Brigantine Media

WHEN H.L. HUNT, the oil billionaire, was once interviewed, he was asked for the secret of success. Here was his answer:

1. Decide what you want to do.

What are your personal goals as a salesperson?

What do you want to sell? To whom?

Where do you want to be a year from now? Five years from now?

2. Decide what you’ll give up to do it.

You mean it’s not a 40 hour a week job? (That’s right!) You mean I have to constantly be aware of the competition and the buyer and any changes they make? (That’s right!) You mean I have to give up some of my hobbies or free time activity to concentrate more on selling? (That’s right!)

Here’s why: When other salespeople take off time for a coffee break during the day, make another appointment for that time instead. You’ll gain an hour a day or nearly one extra day in every week!

3. Decide your priorities.

What comes first on your To-Do list? Then second. Then third. Don’t pick out number eight or nine because they’re easier to do. First things first. Then number two becomes number one, etc…

4. Decide to… do it!

When you decide what you want to do. And decide what you’ll give up to get to do it. And decide your priorities – none of them mean anything unless you make the last decision: To do it!

Well, yes, there is another way. This was oil baron’s John Paul Getty’s three secrets of his success:

1. I got up early.

2. I worked hard.

3. My father struck oil.

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Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.

WHEN FACED WITH A CHOICE between reducing prices and giving away something free… give something away free.

Here’s why: Your cost is less.

If you sell widgets for $50 each and put them on sale for $35, you reduce your profit by $15. Instead, give your customer a gift/supplement/auxiliary item that ties in with their purchase — free. If this free item has a retail value of $10, your cost is only $5 and you’re ahead $10!

Example: You sell jackets in your clothing store for $300. You put them on sale for $240 or 20% off (not a deep markdown in today’s retail environment) but you lose $60 profit.

BUT IF, instead, you give the customer a $25 shirt and a $15 tie — free, your cost is only $20 (half the retail price). You made an extra $40 on the transaction. And made the customer happier because of the free gifts he received.

We know a dry cleaner who never runs sales. But, every once in a while, to increase business, he “gives away” some dry cleaning. Bring in a suit to have cleaned and pressed and he’ll clean and press another pair of pants… free. His actual cost of cleaning and pressing the one pair of pants is far less than if he reduced the price of dry cleaning the suit.

Figure it out. Add up the difference between the money you lose in a having a “sale” against what you lose in giving away something free.

The “free” item maintains a good profit. The “sale” item doesn’t.

Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.

by Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo

Is there a baby boomer athlete out there who has not, at one time or another, used the theme from Rocky as audio motivation to do a couple more bench presses, run just a little farther, pedal a little faster?

Not many, we’d guess.  Since the original Rocky came out in 1976, its story of a small-time Philadelphia fighter who goes the distance against an imposing opponent and incredible odds has been a motivational tool for millions of people. (Some of the most touching moments in Rocky Balboa, the 2006 revisiting of the character by writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone, came during the closing credits, when they showed a wide range of ordinary people climbing the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, mimicking the iconic scene from the original movie.)

Rocky is a wonderful example of why we chose to write The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies. The core premise is that sometimes we all need a metaphor or a narrative to provide guidance and motivation as we make decisions. It really has to do with the ability to tell a story – sometimes to the people we work with, sometimes to our customers or business partners…and sometimes even to ourselves. In writing The Big Picture, we chose a wide variety of movies as our central metaphors because we believe they serve as a common language – a common mythology – that many people can recognize and share. We’ve all had moments of recognition when watching a movie when we recognized a situation or some element of our own personalities – and for a moment, at least, there was just a little bit more light.

Rocky is full of business metaphors, because it is a movie largely about desire and how far it can take you. Not necessarily to the top of the heap, of course. It isn’t giving much away three decades after the movie came out to note here that Rocky doesn’t win his boxing match against Apollo Creed. Rocky wants to go the distance and not embarrass himself. We can find motivation as we watch Rocky struggle to get in shape, to acquit himself honorably – whether he is literally pounding a side of beef or drinking raw eggs.

There is another business lesson that can be found in Rocky – this one in the story behind the movie.

It is a well-known Hollywood tale that when Sylvester Stallone wrote the original script for Rocky, numerous studios wanted to buy it as a vehicle for various star actors such as Burt Reynolds, James Caan, and Ryan O’Neal. But Stallone, even though he was penniless, gambled that this was his one real shot at stardom. He refused to sell the script without a guarantee that he’d also star in the movie. Eventually, he got someone to bite, and the rest is movie history. The movie was shot for under a million dollars on the streets of Philadelphia.

Once the movie was completed, the producers and Stallone didn’t know if they had a success on their hands. That was 1976, and it so happens that Kevin Coupe was a film major at Loyola Marymount University, taking a film criticism class. Each week the class would be shown a movie that had not yet been released and have the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of someone connected to the film.

This class was the first audience to see a finished print of Rocky. It had no expectations, no preconceptions. And to say they were blown away would be an understatement – during the final moments of the movie, the entire audience was on its feet, cheering as if it were an actual boxing match. When it was over, they all were crying and exhausted and completely enthralled by the experience – and then Sylvester Stallone walked in to take questions, and the place erupted all over again. This was before he was Stallone the icon. He was a little shy, a little amazed and completely in the moment.

Rocky made millions, garnered dozens of awards, and went on to spawn a bunch of sequels. And all because this out-of-work actor, propelled by little other than desire, wrote a script about a broken down fighter who was propelled by little other than desire.

It isn’t just the film and music that are motivational. It also is the story behind the film. And a great example of our approach in The Big Picture, looking for narrative, metaphor, and motivation in stories that we all know well.

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Michael Sansolo is a writer and consultant who serves as research director for the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council.  Kevin Coupe is the ‘Content Guy’ for the blog, www.MorningNewsBeat.com.  They are the co-authors of The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies.

By Michael Sansolo

Finding the road less taken is rarely the problem in business. There are countless people with good ideas, countless new directions out there to be considered.

Rather, the problem is how often these groundbreaking ideas or individuals are ignored or beaten back into submission. And for individuals and companies, the big question is how to create a climate where the new idea can be properly considered and evaluated.

In The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies, co-author Kevin Coupe and I examine a wide range of business lessons that can be gleaned and easily shared from many popular movies. Not surprisingly, the topic of breakthrough ideas comes up time and again. It’s presented artfully in Tucker: The Man and His Dream, a dramatic telling of a real life innovator who was beaten down by the forces of convention.

We find it in the delightful children’s movie Babe, as we watch a little pig defy conventional rules to become a champion sheepdog of all things.

And most tellingly we find it in Amadeus, a fictionalized tale of Mozart’s trials and tribulations in Vienna.

Mozart, as even the most casual music fan knows, was a boy genius whose music is familiar to virtually all of us. But in Amadeus, we watch Mozart struggle to bring his new ideas for melody, opera, and more to the stage while the forces of convention do everything possible to thwart his innovations.

Although Vienna is a wonderfully musical city, Mozart tries to elevate the level of performance. He brings innovation in hopes of making the music better. Yet time and again he runs into rules set up to thwart him. Even his small attempts to build financial stability are undermined, dropping the genius composer into depression and early death.

The movie gives the innovators out there a great lesson, too. Mozart’s ideas are clearly wonderful, but for the elite of Vienna, they are uncomfortable. The composer never takes the time to build a base of support or to educate his audience. Instead he plows forward, insisting he knows best. Yes, the elites could have listened better, but Mozart shares some of the blame in his failure.

He has an enemy in his rival Antonio Salieri, who uses considerable skill to convince the court that Mozart is the lesser of the two composers. Mozart never learns how to engage powerful allies to accept his innovation.

The business lesson from Amadeus is laid clear for us again and again. Too often in business, great ideas and innovations struggle against the forces of convention. So the road less taken remains untaken or, worse yet, the innovator moves in an entirely different direction.

One stunning business example comes from the roots of Walmart, now the largest company in the United States. In the 1960s, Walmart founder Sam Walton was a store manager for Ben Franklin stores. He had a plan to create a new type of store and gleefully presented that plan to his company. In short, he was told to go back to work.

Walton gambled instead, leaving Ben Franklin and opening his first Walmart. Some 50 years later we know how that battle worked out. Had Ben Franklin management been open to the radical idea and the road less taken, today it might be the company in every town in America. The business world is littered with such stories of chances not taken and innovation unseen. The stories range from the record company that passed on the young Beatles to the computer giant IBM passing on the chance to buy out a young Bill Gates and his fledgling software company called Microsoft.

Not every new idea is a great one; not every innovation becomes the next Walmart or Microsoft. But occasionally those ideas come up, and great companies know when to listen and when to travel the road less taken.

With wonderful style and soaring music, Amadeus reminds us of the challenges of being an innovator…and the sadness that befalls the world around them when the road less taken is left abandoned.

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Michael Sansolo is the co-author, with “Content Guy” Kevin Coupe, of the new book, “The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies,” available by clicking here .

Michael Sansolo can be reached via email at msansolo@morningnewsbeat.com .

Williams-Sonoma Is Watching You

By Janis Raye

I just had my first experience with an automated reminder that I was shopping for a certain product, and it was a little bit creepy. I received an email from Williams-Sonoma with the subject line, “Thank you for your interest in: Fleur-de-Lys rubber doormats.” The email was complete with a photo of the doormat, a link to the product on the Williams-Sonoma website, with a button to “Buy Now.”

I hadn’t bought a Fleur-de-Lys doormat. All I did was browse the Williams-Sonoma website a couple of days earlier and view those mats. I was kind of interested in those doormats, though, and made a mental note to measure my entryway to see if they had a size that would fit. That’s it. But somehow the gods at Williams-Sonoma knew I was interested and sent me this follow-up message to encourage me to make my purchase. Weird.

But helpful. Despite the initial ick-factor, now I’m thinking I will measure my space and order a mat. At first I was put off to think that Williams-Sonoma was tracking my Internet clicks using “cookies” so carefully they could read my mind about the doormats. But I realized that it was a very clever way to remind me that I wanted to buy a new doormat.

PS: Once bitten on the Internet, twice shy. I bought a new doormat at my local hardware store over the weekend. Thanks, Williams-Sonoma, for reminding me that I needed one!

Here’s the takeaway for businesspeople and marketers: customer service is everywhere you sell, whether it’s online or around the corner. Just because you don’t meet your customers face-to-face is no excuse for treating them poorly, or not thinking carefully about what will satisfy them. Economy of scale is no excuse, either: the mighty Netflix handles much of its customer service via telephone, not the Internet. It may be more expensive, but they recognize that their customers appreciate the service.

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Janis Raye is the co-author of “Business Success In Tough Times.” The book “Business Success in Tough Times” examines business leaders and entrepreneurs who have shown the courage, will, and brainpower to succeed when other companies fail. Their stories illustrate nine characteristics of business success. For more information, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.