<div class="bbWrapper">Hey <a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/members/23590/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="23590" data-username="@Andy Black">@Andy Black</a>, you mentioned that you wanted us to describe our first sale.<br />
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Here’s first sale and a couple more. Maybe more than you want to hear!<br />
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First sale for me was when I was in 1st or 2nd grade in school. Not going to guess what year that was. We lived on a farm about 8 miles out of town although, being a kid, it seemed like a long trip into town. All the farmers drove into town on Friday nights to get groceries and visit. Dad would go into “Monkey" Ward, Mum would go to the 5&10 and Penney’s; we kids would ram around all over Main St.<br />
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Just before we left for town, Grandpap would give us 50 cents, then Mum & Dad would give us 50 cents. It was a decent allowance for kids back then; the money was actual silver as well.<br />
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Our town had two “5&10s”: G.C Murphy Company and McCrory’s. One Friday night I went into McCrory’s and bought a fountain pen and a small bottle of ink. I forget if they were 29 cents together or 29 cents each but still 60 cents max.<br />
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Monday I took these items into school and sold them to my friend Tim for $1.00. Folding money! See, I was thinking about making money even at that young age. I forget if Tim saw the pen and wanted it, or if I had to “ask for the sale”. <b>Making money via sales felt GREAT!</b><br />
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My mistake was made at the supper table that evening. I mentioned the great deal I had made with the pen. Dark looks among the adults ensued. I was given to understand that I had to give Tim his money back. I forget the reasoning, if there was any. I went in to school the next day & told Tim I had to give his money back & please don’t ask why. I guess I really didn’t understand. Tim lived on a neighboring farm, maybe Dad didn’t want me making money off the neighbors. But this was maybe a lesson in abundance vs scarcity mindset: our farm had coal, timber and of course the surface farming operation. We failed the farm a few years later ( it did not fail us, we failed it ) and had to move off.<br />
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But I digress. Come the summer of 3rd grade, I became interested in comic books. I looked up to my big sister; she bought comic books with her allowance. Good for me, I got to read them for free! But what I saw on the back cover intrigued me: “Hey, Kids! Win Swell Prizes! Join the Junior Sales Club of America!”. There were pictures of bicycles, BB guns, baseball gloves, lawn darts: all the stuff that as a kid, you didn’t have money for: or if you did have the money for it your parents wouldn’t let you buy it. And it was all there before my greedy, beady little eyes!<br />
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All you had to do was clip the coupon, send it in and the greeting card company would send you a big cardboard box filled with smaller individual boxes of greeting cards. No money in advance! I don’t remember if I let my parents in on it or whether they were surprised when a big cardboard box showed up in the mail! The individual boxes of greeting cards sold for $1.25. That was a little over 1 hour’s minimum wage back then. The first sale was easy – all I had to do was “ask for the sale”. “Hey Mum, would you like to buy a box of cards?”. “Um, well, yeah, I guess, maybe..” Then I hit up the grandparents, aunts, etc. Then sales kinda dried up…<br />
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I didn’t have a bike. So I would take a big brown paper grocery bag, stuff it with boxes of greeting cards, put on my red-white-and-blue Junior Sales Club badge and start walking. I don’t know if I told Mum I was leaving or not; just started walking toward some “neighbors”. Now, living out in the country the neighbors were few and far between. I walked five miles or more to sell a box of cards. It was different back then; people didn’t worry much about where the kids were. Just so you were home by suppertime. I’d come home at night and they’d say, “Didja sell any cards today?”.<br />
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Sometimes you’d ring the doorbell and a 19-year-old kid with a pimply face and a Thunderbird sitting in the driveway would say, “No, I can’t buy anything, I’m as poor as a church mouse”. I didn’t know what a church mouse was, but I came to understand it meant “No Sale”.<br />
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Some people would buy 2 boxes. Others would buy nothing but invite you in the house out of the sun and give you a glass of lemonade. I didn’t know what lemonade was until I started my career in sales!<br />
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Other times my classmates would be standing behind their mothers, laughing when I asked, “Would you like to buy a box of greeting cards?”.<br />
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When I got back to school in the fall those classmates would say, “My Mum only bought those cards because she felt sorry for you”.<br />
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<b>But I had the last laugh!</b><br />
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The summer of 3rd grade and the summer of 4th grade I sold 48 boxes each summer, won the prizes I was after, and still have the two prizes I won.<br />
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<b>Eat your hearts out,</b> all you <b>mother-stander-behinders!</b> There’s a new kid in town and he’s selling stuff. He’s standing in FRONT of your Mum, TALKING TO HER AS AN EQUAL. He’s a businessman.<br />
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<b>But when I was selling stuff for $1.25, I think my Dad was happy, proud, thankful, intrigued?</b> Did he change, did I change, or was that thing in 1st grade just the right thing on the wrong day?<br />
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I’ll bet I still have that Junior Sales Club badge.<br />
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Which brings me to my latest sale from the Vigilante 30-Day Marketing Challenge ™. Our family had a product we made. We began making it while living on the farm. Yes, THAT farm. While going through my house a couple months ago, I found some of our vintage product all boxed up and ready to sell. At the 2018 Fastlane Meetup I ran into <a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/members/8202/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="8202" data-username="@Vigilante">@Vigilante</a> and the rest is History – subject to revision and individual interpretation, of course. Like all History.<br />
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Long story short, after having one of our vintage new-old-stock products up on eBay for 21 days, it sold. I priced it high and just waited. Man, I was so happy that I jumped up from the breakfast table, did the Happy Dance and called Vigilante! I just wandered around in circles, in disbelief, happiness, daydreaming, scheming, whatever you want to call it.<br />
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About 9:30 AM, I was thinking, “Well, I’ll just sneak into town tomorrow and mail it”. Then I began to wonder, Good Friday IS a postal holiday here in the U.S., isn’t it? Nope. So I ran around, found some of our old letterhead, envelopes and receipts. Wrote the customer a note on letterhead, filled out a receipt, added a couple little bonus items and got it off in the mail about 4 hours after learning of the sale.<br />
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Then I listed another identical item on eBay. It’s getting traction!<br />
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It was gratifying to make the sale, <b>gratifying to receive all the help here on the forum.</b> Writing the copy, fleshing out the product’s web site, setting up social media and pointing it to the web site, learning eBay: all in all it was very satisfying and a good learning experience. All that stuff is set up and ready to build outward and upward on.<br />
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It was especially gratifying to find that people are still looking for our product. It was kind of a humbling experience to write a personal note to someone who believed in our product enough to buy it after 50 years; to see that what my Dad, Mum & Grandpap started so long ago is still bearing fruit. I wonder what they would think?<br />
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<b>Takeaways:</b> try eBay, that’s where the customers are. If somebody smarter than you is giving advice, take it now, argue for your way later. Start a Progress Thread and put yourself out there. Force yourself to sink or swim. Try New Stuff. Build your network. Building our product was almost the “easy” part – we didn’t know how to sell them. I went with my Mum many times as she visited stores selling our product. The only sales technique she knew was “ask for the sale”. If that didn’t work, she would ask for the sale in a different manner. If all else fails, ask for the sale.<br />
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<b>What I’d have done differently:</b> started 20 years sooner.<br />
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<b>Learnings:</b> especially if you are a “techie”. When people mention something new, a different way of doing things, new ideas – don’t scoff. Try it out. Be open to the idea that working with people could actually be f-u-n. No, really. Dealing with people, solving their problems, is where the satisfaction is. If all your dealings with others are stressful, maybe it’s time for those dreaded “soft skills”. Hint: Dale Carnegie, Toastmasters, smile, ask questions, listen, converse about things other than tech, other than the emergency at hand.<br />
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Andy, thanks for the opening.<br />
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Thanks!<br />
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‘57</div>
