Many of you know that I transitioned into photography from a career that I had in nursing. But before my career in nursing, I actually graduated as an undergrad with a degree in cultural anthropology. That was one of those degrees. That meant I could do nothing at all or kind of anything I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to move to New York City and I had heard in New York was a very
expensive place to live. So my number one objection objective, at the end of college was to land a job that would pay me as much as possible so that I could live in New York City. So I got a job with a consulting firm with a pretty solid starting salary for a 22 year old. And I moved to New York in May, for a job that was supposed to start in October, I got a job waiting tables to kind of meet people and have fun over the summer. But I was mostly killing time until my real career was
supposed to take off. However, the year came into play here, because this was actually 2001. And of course, between the time that I moved to New York, and the time that my job was supposed to start September 11 happened. And as a result of that, my job at this consulting firm got put on kind of indefinite hold, I could have eventually taken it. But by that point, I had sort of established for myself that I could live in New York without making as much as I was going to be making at
this consulting job. And my suspicion was that that job wasn't going to be anything that I really loved doing. So I started exploring other opportunities, alternatives for a career trajectory. At the time, I had been working in restaurants just as a, you know, waiter for from the time that I was 15 years old. And I had kind of gotten into foodie culture I was really enjoying that I really liked to write this was right around the time that the Food Network was starting to
take off. So I started thinking about a career in food writing. And I was networking as much as I could to talk to various chefs and people like that about how I could get myself into food writing without a writing background that was specifically writing or any kind of real restaurant experience outside of waiting tables. So I didn't really want to go to culinary school, but I needed to figure out kind of a backdoor way of working myself into that
culture. I ended up getting connected with a guy named Chris Pappas, who ran a company called Dairyland. Dairyland was a restaurant supply company based in Queens that had started obviously, as a dairy supplier and had grown over time to be a pretty big distributor of grocery type products to restaurants ranging from like, you know, corner stores to all the way up to the top restaurants in New York City.
But when I sat down for my interview with this guy, Chris Pappas, which was a very fancy interview at the Four Seasons hotel, we sat down for lunch. And he went through this whole interview, and he was talking about a new branch of their business that they were trying to establish. He said, pretty much everybody comes in as a
salesperson for us. That's what we do, we sell stuff, but I want you to potentially be the point person, the point the head salesperson, in this new division that we're establishing where we are repping high end products to some of the city's finest restaurants. So olive oils, high end cheeses, truffles, foie gras, that kind of thing. And I stopped him right there. And I was like, Okay, I love where you're going with this. But I have to say,
I'm really not a salesperson. It sounds like what you're describing as a sales job. And I don't like sales. I feel awkward when I'm selling I, I'm just not, I'm probably not the right person for that job. But then he went on to be like, Oh, no, no, no, this isn't a real sales job. This is really a networking job. We're going to be sending you to France, and Italy to learn all about these different products. And then you're going to come
back. And I just want you to sit down with these chefs and like have stories to tell, and basically create relationships where, you know, they ended up buying these things from us. And as you can imagine, my 22 year old brain kind of exploded, and I was like, yep, Sign me up. So I took this job. I started I think it was March of 2002. And what I found was that week by week by week, they kept kind of pushing me back and being like, well, we need to start you out by training you like any of our
other salespeople. So I went through their standard sales training. And then I thought like, okay, great, we're gonna transition into this, you know, magic unicorn job that you've offered me and lo and behold, that wasn't quite ready. So then they were like, well, we're just gonna say you up with a handful of accounts, normal accounts, and you'll just manage those.
And while we're setting up this other line of business, so all summer long in 2002, I was schlepping around the East Village, you know, taking Jalapeno Popper orders from dive bars and making sure that those were fulfilled on time, it was the absolute opposite of glamour. And I was I was feeling a little bit like I was the victim of a bait and switch. And of course, you know, weeks turned into months, it did not seem like that Job was
anywhere on the horizon. So when Chris sat me down in September and said, Yeah, this, this whole line of the business looks like it's probably at least a year or two out. I went ahead and went ahead and tendered my resignation, and started to think about like, what's the next thing on my plate. And the short version of the story is that I decided to go back to school for nursing. And, and there, you know, the rest of the
story. But I wanted to share this story, because many of you know me, as someone who teaches sales, right? How in the world did I go from someone who, in an interview, sat there and looked someone in the eye and said, I don't want to be a salesperson. And then when I took the job anyway, I ended up quitting because I hated selling so much.
All the way to here we are 20 years later, and my entire career or much of my career, much of my time at this point is spent talking about how great sales can be and how fulfilling it can be and how it does not need to feel icky or gross, or manipulative or any of those kinds of things. I spent so much time thinking about that, that I have dedicated a large portion of my energy to teaching you how to do it to hosting this podcast about it. So that is what we are going to talk about today on the
podcast. Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken. And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. First, let's talk about what it was that I hated about my job at
Dairyland. Now, there is a difference between selling jalapeno poppers and basically competing entirely on price or trying to create some sort of like false or contrived loyalty where I'm like, oh, man, Johnny, you placed your order with other people. Oh, you're breaking my heart here, right? Like that was the kind of sales type techniques that I was being taught when I started at Dairyland. And, and I could not stomach that for five minutes.
Like that was exactly what I was talking about when I told Chris that like, I don't like sales. That's not what I do. So when I went back to the drawing board, I went back to school, I got my nursing degree, but I still needed to work, I still needed a job. So I went back to what I knew how to do, which was waiting tables. And I got a job near at a restaurant near where I was taking classes. And that restaurant was called 11. Madison Park. I didn't really necessarily think all that much
about where I was working. Other than that, I knew that it was a popular nice restaurant and that it was, you know, location wise, it was convenient for what I was doing. But it turned out that that Job was very different from any of the other restaurants where I had ever worked, or any job that I had ever worked. First, I was extremely proud to have a job there. The restaurant itself was gorgeous. The food was amazing. We were winning all kinds of awards for the food.
And then the service standard was really, really high. I felt amazing about the kinds of service that I was providing, even though you know, you could easily look at it and be like, Well, you were just waiting tables. The way that they set it up there was very different it was very empowering. Second, the owner of the restaurant was a guy named Danny Meyer, and you may have heard me talk about him
in the past. He is not only just a I mean he is a restaurant owner in New York City but he has become this kind of powerhouse in the restaurant industry. He runs Shake Shack, if you've ever heard of that, and or at least he did. He started it and at the time, he was still very young. No firmly rooted in New York. And he was working at the few restaurants, or circling around the few restaurants that he owned in New York. So I got to know him
directly. And he was a super lovely guy and a brilliant business person, his whole thing at that time, and it has gone on to be expanded into so much that he's written books on hospitality and all that. But at the time, he talked a lot to us about how instead of taking the the customer comes first, the customer is king, that kind of mentality, which was very much what I had experienced at the other restaurants that I worked at. His philosophy was that the
team members came first. So he sort of believed in this trickle down theory of customer service, where if the people who worked at the restaurant felt appreciated and cared for, they would, in turn, pass that on to the people, the patrons of the restaurant. So, in that way, even as a 23 year old waiter, I felt really respected. Third, instead of being taught to sell, we were taught to create this amazing experience for our
guests. And we were told explicitly that we needed to be leading with genuine interest and empathy. Because when we did that, so Danny's philosophy went, our sales averages would more or less take care of themselves. So I really loved being empowered to go above and beyond for my guests, instead of being like, Oh, you're upset, because you know, the food didn't come out fast enough, let
me go get my manager. Instead, I could stand there, read the room, decide what I felt like the right way to fix the problem was, and I could go ahead and just take care of that. And what ended up happening was, I made more money waiting tables at that restaurant than I had ever made in the past, not only because the checkout bridges were higher, but because people
loved eating there. And they ended up you know, tipping more and spending more and all that kind of thing, the difference between that situation and what I had experienced in the past, which was sort of the, you know, the kind of upselling that they joke around about at McDonald's, right? Like, Oh, you want fries with that, like constantly being told that I needed to try and get people to buy more things. But on the other hand, if a guest was upset, I wasn't allowed to do anything about it.
And more likely than not, when the manager got called over the table, I would get, you know, yelled out about it after the fact, the difference between a workplace where I felt threatened all the time, and a place where I felt empowered. At 11, Madison Park, my check averages were much bigger, people were buying more, I didn't have to push dessert, or fancier wine or anything like
that. It was like this sneaky way of being a salesperson, but not in a manipulative way I wasn't being gross, or, you
know, Sliney. What I saw over and over was that people who felt cared for people who were excited about the food, they were excited about the experience they were having, they wanted to splurge for that nicer, nicer bottle of wine, or the dessert that they didn't really have room for or something else, they wanted to extend the experience, they wanted to kind of double down to get as much out of it as they could. And that was with no
pressure whatsoever. For me. I was just there as sort of their guide, right to lead them through the experience to give them recommendations. Not only did those clients spend more money, in the end, they were happier with the experience. And they often came back again and again as regular guests. And that I found was the kind of sales that I could get behind. And I would argue that any of
you could as well, right? We all recommend things to our friends, whether it's a restaurant that we went to that we're like, oh, you should go there, it's great, or a book that we read or a shop that they think that they'd love. In fact, I would say most of us really like sharing those kinds of recommendations because we all like being the person who, you know, somebody comes back to us and says, Oh, thank you so much for that restaurant recommendation. We had an amazing meal last night that
feels good. Even though our friend went out and spent money on that restaurant experience or
that movie or whatever. The most important elements of good sales that are done with integrity are number one, listening to what that person's needs are now, I wouldn't go recommending a restaurant to a stranger, about whom I knew nothing, right if I thought that the person's if I didn't know what that person's budget was, and I didn't know that they were Vegan and whatever you know, then my steak restaurant like high end steak restaurant might be a really bad
recommendation. So the first step is always listening to what the particular person that you want to help make a buying decision. With, you'd need to hear what they are interested in. Even if you suspect it's kind of the same as everybody else you want to get the details. And only then do you start to engage in a conversation about what it is that you recommend or what it is
that you offer. And when you do that, you help build trust, because even if it turns out that they are asking for the same thing that everybody else asks for, they know that you have heard what they want. This all goes back to me harping on and on about the fact that you need to talk to your leads, before you try to sell to them, it's not so much that I want you to talk at them, I really want you to converse with them, I want you to hear what they have
to say. And I want you to make it so that they feel like you have heard them. The second step, or the second thing that's really important, with good sales that you can feel good about is respecting your client's boundaries, or respecting your, you know, if you're thinking about making a recommendation for a friend respecting their boundaries, you don't want to do an inappropriate, make an inappropriate suggestion or try and like push them with a hard
upsell. We have all probably worked with a real estate agent or a car salesperson or somebody else like that, where we go in and we say this is my budget, my budget is, I don't know $10,000. And then they blow right by that right? They come back and they say, Well, I know you said your budget was $10,000. But this $15,000 car is so much better because of XY and Z and you're like, Yeah, but you've just
exceeded my budget by 50%. And then you're put in the position of being me to feel like you're less than or you need to negotiate back to the top of the budget that you just, you know, stated explicitly, when we are being good stewards of sales, we need to find out what the boundaries are and respect those, if someone decides to move beyond their own boundaries, once they start to kind of feel out that know like and trust factor that's
different. But trying to immediately go in and say you should change your budget is not being respectful. And ultimately, it's not the right kind of selling. Third, you want to make honest recommendations, even when those recommendations are not the most profitable. And this is where I think a lot of us think about sales. And we think that it has to be kind of this process where we're manipulating people or we're trying to squeeze as much out of
them as possible. You want to listen to what somebody has to say, find out what their boundaries are. And then within the confines of those things, make recommendations. And then the fourth piece kind of goes along with that, which is that you if at some point in the game, you're going to come across people for whom you don't
have anything to offer. So your honest, you know, real recommendation is that perhaps they work with someone else, you need to be willing to walk away, you need to be willing to turn that work down, if you are being a responsible salesperson. Now, a lot of us feel differently about selling our own goods and services, versus making a
recommendation. Like it might be harder for you to try and get someone to hire you as a photographer, versus, you know, pointing out that like, Oh, if you love this restaurant, you're gonna love this restaurant. But there really isn't much of a difference there. We feel that different. That difference. But that's really just because we stand to profit if someone purchases our goods versus somebody else standing to prod to profit. And there's no
material difference there. If you are following the rules that I talked about before, for selling with integrity, there is no difference. That person is spending money, whether it's with you or with someone else. So my recommendation is that you acknowledge that as the owner of your business, you are able to set it up so that you are selling from a place of integrity. You want to be proud
of what you offer. You want to respect your own needs and boundaries first, and then you need to use those two things to be able to offer your clients a fantastic experience. And if you do that the The Sales part is going to ultimately take care of itself. Well, that's it for this week's episode of This can't be that hard. I'll be back Same
time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode, along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can't be that hard.com/learn If you liked the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review on iTunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.