Mad Men TV Show - 1959 Selling Style

Several years ago I met the Founder and CEO of a large, national department store chain. When he learned I was in the sales training business, he said, “What do you know about selling? Do you know how it has changed?” I talked about it being more customer need-focused, more competitive, the availability of information … and asked him for his view.

“I can sum it up like this,” he said. “In the old days, if a customer wanted to return something, you took him by the collar and threw him out. Today, if the customer wore it for three weeks, you thank him for bringing it in and apologize. That’s how it’s changed!”

Watching Mad Men, the AMC TV series on Thursday nights, about a Madison Avenue advertising firm (which has gotten overwhelming critical acclaim for its attention to detail and authenticity of dress, attitudes, prejudices, social structure, etc.), I have been taken aback by the style of selling depicted by the show’s hero, Don Draper.

Because everything else is so authentic, it reminded me of the phrase the Founder/CEO used — “throw them out.”

While Don Draper doesn’t “throw” his clients out, he does the next closest thing by threatening to walk out on them. On the September 13th episode, (early in the call and sales cycle) when a million-dollar client rejected Don Draper’s idea for an ad campaign for a lipstick, without any provocation from the client whatsoever, Don Draper stood up and in a critical and rude tone announced the meeting was over — only after bluntly telling the client, in the presence of the client’s executive team, why the cosmetic company was number four. When the client responded by asking Don to sit down, before agreeing to do so, Don extracted an agreement from him that Don’s time would not be wasted.

Don’s behavior in that episode resulted in him getting an unexpected bonus for $2,500 from his boss, a considerable sum for 1959.

Frankly, in my 30 years in sales, I never saw such arrogance in selling. Granted, in 1959 there were far fewer competitors in all fields and much less knowledge sharing, but factors like this could hardly account for such behavior. Since everything else is so authentic and 1959 was before my selling time, I had to question if the writers just fabricated this kind of selling.

I’ve never witnessed a salesperson acting in such a manner. Have you?And how would your customers respond today if a salesperson pulled a stunt like this?

What movies or TV shows depicting sales and salespeople’s approach and philosophy should we watch out for? One I particularly like is Edward G. Robinson’s depiction of a salesperson in Double Indemnity.


Looking forward to your response.

Linda Richardson