Retirement sale update


A yellow postcard arrived in the mail today with the following message:

Congratulations on your decision to play FUN & GAMES AND PRIZES TOO! You may win one of the great prizes now on display at the store. Come back soon and often to score your DAILY FREE POINTS -- and bring your friends.
...
Remember there are FREE POINTS every day just for coming to the store. Tell your friends and neighbors about our sale. Ask them to add their points to your FUN & GAMES player number 268.

Present this card by JUN 04 2007 for 25,000 FREE POINTS!

And down at the bottom:

© Wingate Sales Solutions Inc 1999

Over at the Wingate web site, you can find out a lot about how to hold a liquidation sale. A consultant comes in and runs the sale for you, with the aim of getting as much merchandise out the door with as little markdown as possible. It's a Kansas-based business that lists testimonials mostly from the south and midwest. (My favorite quote: "I trusted [my Wingate consultant] from the beginning and never felt that trust misplaced. Even when I knew I was being managed, I didn't mind because he did it with such intelligence, charm and good manners.")

The best feature of the site is the multiple-choice "BizQuiz" you can take to determine if you need Wingate's services to reinvigorate your business (assuming you're not there to investigate the "Store Closing" package). "My key employees know that: (a) They can count on bonuses. (b) I need sales growth. (c) Payroll expense is too high. (d) They may be the next to go." Every single question is pre-selected to (d).

They say that salesmen are born, not made. Even if our local Wingate sale-runner is a low-rent version of the breed, relegated to pushing Jay-Jay the Jet Plane and Bristle Blocks, he's still doing something that I could never do -- and maintaining his energy and enthusiasm all the while. I respect that. And I'll probably go back in and claim my 25,000 FREE POINTS! before Jun 04 2007.

Posted: Wed - May 30, 2007 at 07:11 PM         |

©