TV pitchman Billy Mays died. Money explores some of his selling techniques
When Mays and Sullivan are debating whether to shill for a product, their mental checklist could easily be a decision tree for a new product launch at a major corporation. "First, it’s got to have mass appeal," says Mays. "If you can connect to a broader audience, there’s just a better shot of making it work. Second, the product needs to solve a common problem. I need to be able to show that it makes one’s life easier. And also it gives instant gratification, hits you on an emotional level." Both Mays and Sullivan swear that believing in the product is essential to being able to sell it.
Once they find a product they believe in, they move the merchandise with a three-step process that harks back to the carny tradition: "bally the tip," "nod them in," and "chill ‘em down."
The hardest part of making a sale is stopping people, whether they’re wandering by a booth or flipping channels. In carny lingo, "ballying the tip" means drawing a crowd – and once one begins to gather, it feeds on itself. For Billy his volume, energy, hand gestures, and faux authority ("Hi, Billy Mays here for …") are all tactics to bally the tip. To keep the crowd you use humor and make the presentation interactive.
The next step is convincing potential customers that buying your product is totally reasonable. "Wouldn’t you like to eat more fresh vegetables?" Yes, of course you would. A good pitchman will literally nod in answer to his own question to get the crowd nodding along. "If there were a device that made it easy, was a snap to clean, and I could sell it to you for less than half what it cost in stores, wouldn’t you want to buy it?" Yes, yes, and yes!
But the trickiest part of any sale is being able to transform good will into cold, hard cash – the chill-down. Rather than politely ask if anyone would like to buy something, the pitchman often starts the process for potential buyers by counting it off. "Who are going to be my first ten customers? You, sir, you’re No. 1!"
Filed under: Sales
I came to know that, the more time people spent playing a particular game, the more referral sales they generated for that game. The longer people play a game, the more they talk about it. More gameplay time means more viral marketing. This is one reason the massively multiplayer online games can generate so many referral sales.
