The Story Makes the Sale

In the last couple of weeks, I have been reviewing various ads and listings for a new trumpet. Well, maybe not a new trumpet, but a “new to me” type of situation.

A pattern that I have seen among some of the older model instruments, which happens to be what I am interested in, is the person doing the listing will say something along the lines of, “these horns are more and more hard to find these days.”

What I find interesting about this is that the listing is always for an instrument that back in the day was mediocre when it was manufactured. Nothing special about it, essentially the equivalent of a Toyota Corolla as far as trumpets go.

So you can see how these people doing the listings are going after the angle of scarcity, but how many people do you see scouring the Internet for used Fords? Those are things that people settle for when they have nothing else to drive.

No one says, “These Ford Tauruses are more and more rare these days…” Of course they are, because they’re nothing special, and were never intended to be anything special.

But when you add a story to that which is mediocre, you get the opportunity to really make the sale.

Case in point, I knew a guy when I lived in Washington State who had a very middle of the road vehicle. I believe it was a 15 year old Mercury Sable, but I don’t remember exactly. What made this particular car unique is that he purchased this otherwise forgettable vehicle from the person who had recently been arrested for a string of serial killings in the area. He was known as the “Green River Killer,” and he was known to hide his victims’ bodies in the trunk of his car!

The purchase was obviously made several years before the arrest, and before this person’s identity was linked to the killings, so my friend had no idea what he was doing, or what may have been in the trunk at one time when he bought the car.

But that’s quite the story!

When my friend realized there was this notoriety attached to his vehicle, he listed it on eBay. eBay got wind of what was going on, and unsurprisingly pulled the ad. But at the time the ad was pulled, the bids were as high as $15k. This is in the 2003 timeframe, so you can do the math with inflation. In today’s dollars that would be between $20-25,000.

For a 15 year old car that would ordinarily sell for a tenth of that.

People in their twisted minds wanted to own a piece of local legend for lack of a better term. And my friend, to his credit told me and the others around when he shared the story that he never would have sold it, i.e. make a profit off the misfortune of others. He just wanted to see what would happen by listing it on eBay.

And maybe the “winning” bidder would have had second thoughts before actually shelling out the cash. I guess we’ll never know.

I realize that this is a sordid topic to make a point, but you can see how the story is what drove the sale, or should I say drove the perceived value of the vehicle.

These guys selling these instruments that, let’s face it, have never risen above the level of “mediocre”, could learn something from this.

Find a story that is linked to that particular brand of instrument maybe the famous trumpet player once did something amazing in a concert. Their normal trumpet got lost in transit, and they had to use some thing available at the local high school, which was this particular brand.

That’s a good story, and would boost both the perceived value of the instrument, as well as the likelihood of actually selling it!

I could probably go on and on about this, but this is a bit of food for thought for this Sunday morning.

Remember the story makes the sale!