Ronald Shaw

Ronald Shaw, president and CO of Pilot Pen Corporation of America, the only American in the industry to have gained that distinction in a Japanese company, is the perfect example of how entertainment and selling can complement each other. “The first joy of any salesperson,” explains Shaw, “is to sell himself.” If you can do that, you’ve won at least half the selling battle. As a stand up comic, I had to go out night after night and sell myself to an audience that had come to the club, not to laugh at the jokes I was telling to warm them up, but to hear the star singer whom they had paid money to see. Now that was a selling job and I managed to make the sale every night.”

At the age of eleven, when other boys were scraping their knees playing football in someone’s backyard, Shaw was busy playing piano for a USO show. One night the stage show’s comic, whose job it was to introduce the other acts, never arrived and Shaw was given to dubious honor of doing 10 minutes of stand up comedy as the audience-warming emcee. A few laughs later and his new career as a comic had been born.

No sooner had he set his course on the high road to Hollywood than he threw it all away to marry the girl of his dreams and settle down to a nice steady way of life – selling!

Shaw says of his erstwhile comedy career, “Most of selling, after product knowledge, is personality. I learned how to turn on an audience, and then I used those skills to turn a cold prospect into a hot buyer.” Shaw’s skills have multiplied since his early days at USO shows. He runs a company with sales that should reach $55 million in 1986. Pilot is currently experiencing an expansion made possible in large part by Shaw’s selling savvy. His theory: once the public is hooked on Pilot’s pens, the stores will have to stock them. And that means lots of Pilot salespeople out using their Pilot pens to write up orders by the score.

PSP: Why did you quit show business to take a sales job?

Ronald Shaw: When I was emceeing night club shows, one night I introduced a dance act – it was a husband and wife team and they had a baby in a basket backstage. After my intro they asked me to watch the baby while they were onstage. I thought that was a terrible way to raise children so when my wife told me she was pregnant, I immediately quit. Sales seemed like a logical choice for me to make a living.

PSP: What was your first sales job?

Ronald Shaw: Well, technically every night when I went onstage to warm up an audience that had come to see the headline performer, I was selling myself. That’s the first sales job anyone has. It seemed to me that since I had been selling myself all along, any product I might try to sell would involve putting myself over to the customer first.

PSP: It seemed like a natural step to get a job selling.

Ronald Shaw: That’s right, and the first business I tried was the life insurance business

PSP: How did you do?

Ronald Shaw: I was quite good at it, but I despised it because I didn’t like going into someone’s home and saying “God forbid” in a hundred different ways. That’s what it felt like I was doing.

PSP: Comics don’t like to talk about dying.

Ronald Shaw: Exactly, but for myself, I am very insurance conscious and I think highly of the business.

PSP: What field did you try next?

Ronald Shaw: I hooked up with an advertising company that sold cartoons. But I was traveling the entire state of Florida at my own expense and when my first son was born, I began to look around for something else. I wound up answering a blind newspaper ad for a pen company. Of the sixty-eight applicants for the job, I was selected based on my interview.

PSP: What made your interview so successful?

Ronald Shaw: I told him I was 22 and had been a night club comedian. Then he told me the person he was going to hire had to be between the ages of 24 and 30. So I said, “Well, I’m 24.” He said, “You told me before you were only 22.” I told him I was only kidding before. Now he knew I was lying but he also knew I desperately needed the job. I think he sensed a certain spark – a bit of aggressiveness that told him I would work my heart out to make good. When he called me back for the second interview, I found out that he had also been in show business and that’s why he hadn’t turned off when I told him I’d been a stand-up comic.

PSP: Is that why he hired you?

Ronald Shaw: No, it was because I told him, “If you’re looking for someone who can do the job, I believe I can.” I didn’t have any idea if I could do it, but I was flat broke with a wife and baby to support.

PSP: Then you feel that the rapport you build is more important than the product you have to sell.

Ronald Shaw: Yes. You’ve got to walk in and sell yourself and then the product takes care of itself. That’s why I feel so strongly about appearance. That first impression when you walk through the door is vital. When I was the sales manager, I used to tell my salesmen to go out and get a manicure. They were showing a product that people hold in their hands. The salesperson’s hands were a part of the story. The salesperson’s hands were always in view as a part of the presentation.

PSP: As a former stand up comic, how do you see the difference between humor and comedy?

Ronald Shaw: Comedy is an effort to really make somebody laugh. But to get attention, to get somebody to smile, to create recall, to create retention you use humor. You may remember the story about Piels Beer in New York? They came up with an advertising campaign using the voices of Bob and Ray. It was a cartoon commercial, and the two characters in the commercial were two brothers called the Piels brothers, Harry and Bert. The commercials were undoubtedly the funniest commercials I think that have ever been made to this day. I mean, your stomach would hurt from laughing. The New York newspapers used to list the time of day that the Piels commercials would be on along with TV program listings. There was that much demand. So, at 5:46 on channel 7, there would be a Piels commercial and it would be in the paper. It was unbelievable, unheard of. In a bar everything would stop…and there were so many of these commercials and they kept making more. Each one was funnier than the last. But Piels Beer went bankrupt. Comedy doesn’t necessarily sell the product.

PSP: If comedy is not the way to build rapport with the prospect, how do you recommend using humor?

Ronald Shaw: It has to be a match with that particular person’s own makeup and personality. That’s very difficult because what I could do with my personality others couldn’t do at all with theirs. I could never say to one of my salespeople, “I’ve got a joke for you to use on your next sales call.” You have to feel your way and make it apply to your own personality.

PSP: So, the rule is don’t use humor unless you’re real sure of yourself.

Ronald Shaw: Yes, exactly, and don’t feel that it’s mandatory to do it at all on a sales call. You might kid around with somebody once in a while, but you don’t stand around telling jokes. The average buyer doesn’t want to hear all that. Tell me what you’ve got, what do you want me to buy, how much is it, how much am I going to make on it and get out of here because there are five more guys waiting to see me.

PSP: How do you use showmanship on a sales call?

Ronald Shaw: I like to call it razzle dazzle. That was probably the best way I could describe what I did. I didn’t pad orders, I didn’t cheat anybody, I didn’t lie to anybody, but there were many people who signed an order from me because I had their minds going. That’s what selling is.

PSP: So you see the function of selling as…

Ronald Shaw:…To get people to buy.

We’re going to do approximately say $55 million in sales this year and we pay our salespeople 6.5 percent commission…6.5 percent of $55 million is a whole lot of dollars. Customers will not respond by themselves and come forth with $55 million worth of orders. We need our salespeople to make that happen.

PSP: What was your most memorable sale?

Ronald Shaw: The most memorable probably was the most embarrassing one. It was very early in my career, I had very little training. I was given a sample bag and some samples and some catalog sheets and told to go out and sell and not given the basics of selling. I called on an office supply dealer in Miami and I sold my heart out. The guy agreed to buy and I got out the order form and I started to write the order. He looked at me and he said, “What kind of terms do you people have?” I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Nobody ever taught me what terms were and I did not want to appear to be ignorant or foolish. I said “Oh, we get along well with everyone,” and the guy absolutely fell apart. He said, “You must be very new.” I said, “I am, and I also sense I must have said something wrong,” and he said, ” Well, you see, when I say what kind of terms do you have, what I am really asking you is what kind of dating can you give me?” I didn’t know what that meant either. So, I said, “Oh, we could put today’s date, tomorrow’s date, it really doesn’t make any difference,” I wish it weren’t but it’s a true story.

PSP: You work with a company whose parent company is Japanese. You have to build rapport and be a bridge between the two cultures. What have you learned about building bridges and rapport with others?

Ronald Shaw: I think that’s part of your personality. I think it’s how you present yourself, and how you position yourself. You’ve got to lean on and bring out immediately a feeling of trust. Trust is kind of an international way of speaking and if it’s felt and if it’s thought, then I think it can ease the conversation and the ultimate sales presentation to where it can be a simple thing. We all tend to distrust foreigners. We Americans do and everybody else does. That’s normal. As soon as you feel that you are dealing with a foreigner who can be trusted, you relax and they relax and the sale can move on.

PSP: What specific ways do you have for doing that?

Ronald Shaw: If you come on as a real fast-talking, glib tongued individual, you are not going to succeed. You will if you show a lot of compassion for somebody from another culture. For instance I couldn’t speak English as I am speaking to you right now, I would have to speak in very elementary words. I would have to speak very slowly. Patience, understanding, compassion for the cultural differences – we to them, they to us – that’s the best way I can answer your question. There is no set way or pattern.

PSP: How do you deal with the unexpected in a sales situation?

Ronald Shaw: By observing body language. You have to learn to react to body language almost instantaneously. The brain has to work very, very fast. For instance, one night I was working a night club that didn’t have a stage. You had to work from the floor and the audience was in a horseshoe around me. The bathrooms were over on one side and a big fat woman who was sitting over across from the bathrooms decided in the middle of my act she had to go to the bathroom. Rather than walk around the perimeter of the room she walked right out on the floor, right in front of me, into the spotlight. As she started…I was in the middle of my act and I stopped and didn’t say anything. I did a Jack Benny – you know, I got a big laugh by just staring at her. She proceeded right across in front of me. When the audience stopped laughing, I just looked at the audience and said, “Somebody told me the Titanic sank.” I wasn’t the most admirable thing to do at that woman’s expense, but she really bugged me for having gone out there.

PSP: How do you motivate salespeople?

Ronald Shaw: To motivate them is to provide incentives, a future, and some form of security. They want the security. You motivate them with things that can help bring about all the good things that they would like to have in life. I also think you’ve got to bring it down to a personal level. What is it that they really want in life? Let’s then appeal to that.

PSP: What’s the biggest selling problem that your salespeople have to face?

Ronald Shaw: Committee buying. When you go and call on a large chain, you are not allowed to get to anybody beyond a messenger from this manufacturer to the buying committee. He gets his one day a week to go in front of that committee and bring in this big box full of goodies that he has accumulated and he says, “All right, the Pilot guy came in and brought us this. Do you guys want this?” And that’s his presentation. After our salesman has worked on his presentation and polished it. They don’t allow themselves to hear the presentation from the experts.

PSP: How do you handle that?

Ronald Shaw: It’s one you live with, and you continue to try to make your presentation as exciting as you possibly can to the buyer because he is the one that your future depends on.

PSP: What do you think is the key to success as a top manager?

Ronald Shaw: Surround yourself with the people who have the gutsiness to say to their bosses, “I think that this is a better way,” and not just make it as an opinion, back it up with substantial fact or at least a previous experience that says it will work this way if you do it this way. That’s the kind of people that I want.

PSP: What have you learned as a result of working closely with the Japanese business community?

Ronald Shaw: Patience – which is a virtue I was not born with. With the Japanese, one must learn to be tolerant and to be patient, because the Japanese management style is quite different from the American. It takes three people to make a major decision. Here we make a decision and do it. There it’s all committee, committee, committee. You must learn to slow down and do it a little differently. An all-day meeting over there is something you and I could do in an hour at most. I had to learn not to let that drive me nuts. I had to learn just to slow down a little bit and maybe, from a health standpoint, that can’t be all bad.

PSP: What self-management techniques do you use?

Ronald Shaw: I have developed certain patterns to save time and think about details. Whatever shirt I am going to wear today was put out last night and the shoes would have been polished last night and so forth. I try to get home at a decent hour so that I can use the pool. I am very exercise conscious and I do as much as I can. As far as management here, every day has a different schedule, but everything is scheduled. As far as possible. The strongest management controls I have over myself are that I try never to make any decision – or what I consider a major decision – in the afternoon. I don’t think I am as sharp in the afternoon as I am in the morning. I want to make it in the morning when I feel alive, refreshed and very responsive. Another one I try as best I can is on Wednesday afternoons not to see anybody. That is supposed to be my time to finish up with any mail that I have, any loose ends and that’s probably about the only time I try to close the door and it’s like “don’t bother me.”

PSP: I understand you are very active in a number of charities and with the Anti-Defamation League, Cerebral Palsy, and the Cancer Society.

Ronald Shaw: Yes, I believe that a person who has some belief in something is a little more conscious of doing right, of being honest. I think that’s what really keeps people on the straight and narrow.

PSP: It sounds like you have two major focuses in your life, one certainly is to provide for your family through your professional ability and dedication – to be successful and to run a tight ship and to grow and to prosper and to run an ethical company. Your other is a focus on the greater issues of humanity’s getting along better.

Ronald Shaw: That’s very right. It is also important to know that a kid who comes from nothing can make something of himself in America if he’s honest and applies himself to his craft. It’s right to give something back, and giving something back is to be involved in charitable work to help those who are less fortunate than we are. One of my proudest moments was when I gave Jerry Lewis a check for $200,000 as a result of our efforts to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy.

PSP: What is your measure of success?

Ronald Shaw: To do what you enjoy doing, and to get paid for it. Other than health, what else it there?

PSP: Thank you.