Market Conversations

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

They say experience is having accomplished the same routine task in every conceivable situation.  In the context of outdoor markets, an experienced salesman has sold products in pleasant weather, wind, rain, freezing cold, snow, on holidays, without the change box, without the credit card reader, while hungry, while stuffed, while feeling sick, during family weddings, during birthday parties, with plenty of inventory, with almost nothing in stock, with wonderful customers, with jerks, with heavy competition and little competition, with a feeling of accomplishment and with a feeling of defeat, and so on and so forth through every possible variation life has to offer.

I consider myself experienced in the outdoor market arena.  Through the years I’ve noticed patterns that are invisible to clientele and painfully obvious to the marketers themselves.  My favorite pattern is that of the market conversations taking place as commerce bustles in the background.

The most obvious conversations happen between customer and salesman.  In this scenario the salesman has had the same discussion with everyone who approaches the booth, while the chat is new territory to the customer.  Most of the time after only a few words the salesman can predict with extreme accuracy where the discussion will lead.  The pause to listen is purely one of courtesy. 

Questions are often my favorite.  Following are a few examples:

Customer: “Beef, huh?  What do you sell?”

Me: “I sell beef.”

Customer: “Clarion Farms?  Where are you from?”

Me: “I’m from Clarion.”

Customer: “When are you here?”

Me: “I’m here every Saturday.”

Customer: “Will you be here next Saturday?”

Me: “Yes.  That falls into the category of ‘every’.”

People ask if I remember what they bought weeks and months prior.  I do not.

I spend time at my friend’s apple booth and I’m floored by how many people ask if the apples are gluten free.

The same apple friend stores his harvest so he can sell apples all winter long and into the spring.  In April, people ask if the apples are fresh picked.

Questions, of course, are augmented with conversation.  It’s obvious when a courteous “hello” is inadequate for a pedestrian and they cannot help but feign interest so as not to hurt the feelings of the person doing the selling.  After a perfunctory greeting they press on with the bewildered urgency of a driver in a hurry with no destination in mind.

I’ve learned that when a customer reads my signs aloud there will be no sale.  The situation goes like this:

“Wow!  Let’s see… Delmonico-flanksteak-skirtsteak-chuckroast-tiproast-sirloinflap-NewYorkStrip-tbone-porterhouse-filetmedallion-baseballsteak-brisket-shortribs-shank-eyeofroundroast-groundbeef-hotdogs-flatiron and *gasp* cube steak! Gosh!  Let me go and check my freezer.  I’m sure I’ll need something.”

They never need anything.

People love to say that they’ll be back.  It’s a cushioned blow for the salesman; a polite way to convey that they certainly have no intent of buying anything ever.  I remember my cousin telling me that he was appalled when a flea market vendor responded bluntly to his promise to return by saying “No, you won’t.”  My cousin asked if I could believe how rude the salesman was.  I asked my cousin if he returned to the booth to purchase the cookware he’d examined.  He didn’t.  Was the salesman rude for being correct?  He’d had the unfruitful “I’ll be back” conversation a million times, but it was brand new territory for my cousin.

This is the same reason I’ve stopped carrying business cards.  People use them as a method to get away from having to purchase anything.  By compulsion they stop and ask me a million questions.  By intuition they realize after all the questions it is appropriate to make a purchase.  By default they never intended to buy beef.  So they see the card as a replacement for the sale, a physical object they can collect and carry off instead of admitting they really were just making use of the oxygen in my vicinity by drumming up some robust conversation.  I tell people now that I am the business card: If they are interested, they can find me at exactly the same time and place with reliable consistency.  Many are flabbergasted.  But what is the point of buying cards that people won’t use anyway?  I have a stack of accumulated business cards in my office that I’ve never once referenced, and I can’t recall a situation with my friends where someone asked for advice and the response came in the form of a business card someone had collected and saved for just such a moment as this.  Everyone searches with their phone.

Conversations between marketers themselves have a different cadence altogether.  These are conversations between friends that are perpetually fragmented due to interruptions from customers.  The pace has to be slow, sometimes dragging a story out over the course of several days as a thread is lost and then remembered and picked up again under different circumstances.  We share the news and tell the stories at a pace much slower than Instagram.

With all this experience, certainly I am the model customer when the roles are reversed, right?  Not a chance.  Within seconds I find myself spluttering through what I realize is a question so monumentally stupid that I know I’ll be mocked upon departure, so I ask for a business card and assure my return, then run to the car for safety.