Jessie Pinkman is one of the main characters in the popular TV show, Breaking Bad. (If you do not wish to receive spoilers to the show, read no further). For context, the show follows the life of Walter White, a 50-something year old, high school chemistry teacher (/chemistry genius) who just got diagnosed with stage four Cancer. After getting diagnosed, Walter pursued a former student who he knew cooked meth and asked to be partners. The former student was Jessie Pinkman. This is where the sales story begins. (And the spoilers).
After cooking their first batch of meth, Jessie took some to sell to the top dog in the industry, Krazy 8. Since Walter is a chemistry genius, he cooked the best meth on the market, which Jessie was sure to tell Krazy 8. His sales strategy here was basically, “this is the best! Try some then buy it.” Well, things happened, as they do, and Walter and Jessie ended up having to kill Krazy 8 and his cousin. There is some backstory there, but I’ll spare you the details.
After killing Krazy 8 and his cousin, Jessie and Walter began selling to the top dog that took Krazy 8’s place: Tuco Salamanca. The sales strategy they used here was driving a hard bargain. When Walter became involved in selling, he pushed Tuco to buy more and more because he knew Tuco had the market for it. Well, things happened again and Tuco got killed.
Fast forward to the episode I’m on now. There is no top dog in the meth sales industry, but Walter needs the big bucks to pay for his treatment. So what do Walter and Jessie do? They become the top dogs. Walter handles cooking; Jessie handles selling. At this point in the show, Jessie got smart. He started managing salesmen rather than selling meth himself. Since he had experience, he knew how to instruct his them.
Now that we’re caught up with context, let’s discuss the sales techniques. There is a very high demand for meth in the area they are selling in, so finding customers is not difficult. Jessie instructed his sales team on exactly how much to sell and how much to sell it for. He knew that there was a market for exactly what he was asking for. His unwillingness to compromise may seem like a bad sales technique, but since there is a market for his product at that price, the job for the salesmen is to find the people with pain great enough to pay that price (i.e. meth heads).
karnssk22 
BlankAD21
That’s smart to write about how you’re seeing these selling techniques in shows and movies you’re watching. I have definitely noticed myself analyzing movies more when I watch them in terms of both what the characters are selling in the movie, and what the movie industry is trying to sell to me in the movie. Because I think that’s something worth thinking about; What is a movie trying to sell to you to think or believe or do from watching it? Great post!