When people ask me about my favorite album, I always assume they are talking about music but maybe one of the most impactful records I have ever listened to repeatedly is a spoken word album recorded in 1962 by the legendary salesmen J. Douglas Edwards.
The title "13 Effective Methods for Closing the Sale" said everything a young salesperson would want to hear. Before Zig Ziglar there was J. Douglas Edwards…the Don Draper of sales.
This story involves two salespeople, J. Douglas Edwards, one of my all-time favorite sales heros, also known as an icon in the mad men era of sales (the late 50's and early 60's) and the other; my first VP of Sales at a little company called Vestronix.
Vestronix was the first career job out of college and with a staff of similar aged folks, this a little start up out of Waterloo seemed like a perfect fit.
Both Vestronix the company, and the VP of Sales turned out to be too good to be true as and it was all destined to blow up and leave the company in disgrace with lots of unanswered questions about almost every aspect of the company.
I don’t know what really became of the man I call the VP of Sales and anything I wrote would be conjecture so let’s says this. He did his very best to teach us how to close but also got us excited that we could. He was great teacher and motivator.
The VP was not a tall man, maybe 5’10”, a little overweight, with a full head of silver hair earning him the easiest nickname ever… “The Silver Fox”
He could charm anyone and often did, getting seat upgrades after flattering a gate host or maybe even a get a cop on the side of the road to forgive a little traffic indiscretion?
To this man, everything in life was a sales opportunity. He wanted us to feel the same way and so he created a Boot Camp training session.
It was the Spring of 1989 when our VP decided to have a sales conference for the entire sales team. People were flown in from around the USA and England to our little company across from the Brick Brewing Company in Waterloo.
The company decided to brand the event the Vestronix Boot Camp and even went so far as booking the local armory for the multi-day event and our leader played the part, showing up in fatigues.
So, there we were, about 30 with sales and marketing folks all included. We heard people say things like “If you not serving the customer, you better be serving some who is.” and lots of tribal “we’re the best” but quite honestly what makes this training valuable to me even today is the 45 minutes we spent listening to 13 Effective Methods for Closing the Sale by J. Douglas Edwards.
The room had us sitting in a U format and while the record played, the VP walked around the room sometimes acting a detail out but more often just encouraging us to “listen.”
As the record rolled through all thirteen, I was riveted.
When the day was over everyone was given a pirated copy of the record on 60m cassette I was thrilled. I must have listened to that tape 100 times. I knew every word of every one of the 13 tracks.
A few weeks later at Comdex in Atlanta the sales team were beating their chests out trying use as many of the 13 as possible. To further ignite the party our beloved VP of Sales offered up a $100 bill to anyone who could be rude with a customer and still close them.
He won that contest with the next person who walked by the booth telling them "This product was not for them that it was, that they wouldn't be able to get full value out of it."
It took our VP about 7 to 8 minutes to get him to layout $500 for a product he had not heard of 10 minutes earlier.
I remember all 13 of these. Not quite as well as I once did but I've tried all of these in various circumstances, some successfully, some less so but if you are in sales, you should know these...
- The Puppy Dog Close
- The Alternative Close
- The Double Alternative Close
- The Lost Sale Close
- The Sad Story Close
- The Sharp Ended Close
- The Ben Franklin Close
- The Last Question Close
- The Impending Doom Close
- The Hard Close
- The Summary Close
- The Assumptive Close
- The Soft Close
Many of these closing techniques have many different names and have been updated by dozens of “experts” over the years but I prefer the master J. Douglas Edwards.
Listening to him speak is like stepping into an episode of Mad Men. The sales stories here are so vividly told by J. Douglas that it really feels like you’re a listening to a movie.
Need a good read about sales and selling in the 50’s and 60’s ….
https://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Real-Mad-Men-of-Selling-Audiobook/B07HP9J38D
Epilogue:
Whatever it was about that record, even though I lost the tape sometime in the 90’s, I will never forget the techniques it taught me. As for the VP of Sales, I am glad he introduced me to J. Douglas Edwards is where I will leave it.
Vestronix managed to last stay alive for a couple of more years but would be forever colored with a “pump and dump” paintbrush. On the plus side I met some of the most wonderful people who like me were just starting their careers in technology. It was a great experience that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.
