QUOTE: "Less is more in sales"
 

Agree? Disagree?

Just watching something on TV that has said that, I dont know if I agree or not?

Help me decide :)

for actual selling something they are right. Too many salesman talk too much and talk themselves right out of a sale.

How about the political ads on TV? Makes me sick.. Fucking relentless. It ever ends!!! I'll vote for nobody!

Agree.

You need to push someone to the point where they feel they are the one deciding to make the purchase. Go too far and they realise you are forcing something on them and walk away.

I totally agree

It's true...
First rule of economics is that scarcity creates value.

It's the old paradox of water versus diamonds. We would be dead in less than a week without water but diamonds which have offer us nothing would couldn't live without out are worth thousands more.

It holds true in our industry as well. But even more so for another reason.
Most men object to directly paying for sex. And like in real life, they would rather NOT pay for porn in order to jerk off. (it ruins the fantasy)

But when they stumble across a woman that * excites them * .... Many (if not most) will go down right stupid in order to get her ! And in porn, they'll pay and they'll pay a lot more if there is only single source of her video.

Indifference (even contempt) towards the consumer seems to work ...

Yes, it transpired that it was actually the point that they were making. It was a company that sold blinds, and the sales guy was giving too many options.

Thing is though, I like options... But thats just me.

On the other hand, when I bought my sports car, and took it for a test drive, I was given a brand new guy to 'Sit In It' with me. Unfortualy though, he didn't know any of the specs, or answers to the questions I had while I was on the test drive...

I still bought it a month later, but I would have bought it right away, if I had had a more knowledgeable sales person to tell me what I wanted to know there and then... Instead of me having to hunt down the answers to things I was thinking of later on the internet, as opposed to at the time, in the car.

That would be why the opposite that came to mind when I heard it on the TV...

First trick in sales

" Listen to the Customer "

They will tell you what they want, what they can afford and or what they are willing to pay.

Second trick.

" Give the customer what he asked for " If you have set the situation up right, then sitting right next to what he asked for is the better version for a little more. Make sure to mention what the next option has but dont push it.

Rather a sale for the basic at 10$ than no sale for the loaded at 25$

It appears to me that the porn industry listened to the thousands of punters on the internet and started giving them what they "wanted" . And it worked so well that today most of them are going broke.

Sorry but the customer really knows what he wants in the most basic terms. After that it's up to good sales reps to teach him what he wants by making him want what we have to offer. Because if you listen to the customer too much you eventually end up giving away your stuff for free.

If you truely want to make any customer happy make sure that you treat the customer with politeness and respect. Then make a quality product and make sure that it's somewhat *rare* or *difficult* to get. This way his belief in the value of his purchase increases 10 fold in his mind.

Nearly right.

Ask an opening question, to get them talking about what they want.

CHURCH! :thumbsup

There is a difference between giving the customer what they want and GIVING the customer what they want.

Ask any customer if they would rather pay $50 for a Blu-ray player or get one for free and they will all take the free one. The problem with the porn business is that customers told us what they wanted and we gave them that and much, much more.

Everything I am saying below is only from my point of view. If I'm wrong.. I'm wrong and if I'm right I'm right. My comments here won't even pay for a cup of coffee.

Well I also think that the porn industry in america also made the big mistake of listening to the wrong people. I remember when the Internet started and suddenly anyone that looked at poor was getting a sympathetic ear.... Meaning very few people were taking the time to "qualify" who it was they were listening to. In short just because someone is a "consumer" of our product doesn't necessarily make them a "purchaser" of our product.

For me I only listen to 2 times of "consumers".

1. Customers who have purchased things from me in the past.
2. Potential customers... Meaning people with the money in their hands demonstrating a desire to buy.

If someone consumers my product but has never purchased my product and has absolutely no intention of ever paying for it... then to hell with them ! Why should I waste my time listening to them?

And this is where I think most american producers of porn made a big mistake. I look at the porn made in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and I would say most of it was great quality. But after the Internet took hold they started making videos that appealed to the mentalities of knuckle dragging misogynist idiots. Then before anyone knew it, the alienated their base purchaser and soon even the most loyal just stopped caring and buying.

Obviously we could discuss the downfall all night with all the mistakes that were made. But I think it's a dead issue and everyone should just focus on the future and how to win purchaser loyalty back.

I think you are right. People were listening to the wrong people. When I say that the customers told us what they wanted we were listening to the wrong customers. We should have paid attention to the ones who were buying and worked mostly to satisfy them and not listened to the ones that promised they would click our banner if we just gave them hours of free porn first.

There is an old expression that says " Take care of that which takes care of you."
But I think a lot of pornographers and performers were just looking for personal popularity.

Just to show how stupid this popularity game is and how dum it is listening to the "non paying fans".


My college (and sometimes business partner) films at least once a month a 46 year old women. She has no facebook account, no twitter account and her computer is apparently so old that it's still running windows 98. But as my partner put it, she's a unknown nobody that sells a lot of product.

Contrast that with some early 20s girl that he filmed twice. She has over 2000 friends on facebook and even more on twitter. She bragged to all her virtual friends and now both videos have been pirated so bad that now the pirates are searching not only for videos of the girl he filmed... But also other titles from his studio. Filming a "popularity princess" is now costing him money.

Personally I say " Do NOT listen to the fans". Instead listen to those who are actually buying.

It's very convenient to blame customers for your own problems, but the reality is pornographers did not give away porn for free because people were demanding it, they gave porn away for free because it was a simple and unimaginative way of competing with other pornographers.

Sadly i think you probably right on that being one of the reasons for free porn. sadly it was the dumbest thing anyone ever thought of doing. Even dumber that others decided to do it as well.

I remember when having to put a sticker on a magazine cover in order to "hide" the parts from the public. That sticker made the porn industry more money than some of the hotest girls ever photographed. The end result is that if you want to make good money... Give as little away as possible.

If a man see's a girl that turns him on and he can't get her any where else... he'll pay to see her. And it's surprising how much he will pay for his fantasy. You just got to make sure that he believes that it was worth ever cent he spent.

Indifference definitely works for some salespeople.

My wife's grandmother was a pretty successful jeweler and indifference was her core tactic.

There's this school of thought.

The main thing is to actually ask lots and lots of questions of your prospect. So you can get information that you can then ?use against them? when selling. So maybe sellers could call people up and say:

Where do you buy design from? What kind of design do you buy? What makes you decide which company to buy from? How often do you buy? What prompts your purchasing decision? Do you have an annual budget for design?

Then tell him you're better than where he buys from.

No the problem with this business was most who came into it didn't know how to sell, thought there was no need to pay for porn and thought getting 1,000s of people to look at a free image was the key to selling. :upsidedow

IOW we taught them not to pay.

We could turn it around but that would require alot of maturity and ability to cooperate. Sadly maturity and cooperation are big problems in the anlgosphere porn industry.

Now I'm not saying that the non-english pornograhers are saints. In fact the majority of non-english pornographers are god damn fucking assholes. (including me some days) In fact there are days I would prefer dealing with the worst united states slime bag pornographer instead of my closest business partner. (At least I would know where I stood with them. ) So please understand that all I'm saying is the problems are different.

Regardless of what language the porn is made in.. We have to figure out how to kill free porn and piracy. Until we do that, a second golden age will never happen.

Perhaps some of us should brainstorm on what it is we can control and how we can use that to our advantage ?

Good luck with the brainstorming.

Well when you do it alone it's just singing in the rain. Oh well.. such as it is.

You have to figure out that is impossible.

The problem when teaching selling is there are few basic rules. Yet talking less is good advice. All the rules have to be adapted either a little or a lot. Depending on the product, customer and situation.

Some customers have read the same books, been on the same courses or similar to the salesman sitting in front of him. Or had so many sitting in front of him he's wiser than him. In online porn this is often the case. The buying surfers are wiser than the affiliate or site owner about his needs or the niche.

So when selling online remember the guys who buy aren't novices. They are repeat buyers who are well clued up. They've seen the free samples, tours samples of 1,000s of sites and members areas of 10s of sites. Maybe as many as 100. This guy is clued up so treat him accordingly.

No it's not. I don't believe that at all.

What it will take is enough people getting tired of being told it can't be done to turn into the fight. Look at Adult King and his crew. 3 months and he's created havoc in the pirate world.


To this effect you've stumbled upon part of the reason I'm on this site. I'm looking for others that are willing to at least start looking into tackling the piracy and free porn problem.

Now if you want to throw your hands up in the air and say it's impossible. Then that's certainly your right to do so. But you shouldn't try to discourage or stand in the way of others that want to try

I agree.
Sales ultimately come down to respect, making a quality product and setting goals and limits.

El pasado es pasado

So true. Another angle on this is going to a restaurant that has far too many items on the menu. It's too hard to pick something when you're hungry!

Exactly, fewer quality items, focused, people will pay more. Not a bad way to run a business :)