The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Last night my wife and I were flicking through the Foxtel movie channels when we came across ‘The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard’ starring Jeremy Piven (Ari from the Entourage series).
The premise of the movie is about a Used-car liquidator called Don Ready who is hired by a flailing auto dealership to turn their Fourth of July sale into a majorly profitable event. It has the usual ups and downs of the sale including a ‘good ending’ when the final car on the lot is sold and the dealership is saved.
While the film is quite crass – lots of cursing and ‘salesman’ speak, it did show some highlights of the sales game.
Create an Event – for the 4th of July weekend the sales team put on an event – a huge carnival style atmosphere including free hot dogs, dancing girls and a DJ. Special deals were advertised to help drive foot traffic to the sales lot.
Find out about Customer Needs – each of the salespeople were adept about finding out the customer needs and what drove them. Some of the situations in the movie were very funny, others ‘unprintable’!
Use Market Disturbances – during the film a riot caused the police to arrive and the news media to attend. The characters used this disturbance to take advantage of the media to announce more special offers (specifically for police officers) and to spin the riot from being a disappointment that a celebrity didn’t attend into an event where the prices were too good to be true causing the riot.
But the film did portray salespeople as being sleazy, only interested in getting the sale and not caring about their customers. This stereotype is not relevant today as professional sales people are in it for the long haul and what customers not only for today, but for the future. The Friedman system teaches us that repeat customers are really important for sales people to attain targets.
So, if you are after 90 minutes of escapism into the sometimes strange and bizarre world of sales then spending some time watching The Goods may be worth your while.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009) Directed by Neal Brennan. With Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), David Koechner (Anchorman) & James Brolin and features a cameo by Will Ferrall.
