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GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS SALES LESSONS: Part 1
The famous lines are not the lessons.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS SALES LESSONS: Part 1
I was talking with my wife and my son about Kevin Spacey and I suddenly realized I needed to watch Glengarry Glen Ross again. My friends and I have been quoting this movie for decades. Greatest sales movie ever made. I will die on that hill.
The famous lines - Always Be Closing, Coffee’s for closers, AIDA, You don’t talk until you know what the shot is - are not the lessons.
The movie actually covered many fundamentals of sales, even to today. We’ve identified six in the first half of the movie. Here they are:
① 🎯 The customer always comes first
② ⏱️ Please listen closely. I only have a moment
③ 💭 Focus on the customer’s problems and bring out the emotion
④ 📈 Create your own leads
⑤ 🤝 Sales is lonely
⑥ ⚠️ Beware shortcuts
I’d love to know if you’ve found others. Below are the details in comments. More to come tomorrow.
① 🎯 The customer always comes first
Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) is the top closer in the office. Downtown sends in Blake (Alec Baldwin) to run the always-be-closing sales conference. The whole speech. AIDA on the board. Coffee’s for closers. Cadillac, steak knives, or you are fired. The room is packed. Everybody is in there getting their heads taken off.
Roma is not in the room.
He is with a customer. They put the most famous sales speech in American film in the middle of this movie, and the best salesman in the building skips it because he has a live human being in front of him.
If you have a contest, if your VP wants to talk, and you have a customer meeting, the customer comes first. Let the VP know. The meeting will still be there at 4. The customer will not.
Roma does not skip it because he is a rebel. He skips it because he knows what pays. Internal theater does not pay. The person who can buy pays. Founders get this backwards. You will cancel the buyer to sit in a stand-up. You will take the all-hands over the call that is actually in motion. Roma would have been fired for that in this office. He still would not have done it.
② ⏱️ Please listen closely. I only have a moment
Shelley “The Machine” Levene (Jack Lemmon) is in a slump. His daughter is in the hospital. He is calling names that cannot buy. And still, when he gets someone on the line, he says please listen closely. I only have a moment.
That is a great opening. It means my time is more valuable than yours. Do I have your attention. They already showed interest. That is AIDA as a sentence a human being can actually say, not letters on a chalkboard.
If you open a call like you have all day, you have already told them their time and yours are cheap. If you open like Levene, they lean in. They already raised their hand. Do not waste the raise.
People think urgency is pressure. It is not. Pressure is you needing the deal. Urgency is you knowing the clock is real. Levene is desperate and he still sounds like a man whose time is worth something. That is why they called him the Machine.
③ 💭 Focus on the customer’s problems and bring out the emotion
The rest of that same night, Roma is sitting with James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce). Hours. He is working him over. Showing him that life is meaningless. That we might as well just have fun while we are here. Peeling off the weight of society, the job, the responsibilities. Getting him to the place where freedom feels possible.
He holds the product back the entire time. He does not mention the land once until he knows the customer is already sold. Only then does he present the real estate. Boom. Lingk buys.
That is the meeting. Most of us run the other one. We name the product in the first ten minutes because we are afraid the hour will expire with nothing to show. We put the land on the table and hope it does the work. It does not. The man across from you is not buying acreage. He is trying to put something down. Focus on him and what is on him first. Get him there emotionally. The product comes last, when he is ready.
④ 📈 Create your own leads
Everybody complains the leads are weak. Moss says it out loud. Levene begs for the good names. The whole office waits for Williamson to hand them something better. The GOOD leads. The GlenGarry leads.
Roma uses some colorful language to describe the leads as well, but he does not wait. Because he understands that he only has control over his own attitude and his own actions. What leads come to him is someone else's decision. He may be able to influence that, but only through actions, not words. (Read: Who Moved my Cheese?)
He does not need the company’s list. He finds his own people. He creates his own opportunities. He sells.
You can sit around saying “give me good leads or I can’t be successful.” Or you can take responsibility for the database and go make something happen. The top closer in the movie is the one who never relies on the pile of names locked in the office.
The leads are weak?
⑤ 🤝 Sales can be lonely
After the sales meeting, Shelley Levene and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) sit and talk. They commiserate. The pressure. The bad leads. The fact that nobody is closing.
Sales is a lonely business, especially when it is not going well. Great salespeople talk to each other. They talk about their approaches. They try to copy the best parts of others’ work. That is how you stay sharp when the board is dead.
⑥ ⚠️ Beware shortcuts
You will be presented with shortcuts on a regular basis in your career. Beware the golden goose. It is usually a mirage. Sacrificing your morals for success will never be worth it.
Shelley Levene tries to buy the list off Williamson. Dave Moss tries to get George Aaronow to steal it. Two shortcuts. Same hunger.
The leads are weak? That line is the tell. The work is hard, so the list must be the problem.
The golden goose is a mirage. They wreck the office for a stack of cards that still have to be called by someone who knows what to say after hello.
You will be offered the same trade. A purchased list. A tool that sprays a thousand notes. A first hire asked to skip the pattern you never wrote down.
Do not take it. The work you already have is the work.
Which deal this week only moves if someone hands you a better list?