If there were a record for selling the most ballpoint pens in the shortest time to American restaurants, I would probably hold it.
This was one of my part-time jobs in graduate school, along with college teaching. In fact, it was this work that enabled me to make payments on a sparkling sports car during that time, making me a rare visage among my academic peers.
The pen-selling story is worth telling because it demonstrates an amazing, simple, and powerful point about increasing your sales.
When I was trained, I sat next to a guy who was pitching pens to bakeries, a gross, or twelve-dozen pens at a time. The most common objection he heard was "Hey, that's too many—I can't use that many!"
So, he'd cut back the offer to six-dozen and then to three-dozen, of course, cutting his commissions along the way.
I decided to do things differently. I figured restaurants use a lot of pens, losing many to grabby or otherwise preoccupied customers. But I also determined that if I went in with a bigger initial offer, they'd cut me back, but I'd end up at a higher volume than my mentor who was selling to bakeries.
Sure enough, I offered restaurant owners two small boxes of pens, with a gross in each. When they said I was overloading them, I replied, "Fine. No problem. Let's cut that in half to just one small box, ok?"
It worked like a charm.
I became the ballpoint pen king of the crew.
Do you want to double your sales in the blink of an eye? Start with a bigger order, and then, generously offer to cut it back. You'll appear cooperative, and you'll surpass your sales if you went in with more modest amounts.
One more thing: Every now an then, your prospects will seize your initial offer, and you won't have to cut it down, at all!
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.
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