Would you buy popcorn from this boy

Perspectives Dallas Chapter of ASTD Membership Newsletter - January 2007 << Table of Contents <<

Will you buy my popcorn?

Part 2 of 3

by Jeff Persaile

A Popcorn Selling Machine?

“What’s a selling machine, dad?” my son asked.

He was asking because I had just called him the Popcorn Selling Machine. It was a compliment I didn’t use lightly but I felt was justified by his success and by what his experiences have taught me about selling my training services.

In part 1 of this article I showed how Jacob used the power to: Keep Your Eye on the Prize to accomplish his goal. In part 2, I’ll continue our story about the principles of selling we discovered that work for Scouts and for adults who sell their business services.

In his fourth year of Scouting, Jacob wanted to make the leap to selling at least $800 in popcorn. This was a new and dangerous level since his previous best was $150. He had set a monster goal for himself. I knew that a goal is just a dream until you have a plan. Jacob needed a plan for selling popcorn and I needed a selling plan for my training and consulting services.

The Frozen Orange Juice Principle

A key principle we put into action for our plan was:

Concentrate

Our plan to reach the lofty goal was surprisingly simple. Rather than try to reach every home in Texas, we decided to concentrate our efforts proactively on an extremely small target market: two streets. This would either be brilliantly simple or disastrously simplistic.

We targeted just two streets in our neighborhood and decided to talk to every homeowner by going door-to-door. That’s a pretty narrow target market, but gasoline is expensive and since we were on foot we didn’t want to go too far. We also felt we could keep track of a small area and get to know it well. If it didn’t get us to our goal, we’d just add another street and concentrate on it. We wanted to reach the goal one street at a time.

Our tracking was extremely simple as well. On a piece of paper (you remember paper, right?) we listed each house number and just one of 3 possible responses: Yes (if we sold), No (if we didn’t), or Not Home. After we knocked on every house on the street we felt it would help to follow up with those who were ‘Not Home’. Since time was limited by the deadline set by the Scout Pack, we only made two contact attempts. With more time we would have followed up again to give every household the opportunity to buy from us. As it was, here were our results:

142 homes contacted
One set of red knuckles from door knocking; Two sunburns
82 Not Home on first attempt (61%); 22 eventually sold (24%)
80 total contacts made; 50 total sales made (63% close ratio)
$800 in gross sales revenue for the Scouts

Wow! We made our goal selling two streets!! By concentrating we gave every home a chance to buy and made it easy to track.

How would this principle work for your success selling training or consulting or coaching services? Ask yourself these questions:

Our next principle came about through making mistakes. We found that Jacob’s presentation made a significant difference. When he used it, he sold. When he didn’t use it, he didn’t sell. We called this principle:

Jacob’s presentation started with dressing for his sales role. He always wore his Scout uniform and made sure he was clean and presentable. For a 9-year old that wasn’t always his first choice but it was actually mentioned positively by several customers on our calls.

The next aspect of his presentation was a simple introduction: “Hello. My name is Jacob Persaile and I’m a Webelo Scout in Pack 839. I was wondering if you’d like to buy some Boy Scout Popcorn.” He then presented the sheet of products and gave a brief overview including some of our personal family favorites. It gave him a starting point for dialogue and usually led to a few questions that he already prepared answers for.

Did the presentation make a difference? Yes. He sold to 63% of the people he talked to.

We adjusted and perfected the presentation based on our experiences. Once or twice, Jacob started getting lazy and overconfident and begged not say the whole introduction. He experimented with a no fluff direct approach asking, “Would you like to buy some Boy Scout popcorn?” Every person said NO. So he went back to the original presentation.

He also found some people who would come out and ask “What are you selling?” before he could begin to speak. If he answered the question with a big grin and “Boy Scout popcorn” it usually ended in NO. He soon learned to ignore the question and use his full introductory presentation. This almost always resulted in a sale.

What does this say to you and me as business owners or sales people for business services? Consider the following:

§ Is your introduction short and simple yet create enough interest for prospects to continue?

§ How well do you know your products? Can you explain them simply and succinctly?

The best ideas really are simple. In any case, no ideas are any good unless they are acted on. So pop some corn and let the aroma help you craft a simple plan for your selling success. In the third and final article in this series, I’ll share the remaining two principles for sales success.

In the meantime, go easy on the butter!

About the Author: Jeff Persaile is Jacob’s dad and the owner of Persaile & Associates Training and Development specializing in New Hire training for contact centers and Leadership development processes for all organizations. A passion for bringing people up to speed faster has resulted in greatly improved performance with 30% less training time for several clients. Jeff is has been a member of ASTD for over 12 years and currently serves on the Dallas Chapter Leadership Team. Contact Jeff Persaile at 972. 235. 0999 or persaile@ticnet.com