Just about every sales person has been to a kick-off meeting or team builder where a movie clip was used to add some entertainment and emphasize the presenter’s vision. The Sales Challenger Blog just ran their Best Five Sales-Themed Movies. I was happy to see two of my favorites, Tommy Boy and Glengarry Glen Ross appear on the list. But, it made me think about what we can learn about sales from the movies.
I worked through my limited movie knowledge with this simple idea. If I could only recommend one movie to someone to help them sell better, what movie would I recommend? Many great sports movies first came to mind including Hoosiers and Any Given Sunday. For many of us it is the competition of winning that fuels life long careers in sales and the thrill of winning in any sport is so similar.
But the art of the sale is in how we help our customers and prospects to consider alternate ideas and make a change. Is this usually one person we have to persuade? No it’s often committees that cross over every function in an organization often with different backgrounds and some times competing agendas. Creating an urgency for change and ushering everyone to your side is clearly why sales people are paid the big bucks.
I had to go back a few years to find a movie that illustrates all the obstacles that can be encountered when trying to convince a group to set aside strong opinions and consider an alternate idea. How far back? All the way back to 1957, a black and white classic named 12 Angry Men.
This is the gripping, penetrating, and engrossing examination of a diverse group of twelve jurors who are uncomfortably brought together to deliberate after hearing the ‘facts’ in a seemingly open-and-shut murder trial case. They retire to a jury room to do their civic duty and serve up a just verdict for the indigent minority defendant whose life is in the balance.
One of the film’s posters described how the workings of the judicial process can be disastrous: “LIFE IS IN THEIR HANDS – DEATH IS ON THEIR MINDS! It EXPLODES Like 12 Sticks of Dynamite.” Have you ever felt like dynamite went off in the middle of your sale? You will see similarities in this movie.
The jury of twelve ‘angry men,’ entrusted with the power to send a teenage boy to the electric chair for killing his father with a switchblade knife, are literally locked into a small, claustrophobic rectangular jury room on a stifling hot summer day until they come up with a unanimous decision – either guilty or not guilty.
Fortunately, one brave dissenting juror votes ‘not guilty’ at the start of the deliberations because of his reasonable doubt. Persistently and persuasively, he forces the other men to slowly reconsider and review the shaky case (and eyewitness testimony) against the endangered defendant. Heated discussions, the formation of alliances, the frequent re-evaluation and changing of opinions, votes and certainties, and the revelation of personal experiences, insults and outbursts fill the jury room.
I won’t go any further and ruin the movie for you. The art of driving change has to be practiced by every sales person and this movie does a nice job of highlighting the strategy involved in changing minds — one person at a time.
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photo by Katrina Snaps