So when you are selling, you should consider closing your door instead of opening it 24/7.
Brokers may have only three interested parties but they try to make sure they meet one another, by setting the viewing appointments fifteen minutes after each other, and arranging that you stay for half an hour. That means you must wait and expectations are allowed to grow inside you.
That is a bottleneck!
Seeing others who might beat you to the deal makes your heart pound faster. Now you are liable to go beyond your original financial limits. In other words, you are reconsidering the value before the seller has even opened his mouth. Your position has been weakened by the presence of other parties.
There’s a draught – close the window of opportunity!
If we could all do everything all the time, why would anyone act right now? When leaving your opponent every chance to decide you are also removing the urge for him to do so. You will come over as willing and available. These signals can be picked up as dangerous signs of weakness and, more often than not, they are!
7/11 is always open for when you are hungry or thirsty, so that’s your impulse right there – convenience. Negotiating for larger amounts means you must make use of every advantage there is. Giving our opponent a limited chance to deal is a strong weapon, all too often neglected because of our willingness to deal. Just as I wrote earlier, the more people are willing to invest pre-negotiation, the more eager they are. Everyone reads these subliminal signals at some level and will react to them at some level of their consciousness. Once you realise this you can read them sooner and more reliably than most.
Reading the signals
FOCUS: A flock of individuals
ELABORATE: Things would go haywire if you ever admitted: “This is the biggest deal I have ever done…” Can you see why?
If a store is getting only one customer per day, you don’t want to be that customer. Nobody does. It means you are wrong if there is no flock of other buyers surrounding you.
We like to think that we are all so unique, but in our brain (where it matters) the single individual is always in the wrong.
For instance, the sole customer in the empty store gets multiple subliminal messages sent to his brain which he interprets in the strangest manner: “Weird store...”. “I didn’t like it there.” Because whatever brainfarts come out of our head, we will defend and explain them as if they made perfect sense. How could our own emotions betray us?
SOLUTION: In the same way we accept positive messages and they won’t need explaining either. When it feels right, very few will doubt their urge to buy... even when the impulse has been planted by your words or actions, or lack thereof.
Example
Creating eager customers
I built up a successful sportswear company by closing the door five days per week. Competitors were open all the time, so we were not. Most customers will confuse your opening hours with what is considered normal. So they arrived to find closed doors. Sending people away was a signal of such strength that these victims of wrong timing always returned to see what they had been missing and then they displayed exceptional eagerness. Knowing that this was their only chance to buy, they rarely failed to do so. We combined the most powerful of all subliminal messages, “We are busy” and “We don’t seem to care, or need the money”. The Eager Beaver stores never did so well so my policy was based on the image I wanted to create.
I was well aware that we would sell more in two days than the others in a whole week. They opened at nine? On the days we were open, we kept the doors closed until nine-thirty on purpose. The ones who had been driving to reach our industrial area would not drive back home again. No, they would wait that half hour out and their expectations had the chance to grow. Anyone arriving right on time would see others lining up to get inside. So when we were open, we were always busy.
FACT 7: Allowing expectations to grow gives huge benefits
FOCUS: Nothing good comes fast or easy. While you may feel the urge to accommodate the other party quickly, this may not be the best approach.
ELABORATE: Fear of losing the deal often puts you in the wrong state of mind but most such fears have no sound basis. You will not lose any serious customer by keeping him waiting a bit longer. Only the curious ones who just want to see (not buy) will refuse to wait or return because it simply isn’t worth their while when their only objective is looking. You cannot lose what you never had.
SOLUTION: Someone wants to see the item you have for sale?
“Next Thursday at a quarter past five, is that okay?”
That way:
1 Their expectations will be allowed to grow.
2 You do not seem overly eager. This is always a signal of strength. Just compare that with the person who will come right over to show the product to you. More often than not, this happy-to-please attitude does not pay.
3 You get the chance to gather other interested parties together at the same time.
As you can see, it costs nothing and only has advantages.
Looking successful and being successful
When customers saw others buying, they copied them. This added incredible value. Bargain hunters were stacking up clothing and shoes in models and sizes they normally would have turned their back on. To remain successful every segment of your image must fit the whole picture so I instructed personnel to spend a limited time with each customer.
The subliminal Story2Tell: “We are so inexpensive that we cannot give you personal treatment for long. We would really like to help you out, but we don’t care if you buy or not because we can barely handle business as it is.”
Take H&M or Primark on a busy Saturday. Too few registers open on purpose so customers must wait in line. The longer the wait, the better the deal must be. The girls work at a regular but slow-motion pace, as if accepting money is rocket science. How many customers walk away because the wait is too long? I promise you that such tiny minorities will play no role in your bottom line result.
FACT 8: People love to hand over their money to the ones who don’t seem to need it
FOCUS: Our natural impulse is that if someone else buys it, it must be good. If others are willing to pay that price, it must be the right one. This belief increases with the number of buyers who surround you. Our own personal valuation is overruled.
ELABORATE: We shy away from the empty stores and walk the same path as everyone else because we cannot all be wrong, can we?
SOLUTION: So when you give the impression that you are doing a lot of business by understatement, or better still; create actual busy-ness the way I have already described, you will see positive results coming your way.
FACT 9: Nothing succeeds like a proven success
The quality of FREE
Or you could consider giving your product away?
FOCUS: The FREE factor
The reasoning behind giving something away is to sell more. Buy this, get that free.
ELABORATE: It really means included, because whatever they give away has been calculated in the price. No sane person is fooled into thinking otherwise. Yet a strange phenomenon takes place inside the head of the receiver of the “gift”. The fact that it must have cost something means we have been paying too much