What McDonald’s Founder Said about Sales
Disclaimer:
The quotes I put here are only for educational purposes after I finished read the book. Please read it by yourself to gain a full understanding of this amazing man and his legacy.
Book Information:
- Title: Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s
- Author: Ray Kroc, with Robert Anderson
- Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin Edition (August 2016)
Before McDonald’s era was taken place, young Ray who realized that playing piano for life wasn’t a very beautiful option, started to be a salesman to make a living for himself and his family. From time to time, he became a well-experienced, seasoned salesman, who’s trained under the hard process of knocking door to door plenty of restaurant businesses, to sell paper cups and then multimixer. He did it for around thirty-five years, among in a not-so-flourish time, which was the Great Depression — and not to mention the event of World War II — took place, where almost all markets were being collapsed. It was about the time in one of his sales visits, he met McDonald’s brothers which lead to another lovely thing: his dreams.
Don’t you find it’s astonishing to learn about this side of him? Something that makes him can say confidently, “What I did with McDonald’s was not an overnight success.”
You don’t have to wait until fifty to be like him. You can just study his story now.
Looks
I stressed the importance of making a good appearance, wearing a nicely pressed suit, well-polished shoes, hair combed, and nails cleaned. “Look sharp and act sharp,” I told them. “The first thing you have to sell is yourself. When you do that, it will be easy to sell paper cups.” [p44~45]
Looks are not everything, but that’s part of your value proposition as a person. Instead of telling someone to not judge a book by its cover, why don’t we make an effort to create a proper cover while also maintaining the quality of the book?
Ray Kroc trusts his salesman’s instinct and his subjective assessment of people. Even though people accused him of being arbitrary, and he admitted he’s been wrong in his judgment about men (but not very often, he defended), he believed much of the success of his organization is the result of the kind of people he picked for a key position.
June Martino believed that I once fired a member of our staff because he didn’t wear the right kind of hat and didn’t keep his shoes shined. She was correct as far as it went, I didn’t like those things about the man, but those weren’t the reason I fired him. I just knew that he wasn’t right for us; he was prone to making mistake, and the hat and the shoes were merely symptoms of his sloppy way of thinking. [p91]
Pitch
No self-respecting pitcher throws the same way to every batter, and no self-respecting salesman makes the same pitch to every client. [p15]
Different people need different treatment. This speaks a lot, especially if you work in the B2B industry. People have different circumstances and hobbies, just like they have different illnesses and medicine. A person can bring herself as healthy well-being and has good stamina, but she may have a hidden illness (or problem) she may not realize yet. Your job is not to provide a vitamin she doesn’t need, or far worse, to create another illness for her.
Get to know them.
Be considerate.
Too many salesmen would make a good presentation and convince the client, but they couldn’t recognize that critical moment when they should have stopped talking. If I noticed my prospect starting to fidget, glancing at his watch or looking out the window or shuffling the papers on his desk, I would stop talking right then and ask for his order. [p24]
In the B2B industry, it’s often, or should be, that your success does also mean your client’s success. This is the key to a long-term relationship.
My philosophy was one of helping my customer, and if I couldn’t sell him by helping him improve his own sales, I felt I wasn’t doing my job. [p25]
Tell Stories
Tell stories. But not the typical ones.
You need to make great stories that speak the truth about your care for your customers, and with your business, you both can achieve it, together.
When he entered the B2C industry, Ray Kroc adjusted his story well, by speaking to the community and how to improve their life. It’s amazing how hamburgers (and french fries [you know what I mean if you read the book]) business can make a great impact like this.
Finding location for McDonald’s is the most creatively fulfilling thing I can imagine. I go out and check out a piece of property. It’s nothing but bare ground, not producing a damned thing for anybody. I put a building on it, and the operator gets into business there employing fifty or a hundred people, and there is new business for the garbage man, the landscape man, and the people who sell the meat and buns and potatoes and other things. So out of that bare piece of ground comes a store that does, say, a million dollars a year in business. Let me tell you, it’s a great satisfaction to see that happen. [p171]
Like he said. McDonald’s is a people business.
The philosophy behind the “nook and cranny” notion of real estate development is that we want to bring our restaurants to the people. We want to be where people live, where they work, and where they play. [p197]
Don’t forget the “Joy”
You spend at least one-third of your day — your life — working.
Remember to “be present”.
You can’t peddle paper cups and Multimixers in a town for thirty-five years without learning something about it. And if you’re sincere about serving your customer better, you learn the layout of his basement, what kind of alley access he has, and so forth. You might be able to suggest a better way for him to handle his stock or deliveries. If you have this kind of attitude toward your work, life can’t get you down, and that applies whether you are a chairman of the board or chief dishwasher. You have to learn the joy of “working and being let work”. [p198]
And Sleeping
Salesmen are also humans. And humans need sleep to recharge themselves so they can welcome a new day. No matter how busy you are (I know, we’re working 24/7 and there’s so many calls, emails, and meetings — and look at those tight deadlines and targets that need to be achieved, all of them just, drive you, crazier) … Yes I know. But please,
please don’t forget to have a good rest.
I learned how to keep problems from crushing me. I refused to worry about more than one thing at a time, and I would not let useless getting about a problem, no matter how important, keep me from sleeping.
I did it through my own brand of self-hypnosis. I would think of my mind as being a blackboard full of messages, most of them urgent, and I practiced imagining a hand with an eraser wiping that blackboard clean.
My secret was in getting the most out of every minute of rest. I slept as hard as I worked. [p56~57]
Aside from his sales thinking, Ray Kroc the man also had various sides: a leader, an operation guy, an owner for a baseball team, and even … a romantic.
You might get inspired by one of those souls. He was a human after all.
Just like you.
Just like me.
Just like us.
— Mutya Widyalestari
