sales techniques

Best Buy Might Give You A Free iPod If You Know To Ask

Apple is running their regular back-to-school promotion for students and teachers this summer. Buy a Mac, get a free iPod Touch. Neat deal. But let’s say that you’re another retail outlet that sells Apple computers, but doesn’t offer that deal. Say that you’re….Best Buy. How do you convince customers to buy a computer from you, when you can’t offer them a free iPod? Well…offer them 18-month financing. Then point out how many RewardZone points they’re going to earn. Finally, you could just give up and give them a free iPod…. but only if they ask.

According to an inside source, that’s exactly what Best Buy plans to do.

Radio Shack Sales Staff Unfazed By 2,400% Markup

Radio Shack Sales Staff Unfazed By 2,400% Markup

No one goes to Radio Shack to take advantage of low prices. They go because they need an electronic component on short notice, and Radio Shack is pretty ubiquitous. That’s how Chris and his fiancée found themselves at a Wisconsin Radio Shack in search of a mini USB cable, but they encountered such high prices and high-pressure sales lies that they walked out and found what they needed…at the dollar store.

Did Bad Customer Service Doom Circuit City?

Did Bad Customer Service Doom Circuit City?

Best-practices guru Joel Spolsky thinks Circuit City imploded because of their terrible customer service, not any “recession” or “macroeconomic conditions” nonsense. To prove his point, he looks at thriving New York electronics retailer B&H, which succeeds because they understand that stellar service leads to healthy profit margins.

Bra Seller Tells Customer To Get A Breast Reduction

Bra Seller Tells Customer To Get A Breast Reduction

If there’s one thing this writer has learned over the years, it’s to never tell a woman to get breast reduction surgery. It’s rude, insulting, and can quite possibly get you kneed in the groin, slapped, pushed into a train, cut out of the will, and so on. But apparently the salesperson at Penningtons—sort of a Canadian Lane Bryant—didn’t get that memo. “North of 49” writes:

I’m a woman of “ample girth” but still have a figure. At 226lbs, I have a 38J cup. We’re getting married on leap day and I have had issues with bra shopping before. So I went to “Penningtons,” an above average store that should have had bras in my size. They didn’t.

Can A Confusing Sales Pitch Trick You Into Buying Something?

Can A Confusing Sales Pitch Trick You Into Buying Something?

An article due out in the October issue of the Journal of Consumer Research studies a sales technique called “disrupt-then-reframe,” in which the sales person initially tries to confuse the potential customer, then restates the sales pitch in a more familiar way. By reframing the sales pitch in a more familiar way the consumers natural defenses are weakened and the consumer becomes more susceptible to the sales pitch. So, can you be confused into buying something? Yes. And it’s not even very difficult to do.