What Two Minute Noodles taught me about selling

I used to live in a town in Canterbury New Zealand.?(shout out to Rangiora!)

I was a single mother and had three young girls. Life was pretty tough.

I used to struggle with making ends meet and I really struggled to have anything there for me once I’d paid the bills.?

Luckily there wasn't a lot of temptation around. There weren't that many shops were we lived and there certainly wasn’t that many shops that had great clothes that I loved.?

Then one day I went into the town and discovered there was a new clothing store? on High Street.?

I have just lost quite a lot of weight and was wanting to feel myself again and reclaim a little bit of my own personal style. I decided this was an excellent opportunity to go try some clothes on and see if I could find what I might look like if I stopped wearing my baggy shirts and track pants, (and magic wand suddenly appeared and I could buy something.)

I tried on a black dress that fit me to a T and made me feel fantastic. However it was also $230 which really wasn't what I could afford back then at all.? The shop assistant could see that I was very keen on this dress but I was not totally over the line.? She asked me what was holding me back and I explained that it was a bit too much money for me to be able to afford? right now and I struggle to make ends meet for a couple of weeks if I bought it.

?At this point I was still managing to remember that this was just a window shopping trip, but I was a very close to losing that control.

The shop assistant could obviously see that I was wavering. When she discovered I was holding back as it was a little out of my budget, she had another question for me. it was this:

“What about if you just gave your children 2-minute noodles and baked beans for two weeks?”

For a moment I wavered. I weighed up my responsibilities as a parent, my desire to be fiscally responsible, and then, I looked at myself in the mirror, made eye contact with the shop assistant ? and said in a tone far more confident than I felt, “ I'll take it!”

?Let me tell you about that dress. I loved that dress so much. I wore it so often it got holes in it. I was so sad the day I had to finally say goodbye to it. Was it sensible for me to give my children the cheapest food I could lay my hands on for two weeks so I could get that dress?? Possibly not.

But I can tell you this. That shop assistant did a magical thing that day when she convinced me to buy that dress. She removed my objections,? she found a way for me to get a solution,? and she got herself a sale.

(As an aside, I held a lot of mother guilt for this behaviour for years. My children all first heard this story at one of my events as teens, and all were quite put out that I hadn’t done this more often. Not so I could have more dresses, but because they really use to love two minute noodles for dinner and they were considered junk food in our home!)

Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist and owner of?Identify?where we help small business owners develop a marketing strategy and action plan for their business. This newsletter is based around ideas in her new book MAP IT Marketing coming out in 2022. You can also check out her?podcast?here