How To Double Your Sales

The Tale of Two Cities opens with the famous lines, “It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Such was 2003 in my personal and professional life. With a burgeoning family, I was desperate to make ends meet, but I’d been grinding for years with not a lot to show for it. In a moment of desperation, I succumbed to an ad in the paper promising big money… in door-to-door vacuum-cleaner sales.

To that point, I prided myself an Ops man. A man of the people, always willing to lend my expertise to the Sales department, but not slick or gabby enough to pass myself off as a shiny-shoed salesman. But I got an education in the difficult task of selling as a representative of the Kirby Home Vacuum System. Among the many lessons I learned, several remain in my arsenal to this day. Mirror-matching. Building value. Creating scarcity. Increasing urgency. Asking for the sale. These powerful tools I recognize any time I step foot onto a car lot or into a high-pressure sales situation. And I love the game.

One lesson I learned doubled my sales. I believe it is one of the hardest things to achieve but the most valuable of all sales tools: Connecting with your customer.

The method of the Kirby shop I represented was to drop you off in a neighborhood and not return until you were calling from inside a customer’s home! What followed was a 3-way high-pressure sales pitch between the customer, the salesperson, and the sales office on the other end of the phone. What was clear to me was that no van was coming until a sale had been made. If I failed to make the sale, I’d be a sad person standing on the street corner for hours, waiting on his ride.

One Saturday morning I found myself in a beautiful home in the heart of The Woodlands. My poor, unsuspecting customer was a lady in her retirement years. The husband was home, too, but stayed piddling in the garage, so as not to deal with me. It was a relatively easy demonstration, with nice polite conversation. As we talked, I learned that they spent a lot of time in Galveston.

“Galveston? Why, you don’t say? Both sides of my family are from Galveston County,” I said to her.

As we continued to talk and I pursued more mirror-matching, we landed on the topic of hurricanes and the toll they’ve taken, particularly on the tiny island of Galveston. Several storm names came up, like Hurricane Alicia and Anita, and memories we had of them. Then, I reached back, deep into the recesses of my family’s lore, and I drew out a story that has lived in relative infamy in our family for more than a century. A story from the 1900 storm.

My mother’s grandmother lived through the storm of 1900. In fact, legend has it that she was the only one of eight children that survived as her mother was able to cling to only one child as a giant wave swept over their little boat. All but my great-grandmother, Lucia Rosselli, were washed into the sea.

As I told this dramatic story to this little old lady, something to do with the hand of fate, and the strange way in which tragedy shapes our lives began to pluck at my heartstrings, and I began to cry. It wasn’t a cool, dignified tear that rolled down my cheek, either. In my resistance, I began to sob most pathetically. I was outside myself. No longer in a vacuum sales pitch. It was transcendent. And I was sincerely and unabashedly pouring my soul out, saying things like, “It makes you wonder how God delivers, and how by His grace we have arrived at this moment. And it has to give you a sense of purpose and meaning beyond ourselves, you know?” As I poured out my heart, the only slight annoyance I had at the moment was a stark realization that the husband hiding in the garage, with the door slightly cracked, might be listening and perhaps shrewdly even suspecting that all of this melodrama had been part of my masterplan.

As I wiped tears from my eyes, I began putting away the vacuum. In my final closing stage, I asked if I had earned her business. I was honestly unsure whether she would buy anything. Most of the home I had seen was tiled, kept in immaculate condition. The vacuum failed to pull hardly any dirt from her rug in my demonstration. I was expecting a tough 3-way close, probably with a discounted price, hoping it just wasn’t going to be “rock bottom.” Instead, she said she had to go discuss it quickly with her husband. When she returned to the room, she smiled. “We’ll buy two. One for our home here, and the other for our weekend house in Galveston.” There was no haggling, there was no resistance. Two cash deals, fully commissionable.

Sales is not an easy job. I know my own limitations when it comes to the art, and I’m glad to be back in Operations where I belong. One thing I do know, though, is that if you want to double your sales, one very strong technique is to cry. Blood, sweat... and tears, baby!