Do you have ice sales people?

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We all strive to have good sales skills. But could we sell ice up north?

Ice to the Eskimos

By Tron Jordheim

You’ve heard it said about a sales person. “He can sell ice to Eskimos”. Usually we take this to mean the sales person was so good at persuasion and so hypnotically dazzling that he could sell people something they don’t need. There is the suggestion that the sales person cheated the Eskimos because they have plenty of free ice in a good winter. We usually mean this quote as an insult and a compliment at the same time.

I’d like to take a different look at this saying. If you were trying to build a business selling a product or service, wouldn’t you want customers that knew the value of what they were buying? Wouldn’t you seek out the people who knew the most about your business and try to find a way to satisfy their requirements? Wouldn’t those people become your biggest users and biggest fans if you served them well?

One would think that Eskimos know a lot about ice. I would bet their languages have many ways of describing ice. Some live in ice houses part of the year, hunt on ice during hunting season, kayak around ice flows and put ice cubes in their Coca Cola. If you knew about the different uses they had for ice and how ice needs to be for each of their uses, you could build a very nice business selling ice to Eskimos. If you could get the right consistency and coldness of pre-cut blocks, shaped especially for walls, ceilings and tunnels, you could sell pre-cut igloos to Eskimo families who are too busy to select and cut their own ice blocks. Eskimos have busy, demanding modern lives that don’t always leave them enough time to savor the traditional enjoyments. Buying prefab igloo ice would allow them more time to enjoy the great outdoors.

If you knew the kind of ice that was required to keep seals preserved for processing after a hunt, you might be able to sell “Hunter Ice” as well. With the changes global warming is bringing to the arctic, the right kind of ice may not be available to hunters at the times they need it. I can only imagine the disappointment in taking a big seal for your family only to have it spoil before you can get it home and processed.

There are probably kayak races that are held each year in areas that used to have consistent ice flows. I can imagine that some kayakers would be very disappointed to run a race with no ice flow obstacles. If a company could overcome the transportation issues, it could probably sell a lot of ice to the big races with big purses to attract the best competitors and the best sponsors. A “Kayak Ice” line might not sell to many events, but those transactions would generate a lot of revenue for the ice company and the race organizers.

Certainly your ice company would want the exclusive in the concession booths that offered cold soft drinks to the audience. Knowing that the same company that can provide the best quality “Igloo Ice”, “Hunter Ice” and “Kayak Ice” is putting its best “Drinking Ice” in the soft drink machines would allow the concession stands to charge a little more per cup and they’d probably sell more drinks.

What about selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Have any of you seen the Larsen “Far Side” cartoon of the sales man floating away on his boat, waving good-bye to the Eskimos who are standing beside their new refrigerators? What do you think when you see the cartoon? Do you think, “Wow that guy must be some kind of B.S. artist.”? Do you think, “Those Eskimos are suckers.”? Maybe there is a lot more going on there. If you look at the expressions on the characters faces, you see that they are going to miss each other.

Just because it is cold in the arctic, doesn’t mean the temperature is always right for all the things you want to chill. Have you ever seen what happens to a nice head of lettuce if it is kept too cold? Or what happens to apples if your humidity levels are off? What about the seal meat from the hunt? Keep your game refrigerated at the wrong temperature and your family might go hungry. Many newer refrigerators have cool amenities like crushed or cubed ice from the door and filtered drinking water from the door. If the company that provided the best ice for outdoor use, also sold its own brand of refrigerators with crushed and cubed ice available with a touch of your finger, it could develop brand loyalty that would create years of profitable growth and many happy customers.

If your business was ice or refrigerators, would the Eskimos do business with you? Do you know enough about what your customers need and like? When someone who knows a little something about storage looks at your place, do they say, “Yes, this is good.”? Try thinking of yourself as the ice sales person who has just been awarded all the lands north of the Artic Circle as your new sales territory. Do you think you could develop a good business?

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