Dear Friend,
This last Christmas season, I was out
visiting a local mall in the Minneapolis
area... checking out the cart programs, and
doing a little Christmas shopping.
***
On one of the carts was a local artist
selling a really nice line of his hand-crafted
glass and ceramic art.
After checking out the cart for few minutes,
I noticed some small, oddly-shaped dishes.
The designs were really beautiful, something
I thought my mother would like.
Because of odd shape I wondered what
they were meant to be used for.
So I asked the girl working at the cart, (who
had not got up from the chair yet),
'What do
you use these for?'
***
Her reply...
'Whatever you think you should use them for.', she replied.
***
Huh?
If you didn't catch it already, that's not the right
response to this question.
***
And this brings up a key point in the selling
most any item on a cart or kiosk.
No matter how obvious it may seem to you what
the uses of your product are, there are prospective
customers who won't get it... unless you tell them.
And if you don't share with them the uses of your
product, you risk the customer walking away
without ever discovering the uses.
This should seem obvious to anyone reading this
email. But it isn't to all cart operators.
Every time I go to a mall I see cart operators who
simply stick their products on the shelf and hope
they sell without any explanation.
***
Clearly the owner of this cart understood that it was
important to share the uses for these odd shaped
dishes.
As I was leaving the cart, off to the side I noticed
some little 3' x 4' pieces of paper he'd created. I
grabbed one of the papers.
'USES FOR SMALL DISH'
I checked the paper out when I got home.
It listed ten uses of the product including:
TEA BAG HOLDER
Tea bag holder? My mom loves tea. A set of
four of those dishes would have made a nice gift.
Too bad the girl at the cart didn't tell me that.
By this time I read this, I was already home,
getting ready to wrap something else I'd got
for my mother.
My mom won. She got a nice gift.
I won. I got her a gift she liked.
But the cart lost.
They lost because the sales rep did not share
potential uses of their product when she had the
chance.
And in the process, lost a potential sale.
(And who knows how many more sales were
lost along the way.)
***
Today's suggestion:
Share with your prospective customer the
potential uses of your products.
When you do, you give yourself the chance
to It's more likely you hit on a prospective
customers needs.
And ultimately make the sale.
And that's the point, isn't it?
Best,
 Brady Flower
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