Hey Andrew! My name is Michael Montgomery, I'm a 19 year old entrepreneur based out of Emmett, ID. I stumbled across one of your 'how to brand your company' videos on youtube and like what I've seen so far. I know you were asking for sales stories and I'd like to provide one. It may not be as exciting as some of what you're bound to hear but since it was my first ever sale of my services in my first ever Brick and Mortar location I was pretty psyched about it! I started a clothing company in October of 2007 called Double-Take Industries, I always wanted to make clothing with funny sayings or cool designs, initially the idea was to have logos that you had to look at twice to get the joke, whether at first it seemed offensive, confusing, etc. But have since started tackling the purely funny shirt designs. Anyways if you want to see some of that stuff check out my website!

To the sales story and intro: Last Tuesday I took my business out of the home arena and threw it into the Brick and Mortar realm by moving into a fairly affordable upstairs shop in downtown Emmett. I've always wanted to move up to this point but never had the guts to. A few months back I was fortunate enough to receive a donation of my own screen printing equipment and as such I wanted to provide affordable clothing as a service of DTI's (considering we also make our own logos and such it seemed to be an excellent fit!) Well after the grand opening I was talking with one of my old high school buddies who is currently in college and his dorm 'wing' needed some hoodies made up and they were going everywhere looking for quote but couldn't seem to get the prices down to anything they could work with. My business model (mission) is to provide high quality products [with entertaining logos] at affordable and competitive prices (not word for word, but it's late and that's the gist of it), anyways, my price scale set me up to get a 30% increase on my investment and still beat those quote he was getting by about 10 bucks (maybe 11) and because of that (also being a high school buddy probably came into play) they decided to go through me and delivered the funds and the sale to me today! :D

Anyways, that's my story, hope you enjoyed it!
I'm planning on frequenting your site more often now that I've found it, I really like what you've had to say so far!

lol, funny how the microphone started to have technical problems when you asked about revenue for cloud contacts.

My sales story. I didn't think it was possible to get people to send you lots of money virtually (only interacting over internet / phone) until I closed a big deal last year. The sale was a 4.8kW solar electric system to a electrical contractor on the east coast but the challenge was I had never met the decision makers face to face. After guiding them through the sales process and answering all their technical questions, I got them to a point in which they were comfortable the prospective system would meet their needs for their project.

I sent the company the invoice and now the most difficult part, how to get them to send me a check for over $34,000 since I've never met the people cutting the check to our company. Well, the first step is to ask, which I did, and the decision maker threw up an objection "we've never sent this much money to anyone we've never met before, I'm uncomfortable paying for this, how do we know if you're going to send the materials."

Luckily, I had other customers under our belt who were leaving us great testimonials on our website so I was able to tell the decision maker to view what our customers are saying and I explained to her, that I have a vested interest in making sure the buying experience goes better than expected since she would have the power to provide feedback at the end of the process. My online reputation management was the key to capturing this sale and after I started gaining a handful of great reviews I noticed the customer testimonials was helping me convert more prospective customers.

Also, having an active community and blog helps with securing big sales online, because prospective customers can "get to know you" just by reading the blog or engaging the community.

So the moral of the story is, people will send you lots of money over the internet if you know the product your selling and you can prove you have a reputation at stake in each transaction.

I look at stories like Allan's as a re-iteration of the "Luck = Preparedness + Opportunity" adage that goes around, and it truly is stories like his that remind us to be in the moment, seeing the possibilities at all times.

But when I was in sales (door-to-door, baby . . . the REAL cold-call hard-core sales app) it was the 80+ hours a week I put in, the networking (and remembering everybody's name), and the s#!tload of NO's that I got that made me successful. Maybe .05% of my sales came because I was always "on my game."

The value in these "sales stories" we share is they remind us that sales can be fun, business is everywhere when you're always looking, and the day-in-day-out grind has an occasional serendipity mixed in.

I'll put some thought into my "best story" and post it later today.

Thanks Brennan.

Good point. Great businesspeople get hungrier after hearing "no." The others
get discouraged.


Andrew Warner
Founder, Mixergy.com



2009/3/13 Disqus <>

My work involves helping creative people market their creativity and the big sticking block that comes up time and time again is getting them to be persistent in their selling.

Creative folk often dislike anything associated with the word "sales" from the get-go, so talking about "aggressive selling" is a loser.

Of course I hear the old "but some people are born to sell" tripe all the time but that doesn't help someone who thinks they weren't.

My advice is this...
1) Find out and focus on how your product can deliver massive VALUE to your customers first. Not only does this make them happy but it gives YOU the confidence that your product really is of some value to the universe.

2) Now you're confident in your product and you KNOW it helps people, it makes the job of telling more people how they can benefit from it, a lot easier.

Oah, and if you weren't "born to sell ice to Eskimo's" and you can't find any real value in the product you're trying to sell now, the solution is to quit today and find a new direction in life.

I guess the moral is, you gotta hustle yourself first?

Right on Paul!

Selling isn't about pushing people to buy stuff they don't want.

It's more like cheer leading something you love. Evangelizing something you
can't keep quiet about. It's about helping people get something that you
believe in and are confident can help them.

Thanks Paul.

When Dale Carnegie talks presentations skills, he said that even the most
inarticulate person would speak with passion if you hit him in the shins
with a 2 by 4. Once you have something to be passionate about, the words
will come flooding out, even if you're not a born speaker.

I think the same is true for sales.