I got a sales job offer on the spot by first highlighting the limited use of a single pen and without extra’s on hand its negative business impacts. Then stated I had tons of pens available in my car and positioned selling them at least 100, but recommended they acquire 1000+ as this prevents potential issues plus gets them a better deal. Pretty solid approach in my experience.
Selling is an art… and this is why I’m not in sales. I have absolutely no interest in trying to convince somebody to buy something.
True sales is just filling a need, sometimes the customer knows they need it but others are unaware of it. Good sales reps will not sell something unless it makes sense for everyone involved.
Yea, I was never exactly in sales (Geek Squad in store employee is the closest I ever came) but I remember thinking everyone who was like lets get rid of commission in retail sales were very mislead. I still remember the difference in Sears employees in the 90s when I first got a PC and the salesman actually knew to look at the box of the game I was trying to buy and make sure it’d run on my PC before selling it to me. I also remember them knowing about the stuff they sold. This is because with commission, even in small towns you could make a career of it and you’d have actual experienced staff in the stores. As far as I could ever tell, the good salespeople wanted you to trust them, and not to just make a one time huge sale - they wanted you to come back again and again.
Once they all went to non-commission, I recall that being a “selling point” of the stores, but now all you had was a rotating cast of highschool and college summer workers who cared exactly as much as minimum wage paid them to care… i.e. not at all. And they occasionally became unable to even read the boxes they were “selling”. It turned them into less efficient cash register attendants.
put the pen in your pocket and ask “what pen?”
I give you 2 dollar if you take this pen.
(Because everyone has too many pens already and wouldn’t even want one for $0.01 and I want to get rid of this pen or else have to pay for its recycling)
It’s about selling the pen and not making a profit, right?
