What a Sales Person Can Learn from Charlie Sheen

Written by Ben Shute

The last week has been an interesting one if you’re a celebrity watcher. I’m talking of course about Charlie Sheen.

Regardless of your opinion on him and his very public fall from grace, it’s interesting as a sales person to see what kind of lessons you can take from it.

Let’s start with the product. Charlie Sheen is trying to sell himself, and it seems to be selling the producers of his hit show on hiring him back. Whether this is the right way to go about convincing them (especially in light of asking for a 50% pay rise), remains to be seen.

His strategy here is to try and rally popular support in order to do so – in joining Twitter just 2 days ago, he has amassed over a million followers. But he is also hitting the media trail, which you can liken to cold calling. And he’s been effective – in the space of 3 days, he has managed interviews with ABC, NBC, and CNN to go in and tell his story – which is perhaps the biggest lesson.

A couple of days ago, we shared a story on our Facebook page about being in love with your sales story, by Mike Weinberg. Sheen clearly loves his, because he tells it with such conviction. Sure, his story is low on benefit and high on crazy, but he sells it. He has belief in the facts of his story and a passion for his medium (himself), and he hammers it home.

So is it effective? Maybe not, but everyone in the world now knows the story. Do your clients know yours?

PHOTO – HOY! SUSHI

This post by Ben Shute

Ben has spent more than a decade in the media industry, across a number of mediums. He has worked for News Limited as an advertising sales manager across two of Australia’s biggest newspapers, and more recently as a sales strategist Yahoo!7.

Sphere: Related Content