Selling

I need to sell my car because I'm now down here with all this public transportation available. It's been sitting unregistered and un-tagged in my parents' driveway for a year now (yeah, I should've sold it a while ago). The combo. of craigslist (daily posting), facebook marketplace, my sister's coworker network, and general word of mouth has produced a total of four inquiries after what I guess is over a month of advertising. One was from Canada (no thanks), one whose work status has changed from full to part time so they could no longer afford it, and the other two were friend and a neighbor who were both only "maybe" interested. I'm going to have to significantly reduce my price to sell, and finding someone online is way too unreliable according to scary accounts that I've read. I just want it gone now, so it's to the dealer for me.

Everyone I talk to instinctively says "oh, don't go to the dealer, you'll get screwed." Well, we'll see. The car's got a few problems, but I just put over $700 into it to fix things like rotors and brakes, so those bastards should give me some sugar. If I'd have known that selling would be such a bitch, I'd have saved that money.

I don't know if it's an instinctive or a learned thing, but I don't seem to have the natural ability to sell things. A couple years ago I set up a flea market table with someone, and the experience clearly told me that I had no natural ability to move merchandise. I would price cheap things way too highly and expensive things for pennies. I wouldn't chat up the walkers-by. More recently at the restaurant, I feel a sort of guardianship of my customers' wallets and don't upsell just for the sake of driving their checks up. When they ask for advice I offer the cheaper of two options. I can't help it.

I think the upside of this is that when I actually do believe in what I'm trying to push I'm very persuasive. When someone asks for a specific item or a choice btw. two, I give a very good and convincing reason for what I like. I think this might be an indicator that I might actually be good at selling once I find the bangin' sh**.

There was one guy at the restaurant who sold stuff for Quixtar and he was a natural born salesman. I sat down one day and listened to him break down the diffferent types of people and how to sell to them. It was fascinating. He told me his strategies for how to read people on the spot and deal with them a certain way. Now, talking to different people differently is natural. All the time I catch myself saying to one table with big smile "Thank you very much, everyone have a wonderful evening," then literally turn around, put on a casual sly friendly expression and say "'night, guys." But this guy he had a whole set of theory behind it. But when we got to talking - briefly - about specific products I didn't get the sense that he was that especially discerning about what was good or bad. He seemed Bullish about what he thought could make some money. I genuinely admire his sales charisma and his ability to push things, but I don't think I could pull it off. Not for me.