It’s very simple to keep your prices fair to you and to the customer, but you’ll notice that people will try to beat you down just to see if you’ll give way, and most jewelry crafters do give way and lower their prices down to almost nothing, just to see the customer smile and nod and walk away, knowing they’ve had you.
The thing to do to prevent being beaten down for a bargain price is to establish your prices in the first place, and keep them rigid — HARDEN your price list, and KEEP THE FAITH.
What I mean is, look at the sign that announces your prices, point to the sign, say to the customer, “Those are my prices. I’ll give you ten percent off if you buy this today.”
Special fair prices are okay, but PRINT THEM, don’t tell the prices verbally, because then they can change — the customer sees vulnerability there and moves in for the kill, so you must anticipate this by PRINTING your price list and if possible, photographing a few models with your creations and using them in a flyer, announcing your great SALE prices, but that’s as low as you go.
If you leave yourself wide open as a target for bargaining and discussion and rationale and mental one-ups and emotional jumps, you won’t have a good experience. “It ain’t me that decides the price” is the concept that you hold in your mind as the sale proceeds. Never be the one who determines price, or you’ll lose the ballgame.
FEAR of REJECTION is what causes you to lower your prices when you KNOW you shouldn’t, and it’s a fact that lowering your price won’t change the sale. It’ll happen if it’s going to happen, and it won’t if it isn’t. If the sale isn’t “Meant to Happen”, it won’t happen, and if it is MEANT to happen, it will. Stay confident, even if you aren’t. Never let them see you sweat.
Sounds horribly Existential, but it isn’t, and that’s not the right interpretation of Existentialism anyway. It’s impossible to believe it, but there’s nothing YOU can do to alter the FACT of the sale, determining whether the sale happens or not … but wait … there IS something you CAN DO, if you’re ABLE to do it, which is doubtful.
HEISNERIZE IT.
And yes, I coined that phrase back in 1967 in the LA Free Press, in an article for Arthur Kunkin and Chester Anderson. It was published again in Chester’s weekly witchcraft rag, Tuesday’s Child, a copy of which can set you back $10,000 if you happen to have one of the dozen or so issues that actually went out on the street, peddled by the same kids that sold the FREEP — L.A. Free Press.
Back in the early days of radio and electronics, almost 200 years ago, at the early part of the 19th century, Thomas Young performed the so-called “Double-Slit Experiment” or “Interference Experiment”, in which photons are shot at a non-passing “stopping” plate that has in it two slits, side by side, apart just a little.
When you watch the experiment, the photons behave like particles. When you don’t directly observe the experiment, the photons behave like waves.
On top of that, particles tend to go through both slits, meaning that they are in two places at the same time, which is bilocation. They are also quantum-entangled, since they are the same thing in two places at once.
When there is no detector involved in the experiment, no direct observer, the photons behave like a wave, producing interference patterns, as you’d expect from any decently behaving wave, but as soon as the experiment is observed live, which means placing a detector AFTER the splitting event, the photons behave like particles.
What happens is that as soon as a photon detects the detector, it goes back in time and causes itself to behave like a particle, right from the get-go.
This is the basic phenomenon that led to Quantum Mechanics.
The Double-Slit Experiment still works when the Atomic Mass Units are at 10,000 — 810 atoms — and it’s highly probable that Human Body Bi-Location will be solved by human scientists over the next ten to twenty years if all goes well, and why should things all of a sudden go well???
HEISNERIZE IT. But what does that mean?
According to Heisner, Observation Changes the Thing Observed. One of the most basic rules of magic, it is also the very foundation of Objective Consciousness, about which we’ll be talking a lot as we explore the world of Stone Age Jewelry.
OBSERVE THE SALE as an alien would observe life on Earth, dispassionately but with high interest and attention, not relating to the local concepts of money and domination, but taking part in the action as an interested observer.
USE YOUR SPECIAL ATTENTION.
Simple ordinary attention, even very intense observation, won’t do the job. Ordinary attention will get you nowhere. Ordinary Attention does not HEISNERIZE — doesn’t change the situation, alter the reality. but SPECIAL ATTENTION does Heisnerize the action, and will change the outcome.
How do you use Special Attention?
First you have to know EXACTLY what it is. Only then can you learn to activate it and place it on an action scene, event or situation. Direct Observation is the only way to do it, and the only way I know of to learn it is through a series of Action Cycles that naturally and easily creates the necessity for Special Attention.
Special Attention can be mastered through the Stone Age Jewelry Projects. We’ll be talking about Special Attention and Heisnerizing this weekend at the ICW at 6:30 AM PST.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby