Expanding my Comfort Zone
When I signed Ian and I up as volunteers for REVERB at a concert we wanted to see, I had no idea what to expect. I tried looking into what tasks volunteers were asked to do, but came up empty. I signed us up anyway. I figured at the very least it would be an adventure.
I was right.
The Barenaked Ladies (aka BNL) were scheduled to play Marymoor Park on July 26, 2015. Colin Hay (former lead singer of Men at Work), was one of the openers, and that attracted me as I’ve heard great things about him solo but never seen him live. The second opener was The Violent Femmes. Not familiar with their stuff at all.
Then I looked at the ticket price. We’d just seen BNL on the Rock Boat, and wasn’t quite a big enough fan to compel me to plunk out that kind of dough. I guess I’m getting spoiled by the lower ticket prices of all these independent bands we follow.
Then the email from Reverb landed in my inbox, looking for volunteers for all the dates on the tour. Ian and I have been known to volunteer to sell merchandise for bands; not because we can’t afford the cost of admission, but because we genuinely enjoy selling merchandise. Besides, this is for a good cause.
Our product.
REVERB is an organization founded by a musician (Adam Gardner of Guster) and his environmentalist wife to help reduce the carbon footprint of touring bands. REVERB creates and executes comprehensive, custom programs to green the tour itself while engaging concertgoers to take action for the environment. For all I knew, volunteering for this meant we’d be picking up trash or making sure empty water bottles were recycled.
Not quite, though I was close with the water bottle idea. Our volunteer crew was tasked with offering special tour water bottles for a donation of $5 which would go toward a major national water conservation project. REVERB had a booth set up. Sell water bottles. No big deal.
Except Ian and I wouldn’t be working the booth. We became one of several teams that had to go out into the crowd, peddling our wares.
In the safe confines of the booth, people come to you because they want to know what you’re doing and what you are offering. Selling is easier when people are responding to their interest. However, going out into a crowd and soliciting is definitely NOT in my comfort zone. I don’t consider selling to be my strong suit. Also, even though we were given the spiel about REVERB and what the money brought in would be used for, I had no idea what to say to complete strangers to try to convince them to buy a water bottle.
“You’re a professional speaker. You’ll come up with something,” I consoled myself aloud.
It helped a little that our fellow volunteers felt the same way. At least we were on equal footing.
I came up with a great elevator speech on the fly about REVERB and the water bottles. More often then not, people would let me go through my entire bit and then say “no, not interested.” Then I started conversations with people- about their great looking food, about what beer they were drinking, about which artist they were primarily here to see…didn’t increase sales much, but at least I started really having fun because I was engaging people. I was surprised at how many were there primarily to see the Violent Femmes, and by the time we were off-duty, I knew exactly what beer I was going to drink and what I was having for dinner.
Note that my insecurity about going into a crowd and selling has nothing to do with my facial difference. In fact, that may even be an advantage because it gets me noticed. I am not self-conscious about it, and didn’t notice any difference in the way people treated me versus Ian.
Barenaked Ladies with Colin Hay and the sax player from the Violent Femmes performing Men at Work’s “Who Can it Be Now.” Epic.
It was a cool night, so I’d make a crack about how we’d sell more water bottles if it was 90 degrees out. After all, the bottles came with unlimited visits to the water tap in the REVERB booth. Ian started chanting “bringing sunshine to the desert” while holding up our bungee cord of empty water bottles, which almost always got a smile from people as we passed. Since the bottles say “Barenaked Planet,” I started calling out “Barenaked water bottles!” This worked a lot better than delivering a sales pitch no one wanted to hear, especially as the crowd filled in. Sometimes people would actually stop us, wanting to buy one. In those cases, we didn’t have to do anything except carry them around.
My sales lesson out of all of this? Simple is good. Being human- engaging them and making them laugh- is even better. Well, I’m not sure it helped our sales but we sure had more fun and didn’t feel like pushy sales people.
We sold 17 total, which really wasn’t bad. The booth made the majority of sales.
I asked Ian if he would do this again. We agreed we would, even if it meant working the crowd. We’d just start right off with the short catch phrases and human engagement. People love it when you’re interested in them, and they love it even more if you can make them smile or laugh.
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