When it comes to selling, there are many things that I have learned whether it came through friends, experts, the internet, or simply the experiences that I have had throughout my life. Some of the most important things that I have learned happened in middle school when I was selling the excess candy that my dad was bringing home from work. I had my own little operation running from my locker that I ran from around the beginning of sixth grade up until freshman or sophomore year of high school. Here are some of the small things that I have learned.
1.) Focus on each and every person. When I sold candy, I made sure that I always would get people their candy as fast as possible. Usually this just meant going to my locker with that person between periods or after lunch, but sometimes it had to be the next day if I did not have the candy at the time. Bringing the candy and giving it to the person first thing in the morning grew a ton of trust in my business and earned me a great reputation as being reliable to get you what you wanted fast. Continuing with focusing on each person, it was also very important to learn each and every customers names and maybe something that we had in common so we could have small talk and make this business experience more pleasant. This was something that just came naturally to me as I never had awkward experiences when dealing with other students whether they were my friends or people who I did not know.
2.) Another great tip was rewarding customers or friends. Often times those kids who bought from me everyday would get some free stuff as well just to keep the loyal customers happy so that they would continue to come back. Another strategy that implemented was when people bought in bulk. Normally I would charge a dollar for something such as a juicy drop pop or baby bottle pop, but if someone came with a $5 bill, I would often give them six or seven of the same product since they were buying extra. This is a very common strategy but this always ended up with me making more money and also with the customer satisfaction climbing.
3.) One last tip was to convince people of what they wanted. This was a very easy thing to accomplish since everyone already loves candy, especially at that young age, so people were easily persuaded. I never pushed them to buy anything, but at the same time I did sort of flaunt some of the sweets that I had that I knew would convince them to buy. This was probably my most effective strategy since I knew why these people were at my business, so this meant that the product would simply sell itself.
BoweryJE22