The Expert Podcast

So if you're in sales and you get a customer client that wants to come in and buy two things or five things, sometimes you might think, "Hey, this is a big score, this is a multiple sale." However, you might want to proceed with caution depending upon what your product is. If you're trying to sell more than one thing, you might want to start with one and not try to jump the gun. Here's why: this really only applies to higher-ticket items, things like electronics or cars, especially—not so much furniture and appliances because people sometimes buy those in bulk.

Let's say if you work in a car dealership and somebody wants to come in and say, "Hey, I want to buy two cars. I want to buy multiple cars. Can I get a deal on two cars?" Yeah, okay, what are the cars you want to buy? Let's say they want to buy two cars and you start working on those car deals. Now, your closing ratio might go down because if a person comes into the dealership, maybe you have a one-in-10 closing ratio, a 10% closing ratio, and maybe people don't buy because it's too much money or they don't like the car or there's something about it that doesn't match their budget or use. One out of 10 times you'll sell, nine out of 10 times you don't sell.

Well, what happens if one of those two things is your non-buyer? If you try to sell two cars and one of them doesn't work out because the price is too high or the car doesn't match, that might blow your other deal. So, you have to really think about the strategy. It might be better to say, "Look, let's just do one at a time. Let's get you one good deal and then, if you do that, the second one will be even easier." Then, focus on one. If you try to sell two cars at the same time, it's kind of like riding two horses across the stream. Sometimes it'll mess you up.

Same thing with customers that come in and say, "Hey, I'm a volume client. I want to buy five of whatever you're selling." Great! If people normally buy your product, trying to sell five of them sometimes will blow up in your face because it's harder to meet the budget. Look, how hard is it to meet a budget when you sell one thing? How many times does the customer say, "This costs too much money. I can't afford it"? Now you're trying to sell five—five times the chances! I'm not saying you want to turn away volume customers, but be very cautious about whether or not it's real and whether or not it's going to be harder to try to sell five of something than to sell one.

Because any one error, mistake, problem, or objection that happens on one of the five now could affect the other five. So, if you have five sales you're trying to do, you have five times the chances you're going to get objections, five times the number of objections, and five times the probability that one of those could blow up your whole deal. So be very cautious. Don't get too excited if somebody is a volume customer until you get to the point to know they're very qualified and it's a real deal.

Same thing with higher-end items, such as jewelry. Let's say if you go into a watch shop and somebody comes in and says, "I want to buy five watches." If they're a high roller, high-net-worth, private client type person, maybe it'll work. But if there's somebody who you're not sure if they're serious about five watches—especially if they start asking questions where they're not that knowledgeable—if you're having to do product knowledge too much about the items you're selling, it may be better to not muddy the waters and stick with one transaction at a time. Just a suggestion for your professional salespeople out there. Again, you don't want to turn away volume clients, but just kind of give it a little once over to make sure you're not going to be wasting your time getting excited about multiple sales and counting your chickens before they hatch.

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