I was at a seminar today and the person was telling this story about how in many cases when you are looking to find a good business to partner with in many cases they use scripted scenarios to make it seem like you are silly if you don’t take the deal with them. For example, going into a meeting with the intent of seeing if they can help you generate sales. Then all of a sudden they get this magical phone call and say things out loud as if they are talking to a potential company that is ready to buy thousands of dollars worth of products or services from you if you agree to a business deal. Ultimately, once the person signs the deal then they say the company dropped out.

As silly as it sounds it was expressed how this works on so many people and that you should watch out. It kind of reminds me of like some real estate agents where if they are trying to sell a home to a potential buyer who is wondering if there is any rush to buy the agent then magically takes out their cell phone and has an imaginary conversation about how the person they are talking with has just put an offer to sell. Again, just a tactic to get you to react emotionally.

Basically, don’t let this be an expensive lesson for you if a person or company uses this tactic on you.

Valentine’s day is tomorrow and one news that has been expressed is how retailers are preparing for the Valentine’s day rush where people will buy everything from chocolates to roses without thinking much about the price. If anything people are more concerned about having anything to give to prevent the chances of being scolded by their loved ones. In this situation as the the business would you be more inclined to charge people more for your products to capitalize on the business or less to give people a break?

In one end you could argue it is dumb to not capitalize on the supply and demand. At the same time you could argue not inflating your prices can make people respect you more where it could lead to them doing more business with you on regular days as well. I know for myself I would be less inclined to do business with someone if I knew they were price people even if I wasn’t the customer.

I suppose it does come down to the demographic and industry too as if it was something like a high end hotel room during a special occasion then people would be more inclined to be more understanding that it would be more expensive as opposed to like someone charging say $10 for wrapping paper cause someone needed it the day before Christmas.

This was kind of an opposite practice that I saw today in regards to trying to win over customers. Essentially, a person was trying to sell products where for some people they had no clue about it whereas at the same time there were knowledgeable shoppers who were more concerns with the value of it. No normally you would be taught to take your time with everyone as the are potential customers. However, in this case the person had a different strategy where if he felt they were not very knowledgeable he simply left them with a brochure and went to interact with the people who seemed to know their stuff and just needed the extra nudge to make a sale.

It was working for him as he was making a lot of sales. For the people who were simply wondering about it they either just left where he assumed that is what they would have done anyways or they would actually be interested in buying it after. I suppose that is an effective way to a certain extent in terms of leveraging your time to try and focus as much as possible on people who are ready to buy now. I suppose the key difference here is that if the person requires a lot of education you don’t want to just sway them off as that would leave a bad impression where they probably won’t want to do business with you ever.

But spending the time to invest in something that can do the talking for you for the most basic questions is not a bad idea.

This was kind of cute I thought. I was at the supermarket and as usual there were some employees walking around the store trying to sell people into signing up for the company’s credit card. The incentive they used was kind of interesting though. You may think like nowadays most people use like coupons or how people can get X amount off their purchase as an incentive. For this particular strategy they were offering free boxes of cookies. Yes, boxes of cookies.

I was just thinking if that really worked with adults as you usually only hear the mention of that more as a joke unless you are trying to entice children. Funny enough it seemed like initially a lot of people would react positively mainly because they thought the tore was literally just giving them away. It was a good hook I must say to enable the person to start the sales pitch because you don’t expect it to be a tactic to sell credit cards usually.

Makes me wonder as silly as that sounds if that would work with things like a real estate agent where they would say get free boxes of cookies if you choose them over others.

Today I was reading a lot of stories about Best Buy and how apparently they have been having a lot of trouble financially due to a changing market such as people buying things online and general management issues. The news story interested me more as I actually worked in company a few years back and even had shares in the business.

Even though from a corporate point of view or ladder I was pretty much an unknown I still remember the times such as the store I was involved with did literally over 2500% more sales than the other top stores during various key launches mostly due to the management’s ability to allow a person like myself to take full charge as to how to market and sell the items.

Of course that number definitely turned heads. Afterwards I was actually motivated in wanting to contribute in different ways such as getting more into the corporate decisions such as taking advantage of the social media scene as at the time there wasn’t really many companies in that industry that did it. That was actually one of my keys to success to as I took a lot of pride in what I did and constantly scoured various places on the Internet to see what people were saying about the store. However, it appeared though that they went more for the trust the guys on the board table direction as opposed to the people that were knowledgeable and passionate about products and of course people like myself felt that there was nothing to grow into anymore which meant parting ways.

Looking back it really makes me wonder what simple choices like those would have done for the business. In some ways it reminded me of like the “old timers” basically swaying off the “young generation” where the new way of doing things sounds crazy. Never just sway off ideas just because you don’t understand it yourself I guess is what I would say in that scenario. I think the Netflix and Blockbuster story is a good example of that. Sure is weird though seeing a company where at the time you were with was so big just to now read it is struggling.