You Never Forget Your First Sale

The more I watch “Mad Men” on AMC the more hooked I get. This show operates on so many different levels as Ken Kesey was fond of saying. Of course, there’s the central drama of the Madison Avenue advertising firm, which anyone at all interested in sales and marketing should be fascinated by. Then there’s all the sub-plots and individual pyshco-dramas that are slowly playing out over the course of the season. This dramatic tapestry alone simply blows my mind!

But what really has drawn me in is the extreme attention to the most minute of nostalgic details from the early 1960’s in America. For someone who grew up during that period and remembers what “Duck and Cover” means and who has fond memories of the Latin mass in the Catholic Church, then the fascination is total and complete!

During the most recent episode, a young parish priest was invited over for Sunday supper and at the end of the meal, the matriarch of the family directed one of her daughters to “bring out the Brownie”. Now, she wasn’t referring to Duncan Hines. I knew immediately before the next scene what was coming. Sure enough, an authentic Kodak Brownie camera with a flash attachment was produced and a group portrait was taken.

The props in this show are amazing!

If you ever get a chance to watch “Mad Men”, be sure to scan the scene when the action is taking place at the Draper household. Everything from the vintage alarm clock beside the bed to the hook rug in the living room to the “Hi Fi” is dead nuts on from that time period! Heck, that was my house when I was growing up during the same era.

OK, I know, enough already, with gushing over “Mad Men” and getting all nostalgic!

I do have a way to tie all this into something at least remotely connected with IM:

My very first experience with selling anything was an offline endeavor back during the mid-1960’s. See? There is a connection with “Mad Men” already! My scout troop sold light bulbs one year to raise funds for the summer camp. Prizes were awarded for scouts selling $100 or more. One of the prizes was a sleeping bag, which I didn’t have so it was an even added incentive for me to try and hit the $100 sales mark.

So one Saturday morning, my mother dropped me off in the wealthier part of town and I proceeded to go door to door with my order sheets with all the varieties of light bulb packages we offered. Now, for a really shy kid, this was not an easy thing to do. I’m pretty sure I hesitated a long while before knocking on that first door, but somehow I managed to do it because I knocked on quite a few doors that morning and even sold some light bulbs.

That’s the one thing I still clearly remember to this very day — getting a “Yes” to asking someone if they would like to buy some light bulbs. I remember the lady of the house looking over the order sheet and checking off not one, but several varieties of light bulb packages.

When I walked back down steps it was like I was floating on air!

I had actually sold something to a complete stranger! What was even better was that my confidence got pumped up with each subsequent sale I made. It got to the point that I expected to make a sale every time I knocked on someones door.

I went out a few more times after that.

I hit some dry spells, but continued to sell light bulbs here and there. An important lesson I learned was that the more doors I knocked on, the more light bulbs I was going to sell. The old “Numbers Game” principle at work. I also learned that not everyone took kindly to having some kid knock on their door pushing this or that.

But no matter what happened, I always thought about the sales I had made and that kept my confidence up and made me keep going. There was always the possibility that the next door I knocked on would be a household in desperate need of light bulbs or where lived a kindly man or woman who just wanted to help out the Boy Scouts.

I never again experienced the same feeling I got from selling those light bulbs.

Even during my career as an engineer, when we’d have company celebrations after landing a big deal, it just wasn’t the same. I hadn’t been on the front lines and didn’t even get to meet the customers face to face. I’m sure the sales team that landed the deal felt a rush, but it just wasn’t the same emotional high for those behind the scenes.

It wasn’t until I made my first affiliate commission online did that same high of making a sale all those years ago coming rushing back over me. It was so powerful and distinctive that there was no mistaking what it was. It’s that high that makes this stuff so addicting and has ruined me forever for the corporate world.

My total light bulb sales came up a bit short to qualify for the sleeping bag, but my dad took some order sheets into work with him and managed to make up the difference making sales to this coworkers.

Another valuable marketing lesson — it always pays to have a JV partner with a big list!