Joe Ades is not your everyday salesman. In his early days he was best known as the white-haired man with the expensive European suites and shirts and the British accent.
The history behind his salesman career is even more astonishing: he sold textiles, linens, toys and jewelry before moving to Australia in the ’70s. Somehow he managed to get a truck and his career went on as he was selling all sorts of electrical appliances and household items, directly from the back of his truck.
As his coworker, Ms. Laurent, returned to the United States he followed her to America as “one of his marriages, I guess his third marriage, had broken up,” Ms. Laurent recalls the events. In one episode, he discovered little carrot and potato peelers at a state fair. He instantly sensed this would be a fantastic item to sell on the streets, just as he did in his old days with everything else.
So he went back to the streets as a salesman and somehow is really good at getting people’s attention on the markets. Maybe it’s because of his voice, sounding like a radio announcer, or his overall appearance. Either way, he sure knows how to be very present.
Once he gave one of his friends the tip ‘you have to not be afraid to talk to yourself out loud’. Mr. Hughes, who was the recipient of this tip, said “when he started talking out loud, somebody would stop, and once he had one, he’d have a crowd, and once he had a crowd, he’d sell peelers.”
By clever choice of words he referred to the peeler often as being able to “slice practically anything.”
Some days the crowd was so packed, that when Ms. Laurent came to see him in the afternoon, Joe had already left because he sold out every single peeler. Before leaving he would clean up very well in fact, but there were always these “little shreds of carrots that said, ‘I was here.’” Ms Laurent said.
