Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Early Days of George Torok

In case you wondered about his early years in business....

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away. An onion keeps everybody away."

George Torok claims that he never wanted to be in sales.
Yet when he was nine years old - he and his younger brother, Stephen, set up their first lemonade stand at the front door of the office building down the street at 3:00 pm. It was a hot summer day. They ran out of lemonade.

A couple of years later George piled all of his precious comic books into his wagon, recruited his younger brother again and together they walked about the block to sell and trade the comic books with the neighbourhood kids.

When George sold apples for Boy Scouts - he devised a sales pitch, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away. An onion keeps everybody away. I'm selling apples today. Please support Scouting." Even then, George knew that when you make people laugh - they are more likely to like you and buy. That little ditty, his smile and energy helped him to outsell everyone in the district.

While he was in Junior Achievement, he sold candles and key cases door-to-door. That took guts and a lot of forced smiles.

As a student at Delta high school, George knocked on a lot of doors selling pens, peanuts and sponsorships to raise money for the high school band. The band had ambitious travel plans and they did a lot of fund-raising. George played trombone in the band. He was happy to travel by bus and train around the country.

George Torok
Power Marketing

No comments: