A discussion about sales, sales tips and advice, and about those who land the deal

Seems like Sunday is my "trip to Walmart" day.  This makes two Sundays in a row.

I needed to get 25 bags of bark for our front yard flowerbeds.

First, I went down the street to our little regional hardware store.  Went to the garden section, and found a guy on a forklift.  I asked him if they had any bags of bark.  He gave me a roll of the eyes and said, "didn't you see them up by the entrance?"  No, I didn't.  I walked up alone to the entrance.  There was no price listed.  I went inside to ask the clerk how much their bags of bark were...

She didn't know.  She had to look it up.  After a few minutes, she finally managed to find a price for me.  $5.99 per bag.  "Wow," I thought to myself, "that's pretty expensive."  I walked away without buying any bark.

Instead, I made the 10 minute drive to Walmart.  I parked near their garden section.  Spotted the bark.  Their price: $3.48.  Nice.

I walked in to get in line to pay for the bark.  Paid for 25 bags, saving close to $30 in exchange for the 10 minute drive.  As the cashier handed me the receipt, I asked her, "Do you want somebody to come out with me as I load the bags into my truck?", meaning "do you want to make sure I don't steal an extra 20 bags out in the parking lot with nobody watching?"  She said she would send someone out.  I went out and waited by the bags.

To my surprise, four Walmart associates came out of the store and headed to my car.  They asked me to open up my car, and then they all started loading bags of bark into my car.  They had fun while they did it.  They seemed to enjoy their jobs (in watching the news, I thought all Walmart employees would be bitter, abused slaves by now...guess I'm watching the wrong network...).  In about 3 minutes, I was loaded up and on my way.

The sales lessons I learned:

1. Customer service matters.  If you treat your customers like their bothering you and you don't care about them, they'll go somewhere else.
2. There are certain times in life when price matters.  Don't rip off your customers.  We're talking about shredded wood here for crying out loud. If the smaller store would have been 10 cents more expensive, I would have bought it there for the convenience.  But $1.50 more???  Come on...  Incidentally, the Walmart bark wasn't made by slaves in China.  It came from a U.S. company in Arizona (strange...the news seems to suggest that everything in Walmart was made using child labor in fourth world countries?).
3. Add that little something extra to what you do, and your customers will reward you with repeat business.  When I buy bark the next time, I'll think of Walmart's great prices and I'll remember that if I need them to load bags of bark into my truck, they'll do it with smiles on their faces.

How can you apply these lessons to your sales career this week?