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I sold my first piece of advice on a hot summer day in 1992, on a beach on the Malabar Coast of West India. My first customer paid me 11 cents. Though my single-session fees have grown exponentially since then, I can still trace everything I know about selling back to that one single afternoon.
Outside, the temperature had long stopped being bearable, and the humidity wasn’t falling far behind. I had been travelling in India for the past three months, in search of the meaning of it all. Tired, homesick and hungry, I found myself one lazy afternoon at the weekly market in Anjuna. Around me was an anthropologist’s dream; hundreds of hippies, backpackers and other lost souls, all busy buying and selling clothes, jewellery, handicrafts and food.
It took me about 5 minutes to realise I was in the wrong place. I had nothing to sell, nor enough money to buy anything of value. So I parked myself under a coconut tree and waited for the bus to take me back to my guesthouse. It was going to be a long wait--the bus wasn’t due for at least four more hours. After a few minutes passed by, a young Indian sat down next to me. We shared a few moments of silence before he asked me: “What are you selling?” I pondered for a few seconds and answered: “Nothing.” This didn’t seem like the answer he was expecting. “But what is it that you make?”
“Make?” I thought to myself out loud. “Who makes anything anymore?” Still, his question hit home. Everyone around me seemed to be capable of making something. What if I had lost all my money and had to earn enough cash to buy my next meal? What could I sell someone that would get them to pay me money?
“Actually,” I said, turning towards the young man, “I am selling something.” His face lit up in expectation. “I sell advice.” His expression changed again, only now it was one of disbelief. A minute or two passed by and without saying a word he simply got up and left, as if nothing I could say could convince him I was serious.
Truth be told, though I had been pretty good at giving advice in the past, I had never actually tried to sell it until that day. Was I good enough to charge for it? There was only one way to find out.
I took out a blank sheet of paper, wrote “ADVICE” in big capital letters, and added my fee underneath: 5 Rupees (the Indian monetary equivalent of 11 cents). I climbed up on an empty wooden crate, held my “billboard” up high and shouted: “Advice! Advice! Step right up and face reality! Advice!”
This act went on for about 5 minutes, to the amusement of my passers-by. But not before long, a lanky man in his 40s asked whether he could retain my services. “Certainly,” I offered. I explained my fee structure (5 rupees for each piece of advice, no refunds) and went on to ask him what the problem was. “Well,” he began, sounding exhausted, “I’ve lost my wife. We came to the market this morning, and I’ve been looking for her for over 30 minutes. I have no idea where she is.” I nodded and signalled the man to join me on top of the crate, hoping the vantage point would give us both a better view of the grounds. “Hey!” he shouted after less than a minute, pointing his finger to the crowd. “There she is!”
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"I took out a blank sheet of paper, wrote "ADVICE" in big capital letters, and added my fee
underneath: 5 Rupees." |
5 rupees richer, I went back to touting my wares, not before learning the first rule of selling:
Rule #1: If you want to be good at selling, get used to seeing the world from your customer’s perspective. If needed, get on top of a wooden crate.
My second customer appeared shortly thereafter. He was in his mid-20s, hadn’t shaved (or likely slept) in a week. He sat beside me and asked in an impassive voice whether I could help him. “Of course!” I answered, “What seems to be the problem?” “I, ehhh, lost my girlfriend…” This was getting too easy. “No problem my friend!” I said, standing him up and positioning both of us on top of the wooden crate. “Can you see her? Can you see her?” I asked impatiently. The guy looked at me as if I were deranged. “Dude, what are you doing? Why are we standing on this wooden box?” He asked. “Well,” I mumbled, “I thought you said you lost your girlfriend and I reckoned that if we stood here and, uhhh, looked around for a while, we’d find her”. “But I lost her two weeks ago!” He answered, “How am I gonna find her here? We went to some party in some village 500 miles away.
Somewhere past midnight she left with this guy I’d never seen before, and I ain’t seen her since.” My heart sank. Not only did I completely misinterpret the situation, but I had no idea how to go about finding a missing person in west India. My personal confusion, however, didn’t seem to bother the man, who continued to talk about his beau for the next 30 minutes. At the end of his confession, during which I hadn’t uttered more than a few “uh hums”, he stood up, handed me 5 Rupees and with them, the second rule of selling:
Rule #2: If you want to be successful in selling, stop focusing on what you want to offer the customer and start focusing on what the customer needs from you. Sometimes, all they’re looking for is a good listener.
So far my first day of business was going better than expected, and as the sun began to set, my first institutional customers arrived. An Indian family of four, spearheaded by a tearful twelve year-old girl made their way towards me. The father of the family didn’t wait much and nudged his daughter forward, urging her to explain their predicament. Earlier that day, it turned out, the young girl was entrusted with the family camera and had “misplaced” it somewhere in the market. It was clear to all those involved that the camera would not be “replaced” anytime soon. After all, this was a big market with not enough cameras to go around. “How can I help?” I asked the father, after his daughter finished recounting her story. “I want you to teach my daughter a lesson!“ he answered. I looked at his daughter’s teary eyes, looked at her brother, her mother and then back to the father. “Sir,” I began in a sombre tone, “please take a look at your daughter’s face.” The man turned his head towards his daughter, who was making Herculean efforts not to burst in tears again. “Now tell me what do you see?” I asked. “I see a beautiful little girl, with eyes as red as the setting sun.” “Yes, sir, that is correct,” I uttered. “But these red eyes are a product of her tears. And her tears are a product of her shame; shame for having to recount her mistake in front of a complete stranger. And behind her shame is guilt; guilt for losing a valuable family possession. And behind her guilt lies an important lesson which, if I may add sir, I believe your daughter has already learned.”
The father was speechless. The family was speechless. The whole market, in fact, was speechless. Birds stopped chirping. Ok, you get the picture. And suddenly, this big, moustached, mountain of a man breaks into a smile and gives me a hug that goes on for a little too long. “Thank you! Thank you my dear friend!” Standing back now, he took out his wallet, handed me not five, not ten, but twenty rupees and bid me farewell. Before the family disappeared back into the crowd, the young girl turned back and waved, smiling. They were my last customers that day, and with them I learned the third rule of selling:
Rule #3: The only limit to your fees is the one in your head.
You heard me right. Most of us try and come up a fee that “sounds right” to the buyer. But that’s almost always the wrong approach. Nine times out of ten we’ll quote a fee that’s either way too high than what the buyer expected (in which case we will be promptly shown the door) or way too low (in which case we are leaving behind not only money on the table, but a perception that our work isn’t of the highest quality).
So how do you guess how much the buyer is willing to pay? You don’t! Instead of playing hide and seek, work with the buyer to establish the VALUE you’re expected to deliver. This might take a bit longer and require you to ask the buyer numerous questions about her objectives and values, but the result is often not only higher fees, but a relationship that’s based on trust, not second-guessing.
You don’t have to go to India to get better at selling. By understanding how your customer views their situation and by focusing your interaction with them on value, not costs, you’ll find that you’re not only selling more but also doing a better job of improving your customer’s condition.
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