HOW TO SELL

A Primer for Filmmakers &

Entrepreneurs of Every Sort

by Nancy Fulton

www.FilmFundingClub.com
 Table of Contents

You Need to Learn to Sell ............................................. 3

First Some Principles ................................................... 4

These Principles Are Important ...................................... 7

The Bones beneath a Sales Conversation .......................... 7

Why Does This Work? .................................................. 8

What’s All This Got to Do With Marketing? ........................ 9

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© 2012 Nancy Fulton, All Rights Reserved. 2
You Need to Learn to Sell
Grade schools should teach children how to sell, and high schools should
ensure kids can sell before they graduate. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but
the world would be a better place if more people understood the sales
process:

● Knowing how to sell makes you a smarter consumer because you know
why you buy what you buy

● Knowing how to sell makes you a better negotiator because you know
how to build a deal that’s better for everyone

● Knowing how to sell makes it easier to build a business, because

entrepreneurs have to hire employees, negotiate rates, find
customers, all day every day.

● Knowing how to sell makes it easier to support yourself with your art,
music or performance, because you learn exactly how to connect to
your market.

● Knowing how to sell makes it easier for you to market across media. It
helps you figure out how to design, package and present stuff to an
audience or target market so they can see it’s value.

● Knowing how to sell is just plain handy . . .

And learning how to sell is no harder than learning how to multiply or

divide, how to drive a stick shift, how to bake a cake from a recipe or how to
balance a check book. It’s a process you see happen all around you all the
time. You just never looked into the mechanics of the process.

Mastering sales is not:

● Learning how to trick people or how to confuse them.

● Mastering the art of theft without a gun.

That’s running a con or thievery.

Mastering sales is learning how to have a structured purposeful

conversation about the relative value of a product, service or experience so
you can do a trade where both folks feel like they got a good deal.

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© 2012 Nancy Fulton, All Rights Reserved. 3
First Some Principles
If, during the sales process, you realize “This thing I’m selling is a bad
choice for this customer,” stop selling and re-direct them to the solution
they do need. It’s not wise to sell the little old lady with the one-room
apartment and tiny kitchenette the two ton commercial refrigerator.

● It is possible to talk some people into buying stuff they don’t want.
They like you, they want you to like them, they feel pressured they
buy. You both make a mistake, they end up mad. On average they’ll
tell 9 people how much they don’t like you.

● When you sell something people they don’t want, they often find a
way to back out of the deal which wastes everyone’s time and
resources.

● If you sell enough people enough stuff they don’t want for very high
value one of them will find a way to make that a very expensive
mistake.

● So if you find yourself selling something to someone that they don’t

want, don’t need or shouldn’t have, stop. Find someone else to sell
to. This is the prime directive. Your life will be miserable if you
don’t follow this rule.

Second, sell stuff people want. Seriously, you can’t skip this step. It is
very important. Don’t waste your time selling products, services or
experiences people don’t want.

● If you are producing products, services and experiences, start by

packaging just one feature into your product, service or experience
that people really want. Make what you provide the very best way
available for getting something they really want.

● Twitter had one feature at launch. Google had one feature at launch.
Even great films usually have one key feature. What does Pirates of
the Carribean have? Pirates. People like pirates. That is the best
pirate movie most of us have ever seen. Not everyone loves the film,
but lots of folks do because it got Pirates exactly right and Johnny
Depp delivered the coolest pirate of all. Although Geoffrey Rush is
insanely brilliant as well. That film has defined pirates for a whole
generation and it practically sells itself these days.

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 ● With art, the key is figuring out who if anyone likes your work. That
means you have to let people see it and see who likes it. If no one
likes your work, you can still do art. You can refine what you do so
folks like it or you can decide not to do it for a living. Van Gogh was
great, but only his brother bought his paintings. We’re all glad Van
Gogh gave us such great art . . . and we are sorry it exacted such a
price.

Third, know what promise your product, service or experience

makes. Seriously.

● Every product or service can be sold can be summed up in a single

“promise” that you make your customers.

● 747, the safest plane in the sky. Volvo, the safest car on the road.
Pirates of the Caribbean, the best pirate movie ever. Google, the
fastest way to find things on line. Honda, the best low cost car on
the market. The Godfather, the best mafia movie ever made.

● This promise, sometimes called a pitch, a unique sales proposition

(USP), is your product. Now I’ll modify slightly to say different
customers might get a slightly different version of the promise. To Al
Pacino, the pitch for Godfather was “the best mafia movie you’ll ever
make”.

● What if your product, service, or experience isn’t the best? Why are
you selling it. Find something better or make something better. Why
waste time doing something less than wonderful.

Fourth, know who your target market, your audience, is. Now, pay
attention. You don’t get to decide who your target market is.

● You may design your “homemade cardigan sweaters” for little baby
girls, but people with poodles may insist on purchasing them. Those
are your customers and that’s probably Okay.

● Your first step with any product, service or experience you sell is
showing it to people, noticing who likes it, and figuring out why they
like it.

● Once you know the characteristics of people who like your product,
you can go find more of them. For example, Big Fat Greek Wedding
was liked a great deal by Greek people. And it’s producers opened it

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 first only in Greek communities. It was seen by Greek people and
they liked it so much it filtered out into a wider audience.

● If you’ve had trouble selling in the past, I’m about 400% certain this is
your key problem. You may have something of value, some people
may have liked it, but it may never have “clicked” that you have to
get good at finding those kinds of people.

● Think in terms of “communities”.

○ If you are making a film about the Satyr motorcycle club, the
first and longest running motorcycle club founded by gay
men, it’s OK to think about finding other motorcycle clubs run
by gay men elsewhere in the country.

○ If people keep buying your sweaters for their poodles, look

for poodle owners, poodle shows and poodle communities.

● Your best source for new customers will always be old customers who
like you and have enjoyed doing business with you in the past.

Don’t try to sell things to people who can’t say “Yes”. If you call an
office, don’t pitch the secretary. She can’t buy your a $20K photocopier so
why talk to her about buying one. She can only say “No”. What you have to
get her to say Yes to is helping you talk to her boss. The more you talk to
folks who can’t say “Yes” about something they can’t buy, the more “No’s”
you’ll hear. Sometimes the best way to sidestep a gatekeeper is just to ask
to be transferred to voicemail. If you introduce yourself, state the promise
you’re making, and state a specific reason you think it can help the person
you’re leaving the message for, you’ll have better luck than leaving the same
message with the secretary. Emailing this message may also work, as may
connecting to your target through LinkedIn.

Sometimes gatekeepers play a filtering role and sidestepping them with

a direct email may get you in trouble. Movie agents are examples of such
gatekeepers. You only approach “true gatekeepers” when you have what it
takes to get by them. If you have cash in hand, go to the agent with an offer.

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These Principles Are Important
Don’t even begin the sales process until you’ve committed yourself to
these principles. Don’t start selling anything until you understand why these
principles are critical to your success.

Think about all the things you’ve been passionate about buying and
happy you spent your money on in the context of these principles.

It will become very clear why they are so important for you to adopt.
These rules help you sell more because they help you get the right products
to the right people.

The Bones beneath a Sales Conversation

So, here’s generally how a sales cycle goes.

1. You find people like the people who generally like to buy what you
sell.

2. You tell them your unique promise.

3. They say “I’d like to buy one”, they say “No, go away”

4. Or they say I’ll buy it if . . .

a. That’s a condition.

i. If you can meet that condition then they are saying

they will say Yes to the transaction. (ex: I’ll buy it if
it comes in red.)

ii. If you cannot meet that condition, but you can meet
the reason underlying the condition, they will
complete the transaction. (ex: I’ll go if it’s a family
movie because I don’t like violence or swearing . . .
Our film is a nature documentary so you can go.)

5. Or they say I can’t buy it because . . .

a. That’s an objection.

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 i. If their objection is real and substantive, they can’t
buy what you’re selling. (ex: I have three small
children, I can’t buy the 2-seat sports car)

ii. If their objection doesn’t preclude your offering, you

may be able to give them a good reason to go forward
with the transaction (ex: I get $3M per picture. I can’t
do your film that pays $100 a day. . . I completely
understand. Our film has Lady Gaga in it and it will be
seen on Youtube by 300M people. We were hoping
that audience might have some value to you.)

6. You close.

a. This means you ask for the transaction to go forward.

i. So, shall I wrap this for you?

ii. So, where shall I send the tickets?

iii. So, shall we draw up a letter of agreement?

7. They will either state more objections or conditions, tell you to go

away, or give you the sale.

During this process you may hear people start to ask questions like “How
much does it cost?”, “Could we do it Thursday?, “Does it come in blue?”

Those are buying questions. You may also see them start to talk about
how they can use your product, service, and experience to their benefit.
They may tell you what problem it can solve for them.

Those are buying behaviors. It means they want to close. Stop talking.
Let them finish selling themselves what they want, and then lead them
through the end of the transaction so they can have what they want.

That’s pretty much it.

Why Does This Work?

Most folks don’t know why they buy what they buy. They honestly do
not. They show up at Sears to pick a refrigerator and have it shipped home.
They don’t decide in advance what cubit footage they want, whether they

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need an ice maker, or if the freezer should be on the top or on the side. They
don’t even know how much they want to spend most of the time. They’ll buy
one thing if they have to pay cash, another if credit is available.

So the “sales professional” or “deal maker” is the guy who has to help
them walk through the decision making process so they have what they want.
He uncovers their their conditions and objections and sees if he has
something he can provide them. If he doesn’t, and he’s smart, he sends them
to a competitor who does have what they want. That ensures the next time
they want to buy something they come to him first knowing that if he doesn’t
have it he knows who does.

As an aside, sales professionals and marketing professionals are often the

easiest folks to sell to because they have some clue about why they buy what
they buy. They pretty much sell themselves as a rule. You just have to
answer their questions.

What’s All This Got to Do With Marketing?

Marketing is the preparation you to do to make sales easy:

● You design the product or service people want and make sure they
want it

● You find out what characteristics describe the people who want what
you sell and what exactly about them makes them want your product,
service or experience.

● You find a bunch of folks with that set of characteristics and tell
them your promise

● You get them to a physical location or website where they can get
walked through that conditions/objections process.

● You let them buy what they want.

When you’ve done marketing right, sales becomes merely taking an

order. If you can’t sell something face to face, chances are extremely good
you’ll be crap at marketing it.

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 In Conclusion

Making a sale is a straight forward process. It is not confusing or hard

when you follow the basic principles and procedures outlined above. It does
take practice and the best practice is trying to sell stuff.

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© 2012 Nancy Fulton, All Rights Reserved. 10