The Sales Lady From Pond's Cold Cream

The Sales Lady from Pond’s Cold Cream: How I Learned to Sell

My doctoral training taught me how to read, write, and think but it was in my mother’s neighborhood department store in Hong Kong, Waiss Sons & Co. (维新公司), that I learned how to sell.

In late August 1949, my mother fled to Hong Kong from Canton, China with me, her last and fourth child, in tow. My grandfather, who had acquired a modicum of wealth in Honduras in the 1920s and 1930s, invested in a small department store in Canton in Southern China during the 1940s. The business was successful until the Communist takeover in 1949 which forced many who had land and money to flee the mainland. My mother brought me to Hong Kong from Canton within one month after I was born in August 1949.

I had no “home” life, only life growing up at a store from nine o’clock in the morning to 10 o’clock at night. The store only closed on Chinese New Year Day. I first learned how to ride a wooden toy horse in the store (picture on the right) That picture was taken in November 1950.

As soon as I could walk and talk, I began selling whatever we carried in the store to pedestrians who walked into 534 Queen’s Road West in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong.

We carried a wide range of products including Johnson and Johnson’s baby food, Scott’s emulsion cod liver oil, Kiwi shoe polish, Unilever’s Pepsodent toothpaste, Colgate’s toothpaste, American-made matchbox cars, fake jewelry, towels, women’s underwear, Samsonite luggage, toilet paper, yarns, slippers and a myriad of other consumer products. I recall watching customers come in and buy and argue and play mind games with my mother as I grew up in training pants.

I was phobic about math in primary school, but I was never phobic about people. Why should I? Even when I was going to school, I would serve as a salesclerk as soon as I returned home every day. Doing homework was extremely hard in a store because I got distracted constantly. Maybe that was one reason why I got math phobia. I couldn't concentrate in my homework. Yet the endless stream of people walking into our store taught me how to interface and deal with people – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Decades later, I attributed my success in my consulting practice to my sales skills. I founded my China export consulting business in May 1983 after two years of success in my job as the China Area Manager and International Promotion Manager at a Fortune 500 company in New York City.

My favorite sales story is the lady from Pond’s Cold Cream, a salesperson who worked for Pond’s in Hong Kong who made sure that every single store in Hong Kong would carry Pond’s cold cream and its many iterations.

One day, standing near my mother, a Cantonese sales lady from Pond’s walked into our store. She wanted my mother to carry the newest brand that Pond’s concocted. Sensing that my mother was resisting her, the sales lady said to her: “OK, Mrs. Chan, I really want you to carry our newest brand of Pond’s cold cream. Here is the challenge. If you keep this brand in your store, we will send out in the near future a fake customer who is looking for cold cream. If our agent knows that you are willing to push this product, we’ll give you a dozen for free.”

I was keenly aware of that conversation between my mother, who ran the store, and the sales lady from Pond’s and I committed the sales lady’s cue to memory.

A couple of months later, I was sitting behind one of our store’s glass counters and a youngish woman walked into the store looking for cold cream. Somehow, I had a gut-level feeling that she might be the “fake” customer sent by Pond’s to evaluate us.

I knew I could not show my hand too easily. I decided to give her a song and dance to make the sales process feel natural and authentic. I took out other, and cheaper, brands of cold cream first and watched her reactions. Without waiting too long, I told her that a better brand was Pond’s. But I took out the older brand – not the newest iteration – and told her that Pond’s was better, though more expensive, than those I had shown her.

I deliberately paused for fifteen seconds. Then, I said to the customer: “Oh, you know, we do have the newest and best quality cold cream from Pond’s. Everybody loves it! But it costs a few more pennies though it is well worth it!”

Instantly, the “fake” customer said to me: “You got it. You’ve proved that you’re sincere in helping us promote this newest iteration of our Pond’s line of cold cream. I will send you a dozen bottles for free as promised.” She left the store and, a week or two later, we got a dozen free high quality Pond’s cold cream in a well-made carton.

My mother was happy and I was beyond being happy. The incident gave me confidence in selling to people. I felt I could read people. I could tell the serious from the frivolous prospects – skills that I could not have picked up in graduate school. I was learning how to judge a person's character, to read his or her mind; and to figure out what the prospect would do, not what he or she had just said.

Herein lies the mystique of selling. It is no difference from learning to make judgment. And I need people to do that. No wonder the Vice President of Sales of my longest-running client told me in Beijing 40 years ago, smilingly: “James, you need people!”