8

Fill the Seats on the

Ferris Wheel
In an earlier chapter, I said that good selling is like planting and harvesting in a
country where things grow all year round. Planting and harvesting, all year long.
Another way to think of it is in terms of the Ferris wheel that I just mentioned. If
you have ever seen a Ferris wheel, you know how it works. One at a time, the
guy in charge fills the seats. People get off, he fills their seats, moves the wheel a
little, fills the next seats, and so on until all the people in the seats have left and
new ones come on. Then the wheel turns a while and he stops it and does that
emptying and filling again.

Good selling is like that too. Only the wheel is always moving just a little bit so
that some people—the ones you have just sold—can get off for a while and
others—the ones you are just starting to work on—can get on. By the time they
have come full circle, they are ready to be sold, give up their seats, and be
replaced for a while. I say “for a while,” because nobody buys a car forever.

People buy one for two or three or maybe five years and then they are ready for
another one, whether they know it or not. But if you keep proper records and
files and diaries, you know it, maybe even before they do.

In my example in the last chapter, I put Steve Kowalski in a seat on the Ferris
wheel. In a way, I have him locked in that seat. I know what he drives, so I know
he probably will want to trade. I know something about the age of his car, so I’ll
know a little about how much money he will need to have or borrow to buy a
new one. I know where he lives and maybe where he works, so I have an idea of
how good a credit risk he is and where he is likely to go for borrowing: a credit
union, a small loan company, or whatever. And I know when he thinks he will
start looking for a new car, and I’ll be back on the phone a few weeks before he

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says he’ll start looking. So I’ll probably be ahead of the other salesmen he is
likely to see. In fact, if I handle it right, I may be the only salesman he ever talks
to. He is sitting up there on my wheel, and I know exactly where.

A lot of the time, let’s face it, it doesn’t work quite that way. Sometimes a guy
won’t tell you that much. Or maybe you don’t even know who is up there on
your wheel, because you sent somebody a piece of mail and he put it aside, and
you don’t even know it.

That doesn’t really matter. I mean it is great to get a Steve Kowalski, a good
prospect, already partly qualified, just from a couple of phone calls. But don’t
forget the spaghetti throwing. You get it out there and some of it will stick.
Maybe when I call Kowalski back, he will have won the lottery and bought a
Rolls Royce already. So what? I ask him if he knows anybody else who is
looking to buy a car—a relative who was over for dinner, somebody in his shop,
maybe a neighbor who totaled his car yesterday. Or maybe I just wish him luck
and let him tell me about where he bought the lottery ticket. Then I suggest that
it might be nice to use some of that money to buy his wife or his daughter who is
graduating a new car too. Or maybe I just make some pleasant small talk and he
remembers me when he has blown all the money and needs a cheap car again.

I may or may not know exactly where Steve Kowalski is sitting. But I do know
his name and where to reach him and when. And that is worth something. It is a
piece of information that can be mined like you’re looking for gold. He is worth
calling back, maybe more than once, and he is worth putting on a mailing list
and being in touch with again.

When I talk about this guy, I’m sure you understand that I am really referring to
a lot of people—the more, the better. I have sold more than 12,000 cars and
trucks since I got into the automobile business. Since I have an increasing
volume of repeat business, it is hard to say how many of those 12,000 plus sales
are repeats. It is all written down in my records. I have a card for every buyer,
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and if I sold a person more than once it says when and what and all the rest. So
let’s say that there are 9,000 different names of sold customers in my file.

You would think that mailing to 9,000 names is an expensive proposition, and it
is. After all, if I mail them all first class, it costs plenty for postage alone these
days. But my mailing list is bigger than that, because it also includes names of
people I have not sold yet. So it costs me a lot to keep those records and do the
mailings. The dealer pays a good part of the cost, but I pay plenty too. But it’s
worth it, every penny of the cost of maintaining the list and keeping it up-to-
date, to say nothing of the mailings themselves.

If you had a list like that, you would understand its value. That many names of
solid prospects is the most valuable thing a salesman can have. Maybe you wont
be able to put together anywhere near that many names. It doesnt matter,
because however big your prospect list is, it is a list of people you have already
qualified in some way.

There are millions of prospects in the whole country and maybe a few hundred
thousand in any major metropolitan area. But getting your hands on the specifics
—name, address, anything else—of real people is enormously valuable. I don’t
have to tell you that. But I just want to remind you in case you are falling into
the habit of moaning about how nobody comes to see you.

YOU ALREADY HAVE A LONG PROSPECT LIST

What are you doing to bring them in? Who? you ask. Well, for openers, do all
your friends and relatives know where you are working these days? You’ve got a
little address book in your pocket with their names. That’s a prospect list that
I’m sure you already know about. But what have you done lately to be in touch
with them?

Here’s another good source of prospects: your file of paid bills. What I am
saying is that the people you buy things from ought to be good prospects for the

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things you sell. Everybody wears clothes, lives in a house or apartment with
furniture and appliances, drives a car. And businessmen—like the butcher and
the florist and the oil dealer—use trucks. All the people I buy from are on my
list. I try to sell them every time I see them to buy from them. When I give them
money, I let them know again what I sell. And I work it the other way too. If a
guy buys a car from me, I know what business he is in. When I need some of
what he sells, I will buy some from him, and let him know that I appreciate his
buying from me. I’m not saying we can all live by taking in each other’s
laundry. But the people you buy from certainly ought to be on your prospect list.
So check back into your personal bills file to see whom you’re giving your
money to. Maybe it’s time they gave some to you.

Girard’s Law of 250 is always operating. And when we are talking about your
butcher and your filling station and your dry cleaner, figure that they talk to that
many people in a day sometimes. Every one of these people talks to customers,
hears small talk about kids and accidents and cars. Some of them may not even
know what you do for a living, so you ought to make sure that they do know.

MAKE SURE EVERYBODY KNOWS

WHAT YOU SELL
That sounds like pretty elementary advice, and maybe you’ve heard it too many
times already. But I have run into a lot of salesmen who never tell people—other
than close friends and relatives—what they do for a living. They say that sales
people, especially car salesmen, have a bad image. Well, let me tell you that I’m
proud of what I do for a living.

If your sales are to business or industry, you may think this isn’t important or
that it can’t help you. I say it can. Remember Girard’s Law of 250. People are
always talking about who they know and what they do. I know of a salesman
who sold a $120,000 computer service because a friend told another friend about
him.

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I believe that every salesperson ought to be proud of his or her profession. Look
at it this way. Since I was 35 years old, I have sold more than 12,000 new cars
and trucks. Do you know how many jobs that has created, how much steel had to
be produced and sold to make those cars, how much money General Motors and
all of its thousands of suppliers took in just from what I did? Millions. Salesmen
make the wheels go round, because if we don’t keep on moving the goods off the
shelves and out of the stockrooms and warehouses, the whole American system
would stop running.

So you make sure everybody knows you’re a salesman and that they know what
you sell. And when you buy from them, you don’t have to make some kind of
trade with them, some kind of reciprocal deal. But just let them know every once
in a while that you have something for them any time they need it. And what you
want from them is not just a sale but information. If you sell jewelry, when you
hear that somebody is going to graduate, you know that can be a lead to a sale of
a watch or a cocktail ring. And if you are selling cars, when you hear that a guy
totaled his car, you can say you’re sorry, but also keep in mind that this guy is
going to need another car and that he is probably going to get a nice big check
from an insurance company to pay for it.

So don’t forget about the butcher and the baker. They can help you fill those
seats on the Ferris wheel or plant those seeds in the fertile soil, or however you
want to look at what I consider the professional system of selling.

Now let’s get specific about some of my other methods for getting those seats
filled or seeds planted or spaghetti stuck on the wall. However you look at it, it is
going to be the way to get money in your pocket.

Put everybody you can think of on your Ferris wheel.

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