.
We asked him to say “relationship building” instead of “selling” in his mind and we saw right away the fresh connections he was making. His new vocabulary changed his mindset. He was much more comfortable—and successful—in his calls after he implemented this simple tool.
Successful sales also mean maintaining relationships with clients over a long time period without getting the payoff of a “yes.” In the early days of my business, I remember approaching clients who would say no three, four, or five times. I considered that a failure. I thought, “Well, I just can’t do it.”
What did I learn?
Successful sales also mean maintaining relationships with clients over a long time period without getting the payoff of a “yes.” In the early days of my business, I remember approaching clients who would say no three, four, or five times. I considered that a failure. I thought, “Well, I just can’t-do it.”
What I discovered, though, was that I had to see rejection as a temporary setback and make plans to move on. I had to say to myself, “Okay, Mike, what did you learn and what could you do differently? Could you apply a different approach to that problem? Let’s try it and see what happens then.”
Selling is easy “it’s just how you think about it”
Mike
