The Sales Profession: Attention Must Still Be Paid

By BEN STEIN
Published: April 25, 2009

ASIDE from some gardening and baby-sitting in my neighborhood when I was a child, my first summer job was in the summer of 1962, just before my first year of college. It was at Shoe Giant, a large discount shoe store in Langley Park, in Prince George’s County of Maryland, and I got the job thanks to a high school pal who also worked there.

The job entailed selling shoes. The shoes were tossed about in giant bins and some were stored in boxes. Once the customers had picked out the kind of shoes they wanted, my task was to find the right size, close the sale, write up a receipt with my sales clerk number on it and escort the customer to the cashier. (A pair of shoes there was rarely more than $10 — and was often less.)

I made not much more than a dollar an hour, as well as a small commission. I recall that my first week’s paycheck was about $70.

I did not stay at that job for long. Later that summer, my mother found me a job at the Civil Service Commission, where I sat at a desk and added numbers on an ancient Marchant machine with a crank, to find Civil Service health insurance payment data for various kinds of injuries and sicknesses. I hated that job, but I did it anyway. I missed Shoe Giant. I missed the drama of selling.

Even after all these years, and after many other jobs, my mind often returns to my brief stint as a shoe salesman. It was then, amid that tangle of sandals, sneakers, oxfords, high heels and brogans, that I discovered the ballet that is sales. Forever after, I have had a deep respect for selling and for salesmen and saleswomen.

Sales — when done right — is more than a job. It is an art. It is a high-wire act. It is, as Arthur Miller immortally said, being out there “on a smile and a shoe shine.” It is learning the product you are selling, learning it so well that you can describe it while doing a pirouette of smiles for the customer and talking about the latest football scores. It is knowing human nature so well that you can align the attributes of your product or service cleanly with the needs and wants of your customers.

At its best, selling is taking a doubt and turning it, jujitsu style, into a powerful push. Selling is making the customer feel better about spending money — or investing it — than he would have felt by keeping his wallet zipped.

I have special memories of people who have sold brilliantly.

In 1976, when I moved to Los Angeles, I desperately wanted a Mercedes 450 SLC, a car that was — even in used form — far more than I deserved or could afford at my entry-level, highly tenuous work as a scriptwriter. My salesman at Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills, Larry Anish, listened to my objections and simply asked, “Don’t you believe in your own future?” Of course, I bought the car.

Many years later, an insurance broker came to call on my wife about disability insurance. I scoffed at him and told him how incredibly unlikely it was that a healthy woman like my wife would ever be disabled. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what we think, too. That’s why it’s so cheap and pays so much if she does get disabled.”

I bought the policy, and when my wife did get temporarily disabled, it paid off magnificently and we needed it.

When in doubt about any aspect of human interaction, I always consult the best salesman I have ever known, Barron Thomas, real estate and airplane salesman extraordinaire, and occasional writer, who could sell oil to the Saudis.

In particular, I’ve come to love insurance sales representatives. After many years of skepticism, and despite many warnings from consumer “experts,” I have come to believe that you can rarely have too much insurance, and that whatever insurance you don’t have is exactly what you will wind up needing. The fact that so many people in insurance sell you what’s good for you, even when smart alecks are telling you not to buy it, makes their work extremely impressive. I wish I had paid more attention to them.

People who work in sales often sit next to me on airplanes, which are my true home. In “Death of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller also wrote: “A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.” Those who are in sales are always aware that the next sale is behind the next door, and they are always great companions. They are where the rubber of production meets the road of consumption, whether in a showroom or a studio or on the phone or calling you at home. When the recovery starts, they will be the ones making purchases happen.

Lawyers and doctors and dentists and politicians and accountants and actors — all of us sell something, every day and every time we meet someone. For me, it all goes back to Shoe Giant, 47 years ago, and I wish that every 17-year-old I know could have that experience. It takes some ability at sales to believe in your own future, no matter what that future may be.

Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.

On The Net : The New York Times

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On The Net : Get Satisfaction : Twit Store

Garment Valet – A Business Case Study

By Rob Walker (NYT)

The story of the young company is a reminder that entrepreneurship often depends more on successful execution than radical reinvention.

It’s easy to draw despondent conclusions from the economic headlines. For instance, if you were thinking of starting a laundry-and-dry-cleaning business that requires consumers to pay for the value and convenience of an efficient pickup and delivery service, you might be skeptical. Aren’t people just beating their clothes on rocks down by the river these days?

The good news is that not everybody has that attitude. Dominic Coryell, a 23-year-old senior at Northeastern University, recently won a prize for collegiate entrepreneurs on the strength of a business he runs in Boston called Garment Valet. The proposition is basic enough: Customers use GarmentValet.com to arrange laundry and dry-cleaning pickups and deliveries that — thanks to arrangements with building owners and managers — don’t involve waiting around for the driver to show up. And it’s not a business plan; it’s a business, with 14 full-time employees and about $950,000 in revenue last year. Grim economy notwithstanding, Coryell says he believes the company will fare even better after he graduates next month.

The Global Student Entrepreneur Award, which Coryell won, comes with about $10,000 in cash and a variety of products and services donated by members of the sponsoring group, the Entrepreneurs Organization. Rooting for the abstract idea of the entrepreneur, whether a small-business owner or the hypothetical Next Bill Gates, is one of the great clichés of American politics and life. From consumers to politicians to whatever Joe the Plumber is supposed to be, everyone supports entrepreneurs. They’re pivotal figures who will get us out of this recession. Some observers suggest that the downturn is actually sparking entrepreneurship, as laid-off workers make a go of a variety of new small businesses.

Funny then that, as Coryell notes, “the thing about entrepreneurship is that nobody knows what it is.” To some, it means dreaming up a magic-bullet idea that becomes the next Google or Facebook (or at least shows enough potential to flip to a buyer like Google or Facebook). And then there are “the people who are more kind of operators at heart,” he says, “who get involved in the complexities of an operation.” He falls in the latter category; Garment Valet was not even his idea. Another Northeastern University student, Adam Jacknow, created it in the late 1990s, when he was an undergraduate. They met when Coryell applied to be a driver as a freshman, and he promptly ended up as the chief executive and owner of 49 percent of the business.

“What really got me involved was that everything I did there, there was a direct response,” Coryell says. “If I wanted to make a flier and see how many customers it would bring in, I could do that.” Such elementary experiments led to tinkering with the accounting, with sourcing strategies, with figuring out which marginal changes really improved profits and cash flow. Jacknow has focused more on proprietary software and other technology that improves efficiency and that he hopes will fuel more growth.

The story of the young company is a reminder that entrepreneurship often depends more on successful execution than radical reinvention. Originally focused on students, the business has shifted toward young professionals who now make up two-thirds of its customers; more recently, the company began deploying a “virtual concierge” system involving special lockers in some buildings so the exchanges can happen even in the absence of a doorman or building manager. Garment Valet offers a variety of pricing options to remain relatively competitive, but what it is really selling is the value of time saved.

The downturn has affected the business, most notably through tighter credit terms from lenders. So Coryell is focused on details, like how many active customers remain loyal, meaning that they use the service at least every 14 days. “From a sales perspective we’ve done nothing but grow, month by month, in this economy,” he says, estimating that the company is on track for $1.5 million in revenue this year.

He’s certainly aware that some might see a service like his as an easy expense to eliminate. “Now is the time to show people that you can kick service up and give them what they deserve,” he says. The next step is operating in a second city, by 2012, and slowly building a national brand. “The economy is what you make it,” he adds. Spoken like an entrepreneur — one with student loans to pay.

On The Net : Business Case Study

Six Traits That Separate the Achievers From the Wannabes

Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, a social entrepreneurship funder which has dispensed over $27M to projects such as City Year and Teach for America, says the people who make things happen share certain common traits.

Each year Echoing Green vets about 1000 ideas to come up with 15 projects they want to fund. The trick, Dorsey says, is ferreting out which of those submissions is not just a scalable idea, but has a person behind it with the right stuff to make it happen.

“There’s truly magic to doing this work,” she said. “You’ve got to find the right person, with the right idea, who can execute, and who’s at the right moment in time for idea to take flight.”

To separate the worthy from the wannabes, Echoing Green canvassed the characteristics of more than 500 Echoing Green fellows. They distilled them and put them together into something they call the social entrepreneurship intelligence–with a nod to Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

Running out of time, Dorsey listed six:

1. Core identity formation and alignment. “These folks,” she said, “have reached a level of authenticity in life. They have found purpose and passion. They know what they’re on earth to do. They’re in the Social Change ‘zone.’ They have head/heart alignment.”

2. Focused and ability to execute with alacrity. “It’s not enough to have an idea. You must be able to prove your model is having an impact and build on it.”

3. Solutions oriented.

4. Asset based thinking. “Most of us deficit based thinkers,” Dorsey said. “But instead of seeing the world as filled with problems, they see opportunities. They see the glass as half full, and execute against all odds.”

5. Resource magnet. They’re able to draw money, garner human capital, and attract media attention.

6. Deep and unshakable commitment to a cause.

On The Net : Fast Company