Small Business 101 — Rule 3: Learn to Sell a Bra

One of the unstated goals of Pari’s was to run a business that makes women feel good about themselves. We used to sell Indian womenswear covering regular, daily wear, maternity clothing and then a reasonably intelligent business decision later, lingerie. This meant that our staff had to be trained on how to speak to all the different kinds of women who walked in. Our staff were women coming from lower income backgrounds. Most often they didn’t speak English very well and had almost always never worked in Sales. My Mom preferred this because, “it is easier to fill water in an empty pot than in a full one”. Some of the women my Mom trained went on to become managers for major brands in Bangalore city.

But the big task at hand for a sales store with such a variety of products was teaching someone who has never been pregnant to sell to a heavily pregnant woman, on her third baby. How do you teach a man to sell a bra to a woman when he’s never worn one himself? Enter Aditya (Adi) Rao.

Adi is my older brother by 6 years and easily the nicest human being I know. He is also an excellent salesman. He could sell a banana to a monkey and that critter would come back after a good night’s sleep for more. Charming, funny and easy-going, Aditya was an instant hit with the ladies who used to come in to the store. I guess it helped that our running joke at home was that while Dad and I were the books, Mom and Adi were the looks.

The intelligent business decision of introducing lingerie allowed us to tie up with some of the biggest brands entering India at the time. We ended up selling some really sexy numbers at our flagship store on Church Street. The biggest one (I won’t name them) at the time had launched the concept of “fit consultancy” across their Bangalore outlets. Mom and Dad managed to get our store to be their first one in Bangalore with this concept. Pro-tip: Contacts and network really are everything.

What made the idea so special in Bangalore was that it was an emerging cosmopolitan city at the time, with expats coming in from everywhere — the Silicon Valley of India. Now I’m probably making a huge generalisation here when I say this but, based on what I heard and saw growing up, a lot of women in Bangalore (and India) do not know how to buy good fitting bras. The cup size is too big or too small; the bra-strap never adjusted, the under-bust fitting wrong. “Fit consultancy” in Bangalore was a great idea, and Mom was the first business-owner to be trained in the same.

The funny thing was that the person who trained Mom on how to wear a bra was a man. Satish (name changed) was a sprightly young fellow who had joined the lingerie company’s team just as they were getting in to the industry and had learnt everything he possibly could about lingerie. He delivered his trainings with surgical precision. This bra strap goes around like this, this 5-way bra has a silicone lining, etc. After he trained Mom he suggested that she train more women and so she did. Our staff knew how to sell the lingerie like they had hand-crafted the bras themselves. Aditya and Dad were left out of the knowledge pool because “how can men sell bras?” (Fun fact: The small Mom-and-Pop stores in every tiny alley-way in India have men selling bras to women).

Mom went back to managing our other stores, leaving Adi alone at the store on the prime shopping street with our sales staff and me. And when one of the days our staff was sick, it was just Adi and me.

A tall, dark-haired woman with the eyes of a gypsy walked in on this fated day. I was still too naïve to speak with customers without giggling about bras and so Adi had no option but to attend to her. He edged to the front of the store and in his classic drawl said, “Can I help you, Ma’am?”

The woman without looking at him but looking very intently at a particularly lacy number said, “can you give this to me in 36 D?”

“Yes Ma’am, here you go.”, he said, quickly producing a piece.

She went inside the trial room and called out saying, “My dear, this does not fit.” To which Adi quickly replied, “Ma’am, that should be the right size, I might suggest adjusting the strap”. A few silent moments later the lady replied, “Oh. Yes.”

A further few silent moments later she spoke again, “Do you have some regular bras as well in this size, can you pass me some?” Adi quickly gathered some styles and gave them to her to try over the door. She emerged a good 15 minutes later and said, “you know, all these years I’ve been thinking I was just a strange bra size but now I’ve realised that it’s because I’ve stupidly never adjusted the bra strap. How funny that such a small thing could change so much. How did you know?”

My brother simply laughed and said, “I’m glad I could help, Ma’am. ‘XYZ company’ has started this concept of ‘fit-consultancy’ and I’m a trained fit-consultant.”

I was watching all this intently from my seat near the billing counter and it was odd to see that Aditya didn’t hesitate even once, nor did he look at the bras (or at her) in a (for the lack of a better word) sexual way.

Many hours and many laughs later, this woman left.

I said, “Well, she was hot.”

He replied, “Good sale.”

“How come you sold her the bras? You should have just let her go. You’re a boy. Now she won’t come back if she knows a man is here.”

“Pari, we’ll lose a lot of money if we don’t sell to our customers. Lingerie is an easy sell. She’s a customer, I’m going to do my job. And she didn’t seem to mind that I’m a boy.”

So, to answer the question — how do you teach someone to sell anything to anyone? Teach them how to sell a bra. When a sales staff has this shift in perspective that “a customer is a customer is a customer” and there’s no giggling or ogling taking place, then you know you have a good sales rep. Whether your customer/colleague is a man or a woman or a boa constrictor — it is important to remember that we are in a professional setting and that there is a job to be done. Once this perspective is ingrained in an employee, the rest becomes easy.

The proof in Adi’s method was in that woman becoming a regular with Pari’s. The fun of it was that she would always ask for Adi by name when she came, even if Mom was at the counter.

#entrepreneurship #IWD #howtosell #smallbusiness