Written by Kristine Hansen, photos by Troy.
At the December MKE Creatives’ meeting were two seasonally appropriate guests: Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus! (No, really: member Paul Akert is a professional Santa Claus and on this particular day his wife came along.)
After a half hour of informal conversation in Anodyne Coffee Roasting Company’s private room, including telling Santa what we’d like for Christmas (just kidding!,) founder Troy Freund introduced Jeff Ganger. Jeff dazzled the room not just with his dance moves, but also retelling stories about what he learned in the business world before launching Non-Affiliated. After jobs in publishing and at an ad agency, he left it all behind in 2013 to co-found that business. He walked away from it a year later because it wasn’t meeting the goals he had for it. Jeff realized that, while he had the necessary design skills, he was not as a good a salesman as he wanted to be.
So, he sold cars and windows to learn sales. And embarked on a marathon of reading SEVENTEEN business books. “The best guys didn’t even sell – they talked to you,” says Jeff, about the car- and window- salesmen. During this time, he received many offers from past design clients, to provide them with creative marketing and design work. Enough offers, in fact, that Jeff left his role as a car salesman to return to the design world – but now with a much-improved sense about sales.
Some of Jeff’s main points during his MKE Creatives talk were:
-Everybody’s in sales … even if you hate the word ‘sales.’
-Money is validation for the value that you give people. It’s a validation of your product or service, and – more importantly – a vote of support.
-“Lynchpin: Are you Indispensible?” by Seth Godin is an amazing, powerful read, as is “Never Be Closing: How to Sell Better Without Screwing Your Clients, Your Colleagues, or Yourself” by Tim Hurson and Tim Dunne, and he’s currently diving into “Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing and Selling” by Michael Port. (go get ’em at Boswell Books – TF)
-It’s okay to fire clients, turn down job offers or say ‘no’ to an opportunity: “The idea of cultivating your client base by putting up a red-velvet rope is really freeing.”
-Selling virtually is as easy as asking “Who else do you think might benefit from talking with me?”
-Create a product, such as a book, and sell it –this is a way to receive validation.
Jeff’s other claim to fame is the Brew Logger notebooks he’s created for home brewers of beer who want to wax poetic about suds.
Our next meeting is Wednesday, January 7 at 10 a.m. at Anodyne Coffee Roasters. Special guest will be Mark Bradford, of Bradford Web.
(Past MKE Creatives write-ups can be seen here )
