Art Post
I’m back from our President’s Club trip to Cabo San Lucas and it is a spectacular location. This was my first trip there and we spent five nights and almost five full days. When you get to my age you’re always thinking about where (and when) you can retire. Cabo is surely one that’s on my list, but maybe a bit outta my price range.
What I really wanted to talk about is the sales people, I’m thinking that Cabo San Lucas has more sales people than they have cactus! They have time share sales people, walking beach sales people, shop sales people, tour sales people, cruise sales people, fishing charter sales people, and I could list even more. What I found intriguing is that everyone greeted you with a smile, a “hello, amigo” or “hello, my friend” and then had a pitch for whatever they were selling. If you noticed I didn’t call them peddlers, hawkers or shady. Each person was selling either with a smile of some sort of opening hook, matter of fact my wife and I walked past one person and he said, “are you enjoying your honeymoon”?, my quick response was “every day is my honeymoon” and there was silence….my wife stated that he probably hadn’t heard that before and had no prepared response for my quick wit!
In particular all of them closed early and often, most were not good at finding out “why” you did not want to buy, but they were all persistent and did not take the first “no” as the final answer. Almost everyone in our party eventually bought something from these sales people. I had one that was selling jewelry and I had said no at least five times and the final result was that I bought the piece of jewelry. I bought because I thought I’m getting a pretty good price, the guy’s persistence, and he insisted that my wife would like the “fine Mexican silver” as a gift. But what happened afterwards was something he said, “would you like to buy another one?” Which got me to thinking, how often do we as salespeople make another offer to our customers during or after they are buying from us? We know people buy from people they like, right? Plus they are in the buying mood, right?
Many years ago and I’ll be the first to admit that I get away from the basics also, when we agreed price and the type of equipment, I would offer a special on another piece of hardware or software right before we signed the lease. Years ago it was a small 30-ppm MFP that sold for about $600, but I broke it down to the monthly payment and then asked my customer if they’d like to take advantage of getting this additional unit as a backup or for the home for only $10 additional per month. When I was doing this, I increased my sales and going back probably added another 25-40 units for the time that offered the item. I made maybe $50 on each one, but I was also given a $50 Savings Bond for each machine also. Thus 25 systems turned into an additional $2,500.
Sell the extras. Offer them up and see what happens. The old saying “if you don’t ask you don’t get” means we are losing opportunities to sell more, make more, and make sure you’re on track for Presidents Club next year.
BTW, for all you fishing gurus, we boated a 140-lb. striped marlin!
Good selling.
