SELLING CAME NATURALLY TO THIS LIVING LEGEND - A BONUS ISSUE

I'm so excited about this new column I had to release it in advance of my next regularly scheduled column. This may be my best column ever! Read it and let me know if you agree!

Sellenthal Column #5 –SELLING CAME NATURALLY TO THIS LIVING LEGEND

If, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect, entrepreneur Harriet Roughan did not need much of it in order to establish herself as an outstanding salesperson.

What she needed was an opportunity to prove it and it came in 1977 when she opened an antique and consignment shop on East Putnam Avenue (we locals call it the Post Road) in Riverside, CT, part of the Town of Greenwich. It was established as Estate Treasures of Greenwich and today, 48 years later, the name's the same but a lot has changed. The store was relocated to a new location eight years ago on the same road in nearby Old Greenwich; and the store has become a landmark and its proprietor something of a local legend. Deservedly so in the opinion of many.

Having interacted with her and her family for more than a half-century and as someone who's purported to know a few things about the art of selling, none of her success surprises me. Simply put, she's got all the right stuff, including the belief that the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Her son, Howard, is a friend of mine, as well as a wildly successful author and now a moviemaker, too, and I asked him what makes his mother such a great seller. His response: "Harriet's got three rules of selling. The first is to know when to talk. More importantly, know when to listen. Secondly, when you do talk, know what the hell you are talking about. And, thirdly, know the difference between making a sale and making a customer. A sale comes and goes, but a customer can remain one for a long time."

Harriet laughed when I reported what Howard had said. "Sometimes," she observed, "I think he knows me better than I know myself, but he's right; in fact, one of the biggest and best sales I've ever made was to the parents of a daughter that lived in Greenwich. Thereafter, the entire family became big buyers. They especially loved the twice-a-year tent sales I developed and came from out of town to buy a great many things for their many homes."

Harriet's oldest child, Shari, a successful seller and business manager in her own right, has actually worked at the store intermittently and has seen her mother operate in an up-close-and-personal manner. Her observations, much like her brother's, are insightful.

"Many things make her good," Shari said, "but what makes her stand out the most is that my mother knows so much about the products she is selling that she's able to ask penetrating questions that enable customers to accurately identify what they are truly looking for. They leave the store as happy customers and, as Howard suggests, happy customers are likely to return. Again and again."

I asked Harriet to tell me more about her creativity and she happily brought up her initiative to rent her merchandise to real estate brokers so they could stage the homes they were trying to sell.

And there's more, she said. "We even extended our sales outreach to set decorators for television and movie sets."

For many years, along with her biggest fan, husband John, Harriet made regular trips to England in search of specialty goods and custom furniture she could ship to the U.S. and sell at Estate Treasures.

The onset of Covid brought that undertaking to a screeching halt, even forcing Harriet to shut down the store for a brief period. But what initially seemed like a stomach blow to the store's future suddenly became a sales opportunity when Harriet turned on the TV and watched people setting up home offices as Covid flared and their regular offices closed.

"We had a warehouse filled with desks and bookcases and I realized we could sell them online," she said. "And we did. All of them."

Not long after, people began exiting the city and buying homes in Westchester and Connecticut, and Estate Treasures opened its doors to them and continues to welcome their repeat business.

Like they say, problems can be opportunities.

Harriet prides herself on her relationship-building capabilities. "I'm sincerely interested in people, conversing with them and getting to know them. By retaining information about them, I've developed many good friends, not just good customers."

One of her oldest and dearest friends, a successful entrepreneur in the jewelry business named Fran Lukas, is wowed by Harriet's ability to read a room and the people in it. "Instinctively, she knows how to respond appropriately - quietly or enthusiastically," Fran said.

Harriet makes it plain to anyone even remotely interested that she lost her best friend when her husband passed away in his sleep five years ago at age 95. "He was so sweet, so supportive, so proud of me. Whatever I may have accomplished, I couldn't have done it without him at my side."

Privately, pridefully and lovingly, John, a truly funny man, referred to his wife as "my little money machine."

Harriet pauses, collects herself and expresses deep pride in the small team of people that supports her and then closes with these words, "We serve all of our customers with loyalty and, most of all, with honesty."

As a final question I ask her to tell me the nicest compliment she's ever received.

Her response: "You look the same as you did 48 years ago when you started your business."

I thought I could top that with this compliment: If there's a better way to serve your customers and make more money doing so, it's likely Harriet Roughan will find it.