6 Ways to Sell Like the Pros

Joy Mangano, founder of the company Ingenious Designs and inventor of the Miracle Mop and Huggable Hangers, reveals product features gradually, performing a home-ec version of the dance of the seven veils. Her hangers are unbreakable! They are ultrathin, so they take up less closet space! They keep a lock grip, so clothes don't fall off! As these lessons unfold, viewers have time to absorb one before being presented with the next -- the argument is like a wave, growing inexorably in power. "She makes a clear link between the feature and the benefit, and she piles them up," says Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School marketing professor. "So if you are not convinced by the first benefit, then you are convinced by the second or by the third. At some point you think, Wow, this is really an unbeatable combination of things, and you go for the phone."

Wolfgang Puck is a celebrity chef. Jennifer Flavin-Stallone, co-founder of Serious Skin Care, is a former model, current wife of Rocky. But in selling mode, they feel as if they could be your friends or maybe even… you. Puck never tries to dazzle: He tells stories about his children and keeps the chefly flouncing to a minimum. Flavin-Stallone, who could give a hypnotist lessons in eye contact, blunts the glam with a dress-down sweater and exudes an all-girlfriends-together coziness. Her set looks like a makeup counter in the least-intimidating boutique on earth, and she mixes flesh-tone advice with confessions of her own struggles with acne. "She's like the popular senior in high school when you were a freshman," says Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School marketing professor. "These people are aspirational, but they don't seem too far beyond customers' reach. The product becomes a bridge to bring the customer toward them."

With her dramatic before-and-after visuals, Mangano is convincing that packed closets, clothes-strewn floors, and peaky sweater shoulders are major quality-of-life issues. "She seems to have spent weeks watching people hang things in their closets," Elberse says. "You feel she understands everything that can go wrong." As Mangano demonstrates the transformation from unseemly jumble to rainbow-hued regimentation, the promise becomes a metaphor for something grander. "The real problem she is addressing isn't hanging clothes," Elberse says. "It's getting rid of the mess in your life. The solution to all that is bothering you."

Selling vitamins and dietary supplements is a tricky business. The government regulates health claims, and scary stories about ephedrine and Chinese imports have rendered the public twitchy. Against that backdrop, Andrew Lessman's company, ProCaps, claims to be the purity provider, ensuring safety by manufacturing all its own products. The segment we watched was filmed in the ProCaps plant, which could double for the spaceship in the movie 2001. The effect was reassuring: Viewers saw a real company, complete with solar-paneled roof that demonstrates concern for planetary as well as customer well-being. "The unique selling point is that this is safe," says Elberse. "We have this fully under control: There is nothing you don't want in there. He is taking away the negative."

Puck, of course, has the advantage of legitimate celebrity. And by recounting stories of being accosted by fans in the airport, he doesn't let you forget it. Nor does he let you forget how he attained that celebrity. Puck is all about the food, preparing Gourmet-gorgeous dishes with consummate ease while maintaining a low-key shill for his cookware sets. He is also an educator -- generous with cooking tips and recipes -- and a bit of a poet (long strings of caramelized sugar are "angel hair"). That combination of reputation and demonstration carries huge credibility.

Mangano can barely keep still. Her face is expressive, her hands are expressive, her hair is expressive. She talks over her co-host; she seems almost to talk over herself. The cognitive dissonance between her mundane products and the evangelical fervor with which she describes them dissipates as you watch. Passion is passion. Mangano's is contagious. "The founders of companies often are terrible at selling, because they believe their product is better at a gut level," says Norton. "They don't understand they need to communicate that, to get the customer to see what they see. This woman understands."