Start-ups and small publishers often confuse sales and marketing, thinking they are the same thing. Oh boy, are they different. While I could regurgitate the usual definitions, I want to go past that. I'll show how I marketed myself well, then got schooled by Marcus King at Titan Games. I'm pretty good at marketing. I've learned I'm not so good at sales.

Marketing is "the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to satisfy customers." (http://www.cfdccariboo.com/glossary.htm). Pretty much says it all.

Sales, by contrast, is the act of selling. It's the crucial last step between a great preparation, and actually getting hard currency into your pocket. You can do all the marketing you want, but you won't make a dime if you don't actually get out there and sell the darn thing. Conversely, you can have a great salesperson out there hustling, but if there is no marketing support, they won't sell well.

Here's the scene. Marcus says he's buying used RPGs, you can either ship to him and get an offer, or send him a list to get an initial estimate. So I write a list.

The list was my marketing. I wrote clearly so as not to waste time, listed items in order, noted the condition of many as very good or unread, and added that I had more stuff past that as well. I put my best foot forward. Marcus replied with an estimate.

Eagerly, I dug up more stuff and ended up shipping him perhaps twice what I'd gotten quoted. Visions of twice the money flew through my head.

Marcus gets the stuff, calls me with an estimate. I'm out, but I email back. He calls again. Now, all our dealings had been by email but he'd switched to phone.

First sales lesson: Don't give them time to think, close quickly.

Phone and face-to-face is good because people commit more hastily. Most people aren't nearly as good at thinking on their feet as they believe they are. On their feet, people buy or sell emotionally. Give them time to consider, and they'll negotiate harder and often realize they don't want the deal at all.

Marcus makes an offer a bare $20 over the original. At first I'm upset, after all, it was twice the stuff! But he depreciates the quality of the items that were less than perfect, justifying his drop on the original estimate. I tout that some stuff was still shrink-wrapped, a poor attempt to jump things up, he gives warm fuzzies in return about how he's appreciative and that makes his job easier.

But the price didn't change. You know why?

I forgot to ask. Seriously. I didn't say, "but some was shrink wrapped, can you toss in another $20?" I just, well, whined. I'd done my marketing up front and set myself as a professional, but I got totally schooled in the face-to-face (phone-to-phone?) negotiating.

Second sales lesson: You won't get it if you don't ask for it.

So he'd made his offer, we'd quibbled over points, then I acquiesced. The conversation ended.

Third sales lesson: Close the deal, then leave.

That last bit, leaving, is very important. One shopkeeper I know doesn't stop talking after he sells. So he burns a lot of time chatting with an ex-customer and neglects new business. My own flaw is I'm soft-hearted, so if I'm selling and I close a sale, I'm a sucker for the counter-sell, the "hey, as long as I bought this, can you add in this" kind of things. Sales is work, so when you finish, get to more work, not more fun. A cleaner ending helps everyone.

The interpretations begin. Had Marcus 'taken' me? No, really, he was open to talking. He's also a businessman and very good at closing the sale. I was outmatched in that. And, from a gaming stance, by agreeing to his venue--phone--I'd pretty much ensured he'd come out 'ahead'.

You could draw a plot showing the range of potential outcomes, where anything above X is too much for Marcus and anything below Y is too little for me. Then you can invoke economic theories to explain how we settled on an equilibrium and how perception affects this and so on.

But wait, what is 'ahead'... after all, in the end I did agree to his price. And I also got to walk away with fistfuls of cash and less clutter in my bookshelves. Meanwhile, Marcus is out of cash in speculation that he can recover it later. After all, he's the one assuming the risk in the transaction.

Any recriminations I have are all about my behavior, not his. He did a straightforward deal. We both came out ahead, relative to going in--he has more stuff to potentially sell, and I have handfuls of cash. My armchair quarterbacking doesn't change the economic reality.

The kicker is, I'd sell stuff to him again.

Fourth sales lesson: Repeat customers are good business.

Until next month,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net