Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it’s often said. Imitation is also the key to effective sales strategies. Sales people become great by analyzing the techniques, traits and innovations of the masters. At the pinnacle are the GOATs — the sales legends who are widely viewed as the Greatest Of All Time.
There are many lists of these stand-out sales icons, and recently CRM software developer Pipeline shared one of the most intriguing compilations. The roster includes a creative mind well known to anyone who has ever sold, shipped or written copy for a direct marketing or advertising firm: David Ogilvy.
He began his career at street-level, selling stoves door to door. It wasn’t just instinct or intuition that made him a success. He understood the importance of cultivating the prospective customer, and realized that a hard sell could be counterproductive.
His approach was so effective, and so well anchored in a broad understanding of human nature, that he wrote a sales manual based on the experience, “The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA Cooker.” The AGA Cooker is long since gone, but this masterwork is still well worth reading.
Also on the list is legendary car salesperson Joe Girard, who set an incredible record by selling 18 vehicles in a single day. He realized that customers responded to a pitch that sold more than just a car, but also promised the security of having a trusted place to maintain and repair it. Girard was a master of the personal touch, writing thousands of notes and greeting cards to customers to keep them engaged, and primed for future sales.
Mary Kay Ash was a pioneer of multi-level marketing. She saw the potential for selling personal care products in a fun and friendly party setting. She also understood the power of incentives, and the publicity value of unique incentives. Pink Cadillacs were her trademark rewards for top sales people. It was a winning formula that led to the founding of her own highly successful cosmetics company.
Erica Feidner makes the list for proving that a great salesperson can sell anything to almost anyone. She made her mark by selling expensive Steinway pianos, often to customers who had never even played chopsticks on a set of pearly keys. By inspiring a love of music, accumulating and sharing a wealth of information about her product, and building credibility by insisting on pairing each customer with the perfect piano, the one right for them, she excelled in a sector where repeat purchases were as rare as a Salieri masterpiece.
Napoleon Barragan’s unique idea was to sell mattresses via an 800-number. Zig Ziglar applied his understanding of the power of motivational speaking to inspire sales people to break records.
Finally, no list of sales GOATs would be complete without Dale Carnegie, who cracked the code of friendships, relationships and sales by closely studying how ordinary people react to social cues. As Pipeline notes, “Carnegie believed that influence began with relationships and that to engage someone, you need to make them feel important. His sales secret to success was to show genuine interest in people, asking questions, remembering names, and avoiding flattery.”
In sales, these insights are literally the keys to the kingdom, proven strategies that will never be reinvented, and rarely fail.