Earning $4,200 per Hour

I want to talk about getting results.

 

This is real, and it’s extremely valuable to you.

 

The Experience: Earning $700 in 10 minutes.

 

There is one preface to this story. It’s a quote from one of my role models, one of the successful men of all time.

 

“A penny saved is a penny earned.” – Ben Franklin

 

If you are going to make a purchase and you save $700, then you have effectively earned that money in the process.

 

This story starts outside Boston, down the red line, in one of the outskirts of the city. There, I was checking out a personal development camp with a good friend of mine. We were completely sold on the quality of the program but one thing held us back.

 

The Price: $545

 

Holy ****. I definitely didn’t want to pay it. Walking up to the man in charge, I asked if we could get some kind of discount. Initially he rambled on about how normally they didn’t give discounts. (This is normal and should be completely ignored) Then he mentioned how maybe, just maybe, because we were college students, he would help us out.

 

Here was where I made my first victory, but also blunder. He asked me what price I was considering and I said roughly half price ($250) would be perfect.

 

He closed his eyes for a second (pretending to do some math) and then said that $250 was impossible and that $300 was the lowest he could go. This is why mentioning $250 was my first mistake (concealed as a victory perhaps).

 

I gave him a ballpark of what I was able to pay, and he then knew that he could raise the bar slightly without eliminating my purchase to buy. Naming my price first was good at knocking $245 off the price of the ticket, but in doing so I had locked myself in to paying a large sum of money for the event!

 

He now knew I could afford the $200-$300 range.

 

Leaving the venue, I felt successful. I had just knocked $245 off of both my and my friends ticket! That was roughly $500 saved in just a matter of minutes. Why was everyone else paying the full price again?

 

Falling asleep that night, I felt good. I had just saved my friend over $200. But as I lay there… I knew I could do better.

 

The next day I called the man back to seal the deal, but unfortunately, there was an issue for him. I was able to get my $300 but my friend was unable to scrape together the cash. I could do the deal today, and pay him $200 per ticket for a grand total of $400, or we could try to pull together some cash over the coming weeks.

 

I can go into greater detail in another blog post, but basically what happened was that he realized that as time went on, he had less and less chance of making the deal happen. Hoping to make some money from the transaction he agreed to $200 per ticket.

 

One note: All salespeople know that every day a deal goes without closing leads to the likelihood of the deal occurring to become smaller and smaller. With my vague speech about ‘pulling some money together over the next three weeks’ he knew that the deal was either happening now or not happening at all.

 

With my debit card already on the table, he couldn’t let the chance of a sale slip though his fingers.

 

The Takeaway: Negotiation is Powerful!

 

Through a little negotiation, I was able to save $345 not only for my ticket but also for my friends as well. This was about $700 in about 10 minutes of talking.

 

Think of that in perspective….. If you earn $10 per hour, it would take you 70 hours, nearly 2 weeks of work, to earn that money. Within 10 minutes I was able to keep myself from having to pay that vast sum.

 

$400 for two tickets is a much better deal than $545 for one. All because of a little negotiation I was able to save my friend and I a lot of money!

 

The One Lesson: Ask. Then Shut Up!

 

If there is one lesson I’ve learned through negotiation, it’s that if you want a good deal you need to ask and you need to be serious when you ask.

 

Ask. Then shut up. What is very common to do is to ask, see the surprised look on the sellers face, and then quickly feel bad about asking for such a low price. You need to stay put.

 

Was going down to $300 crazy? He sure made me feel like it was. But when I called in and offered $200 the next day he accepted. The night before he had explicitly said $250 and even $275 was entirely impossible.

 

By simply asking for $200, and then letting him do the hard thinking (do I lose this sale or not?) I gave him the opportunity to accept. Because it was an event where every empty seat is money not made, he accepted.

 

Ask. Then shut up. It was worth $700 to me and can be useful to you in any number of situations.

 

I Want to Help You!

 

Buying something big in the near future?

 

I want to help you save a ton of money. (Just like I did)

 

Leave a comment or email me at nico@nicojannasch.com and I’ll help you save as much money as I can on anything you want to buy.

 

This could save you hundreds in minutes.