How to sell a pastrami sandwich seems like a simple question, but the real answer is more complex than it appears on the surface. What can selling a sandwich possibly have to do with rebuilding a transmission?
Well it turns out the interesting reason is, selling a sandwich is not about selling something. It’s about building something! It’s building the best product, getting the best price, having the greatest profit margin, kicking the competition’s backside and having the highest repeat consistent customer count. If you build it right, they will come back. (Of course in our industry if you build it right they don’t come back.) If you do, the customer becomes your sales person, no extra charge – or discounts.
So, let’s build a nice hot pastrami sandwich, but not just any pastrami sandwich, the best and only the best. We’re going to spend some good money on it too.
First the bread, fresh today, baked last night and delivered to your back door when it opens. Next up for early morning delivery is fresh lettuce, red onions, and even fresh-as-possible tomatoes, for those few crazies that want a tomato on their pastrami sandwich. — Psst! Don’t ever tell a customer they’re crazy, even if it’s your cousin.
Now let’s get to the meat of the subject, pastrami. It comes from the top commercial meat vendor in town and you buy it by the hundred pound weight because your store sells a lot of it. Don’t be shy, buy the best stuff, priced be dammed. Your competition’s cost for an inferior product is just pennies per pound difference. Your customer will know the deference and tell everyone they know about it too.
Then we have your recipe. And it’s not just any recipe, it’s yours by ownership. One that is tried, tested, tried again and then when perfect, cast in stone. The baking time is overnight, popped into the oven as the last job of the day to be slow cooked and ready for your first customer of the next day.
Now we have the hard parts, let’s put them together on a cutting board. First two slices of rye bread, with a leaf of lettuce on each piece of bread to slow the pastrami juice from leaking into the bread. Now add some thin sliced red onion to one side of the bread. To the other slice of bread, slap on the delicious thin sliced hot pastrami, letting each slice drape or fold over the other with air between the slices so the smell and flavor of each piece comes out. Start with about the same amount of pastrami as your competition does. Now that’s a nice sandwich, but it’s not nice enough.
Here’s the fix and what makes the sale! Pile on another 50 cents worth of pastrami, at your wholesale cost. This giant step is the key to making a sandwich that takes your product over the top, a one and only from your store. It’s unmatched in size, quality and taste. The pile is so high your customer smiles and becomes enlisted as your sales agent.
Slice the 3” high sandwich diagonal; place it on a serving plate, with a sprig of parsley for color and a fresh new pickle, with the piled high pastrami exposed toward the center of the plate so the flavor waifs up to the customer. It makes their eyeballs pop when served. On the table is a wide choice of mustards. If they want mayo, put it in a side dish so the pastrami is not infected. (Who puts mayo on pastrami?)
But wait, what about the cost? How can you make money giving so much more than the competition? Let’s do some simple math. Your competitor charges $6.00 for a pretty good sandwich and they make a net profit of $3.00 per sandwich. Their cost to run the business is about the same as yours. In fact, one of your competitors is a national chain store with an even lower price and much lower quality. But you charge $8.00 – because you can for a great sandwich. Your competition made $3.00 while you made $4.50 on the same deal, remembering the 50 cents worth of extra pastrami. Guess what? The customer doesn’t care about the higher price, they wanted the best sandwich and they got it, yours!
So what’s all this have to do with selling transmissions? Well quite a lot actually. You see selling is not about a pastrami sandwich or any particular product or service. Selling is all about knowing your product quality, surprising customers in a better than expected way and making more money than the shop down the street per sandwich – (or rebuild.) That’s your goal, give customers more then they expect and don’t worry about the price. The price is the least of your problems. It’s product quality, service and your reputation that sells – and resells.
Want to be a good sales person? Pile it on with a little extra, enough to make your customer smile. And that my friend is What’s Working for Sales 101. Now go build a transmission, one time.
