fastlane_dad
8 Figure Fastlane Graduate
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Too many times – great, applicable lessons in the ‘slowlane’ are dismissed and not broadcasted.
I want to share and highlight several lessons that have stuck with me over the last several decades, after I spent the summer of the year 2000 selling CUTCO knives. I was 17 at the time.
Looking in retrospect, even though this was only through a short duration (3-4 months) – the lessons I took away were far and beyond certain other positions and jobs I held for years.
Let’s get into it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So for those who don’t know, CUTCO knives/cutlery used to be sold through vector marketing, doing direct sales basically ‘door-to-door’. The premise went something like this.
* Book a demo (lasted 20-25 minutes) with your friends parents. Ask them to purchase (through your given script).
* Post demo – ask them to refer at least 10 people you can show the same demonstration to
* Call all the people on the list one by one, letting them know their friend ‘Laura’ referred them! Ask for an appointment, letting them know you are showing them a project you are working on to help you with your school scholarship (good way to get in the door).
* Show up, do the demo – and the process repeats. As you can tell, within a short amount of time you have an exponentially growing list of contacts who to call, and setup these appointments with. Theoretically you will 'never' run out of work to be done.
You were in charge when to book these. Obviously owning a car was a requirement. There was no iphones or google maps back then (summer of 2000!) – you have to print out all of your own MAPS and follow that around town.
The pay structure was tiered, depending on your total volume of sales. It started at 30% of your revenue. If in a 2 week period, you failed to hit at least $12 made/appointment average, they would make up the difference so you were almost ‘guaranteed’ a base. Although $12 doesn’t seem like much now, it didn’t sound bad in 2000, especially when you looked at it as a 10-15 minute drive, and then a 20 minute demo that you had to get through.
This position wasn’t exactly slowlane – but you weren’t in control of much outside of who you saw, how many appointments you set, and when you saw them. You decided exactly how much you wanted to work.
You were given a script to follow, that I had memorized after a few iterations. It included running through a brief description of all the knives, followed by a live ‘demo’ comparing their cutlery to yours. Obviously nothing beats fresh , sharpened knives in an at-home cutting demo!
Although this wasn’t the most ‘enjoyable’ job – It was life changing in the lessons it brought me. I didn’t mind doing sales, and it kept me engaged. I enjoyed driving so that was always a plus.
I’m sure there was more to fill in – but that was the entire gist of the position.
Now! Moving on to the part you were waiting for – my takeaways and lessons learned.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) YOU CAN'T PREDICT THE MARKET. DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER
My biggest SHOCK and TAKEAWAY – is you can’t predict or know what or WHO the ‘market’ will be. Because all the knives, and all the accessories were pricey – I imagined that every person in a wealthy neighborhood, with loads of cash would have no trouble buying up some of my offer!
Boy was I wrong. The people that bought most were those living in average (or poorer) neighborhoods, living in average homes, driving average cars. Many times, it took me as a SHOCK at who decided to buy the whole sets ($700+).
Being young, without much real world experience (wisdom or much else) -- I always tried to judge a book by it’s cover – and it never failed to disappoint me. There were some appointments I was in, where I deemed it a ‘waste of time’ the second I came through the door. Those were the appointments I made a killing on.
The opposite was completely true as well. I still remember one appointment, going to a mansion selling a small set to a stay at home wife of a plastic surgeon. Not only was it a tough sell, but I saw in my stats that the set got returned weeks later. What a bummer!
2) YOU CAN'T FORCE YOUR PRODUCTS ONTO A CUSTOMER, EVEN IF YOU'RE SELLING $2 BILLS FOR $1 (IT'S TRUE!)
You can’t ‘force’ your product on anyone, or ‘convince’ them that this will help their lives. I’ve been to several homes where the knives the customer used were dull as a credit card – and for the life of me they wouldn’t buy a single product. On occasion, I’ve even gotten kicked out of homes (oops!).I was a big believer in the product at the time, and definitely thought that every household could use a full set.
3) YOU HAVE TO GET THROUGH THE NO'S!
You have to hear 7-8 NO’s before you hear a YES. This is widely known in sales now – but there’s nothing like repetition when doing sales. I saw this first hand. We would always start the sales pitch with the most expensive set ($800) – and go page by page, showing smaller sets – until I would get to individual knives pricing. Typically by the time I’d reach the individual knives, costing $50-100 I’d be able to convert a sale.
4) TRUST THE PROCESS
We see this again and again on this forum, and plenty mentioned on and off line.
GUYS - You have to trust the process. The ‘back office’ definitely knew the conversions you should be achieving. As an individual – it was tough to see that at the time. I had a row of 10 appointments in a row where I sold something on EVERY VISIT. Shortly after I had 10 appointments in a row where I sold NOTHING! You have to leave emotions at the door, trust the process and know that in the end, your numbers will work out. It did help that the company guaranteed an average of $12/appointment if you don’t make that per visit. I always made above that looking at the total numbers. All in all for the summer I worked there, I didn’t do all that bad, and earned several thousand dollars.
5) NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU DO ANYTHING
Like in entrepreneurship – you had to be DRIVEN and SELF MOTIVATED. No-one could make you call all your prospects, and setup all these appointments. We had weekly meetings where they constantly asked if they had appointments set for us would we attend every single one – every hand would always go up. I took these lessons to heart, especially when starting up several of my businesses. There is no one that will make you ‘start’. Many times you have to lay out the plan, and the groundwork all by yourself and get moving.
6) SUPPORT SYSTEM / MENTOR / ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER IS NECESSARY
A support system (weekly meetings) kept everyone’s morale up, went over any questions people had where they stumbled or had any difficulties in their appointments. Overall – this was hugely beneficial, especially to someone starting out in sales. It was almost like a mini-party each week. It was great having someone to check in with week after week. In my business life, @NeoDialectic and I keep each other accountable and on track to make sure we are moving forward making progress in areas of life and keeping morale and motivation up.
7) KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SELLING AND STAND BEHIND IT
You have to know all your products back and forth – and be confident in what you are selling. You have to know the answer to every single rebuttal they can pose (pretty easy after a while). The company gave you everything you needed to know, and recited the script with you back and forth. This was definitely not a position for the weak-of-heart back then and I still think is killer experience for anyone on the entrepreneurship path.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you guys have any experience selling? Anyone else sell CUTCO in their younger years? What were your takeaways!? Happy to discuss.
I want to share and highlight several lessons that have stuck with me over the last several decades, after I spent the summer of the year 2000 selling CUTCO knives. I was 17 at the time.
Looking in retrospect, even though this was only through a short duration (3-4 months) – the lessons I took away were far and beyond certain other positions and jobs I held for years.
Let’s get into it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So for those who don’t know, CUTCO knives/cutlery used to be sold through vector marketing, doing direct sales basically ‘door-to-door’. The premise went something like this.
* Book a demo (lasted 20-25 minutes) with your friends parents. Ask them to purchase (through your given script).
* Post demo – ask them to refer at least 10 people you can show the same demonstration to
* Call all the people on the list one by one, letting them know their friend ‘Laura’ referred them! Ask for an appointment, letting them know you are showing them a project you are working on to help you with your school scholarship (good way to get in the door).
* Show up, do the demo – and the process repeats. As you can tell, within a short amount of time you have an exponentially growing list of contacts who to call, and setup these appointments with. Theoretically you will 'never' run out of work to be done.
You were in charge when to book these. Obviously owning a car was a requirement. There was no iphones or google maps back then (summer of 2000!) – you have to print out all of your own MAPS and follow that around town.
The pay structure was tiered, depending on your total volume of sales. It started at 30% of your revenue. If in a 2 week period, you failed to hit at least $12 made/appointment average, they would make up the difference so you were almost ‘guaranteed’ a base. Although $12 doesn’t seem like much now, it didn’t sound bad in 2000, especially when you looked at it as a 10-15 minute drive, and then a 20 minute demo that you had to get through.
This position wasn’t exactly slowlane – but you weren’t in control of much outside of who you saw, how many appointments you set, and when you saw them. You decided exactly how much you wanted to work.
You were given a script to follow, that I had memorized after a few iterations. It included running through a brief description of all the knives, followed by a live ‘demo’ comparing their cutlery to yours. Obviously nothing beats fresh , sharpened knives in an at-home cutting demo!
Although this wasn’t the most ‘enjoyable’ job – It was life changing in the lessons it brought me. I didn’t mind doing sales, and it kept me engaged. I enjoyed driving so that was always a plus.
I’m sure there was more to fill in – but that was the entire gist of the position.
Now! Moving on to the part you were waiting for – my takeaways and lessons learned.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) YOU CAN'T PREDICT THE MARKET. DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER
My biggest SHOCK and TAKEAWAY – is you can’t predict or know what or WHO the ‘market’ will be. Because all the knives, and all the accessories were pricey – I imagined that every person in a wealthy neighborhood, with loads of cash would have no trouble buying up some of my offer!
Boy was I wrong. The people that bought most were those living in average (or poorer) neighborhoods, living in average homes, driving average cars. Many times, it took me as a SHOCK at who decided to buy the whole sets ($700+).
Being young, without much real world experience (wisdom or much else) -- I always tried to judge a book by it’s cover – and it never failed to disappoint me. There were some appointments I was in, where I deemed it a ‘waste of time’ the second I came through the door. Those were the appointments I made a killing on.
The opposite was completely true as well. I still remember one appointment, going to a mansion selling a small set to a stay at home wife of a plastic surgeon. Not only was it a tough sell, but I saw in my stats that the set got returned weeks later. What a bummer!
2) YOU CAN'T FORCE YOUR PRODUCTS ONTO A CUSTOMER, EVEN IF YOU'RE SELLING $2 BILLS FOR $1 (IT'S TRUE!)
You can’t ‘force’ your product on anyone, or ‘convince’ them that this will help their lives. I’ve been to several homes where the knives the customer used were dull as a credit card – and for the life of me they wouldn’t buy a single product. On occasion, I’ve even gotten kicked out of homes (oops!).I was a big believer in the product at the time, and definitely thought that every household could use a full set.
3) YOU HAVE TO GET THROUGH THE NO'S!
You have to hear 7-8 NO’s before you hear a YES. This is widely known in sales now – but there’s nothing like repetition when doing sales. I saw this first hand. We would always start the sales pitch with the most expensive set ($800) – and go page by page, showing smaller sets – until I would get to individual knives pricing. Typically by the time I’d reach the individual knives, costing $50-100 I’d be able to convert a sale.
4) TRUST THE PROCESS
We see this again and again on this forum, and plenty mentioned on and off line.
GUYS - You have to trust the process. The ‘back office’ definitely knew the conversions you should be achieving. As an individual – it was tough to see that at the time. I had a row of 10 appointments in a row where I sold something on EVERY VISIT. Shortly after I had 10 appointments in a row where I sold NOTHING! You have to leave emotions at the door, trust the process and know that in the end, your numbers will work out. It did help that the company guaranteed an average of $12/appointment if you don’t make that per visit. I always made above that looking at the total numbers. All in all for the summer I worked there, I didn’t do all that bad, and earned several thousand dollars.
5) NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU DO ANYTHING
Like in entrepreneurship – you had to be DRIVEN and SELF MOTIVATED. No-one could make you call all your prospects, and setup all these appointments. We had weekly meetings where they constantly asked if they had appointments set for us would we attend every single one – every hand would always go up. I took these lessons to heart, especially when starting up several of my businesses. There is no one that will make you ‘start’. Many times you have to lay out the plan, and the groundwork all by yourself and get moving.
6) SUPPORT SYSTEM / MENTOR / ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER IS NECESSARY
A support system (weekly meetings) kept everyone’s morale up, went over any questions people had where they stumbled or had any difficulties in their appointments. Overall – this was hugely beneficial, especially to someone starting out in sales. It was almost like a mini-party each week. It was great having someone to check in with week after week. In my business life, @NeoDialectic and I keep each other accountable and on track to make sure we are moving forward making progress in areas of life and keeping morale and motivation up.
7) KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SELLING AND STAND BEHIND IT
You have to know all your products back and forth – and be confident in what you are selling. You have to know the answer to every single rebuttal they can pose (pretty easy after a while). The company gave you everything you needed to know, and recited the script with you back and forth. This was definitely not a position for the weak-of-heart back then and I still think is killer experience for anyone on the entrepreneurship path.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you guys have any experience selling? Anyone else sell CUTCO in their younger years? What were your takeaways!? Happy to discuss.
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