Elizabeth Brinton was a school girl in the US, when she created a sales record that remained unbroken for 29 long years. She sold so many "Girl Scout Cookies" that she became known as "Cookie Queen" and was invited to sell cookies to two US Presidents. Years later, when speaking about her sales strategies, she talked about 5 keys to successful selling. Sell Well Grow Well discusses her 5 principles and how these are equally relevant in our business of selling financial products to Indian savers.

Sell Well - Grow Well, a joint initiative between SBI Mutual Fund and Wealth Forum, is an effort aimed at encouraging and guiding distributors on a path towards right selling - which we firmly believe is the best way to grow well on a sustainable basis.

A sales record that took 29 years to break

There is a time honoured tradition in the US of Girl Scouts selling "Girl Scout Cookies" each year, in an effort to raise funds for their local Girl Scouts units. Each annual "cookie" season, Girl Scouts go door-to-door, selling cookies in their neighbourhood. Most sell a couple of hundred boxes, some go all the way to over a thousand boxes in a season. But Elizabeth Brinton went far ahead during her Girl Scout days in the 1980s, recording a high of 18,000 boxes in a single season, and over 100,000 boxes of cookies during her time with the Girl Scouts, after which she went for higher studies to the University of Pennsylvania. Her record of 18,000 cookies boxes in a single season remained unbroken for 29 years, until it was bettered in 2014. Its not for no reason that Elizabeth became famous as "Cookie Queen". Her impressive sales of Girl Scouts cookies year after year got her the honour of being invited to sell Girl Scout cookies to two US Presidents - Ronald Raegan and George Bush Sr.

The secret of her success

She succeeded by investing time and thought to her selling techniques. Every aspect of her sales campaign was thought out - from location to the sales pitch. She moved away from the tried and tested approach of door-to-door selling, and focused more on selling wherever she found crowds. Her sales pitch varied with the type of customer - when she sold the cookies from a stall at the subway station, she changed her sales pitch depending on her prospective customer, addressing a sailor differently from a man with a lady on his arm. Her willingness to change her script depending on who she was addressing was a key element in her ability to increase sales.

In a speech at a Sandler Foods convention, Brinton listed her five keys to selling successfully:

1. Set high goals

2. Sell yourself and your products

3. Know your product well and believe that your product is best

4. Know your territory and customers

5. Accept the fact that some people will still say no

What can we learn from the "Cookie Queen"?

All the 5 keys to successful selling that Brinton listed are equally applicable in any sales function - even when selling financial products. After all, sales principles remain the same. Let's look at how we can imbibe lessons from her 5 points in our business. For this purpose, we are re-arranging the sequence of her 5 keys as follows:

1. Understand what you offer and believe that it is the best

Whether you are offering vanilla equity funds or integrated retirement solutions, you must have a thorough understanding of what you are offering and most importantly, have high conviction that your proposition is the best for your clients. Only when you have the highest degree of conviction will you be able to transmit that to your clients. That's equally true whether you are selling a single product or a comprehensive solution. If you are not fully convinced yourself, either do your homework to develop your conviction, or drop the product. When you go out on your sales call, believe that what you are offering is indeed to best for your client.

2. Know your territory and your customers

What's the profile of households in the locality that you have marked out as your territory? Do you have more young couples in your locality or retired couples? Are there more salaried people in your territory or businessmen? Who are the key influencers in your territory? Who are the socially active people? What are the prominent social groups in your territory? What causes are more enthusiastically supported? These are just a few of the data points about your territory that you must be familiar with, which will help you decide what to pitch to whom and how.

The second aspect is about knowing your customers - which is something that all of us understand is absolutely core to this profession. KYC is not just a form to be filled, knowing your client beyond the KYC form is essential for you to discharge your responsibility of selling products that are suitable to your customer.

3. Sell yourself and your products

Our business is one of trust and confidence as customers do not get to experience the outcome of the product for many years after they bought it from you. They essentially buy your conviction in the product, on the basis that they trust that you will do the right thing for them. If that's what they are buying, well, you ought to be first selling yourself, then the product. Merely describing the virtues and features of a product does a big disservice to the core proposition that they are buying into : which is you.

4. Set high goals

We hear many people in this profession saying they don't believe in setting targets because targets induce mis-selling. Perhaps this though process misses a point. You don't need to set specific targets for specific products - you don't for example have to set yourself a target to mobilize a certain amount for a particular NFO. But that doesn't mean you don't have to set targets for yourself. What's wrong, for example, in setting yourself a target that you will sign up 10 retirement solutions in a month? What's wrong in setting a target that you will acquire 10 new clients every month? Setting targets - in fact, setting high targets motivates and drives you to direct your energies towards a goal that will take your business forward. Set goals that are high, and see how these energize you to achieve more than you thought was possible.

5. Accept the fact that some people will still say no

Persistence must never be confused with pig-headedness. You have a proposition, a style and an approach that appeals to many, not to all. Its sensible to understand where you are hitting a wall and move on rather than expending too much energy in bringing down that wall. If some prospects are not warming up, you must know when to cut loss and move on. Standing on ego and saying "I will win this account, one way or another" may not be the best utilisation of your precious time.

There are many more examples that you will come up with yourself when you think of our Cookie Queen's 5 principles for successful selling. Apply her principles and go on to make sales records that will last as long as hers did!

All articles in the Sell Well - Grow Well section are created by Wealth Forum. These are not to be construed as opinions given by SBI Mutual Fund.

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