If you’re in sales, there’s one question you must be able to answer in a job interview: Sell me this pen.
It may happen today or tomorrow, or it may come up further down the road,
but it pays to be ready for it. It’s also a question that can teach you
something new about sales or remind you of some core sales principles that are
sometimes neglected.
The question gained fame recently when it appeared in “The Wolf of Wall
Street,” Martin Scorsese’s fact-based 2013 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as
Jordan Belfort.
Belfort got rich running a stock brokerage, Stratton Oakmont, that was
a boiler room operation specializing in penny stocks and, not so incidentally,
defrauding its customers of some $200 million. After it all came crashing down,
he served 22 months in federal prison.
In the movie, DiCaprio is at a deli with a group of friends and
potential recruits to his new brokerage business, talking about how everyone
wants to get rich and about capitalizing on people’s natural greed. As part of
that conversation, he asks the pen question in response to someone who says he
can sell anything. When that person won’t give a sales pitch for the pen,
DiCaprio turns to “my boy,” someone who allegedly can sell anything. That
person takes the pen and asks DiCaprio to sign his name. Since DiCaprio now has
no pen, the sale is made.
The deal closed, according to the scene, because of supply and demand,
or, in DiCaprio’s words, by “creating urgency.”
Somehow, the movie presents one or both of these ideas as valid
foundations for the sale, but the movie gets this very wrong.
Interestingly enough, it gets it wrong without even touching on a common
mistake novice salespeople make in similar situations.
In a nutshell, that mistake consists of excessive attention to the
thing being sold. It’s the failure to see that the pen is beside the point.
When you’re asked to sell a pen, it’s all too easy to focus on that
pen. You might be tempted to talk about its many features. It works in outer
space. It writes under water. It molds itself to your hand like a living thing.
It’s a beautiful color blue, the like of which has never graced a pen before.
It’s a natural mistake. There’s the pen. The pen is for sale. This must
be about the pen.
When interviewed by CNN after his downfall, Belfort called the question
“a trap,” and, whatever his moral failings, he hit the nail on the head with
that characterization. When you talk about the pen, you’ve fallen into the
trap.
What’s the alternative?
Start with the customer. In a process known as
“qualifying,” the real starting point of any sales pitch is the act of getting
to know something about your buyer. It’s all about asking questions, looking
for insights into what the customer is looking for.
The Globe and Mail got Belfort’s own answer to the question. “Before
I’m even going to sell a pen to anybody, I need to know about the person, I
want to know what their needs are, what kind of pens do they use,” he said.
Armed with that information, a good salesperson can tailor the approach to the
customer’s needs. Without that information, all the features in the world won’t
help you make the sale.
Some items seem to take more easily to the inquisitive approach. If your house-buying customer has four children, three dogs and two cats, you won’t show that customer many studio apartments. You’d avoid that mistake because the importance of knowing your customer is so clear when you’re selling a house.
The point, though, is that it
should always be clear, and that the qualifying approach is right regardless of
what’s for sale. Start with the customer, his needs, his wants and his
situation. Then, and only then, sell the pen.
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