Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Negotiation Tips From a Garage Sale King

I just found a Q&A from U.S. News and World Report with Aaron LaPedis, the so-called "garage sale millionaire" who writes a monthly column for the Denver Post. You can click here to read the entire article, but I found his comments on negotiation at a garage sale interesting. I'm including that section below.


What are your strategies for pricing items?

I believe getting the other person talking starts to bring down the barriers. So anything under $15, I don't believe in pricing it. If there's no price, they're going to ask, "How much is this item?" and your follow-up would be, "What are you willing to pay for it?" They will come back to you with an amount of money and that's where you can start negotiating.

A lot times when you don't price items, you may get more than what you were hoping for, but this way, guaranteed, it will trigger a conversation between you and the buyer. Most of everybody's yard-sale stuff is under $15, so it's usually time-consuming to price all those little things. Now, if you have items above $15 to $20, you want to price it because people will offer you a lot less than what you're going to want.

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