I had the time of my life a few weeks ago in the role of a sales professional, and it’s not the kind of selling environment that I’m used to. I was given an opportunity to actually use the sales tips I speak of in this sales blog. This selling experience reminded me of the importance of sales basics.

The Request
I was asked to help in an estate sale. In case you aren’t familiar with estate sales, they are a few steps up from a garage sale because of the merchandise being sold. Typically, someone is liquidating a substantial amount of his or her earthly assets including jewelry, electronics, major appliances, fine china, silverware, etc.

Performance Anxiety
The scary part was that the person who asked me to help with the estate sale knows about my sales background, this sales blog, my upcoming book, etc. so her expectations for me were high. To be honest, I was a little nervous. You know, performance anxiety. This is the same kind of nervousness your sales manager gets when you say, “Why don’t you take the next sales call and I’ll learn from you.” These kinds of requests make your sales manager nervous, even though they won’t admit it.

5 Basic Sales Tips That Still Work
At the end of the day, I reflected on the sales tactics I most frequently used to sell such a broad array of merchandise. I am happy to announce that the tactics all work well in 2009. Have you forgotten about some of these?

1. Bundle things. A woman approached me with a couple of pieces from a sterling silver set and asked about pricing. Rather than give her a price I said, “If you purchase the entire matching set, the per-piece price will be less expensive.” I sold her the entire set and she was talking about where it was going to go in her home as she walked out the door.

2. Give away something small to sell something big. A nice man asked about an old CD player. I asked him if he wanted to buy the entire audio system that was sitting next to it. He said he wasn’t that interested in buying all of it. I replied, “I’ll give you the CD player if you’ll work with me on the remainder of the audio system. That way you’ll have a matched set of components.” He bought the entire system and thanked me for helping him.

3. Admit a weakness in your products to enhance your credibility. A woman inquired about a piece of furniture that I could tell wasn’t in very good shape. I responded, “This isn’t a very nice piece of furniture and I personally think it’s overpriced. There’s another piece of furniture that’s just a little more expensive that is a much better investment in my opinion.” That’s right, she happily bought the more expensive chair.

4. Puppy dog closes work. The premise of the puppy dog close is that a small child sees a puppy in a pet store and begs his parents to buy it. The pet store owner observes what is going on and says, “Why don’t you buy the puppy right now, take her home for the night, and if you don’t like her, in the morning you can return her for a full refund.” Exactly 100% of those puppies never come back. I used this technique when a nice man didn’t know if a particularly expensive lamp would work in his home. I told him to pay me for it, take it home and give it a try. If it didn’t work out, I would refund him 100% of his money. Never did see that lamp again.

5. Put the brakes on discounts. Buyers will push and push you to discount until you say, “stop.” It’s a bluffing game. I graciously called buyers’ bluffs on many transactions when the price was already fair for both parties.

Sales Blog Epilogue
I was pleased to overhear an older woman in a walker look at me and whisper (she thought she was whispering) to her daughter, “That young man should be in sales. He certainly seems to have an answer for everything…just like your father.”

Did I sell everything I was trying to sell that day? No. But it felt good to know that solid sales basics still work.

P.S. Don’t tell the person who hosted the estate sale, but I gave away a few inexpensive items at N/C to some deserving folks that day (I worked for free). The final lesson I learned is that most of us have more things than we need and are more fortunate than we realize.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Related posts:

1. Always Being Nice Is Not A Good Sales Strategy

Tags: closing, pricing, skills

We'd like to hear your feedback on this post - feel free to comment below!