Why is “Selling a Fridge To An Eskimo” The Worst Sales Advice Ever!

We have all heard the adage selling a fridge to an Eskimo

Or the proverbial "Sell me This Pen" uttered by a salesman during his seminar, dressed in an expensive borrowed suit with rented Lambo waiting outside.

It is an obscene approach designed to attract eyeballs with no substantial meaning whatsoever

Best salesmen know – 80% of their sales deal will come from 20% of their deal

What then is the point of become extraordinary – for another 20%

The best kept secret of all salesmen: You don’t have to be great at sales

You only have to be good enough

Gary Halberts in one of the letters to his son gives him the most timeless advice on making money:

Sell what people want to buy

That’s it.

Why would you like to be so damn good as to be able to sell a fridge to an Eskimo, when he doesn’t even need one?

And how many fridges would you sell to a sparsely populated Antarctica anyways? The effort to become painstakingly great salesman is disproportionate to the expected outcome. The law of Diminishing return in action

How do you determine what people want to buy?

Start with your direct mail. It’s boring I know and most of us are used to dispose this useless pile of junk straight into the trash can.

There is reason direct mail hasn’t died yet. It still works

And most of the items inside tend to repeat themselves over and over again. This is your signal. Study those papers. Let that obscene junk deliver to you the pulse of the market.

And read the rest of the Boron letters. They are amazing.