Back when I was researching my new 10 Commandments book, about con men, pick up artists, and among others, door-to-door salesmen, I came across a 10-minute documentary titled, “The Bronzer.”
The Bronzer is about a door-to-door salesman named Stu Larkin, who has been selling bronzed baby shoes his whole life.
(The movie came out 10+ years ago, but Larkin is still at it as far as I know.)
There weren’t any useful door-to-door selling techniques in this documentary. But there was a kind of wake-up call.
Bronzed baby shoes are nice. I guess they sell for $50 a pair? or $100? or $200? In any case, Larkin had this to say:
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The thing about selling that I’m kind of disturbed about, because I know that I’m so good at what I do, is that I think I missed my calling in something else. That I could have made millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars selling something else. Like someone would be going, “We know that guy. He’s the most renowned salesman in the world.”
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There are good techniques for positioning yourself at the top end of your market, and I want to write my next book about those.
But those good techniques are like the blueprints for building a skyscraper. The foundation of that skyscraper, without which even the most sound blueprints will result in a janky leaning tower that nobody wants to live in, is choosing which market you will be in to begin with.
Fact one:
It takes as much skill to sell to people who aren’t interested in buying or who have no money… as to sell to people who both are eager to buy and who have the money to do so. Often, it takes more skill and more work, far more, to sell to the first group.
Fact two:
If you’re selling something right now, then there’s sure to be another market where your exact skills, and maybe even your exact offers, could sell for 5x or 10x or 100x of what you’re selling for now.
Of course, it’s not an easy or light decision to switch markets and to basically set sail in an unfamiliar and possibly shark-infested sea. But it’s worth thinking about, or at least that’s what I tell myself, as I’ve been thinking about it too.
I’ll leave you with that seed for today.
Meanwhile, as that seed germinates, if you wanna see what valuable techniques of door-to-door salesman I did find, and how those tie into related fields like copywriting, standup comedy, and con games: