Yoon Seok-keum and#8212; sales king

By Oh Young-jin

When I exchanged business cards with Woongjin Group Chairman Yoon Seok-keum as part of a routine before an interview, I thought that he had mistakenly given me two.

As he introduced himself to the other members of our team, I glanced at Yoon’s name card in my palm and found it was folded.

The front cover as usual bore his name and position in Korean and the back had them in English, while Page 2 listed his 6-point “love” pledges for customers, community, company, change, challenge and work, and the third contained the names of 15 subsidiaries.

Woongjin is one of top 30 conglomerates that has its roots in publishing, has been thriving on water purifier rentals and now encompasses construction, energy and country clubs, among its other businesses.

It is not the size of its business but the person at the top, Yoon, that captures salaried men’s imagination.

Nearly 40 years ago, Yoon had his humble beginnings as a salesman for Encyclopedia Britannica, not dreaming that he would end up the owner of a big conglomerate with a wide ranging portfolio.

It didn’t take long to know that he has not changed his core competency as a super salesman.

“It’s important to have the right tone of voice,” he said as he started explaining what a good pitch was all about. “You need to convey confidence through your voice to prospective customers.”

The voice, however, should not sound uncultivated but be strong enough to hint at a sense of authority, he explained.

His advice was based on his experience. In his first year as a salesman, he sold a record number of encyclopedias ― about 300 sets ― and was awarded by the headquarters in the United States.

“I didn’t sell any of them to my family, relatives or friends,” he remembered.

There were a couple of cases that he still fondly remembers.

Once he went on a sales run around provincial areas. As usual, he checked with the yellow pages and found numbers for influential people because few ordinary people could afford to buy the encyclopedia. He picked a county head as his target buyer. He called his office and was told that the county chief was playing tennis and was not available. He left a message that he was from Seoul and had a very important business to consult him. Yoon made sure on two things _ the request was authoritatively given to the county head’s aide and the place of their meeting was to be a café rather than the county office.

Feeling anticipation and anxiety in equal parts, he went and waited: then came the county chief. Yoon instantly knew that he had a sale but tried not to show his excitement. So he had the prospective buyer, the county chief, sit in a seat facing the wall at a corner table, ensuring that he was not distracted.

Then, he began his sales pitch. In a way, the county chief realized that he was “swayed” by a book salesman but was too proud to show it. He bought one set and connected Yoon with other buyers.

As his sales record went up, his tactics evolved, becoming more elaborate and more specific to different characteristics of buyers. For instance, selling to an Army general a person needs to be more authoritative, while pitching to doctors requires a detailed explanation about benefits one can expect from having an expensive encyclopedia.

While explaining his days as a young salesman, he appeared to use his sales charms on us.

One time, he looked us in the eyes and addressed us by our full names with titles, an action that made us feel closer to him than our first encounter warranted. Interestingly, at the end of our interview when he signed his autograph on his memoir as a gift, he had to consult our name cards. Perhaps he wanted to make sure he was correct or maybe because he forgot our names and titles he had temporarily memorized for theatrical effect.

Despite being a super salesman, he did not make a sale every time he tried.

“By using telephone or ‘cold calls,’ my success rate was about 20 to 30 percent,” he remembered. “For recommendations, it was about 60 percent.”

And one experience of failure made a difference to his life.

It was during the onset of the 1998 currency crisis that his business faced hard times as others. Companies fell in large numbers, hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs and the country was facing what was called “its worst peacetime crisis.”

His water purifier business was on the brink of collapse. With everybody tightening their purse strings not knowing what the future held in store, water purifiers were among the first items to be crossed off their to buy list.

He had some sleepless nights, trying to figure out how to get sales back on the track.

Then, he decided to go cheaper, not by selling but by renting them out.

Before that, he canvassed the market to the best of his ability to find out what were consumers’ preferences by checking with people attending meetings and gatherings. About 80 percent of them supported the concept of rentals and agreed on a monthly fee of 27,000 won.

He set the right yearly rental price range but it came down to how to bring down the costs of rental and maintenance.

It was his failed attempt to form a joint venture with a Japanese cleaning firm that gave him a winning cost-saving idea.

The Japanese firm had its cleaning units operated on vans that were owned by its members, the adoption of which saved Yoon expenses of office lease and transportation for “codi” or coordinators who install and maintain the water purifiers.

Then, he remembered his days of selling Encyclopedia Britannica, where salespersons were required to pay for stationery, catalogues and expendables.

“Do it yourself,” he said. “If you have to pay for each item of expendables you use in office, you would waste less and end up saving a lot.”

He said that it takes more than a good idea to be successful.

Yoon said that his water purifier rental business proved to be successful as all the right factors fell into place. For instance, a codi gives users a sense of safety because they maintain the purifiers on a regular basis, while a great number of customers opt to use his services, because these ensure they are given supplies of clean water which is pivotal to maintaining their health.

Being idolized by salaried people for his success story, Yoon said that his success began with a dream.

He wanted to make some money. Then, it grew and became more specific.

“When I started a publishing firm, my dream was to beat the industry leader,” he recalled, adding that it took 10 years to beat it in terms of sales.

His dream has taken on a life of its own, providing him with one new dream after another. He has achieved one by one, although he has failed at times. Obviously, he often uses dreams for a goal and vice versa, perhaps reflecting that he has attained his dreams more often than others on his way to a success.

Now, his dreams have evolved to be more complex. “My dream is to make my firm the most wanted among our young people,” he said, explaining that this means his firm is better than others in outlook, working environment and the whole nine yards.

So what does he want to do with his great wealth?

He said that he won’t leave much of it to his family or relatives. As a matter of fact, he said that he came close to having his will written last year but decided not to.

“I can’t tell you the details right now,” he said.

He also has an unexpected view about the “Buffett tax” that U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett proposed, calling on the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

“I read a group of American rich people argued that they would be willing to pay more taxes to protect their own wealth because their wealth is put at risk, if the society is in difficulty,” he pointed out.

But, if more taxes are slapped on rich people without their consensus, it would only drive them out in search of places where they can park their wealth without fears of it being taken away, he observed, adding that he pays taxes faithfully and has no grievances.

The rest of society would feel bitter, if the rich paid taxes as part of their charity work, he said.

Yoon supported the idea of rich people setting an example for the rest of society to earn respect and make them an endeared member of society.

SK Group Chey Jong-hyun had his remains cremated according to his last wishes. His act led tens of thousands of others to follow and made it a key means of treating one’s remains. “If the President sets an example, it will be an even more dominant form of remains treatment,” he said.