Once, in another life, I chased posh Londoners down the King's Road in Chelsea and asked them where they got their hair done. Then, I quickly became their best friend and convinced them to give me their credit card, or cash, or write me a cheque... and in return I would give them a piece of cardboard which entitled them to hair and beauty treatments at a salon of which they had never heard. I could usually complete this process in a matter of minutes. The job was 100% commission based so it was easy to be motivated.
I knocked on doors, I shouted across streets, I tapped on shoulders, I trotted up to groups of women waiting at the lights. Sometimes I intercepted them as they rushed to catch the tube to get to their morning meetings. Often I raised a little corner of my mouth and made my voice high and fizzy with giggles, and sold to men for their girlfriends and wives and daughters and mothers. In my finest hour I sold a series of 4 visits for a hair salon to a bald man. For himself.
I did this job in the thin dark cold of the sunless English winter; on days when the light would travel from very far off and tentatively peek over the city, on and off, for just a few hours.
Perhaps you know something about Londoners in the winter; perhaps you know that it is a time when their faces become hardened and grey and their voices become thin with impatience and shivers.
Londoners in the winter mostly do not like having a strange Australian girl of uncertain hair colour (it was a time of hair experimentation) running up to them and asking them questions about their hair as a ruse to begin her sales pitch.
Once, I was detained and searched by police after slipping into a law firm on the coattails of one of its employees, who held the back door open for me as he returned to work after a cigarette break. I was in the middle of pitching my sales spiel to one of the senior lawyers (who I might say, was very interested) when someone called security. I was made to feel very special: they called a female police officer especially for me. She arrived and snapped on a plastic glove. I lifted a brow and emptied my pockets, hoping for the best.
Once, I made the equivalent of 700 Australian dollars in a single day of this foolishness.
Once, I did this job with pink hair and bad skin. (This job of making people give me money because they believed I knew best how to make them beautiful). Let me add that I am not one of those cool funky types who wears her hair pink because it looks cool. I was more the colour-gone-wrong type of orangey-pink disaster. However, with pink hair, I still sold.
I tell you all this by way of saying that I know a thing or two about how to sell. And by way of explaining why I now totally get why things are the way they are on the streets of Jakarta.
It is one of the most inspirational and maddening things about living in this city: the entrepreneurial spirit of the people who have made this place their home. In Jakarta, everyone is on the hustle.
Arriving into the airport, you’re greeted by a cacophony of airport tycoons – everyone has what you need, in fact they have what you didn’t even realise you needed (but you do, you really do!)
Every morning leaving your apartment into the embracing heat of the day, you are a consumer immediately. Oooojeeeeeek croak the motorcycle taxi men from across the street as you walk past, looking down. If you accidentally look up, they are already swinging legs over motorbikes and chugging over to you. And when you do want to catch a motorbike, you need only to raise your index finger and there is one by your side by the time you’ve dropped your arm. On the streets of Jakarta, things happen quickly.
As a fellow hawker, I know what they’re playing at. I recognise this behaviour as one of the golden rules of selling: always assume the sale. Whether you’re selling a bald man a haircut, or offering a ride to someone who has just stepped out of a taxi – you just need to assume that your customer wants and needs what you’ve got, and they will in turn assume that they want it too. (I must want this, it seems ridiculous not to want it. Why would I walk to the end of this street when I could get on the back of a motorbike?).
But it’s all sales. Jakarta hawkers know their rules for sales success and this one ties in with another important one – “work your numbers” - ask as many people as you possibly can and eventually someone will say yes. This selling tool is in full use among Jakarta’s modes of transport, where a strange “opt-out” system has been developed. In most cities of the world, you must seek out taxis – and they are often elusive and annoyingly stand-offish (exhibit A: Kings Cross in Sydney at about 3am, changeover time). This is not at all the case in Jakarta. In Jakarta you spend your days refusing the services of all kinds of modes of transport – taxis, ojeks (motorbike taxis), bejajs (tuk tuks), anggots and mikrolets (combi-vans). You feel as though someone needs to sit all these drivers down and say – “hey, you know what might make a bit more sense? Instead of you always asking me if I need you, perhaps we could do it the other way around and I can hail you when I need you... as opposed to un-hailing you, constantly, all day and every day.”
Not to mentioned the rehash and double your cash (upsell!) – if you’ve sold one, sell more. You need 2 or three sarongs, 5 or 10 DVDs. You do, don’t you?
The untiring and entrepreneurial spirit of Indonesians, if particularly evident in the Jakarta, is found all over the country. If there is a need here, there is a bustling queue of people ready to service it. Often the need aspect of this is faint. But sometimes it’s nice to know you’re going in the right direction down a one way street, because there’s a 12-year-old in a threadbare t-shirt collecting Rupiah for the service of pointing you in the direction of traffic (the direction in which you’re already headed). What would happen if these people weren’t there?! Mayhem surely. It’s like a pat on the back – yep, just keep going, you’re going the right way! If only we could have this sort of reassurance in everyday life.
These are some of the best, most ambitious sales people I’ve ever come across. Poverty exists in a flurry of activity. Markets brim with people toiling away – cutting the heads off still flip-flopping lele (catfish), packing bright yellow fish into little banana tree bark compartments like tiny little coffins, shelling and shredding coconuts; always always busy hands. People are not poor because they’re lazy. Try pushing around a cart of food and cooking materials all day and all night and finding the energy to call out your sales spiel; or riding a bike whilst balancing gas cylinders or great tubs of water; or balancing your wares over your shoulders and bounce-jogging them around the city in your own outdoor-market selling space. It is hard to conceive of how exhausting this work must be.
I became a street hawker in London because I had holes in my shoes and was living off cornflakes and hiding from my friend’s landlord so I could sleep on his couch. I thought that was motivation enough. But imagine leaving your family behind in your village and moving to Jakarta so you can earn a tiny bit of money to send back home ... for so many people, it’s a way of life.
Once, I used to wonder whether all the selling would ever stop – the croaking sales calls, the beeping horns, the irritating repetitive ice cream song, the ‘hello misters’ ... always, everywhere, someone is calling and asking and wanting from you.
And then I remembered with a flashback to the streets of London ... that was me, once.
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* Keen readers may recognise that at the beginning and end of this post I’ve borrowed the style of Morris Gleitzman’s lovely and awfully sad book “Once.” Read it. Read it privately, unless you’re a fan of sobbing in public.
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