A Garage Sale Business Can Be Profitable!

Organizing Garage Sales Can be Profitable!

Need extra money? Especially during the recession, organizing a garage sale business, at your home on weekends, especially during the summer, can be a profitable, low risk way to start a home-based business, and get extra income. Besides selling your unwanted, excess, or unused items (but that’s a good place to start), you can buy wholesale merchandise from wholesale companies that cater in part to people selling at garage sales.

The great American garage sale, also known as a yard sale, rummage sale, moving sale, or block sale, is quickly becoming more than a place to find or get rid of old, unused, household junk. Because of the recession and to save money, many smart shoppers are shunning department stores, shopping malls, and the Internet, and turning to garage sales to meet most of their material needs.

On any summer weekend, take a drive through any American suburb, residential neighborhood, for example, around Portland Oregon, San Francisco, New York, Miami, and you will see what I mean. People are loving garage sales all over America. There, you can find anything from household items for 50 cents each to appliances like a television and refrigerator, other household furnishings, such as sofas, dinning room table sets, even valuable collectables, at a small fraction of the price found shopping downtown.

Setting Up the Sale

Use the driveway as the main selling area, then the front porch, lawn, or other parts of the front yard as needed. Use tables as much as possible to display your items. Keep different types of merchandise clean and separate from each other. For example, keep clothing like shirts, jackets together, and clothing should be on cloths hangers and racks. Glass wear, pottery, etc. should all be together, and so on. Maintain clear traffic isles. The better your sale looks and the more you have out, the more people will stop to see what you have!

Garage Sale Pricing

Most people come to this type of sale in search of bargains. So give them bargains! It depends on what you are selling, but for larger articles, for example: a three-man dome tent, good condition, try selling for 1/4 the original value. Use the same pricing for such things as a washer or dryer, dinning room table set. Be careful! Don’t sell something, then later regret selling it. Sell only merchandise you won’t mind selling, stuff that you just want to move out. Most used shirts sell for $1-2; same with old pants (except jeans, sell for more depending on its condition); glass wear 50ยข to $1.

If you try purchasing from wholesale companies with the intention of reselling it at your sale, fine. But make sure you can sell it at a price that will give you a good profit. It takes some experience. Small flags for example, American flags, Mexican flags, other flags too, sell pretty well during certain times of the year or on holidays. Just make sure there is a good market for your purchases and shop only from a genuine wholesale supplier. You can go to my website (see link below) for a free list of genuine wholesale companies.

Put Out Lots of Signs

Place informative signs at strategic locations and intersections to direct people to your sale. A small, saw horse type sign, which you can easily make yourself, stands nicely and you can fold it up to be used another day. Or, you can use signs with wooden rods attached to push or pound into the dirt or a lawn. The more difficult it is to find your home, the more signs you will need to put out. Make them bold and colorful to attract more attention.

Advertise

You can place free Internet classified advertising listings on Craigslist.org and many local news publications allow free classified ads as well. Of course, the more signs, ads, fliers you put out there, the more traffic you will draw and the more $$$ of profits you will make! So, as in any small business enterprise, promote! promote!

Bob Thompson has been selling on eBay since the year 2000. He also has experience owning his own successful landscaping business and has college degrees in business and science. For more information o

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Sales Business – Top 4 Selling Mistakes to Avoid

Just like any business, the sales business needs to adapt to the new social and economic environment.

As customers become more difficult to influence, you have to come up with more effective sales techniques. As people start having less spare time, you have to be quicker to close sales.

The new times call for new and more influential methods for selling, such as NLP and covert hypnosis. They are more flexible to tailor to the individual prospect as well as more effective, as they are used to influence people psychologically and subconsciously.

Even if you use these methods, you are not safe from making sales business mistakes. That is why you should identify them and avoid them. This is what I will show you here, presenting some of the most serious mistakes a salesperson can make.

Building Rapport Using Technical Methods

You know that you have to tell a joke to “break the ice” between you and the prospect customer. This is an old and silly trick that will not work great today because it is pointless and time consuming. Furthermore, the joke may offend the prospect.

One effective way to build rapport is to use mirror imaging, a popular technique in NLP and covert hypnosis. Study the gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice of the prospect and do adopt them yourself.

You can readily use cross mirror imaging as well. For instance, if the prospect is touching his chin with his right hand, you can readily touch your chin with your left hand.

It is best to use the same language as the prospect for building rapport. For instance, business people use different jargon words and so do teenagers. Try to capture the jargon and reciprocate. This will help you immensely in your sales business.

Selling the Product Instead of Selling to the Prospect Customer

This is probably the worst mistake anyone in the sales business can make. You have to forget the phrase, “The product is selling itself”, for good.

It is all about the prospect, his needs and requirements. Your primary task in the sales process is to identify these factors and relate them to your product. You have to focus on the benefits the features will bring to the customer rather than on the features alone.

It is equally important to trigger positive emotions in the prospect and to make him associate these with the product. This is done with the use of NLP and covert hypnosis anchors. Flattering the person is also a good idea.

Asking Uncomfortable Questions that Give You No Valuable Selling Information

The question, “What do you need”, is impersonal and will not give you the amount of sales information you need. You have to use more subtle and psychologically influencing questions in your sales business.

Instead of this impersonal and formal question, you can readily ask, “What will help you get the desired outcome” or “How do you see the solution for your problem?”

Similarly, you are not a maintenance person or a health care professional in order to ask “What seems to be the problem?” You have to find a more influential question that will make the prospect feel comfortable and relaxed enough to share with you.

For example, you can ask, “What (in your business or fashion style) could be better?”

Using Words that Put Prospects off Buying

This is another one of the most serious mistakes in the sales business. The wrong words create wrong images in the prospect’s mind. In turn, these images put him off buying.

That is why you should always choose your words carefully. This is essential, when you use both NLP and covert hypnosis in your sales business.

One of the worst words to use is “cheap”. This word means “low price” as well as “low quality”. You can replace it with a range of more suitable words, such as “cost-saving”, “economic”, “cost-efficient” and even “practical”.

Another word that may produce the wrong impression is “buy”. Most people associate it with paying at the till. A superb word to use instead of this one is “own”.

You have just learned more about some of the most serious mistakes you can make in the sales business and how to avoid them. Use this knowledge to boost your sales and keep learning to become even more successful.

For the absolute best information on sales business [http://www.salestechniquesblog.com

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