Salesmanship 101 from a 16 Year Old

I'm not trying to criticise your clients, but if it's going to accompany the pudding, a nice bottle of white might have been more appropriate? I'm just saying ...

Thanks for the input, everyone.

My kiddos amaze me all the time with their insights. They are very smart kiddos.

Simple lesson, but very powerful.

That's a great story. I love it.

Will

That was something I was quite perturbed about when a repair guy had come to the house before! LOL

The fact that my son used that as part of his argument was (IMHO) awesome.

As people are fond of saying, "Business is business." Just because he was my son didn't mean I would have just given him the job.

Maybe that sounds mean, but he's not a 5 year old. He's 16. He needs to learn that he needs to fight (for lack of a better word) for someone's business. Even mine. I already had chosen a company to do the work. He was trying to lure me away from them.

Someone else suggested that I could have had him do it for free. Yes, I could have, but he does a lot of other stuff around the house as part of chores, and that kind of yard work isn't part of the norm. (I don't think this is the place for my childrearing philosophy. Maybe I can put that in the OT section. )

I have entrepreneurial kids. (The older ones are, anyway.) I like to think my way of raising them has had a hand in creating that mindset.

LOL I did!

But in all truth, he did his best right off the bat. He made his own self-imposed deadline, too.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Don't let him hear you!

Selling on price is the death nell of any business. In my bricks and mortar business people come into our market all the time and the first thing they do is sell cheap - guess what happens they disappear very quickly. I believe in a fair price for a fair job and if anybody ever asks for a discount I just so NO go elsewhere. People appreciate that any business needs to make a profit or whats the point. We are not charities.

Now there is a difference in being cheap and being competitive.

What your son did was classic. He demonstrated that his price was competitive but he added value - " Done today" - "No mess" etc

We add value by including products and services which intrinsically cost us very little but have a perceived high value and we always sell packages not individual products. We can demonstrate that the package has a much greater value at a more competitive price than the individual products. If someone does insist on an individual product then thats fine as we have made even more margin but as we all know its much easier to sell more products to a current buyer than to get a new customer.

Well done to your son it sounds like he has a great future as he has alreday grasped some fundamental principles of business.

Thanks for all the comments.

I want to elaborate on my decision to hire my son, since it's come up a few times.

I talk about business stuff all the time to my kids. I use terms like profits, commissions, upsells, ROI, etc.

When we're out, I point out marketing messages. When the cashier suggests a bigger meal size or that you can buy one and get a second item half price, I point out what they're doing.

The very first biz lesson I gave the kids was when they were fairly young.

I bought one of the 10 pack of snack size candy bars. That was when you could get 10 in a pack for a dollar. (Now you get eight for $1.25, but that's another story...)

I took the candy bars out of the package and set them out on the table. I asked if they thought that paying a quarter for each one would be fair. They said they thought that would be fine. I then explained that if you bought the whole pack, it would only cost you a dollar. However, if somebody only wanted one they would be happy to pay $.25 so that they could have one. If you sold all 10, you would have paid one dollar and you would have made $2.50.

Best of all, everybody is happy. You made the investment to buy 10 of them. Your customers felt that $.25 for just getting one was fair. You make $.15 profit for each one you sell.

I also explained commissions. If you buy candy bars for $.10 apiece, and you pay somebody five cents apiece when they sell one for you, you still make $.10 profit even after paying your salesperson.

It's one of the simplest explanations that I have found when explaining business to small kids. It's using a product that they understand, it's a very simple explanation because they've all seen places where you could buy individual pieces of candy for a quarter, and they get to eat the demonstration pieces after you explain it.

My parents never talked to me about money. They never knew anything about business. Consequently, it took a while working in businesses and managing businesses to learn stuff. There was a huge learning curve.

I sincerely hope that by talking to my kids about business and making it a natural part of their lives instead of just something that they study in a book once they get to college, they will naturally think about entrepreneurship.

So far it seems to be doing well. They both have business things that they work on, and they both are developing a very business oriented mindset.

They aren't going to learn this kind of thing in school. It's up to us to teach our kids about business.