PERSPECTIVES

Selling Lemonade is Easy
by Robin Bulanti, July 2007

Growing up, I was all about the lemonade stand. Summers in upstate New York were hot and muggy. And when it’s hot outside, lemonade is an easy sell.

Here was my strategy:

It’s hot.
My friends are thirsty.
Lemonade is cold, cheap and tastes great from a Dixie cup.

I sat there all day collecting dimes.

I can’t sell something I don’t believe in. It would be written all over my face and you’d hear it in my voice. And if I didn’t believe in what I was selling, I’d be terrible at my job.

I never realized how much PR is like sales. And the day I did, I got kind of scared. What had I gotten myself into? I never signed up for sales!

But wouldn’t you know it – I’m in sales. Every day I “sell” ideas to my clients, I “sell” our agency to potential new clients, I “sell” good stories to journalists and I “sell” my colleagues on my management skills. Sell sell sell. For a girl who can smell a sales pitch a mile away and usually slams the door on it, this was an interesting twist.

Why didn’t I like the idea of selling? I guess I assumed some level of dishonesty that I wasn’t comfortable with. But I know really good people who happen to work in sales and they share traits I admire: genuine, honest and trustworthy. But this was completely at odds with my idea of sales…

So I made peace with it – after all, for better or worse this is my career. Here are my three golden sales rules:

1)    Be honest. (And: It’s ok not to know all the answers!)

2)    Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Care about what they need.

3)    Never sell something you don’t believe in. I actually believe in my clients’ technologies and companies 100%. I couldn’t pitch their stories otherwise! I simply can’t pick up the phone and claim something is the “first”, the “best” or the “most,” if I don’t know that it is.

This last rule is pretty important. Put it this way, I’d be terrible at selling steak knives. In the end, they all get the job done, and aren’t really all that different. Besides, I don’t eat steak. I think I’ll stick with IT (or lemonade).