MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL – Best Sales and Marketing Ideas #42

101 Best Sales and Marketing Ideas

IDEA 42:

MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL

This heading should perhaps be followed by the words, “even when you are not”. There is no question that success, however you may choose to define it, is a sign-one that lends conviction to a sales argument. If you are successful people will figure that you must have customers, and they must be happy customers too or you would soon cease to be successful. Conversely if you are not (yet) successful it is difficult to get a hearing; and this makes it difficult for companies, and sales people, in their early days.

Idea

Jerry Della Femina throws a party …

Jerry Della Femina is a heavyweight of the American advertising business, but it was not always thus. One advertising agency he founded was slow to attract clients, and it looked as if it might well founder. As Christmas approached he decided to pour his last remaining funds into an epic Christmas party. He sent more than a thousand invitations to journalists and potential client, and put on “one hell of a do.”

People love to be associated with success. The “big do” indicated success, and a large number of those invited attended. It gave him and his colleagues an opportunity to sell to them, and do so in a positive atmosphere. Instead of questions being asked, assumptions were made about the success and substance of the operation. Meetings were set up, deals were done, and as January got under way new clients were signed up. A snowball effect had been created, literately in one (expensive!) evening.

Sometimes an extravagant gesture needs to be part of selling, or as here, to lead into it. This tactic did two things: it produced face-to-face contact with key potential clients (and engendered some public relations coverage from doing so), and also created an image of success that changed the nature of subsequent sales conversations. And, by all accounts, it was a great party.

In practice

  • Think carefully before doing this sort of things. In the example above the finanical risk was considerable.
  • Such things work best when they combine a display of success with additional opportunities to sell.

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