Читать книгу Media Selling - Warner Charles Dudley - Страница 162

Charles Warner

  Old‐Fashioned Models of Selling

  Old Models Don’t Work In the Digital Era

  The Current Model: Selling as Educating

  The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

In 1957, I got my first sales job at WSPA‐TV, the CBS affiliate in Spartanburg, SC. My first sale was to Mr. Parrott of Parrott’s Florist. The owner of WSPA‐TV, Walter Brown, knew Mr. Parrot and bought flowers from him weekly for his home and for the station. Mr. Brown sent me to see Mr. Parrott because a CBS program, “See It Now” with Edward R. Morrow was sponsored on the network by Florist Telegraph Delivery (FTD). Because of the two men’s relationship I got an order for a 20‐second commercial that ran before the network program. When he gave me the order, Mr. Parrott said he’d “try it once,” but when I returned to see Mr. Parrott the next day after his commercial ran and asked him if he would like to renew for another 13 weeks, he said, “No. I didn’t get any results. No one called.”

When I retuned downhearted to the station, my general sales manager asked, “How did it go? Did you close him?”

“No. He said he didn’t get any results,” I replied sheepishly.

“That’s a common objection,” replied my sales manager. “You should have asked him a bunch of questions that led him to the answer you wanted him to give you and then sold him sizzle!”

“Sizzle?”

“Yeah, you know, ‘sell the sizzle, not the steak!”’ My sales manager always spoke in exclamation points. It was his way of showing that he was enthusiastic.

“Enthusiasm, enthusiasm! Enthusiasm is what gets orders! Always sell the sizzle!” He might as well have said, “Sell him magic!” for all I knew. And with that, he reached back to his small bookshelf, took out a book, and handed it to me. “Read this!”, said my sales manager, “it’s by Elmer Wheeler and it’s called Sizzlemanship! It’s the greatest book ever written about selling! Memorize it!”