Make more sales with the Puppy Dog Close
26 Jan 2009
If you sell products, maybe you have some quantity of stock sitting around waiting to be sold? If you provide a service – maybe you have some spare capacity right now? If you do, maybe you could consider using the puppy dog close?
Rumour has it that the first person to use this technique was a pet shop owner in California. He used to get so many people visiting his pet shop who loved looking at the puppies and playing with them, but only a very few were sold. Then he came up with a cunning plan.
As soon as a parent with children came into the store and started looking at the puppies, he would approach them and say, “Sir (or Madam), I really cannot sell you a puppy today. Sometimes they get on famously with a new owner and sometimes it can be a real disaster. Sometimes they get on great with kids like yours and sometimes they don’t. Tell you what I’ll do though. I’ll let you take this little fellow home for a few days and you can see if he fits in and gets on with everybody. If he doesn’t you just bring him back. Would you like to do that?”
The kids would scream “Mummy, mummy – can we do that please!” and mummy could hardly ever say no. Nor could she ever bring the puppy back again!
The same technique was used to sell colour televisions when they first came out. The store owner would approach people who were looking at this ‘new fangled’ TV and say to them – “you really should not even think about buying one of these today. We think that a lot of people react adversely to the colour pictures and get headaches and such like. Rather than risk buying it and having have that happen, why don’t we lend you one for a few days and see how you get on with it?” Of course once the neighbours had been in to see the new colour TV, nobody ever wanted to say to their neighbours that they had sent it back.
Maybe you can adopt this technique in some way or another to your product or service? Many of my clients have in the past with a great deal of success. And when you think about it, it’s really not a lot different to offering a customer or client a guarantee that if they are not satisfied, they can simply bring it back or get a refund for your services. It’s just a different way of doing it and in the current climate – it pays to be different!