Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Hardly Sell

Someone could make a bundle translating Fisher and Ury (apologies for mangled spelling) into Indonesian. The people selling goods and services in the tourist areas I’ve visited over the last few months could use a little Getting To Yes. The towns are full of myriad salesmen, hawkers, vendors, massage peddlers, taxi drivers, moped renters, and tour guides. Everybody’s here except the kid with and a grubby handful of chicle! and ten sombreros on his head.
They all have an admirably aggressive approach, often more respectable for enthusiasm than effectiveness. Standard opener is to announce the good or service on offer in a sing-song voice with rising interrogative inflection at the end: “Massage?” “Transport?” and “Sarong?” are three pretty common ones. There’s a friendly approach designed to establish rapport before the sale: “Where you from, what you name, where you stay, how long you stay in Lombok?” are all pretty common, so common in fact that I vacillate between wanting to hang a sign printed with the answers around my neck and pretending I am deaf and mute. From here the openers get a little more esoteric. A bizarre one: “What can I do for you?” to which my bitten off reply would be, “I’ll let you know when I want something,” if I weren’t a constant model of politeness. The deaf mute angle counts as polite, right? Once on a street in Sengigi I got hit with a metaphysical opening line, not what I was expecting from a watch salesman: “What are you looking for?” My all time favorite come on though is when a vendor approaches me and just gives me an enthusiastic “Yes!” No clue how that’s supposed to loosen my wallet, but I like a positive sales attitude.
Another motivated aspect is how the salespeople will take any opportunity to sell. They stride the beaches and the streets shilling their wares, hitting up pool and beach-goers, those lounging or eating at a restaurant, strollers, bicyclists, you name it. They will wait on the beach until you come out of your room for breakfast and then shill. Again, marks for enthusiasm.
After the opener, though, things go downhill. If you don’t show immediate interest in offered wares or interest in conversation, salespeople may repeat an offer a few times or stand there and idly look at you while you try to eat or walk or take in sun or swim, but they soon lose interest and let you off the hook. If you don’t respond, they may move on, or they may open up a massive avenue of defeatism that would make any used car salesman cringe: “Maybe later? Maybe tomorrow?” Now come on. What kind of entrepreneurial spirit and go-getter attitude is that? How can you let someone off that easy? Only slightly less hard nosed is when they start reducing their opening price before you show any interest in what they are offering, much less muster the energy to haggle. You haven’t even made like you were cared and they are already diving for rock bottom prices. Special prices. Morning prices. Evening prices. Friend prices. All prices swooping towards cost just to get you to react.
Clearly Tony Robbins or some other self-improvement sales technique specialist would make a killing here teaching folks to be closers. Maybe a little hard sell Glengary Glenross attitude is in order, though I am afraid I would be tempted to use the set of second place steak knives on vendors more pushy than the ones here already.