“Guilt Trip” Lessons on Selling

I have been getting some movies from RedBox lately
and the other night I was watching the movie “The Guilt Trip” With my wife.

I thought it would be funny to watch but I really
wanted to be working on some marketing for the Summer.

Well it turns out that I was able to to BOTH!

The comedy flick stars Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen
where Rogen plays the inventor son who takes his nagging
mother on a cross country trip while he tries to sell his
invention.

Seth’s character, Andy, spent many years at UCLA as an Organic
Chemist and has invented this cleaner which
is so safe you can get it on your skin, in your eyes, even
drink it and it won’t hurt you.

It took him five years to come up with the formula and believed
in it so much that he quit his job, spent all the inheritance from his
deceased father as well as  his entire life savings manufacturing tons of product
(before he sold it.)

The thing that kills me is that this technician (Organic Chemist)
became the main marketer and brand salesman for this amazing product.

And then set up appointments with
major retailers like Costco and K-Mart to see if they would
be willing to carry his product in their stores.

Besides the obvious big lesson here of testing to see if
anyone is interested in your product or service before you
invest tons of time and money in developing it, there is a
great sales lesson in this movie.

His pitch is beyond bad and doesn’t even listen when Costco
Buyers are trying to still give him help in how to better improve
it. If fact, he strongly tells him he “isn’t changing ANYTHING”!

So watch the movie and see how you could have improved
the success of these sales meetings.