Joe Sugarman's Triggers - When Your Neighbor Kicks the Bucket
This is one of the really important keys in determining how to sell a product: First, you have to realize that every product has its own unique personality, its own unique nature. Then it’s up to you to figure it out.
How do you present the drama of that product? Every product has one very powerful way of being presented—a way that will express the true advantages and emotion that the product has to offer and motivate the largest number of people to buy it.
Let me cite a good example. Back when I first started JS&A (the name of my mail order company) in the basement of my home, I met Howard Franklin. Howard was an insurance salesman from Chicago who bought his first calculator from me, responding to an ad I ran in The Wall Street Journal. He loved his calculator and stopped by one day to buy a few more of them. Later, Howard would stop by every once in a while and buy more calculators as gifts for his better clients.
One day when Howard stopped by, he pointed out that because JS&A was a growing concern, I should buy insurance. “You want to protect your family because if anything ever happened to you, there may be quite an estate and lots of taxes to pay before your family would realize anything.”
“Thank you, Howard. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t really believe in insurance,” was my standard reply.
But Howard was a good salesman. Every now and then Howard would clip out an article on calculators from a local paper, or an article on some new gadget from some magazine, and send it to me with his card. And every once in a while, Howard stopped by and picked up a calculator and again dropped the comment, “Joe, you should really have insurance.”
“Thanks, Howard. I appreciate the advice,” was my typical comment.
Then one day I heard a siren in front of my next-door neighbor’s house. I looked out the window and within a few minutes saw my neighbor being carried out of his home on a stretcher with a white sheet over him. He had died that morning from a massive heart attack. He was only in his 40s. I was 36 at the time.
The next day I called Howard on the phone. “Howard, remember our many discussions on insurance and protecting your family and stuff? Well, I think we should sit down and work out some sort of program for an insurance plan for my family and me.”
I had finally made the plunge. Was it Howard’s salesmanship? Was it his persistence?
Maybe. But I realized from that experience a really effective way to sell a whole series of products. Howard succeeded because he had planted enough seeds in my mind for me to realize what insurance was for, who should sell it to me, and who was a good friend and customer. When it came time to buy, only I, Joseph Sugarman, would know. And only when there was an immediate experience that hit close to home would I see the value of insurance. I went through the experience and I responded.
Every product has a nature to it that you must understand to be successful in selling that product. For example, from the insurance experience, I soon realized how to sell burglar alarms. I had one of the largest burglar alarm sales companies in the country, at one point protecting more homes than any other company.
The alarm was called the Midex and my thoughts went back to Howard as I created the ad for it. I knew that trying to scare people into buying a burglar alarm was like Howard coming into my basement and saying, “Joe, when you die, are you going to leave your wife and kids in financial disaster?” That would never sell me insurance. Nor would a similar technique of quoting crime statistics work to sell burglar alarms.
I realized that for me to buy a burglar alarm, I would first have to recognize a need for one.
Perhaps a neighbor was robbed, or crime in my community was on the rise, or I had
recently purchased something expensive. Once I knew I needed a burglar alarm, I would look for one that really made sense for my situation. The first thing I would insist on is that it work. After all, the first time I really needed my alarm to work might be the only time it would be called on to work, and I would want to make sure that it would work flawlessly.
The second thing that would be important to me is ease of installation. It would have to be so easy to install that it wouldn’t require any outside person stringing wires all over my house. So when I wrote the ad on the Midex burglar alarm, I made sure that I spent several paragraphs on the reliability of the product and the testing each unit went through before it was shipped. And I used astronaut Wally Schirra as my spokesperson for the alarm. He was quoted in my ad as simply saying, “I’m very pleased with my unit.”
Never did I try to scare the prospective customer with crime statistics. It would look as ridiculous as Howard screaming or warning me in my basement to get insurance because I may die. All I did was realize the nature of the product I was selling, bring out the points about the product that were important to the consumer, and then wait until the consumer saw the ad enough times or was threatened close enough to home to make him or her buy.
We received many orders from people who had cut out the ad and put it in a file. When indeed they were threatened, they then called and placed their orders. Fortunately, thanks to our timing, there were enough people who wanted a unit when they saw the ad to earn us a nice profit, but we also received orders months after we stopped running our ads. Despite the fact that many of the electronic products of the time were obsolete just a few months after they were introduced, we managed to run our ad for over three years before sales slowed down.
I use the security system as an example of how products have their own unique personality based on our emotional reaction to them. And because of my experience with Howard and my next-door neighbor’s untimely death, I had a special insight into the nature of this dissimilar but related product.
But what about other products? How do you determine or learn about their nature? There are two ways. The first is to become an expert on the product you are selling. Learn everything you can about it: how it’s made, how it’s used, and some of the unusual applications it may have. Learn about the emotional appeal of the product or service to a prospect. Study the prospect. Talk to as many potential buyers as you can and get their insights. Ask a lot of questions. The more of an expert you become, the closer you will get to really discovering the true nature of the product you are selling.
The second thing you can do is tap into your own broad knowledge. Throughout your life you have had numerous experiences that could shed light on your understanding of the product you are selling. Had I not had my experience with Howard and my neighbor’s untimely death, I might not have had the insights to sell the burglar alarm. But since your broad knowledge comes from your complete body of experience, it is not something you can focus on to obtain more information. You already have the information; you only need to “mine” the answers from your vast personal experiences.
Think about other product examples. What is the nature of a toy? Just from your own
personal experience, you know it’s designed for fun. So you bring out the fun aspects of the product. Maybe when you study it, you’ll find something else that might appeal to your prospect. What is the nature of a blood pressure unit? It’s a serious medical device that you use to check your blood pressure. Note the word “serious.” What is the nature of a burglar alarm? It’s a serious product that should be easy to install, that works when it is supposed to, and that provides protection to concerned homeowners. Very often, common sense combined with a little bit of work is all you need to understand and appreciate the nature of a product.
If you don’t understand the nature of the product you are selling, you won’t effectively sell it.
Every product has a unique nature to it—a unique way of relating itself to the consumer. If you understand this nature and find the way to best relate the product to your prospect, you’ll hold the key to a successful sales program.
Trigger 2: Product Nature
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