When I was travelling & working in London in 2004, I was given a great opportunity to combine my interest in face-to-face sales with performing magic. Harrods of Knightbridge is one of the world’s most famous department stores so it is normally very busy; imagine how busy the toy section of Harrods was when I worked there a month before Christmas!
The “Marvin’s Magic Stands” are a major crowd pleaser, especially as the kids have just visited Father Christmas’s cave & are now looking for their Christmas presents. Harrods is known for having a rather formal atmosphere (the staff rules are very strict) & their prices cater more for the wealthy, so the fact that they encourage the Marvin’s sales team to draw in a crowd is a testament both to the success of using entertainment & magic as a sales strategy, as well as the importance of giving the customers an entertaining & unique experience.
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| Standing in front of my D’Lite stand in Harrods, London. November 2004 |
I’d never ’sold’ magic before, so with my (then) 5 years of performance experience it was quite challenging to sell the magic tricks & kits after I had created a crowd at the table during my performance. Initially I would perform for 1 or 2 people, unti; a group formed & then I’d continue to entertain until 1 or 2 people eventually bought something. After the first week, I didn’t reach my commission target -so I changed my strategy …
I took on the “D’lite” stand that was right at the end of a passage. The D’lite is an awesome little trick that practically anyone can perform – it looks like you’re throwing a little ‘light’ from hand-to-hand, make it vanish, penetrating things & doing some pretty crazy stunts. As a group of children would approach my stand, I’d start throwing the ‘light’ around until they were so amazed, they’d form a group around me. By this time the parents would arrive, & having just walked past the remote-controlled toys, would be relieved to walk find a toy at 1/10th of the price! After watching for a minute or two, the kids would be screaming to get the trick for Christmas (it makes a great stocking-filler) but the parents were not convinced that their children would be able to perform it.
“You won’t be able to do it Johnny!”
“Of course I will Mum!”
And at this point I jumped in, showing Mum & Dad just how easy it is to perform – in fact, I showed MUM how to perform it first. It was hilarious to watch Mum desperately trying to throw this ‘light’ around, but once she quickly started to get the trick to work, she’d inevitably start to smile! Then she’s show her husband what she could do, then she showed the kids …
Once I realised that the secret of getting the sale was to get Mum to play with it, it immediately became part of my script. On my second last day in the store, I broke the store record for most D’lites sold in one day.
I learnt a LOT about direct face-to-face sales that month:
- Work in the area that is immediately after the biggest contrast in the area ( small magic trick vs. large remote-controlled cars & model trains)
- Kids can be very persuasive, but even those adults without kids are easily persuaded
- Learn to sell one (or as few as possible) product really, really well. When you find that the sales tactic you’re using for that product works & you’re able to create & meet a high demand, stick with it!
- Learn to deal with objections by first finding out if the objection is really valid; if it isn’t, allow the customer to find out for themselves why it isn’t valid.
- Let the customer play with it & the moment she figures it out, close the sale.
- Close the sale by giving the customer a shopping basket & walking her to the tillpoint.
- Laugh. Have fun. Talk to people & be super helpful & friendly. Not only will they thank you, but they’ll look at what you have to offer.
- You close a higher percentage of possible sales when you pitch to a group then when you pitch one-by-one.
finally,
- Magic works really, really well to Create a Crowd, Convey a Message & Collect the Sales. It gets the crowd in such a perfectly suggestable state that it’s almost unfair to the parents walking through the toy section.
There’s a whole bunch of other skills I learnt during the short time that I worked there. Ask me about them when I see you next time.
[Turns out that, 2 years later at the Joel Bauer training event I attended, I met a fellow magician who'd also worked & sold magic at Marvin's Magic in Harrods for a while. He also attributed his very succesful sales skills to the job we both did on the stands.]
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