If you’re asking who the Fuller Brush Man is, you’re younger than a Baby Boomer. Possibly a Gen Xer. If you’re a Millennial, there is a good chance you have never heard of him. In other words, the Brush Man goes back a way, but was iconic back in the day. He went door to door, calling on housewives with his briefcase full of brush samples. He carried many products, and sometimes the visits were lengthy which became a source of many rumors about his “sales techniques” and the premise for a movie. Jokes about Mom looking forward to the visit from the Fuller Brush Man were common.
Kidding aside, what can we learn from this seemingly ancient sales process as CPA’s and business professionals with websites, e-commerce platforms and other modern sales tools?
The Fuller Brush Man provides an example of the basics of a business that should not be overlooked. We tend to overcomplicate things, and when we do that, a business becomes systems, structure, marketing, sales, brand, technology, etc. But at its core, a business is a list and something to sell to the list. That’s it. For the Brush Man the list was a neighborhood and the thing to sell was the brush. When things get overwhelming, it is always comforting to me to come back to this basic principle.
For the time being, lets ignore what we sell to the list. What is our list and what is the value of it? I’ll provide an example to demonstrate. Elon Musk started a new company called The Boring Company. I think the name is a bit of a joke because the business is relatively boring compared to Tesla and SpaceX, but it bores tunnels. For some reason, the company decided to sell flamethrowers or what they referred to as “Not a Flamethrower”. They sold 20,000 units at $500 each bringing in $10m! This is after they sold $1m of hats in one day. They had a powerful list of people (willing to spend $500 on a toy), most likely borrowed from Tesla, and something to sell to the list.
Of course, the Brush Man knew that a powerful list had more to do with quality than quantity. Going door to door in something less than a middle-class neighborhood meant a lot of walking and a lot of knocking. If we have a powerful list of clients, prospects, referral sources, influencers, etc. we have the platform to sell our products and solutions. People might pay us to access our list by doing revenue shares or by co-sponsoring our events (we’ll touch on biz dev on a budget later). Opportunities to monetize the list are limited only by our creativity.
Having the right list is an incredibly valuable asset not to be underestimated or ignored.