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Thread: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

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    Veteran Member Pumpkin Pie's Avatar
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    What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    I've just been brought onboard as a computer consulting firm's marketing director. The owner wants to take his company to the next level and thus the reason for hiring me. Yes, yes, I know he's a fool to hire me, but anyway...

    Part of the ramping up the company is fielding a massive sales force around the world. I just brought onboard a new Sales Director and already have sales reps joining. However, when thinking who also to recruit for sales reps, I've wondered about exotic dancers.

    Being a regular here and a moderator on Exotic Dancer Forums (http://exoticdancerforums.com ), I know many dancers and know a lot of them are already thinking of what to do for their second career. Dancing being a young-n-healthy occupation like sports thus not something one can normally do until you can collect Social Security. I also know some that would simply like to make some extra money, having something challenging to do during the daytime (other than watching soaps), and/or starting a job that has the potential to make them more than they make from dancing and thus a way to transition from one job to the next.

    But what I'm wondering and the reason for this post is just how good would dancers really make as sales reps for a web tech firm. Why I'm asking this is because anyone that has been on these forums for any length of time soon realizes that many dancers are quite tech savvy and their dancing job requires them to be good salespeople (i.e., to be able to constantly sell strangers lap dances). Both would be needed for the job. Tech savvy needed as they would need to know how the net and search engines work ... or know they can easily learn and understand that information. And needless to say, the need for sales ability for a sales job is obvious.

    Now I don't want this to be a discussion about "We can do anything we like!!!" or such. I'm not talking about dancers themselves as individuals but the exotic dancing profession and what it trains dancers to be as far as sales professionals. For, in the case of my firm, what they would be selling isn't $20-$100 lap dances but big-ticket web support services to marketing firms and ad agencies. The first wave of salespeople hired working on straight commission on the monthly fees charged clients. It would also be a territory job. They're given a set sales territory and their job being to not only rope in clients but keep them as clients. Eventually, they'll have brought in so many clients that client maintenance is all they do.

    I've talked about this with the owner and new Sales Director and they're both cool guys that are cool with this possibility. Or rather, they're both cool with it if I'm cool with it. So this isn't merely a theoretical question. So...

    I guess what the question boils down to is: What sort of sales training does exotic dancing give and what other sales jobs would they succeed at with such training? And, more specifically, would one of those other sales jobs be what my firm needs?

    I'd especially like to hear from dancers who have done other sales jobs and their thoughts of how those compared with what sales acumen is required of them to make big bucks as a dancer.
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  2. #2
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    A little off topic, but PP's post reminded me of the following experience from a few years back:

    I went to a SC with a fellow journalist. At the time, we were both covering the technology sector. A dancer asked us if we worked together, and we nodded. She asked what we did, we said we were reporters. She asked which magazine or newspaper, and while we declined to surrender this detail, we told her we both covered computers.

    On hearing this, she dropped her cooing, sexy personae and told us her other job was as a corporate telesales manager at a large, well-known computer reseller company in Chicago. What followed was a 30 minute discussion among the three of us about Intel's forthcoming, at the time, Pentium 4 microprocessor and how it'd play in the corporate market. And, no, neither of us bought a dance from this fellow geek (she didn't offer, as I recollect). In all, it was a funny, surreal experience.

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    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Well, I'm not a dancer and I have tried this route.

    On first sight, it would appear awesome as they certainly know "how to ask for the money." They certainly are familiar with dealing "cold calling." They certainly are able with building up rapport with a customer. They certainly know how to keep an attractive appearance.

    Get ready for about a 70% disappointment rate. If you hire ten dancers then seven of them are going to disappoint.

    Of that 70% you are going to find they have no self-discipline. Calls won't be made. Sales collateral won't be sent out. Sales tracking won't be performed. If you have a long sales process for your product/service, they won't stand for waiting so long to get paid - even if it is big dollars.

    They have no respect for men in general and working for "a man" or dealing with a customer "they can't just walk away from" does you no good. They will walk away from customers that are good for the company, but they are not willing to suck up the bullshit like everyone else in "normal day jobs" do.

    They like being "outside the system." That means authority problems even if it means YOUR ass is on the line for what they say. It means "fuck you" in the middle of a juicy deal - simply because they want to excercise their power instead of a partnership of win-win.

    It also means they like to "sweeten" the deal with thier "inside connections" worse than a used car dealer talking to his "management." The only problem is you won't know about it until invoice time!

    (You DEFINATELY want an agreement where the sales person won't get their commission money until the customer pays the invoice. Then pay in five or ten days after YOU get your money.)

    They will play games with the male salespeople or technical or executive to move up the ladder or to get some favors. I'm not talking about "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" kind of games either. Flirting, teasing, and other distracting shit like that.

    The remaining three - awesome.

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    Veteran Member Pumpkin Pie's Avatar
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Deogol
    Get ready for about a 70% disappointment rate. If you hire ten dancers then seven of them are going to disappoint.
    Then they're better than I thought. It has been my experience that only one out of ten salespeople is any good. The worst are not the bad salespeople but the so-so ones. Bad ones you can tell off the bat and get quickly get rid of.

    (You DEFINATELY want an agreement where the sales person won't get their commission money until the customer pays the invoice. Then pay in five or ten days after YOU get your money.)
    Pretty much that is how it will be. The sales force will be paid a commission on the monthly fees charged clients and after the client pays them. The sales force isn't just to bring in clients but maintain the clients they've brought in.

    They will play games with the male salespeople or technical or executive to move up the ladder or to get some favors. I'm not talking about "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" kind of games either. Flirting, teasing, and other distracting shit like that.
    That's real common whenever you hire female sales workers. Rarely are they not attractive. If they weren't, they wouldn't go into sales. Being attractive, they just use that to their advantage whenever they can. Not just with clients but within the company as well.

    The remaining three - awesome.
    The question is how to figure out who these three are out of the ten that apply ... without field testing them. I'm all open for suggestions.
    Last edited by Pumpkin Pie; 05-17-2005 at 01:10 PM.
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    Banned Katrine's Avatar
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    The 80/20 rule applies to salespeople as much as customers. Dancer or not, only 2-3 sales people are going to pull in the fat of the profits.

    Personally, I would not set out to hire dancers in the club as sales persons. BUT, I would not discount hiring a woman just because she has been a dancer. Any smart salesperson wouldn't fess up to their past in stripping anyway.

    Deogol has stated it perfectly!

    Remember, strippers and attractive, assertive civilian women aren't all that different. Hell, we aren't even all that different from average civilian women. We are taught to use our sex appeal to get what we want, and its often a challenge to un-learn that MO in order to be respected as an equal..

    The gender war is far from over kids.......I went to training for my new job in sales and finance yesterday and one of my new colleagues is already asking me out on a date and tried to kiss me...godfuckingdammit!

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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Without any first hand knowledge, I'd say that selling impulse products to middle aged men to make them feel more sexually attractive would be a great position. For example, selling sports cars, Hummers, Harley's, Rolex watches, and handguns. The guys that buy these "compensation" props and mid-life crisis toys could be sold by a dancer in a heart beat. If I was a Hummer dealer, I'd be recruiting strippers to sell them.

    As for the rest of the sales world, I'd say at a minimum they all share a willingness to put their ego on the line for a potential sale, which is not something that is all that easy. I'd lean more towards higher end luxury and impulse type products and less towards soft sell products that customers may be suspicious of a too attractive sales person. I'm curious what dancerwealth has to say. In the film Glengarry Glenross, Al Pacino uses a subtle gay stripper shit sales approach. Very subtle.

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    Veteran Member Yea's Avatar
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pumpkin Pie
    The question is how to figure out who these three are out of the ten that apply ... without field testing them. I'm all open for suggestions.
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Actually, this is interesting for me as I've personally been wondering if I can indeed take the sales training I have received via my business as a dancer/stripper into other sales related fields.

    Since what DW teaches is tailored to dancers whilst also just being plain good sales techniques and such... I'm thinking I can... and thanks to latest developments in my life... I've been seriously considering maybe all I require is another commission based sales 'job'.

    Of course, I would require a commission based sales 'job' that paid daily or weekly.


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    Veteran Member Pumpkin Pie's Avatar
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Quote Originally Posted by GoldCoastGirl
    Actually, this is interesting for me as I've personally been wondering if I can indeed take the sales training I have received via my business as a dancer/stripper into other sales related fields.
    Yes, that's basically the question of this thread. How universal is the sales training that dancers acquire? And, more specifically and saying the dancer is comfortable with techical issues, would it be applicable to selling technical services?

    Since what DW teaches is tailored to dancers whilst also just being plain good sales techniques and such... I'm thinking I can... and thanks to latest developments in my life... I've been seriously considering maybe all I require is another commission based sales 'job'.
    Without getting too personal, what are those latest developments in your life? Are they common ones experienced by dancers? The impetus for switching to the next career?

    Of course, I would require a commission based sales 'job' that paid daily or weekly.
    Some sales jobs are structured to generate instantaneous sales commissions. Dancing at clubs being one such sales job. The immediate reward is a good motivator.

    How sales would be done by my firm, it would be a combination of instant and monthly. Instant in getting the client to sign up and pay to start up the process for them. Monthly in that each month as the client pays, the salesperson that brought them in and keeps them in gets paid a commission on these fees. What this means is that once brought in, the salesperson is to keep them in thus why they continue to make commission after the initial sales.

    So another question is how important is instantaneous sales commissions to dancers? Commissions are the reward system. The carrot for doing the work.
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    God/dess PaigeDWinter's Avatar
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    I agree that a lot of dancers are good at selling what they sell. A lot. Not all. And the other operative words here are What They Sell. To take your average dancer and try to make a sales woman out of her for a corporation? You'd need to rearrange HOW she sells things. Unless said dancer totally talks everything up already and doesnt rely on sexuality to sell herself, you're going to have to get her to adjust how she pitches things. And then you have to train her on the specifics of what she is selling. A dancer knows her own body her whole life, and learning the rules and amounts per dance at a club isnt too hard. So now you have to take her OMG AWESOME SKILLZ and make them work for an entirely different product, one that she isnt wearing and that she isnt a part of physically.

    There are plenty of smart women out there in this industry. Women who ARE able to do that sort of job as well. You have to find them and then judge how much training they'd need.

    And we all know that there are plenty of ladies who DO have other jobs beyond dancing, as well as other skills. I wouldnt loose hope on this idea.
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    Default Re: What kind of sales professionals are dancers?

    Quote Originally Posted by PaigeDWinter
    I agree that a lot of dancers are good at selling what they sell. A lot. Not all.
    Actually, the statistics show this to be not the case. Quite the opposite in fact, that well over the majority of dancers are quite bad at what they sell. It's an unfortunate reality, and yet it's quite true. Katrine is dead-on right here. Exotic dancers fall into the Pareto Principle to the tee just the same way sales people in any other industry do. It was this fact is actually what really made me aware of the fact that this industry was truly about sales and eventually led to starting our organization over two years ago.

    Now, that being said, to follow-up with what Socaltastic asked. I find that desparate salespeople are the ones who wind up putting their ego on the line more than others to make a sale. For those of us who are good at selling, we put confidence on the line...a big difference. There is an old saying...that there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence. I'm a big believer in that. Putting ego on the line ties into arrogance. The better aproach in sales is to come across to your customer as an educator and source of fun or pleasure in the product your customer is looking for, not just a person working for a commission off of the sale. This isn't to say that I hide the fact that I'm selling a product.

    When I teach people in car sales, I tell them to carry the finance forms with them while showing the car. Make no bones about it, they are there to sell that car to the customer and shouldn't hide that fact. And yet they shouldn't come across and just being a "salesperson" only. That was the beauty behind that scene from Glengarry Glen Ross. Al Pacino wasn't hiding the fact that he was there to sell the property, he was just very seductive in the education and emotional triggers to make the deal happen. What a brilliant film!

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