The line that stood out to me the most after watching was “I prefer a weapon you only have to fire once” in reference to the quote “the best weapon is one that you never have to use.” Tony Stark seemed to have his pitch backwards and fell into the trap of selling features instead of benefits. He even went so far as to throw in a crate of wine if you had a big enough purchase. At no point in his pitch did Mr. Stark ask a question, rather, he talked one hundred percent of the time about his product. He failed to discover the pain in his client’s situation, perhaps they didn’t even need his product. Mr. Stark is really only successful at sales because he is a fictional movie character. His approach gets a lot wrong and I don’t think that he really would succeed in sales in the real world.
BoweryJE22
This is one of those Hollywood characterizations that doesn’t take into account actual sales principles. While it doesn’t necessarily illustrate a great sales method, it does make for a great characterization of Tony and the entire Stark company. Thanks for this post! Fun one to watch and read!
I think that all corporate CEO’s excellent sellers regardless of their product or position.
Tony has a lot of charisma but since he is so self centered and does not pay attention to the pains of his clients I don’t think he would be nearly as successful in the real world. I suppose the closest Tony Stark that we get is Elon Musk, who does pay attention to the needs and pains of others and tries to solve them.
Haha! Although did he close? Hey, I would have purchased if I had $500M. I think Mr. Stark did do a good job of prospecting though, he had an appointment with what seemed to be interested, reasonable buyers. He also had a great delivery which does mean something too. Even if his whole mentality was pretty much “all you need is explosives, alcohol and me” he was probably successful. Awesome clip though!