My Personal Sales Experience

Last summer, I had the opportunity to sell PPE (personal protective equipment). My dad’s business is mainly a manufacturer to the screen printing industry and due to covid, this industry came to a halt pretty much. It was very slow and he had to lay some guys off part time. One day a guy my dad knew came in and asked if we cut plexiglass for sneezeguards and my dad told him we can have a sample by the end of the day tomorrow. We’ve never cut sneezeguards before but we had the equipment. This led to selling sneezeguards to about 300 Panera Bread locations.

Once we realized the sneezeguards would be a hit, we moved into things like masks, hand sanitizer, hand sanitizer dispensers, wipes and many more products. We focused on schools because we had many connections to them already because of the graphics side of the business.

I called just about every school in Ohio and tried to inform them about our products. I was awful at first and did not know what to say but I got the hang of it by the end of it. I then decided that we needed to send an email blast out to all these schools so with the help of our graphic designer, we got it sent out and it led to many sales. It got people calling us instead of us calling them. We found that we had some of the lowest prices and we also had PPE in stock because many big companies were selling out so fast due to the panic.

The most memorable sales experience I had was giving a pitch at a Trumbull County meeting with every superintendent in the county watching me. It was stressful but led to some good sales and these customers keep coming back. I didn’t have a presentation or anything I just went up and talked and answered many questions. Many of the questions were about price and when they can get it. The product I was selling was pretty much the same as everyone else’s. But, I was selling everything and we had all the products you could need and if we didn’t have it, we would get it. So people liked to buy from us because it was only one vendor to deal with.

My biggest takeaway from this was that when you are selling a product that people need, it tends to be a bit easier. Also, building and maintaining relationships with people is more important than anything.