A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Washington, DC, to do some consulting for a group I’m working with to help them focus their marketing efforts. Lorie and I decided to go up a few days early and spend the weekend visiting museums and seeing the sights, which are amazing in our capital.

On Sunday morning we decided to go to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. On the way from the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at, we walked through Dupont Circle, which was holding its weekend Farmer’s Market. We weren’t going to buy fruits and vegetables because we wouldn’t be making dinner, but we thought we might get some food for lunch and we were not disappointed.

There were vendors selling the usual vegetables, but there were also people selling crisp autumn apples and the most incredible Asian pears. There were vendors selling all kinds of cheeses, breads, and pastries.

Also, there was a vendor selling soap, not ordinary deodorant soap, but about 50 different scented soaps. There was French lavender, cherry chocolate truffle, honeysuckle, lemongrass, and a multitude of other samples lined up in a row that you could smell and decide which was your favorite. Once you chose which one you liked, they would cut a 1 inch wide bar of your selection from a large piece of soap.

There were a few things this vendor did exceptionally well that you might want to consider in your own business, even if you don’t sell soap.

Help your prospect interact with your product. All of the vendor’s soap samples were prominently displayed so that he could pick them up and hold them in his hand while breathing in their scent. There were quite a few people in front of the booth, all smelling the soaps and deciding which ones they liked best.

When I asked the sales clerk for the price, she told me that the soaps were $6.25 each, but you could buy 3 for $17. For some reason, 3 for $17 sounded like a really good deal, but when I found out later, I only saved 58 cents a bar. Why do you think it is? The answer is that when you add 0.25 to the $6, it looks like more than when you leave it. You realize they left it out of the $17, so it seemed cheaper.

Now I bet even though I didn’t ask, I’m sure they had tried various price points. Remember that the only way to make more money is to charge more, make your customers buy more, or get more customers. Take a look at your own pricing structure and see which one works best for your business.

Also, you can join their frequent shopping club and get a free bar after you buy 10 bars. Can you do this in your business?

Another nice touch was that they added a few small samples of other scented soaps to your bag with your purchase so you could try a few different soaps later.

So what can you learn from them that you can incorporate into your own business? First, people like to interact with a product. They like to look at it, feel it, taste it, or even smell it, like soap.

People have five senses: hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste. And different people are more likely to respond with one meaning than another. That is why it is vitally important that when selling your product or service you incorporate the five senses in the sales process.

Does your prospect need to see what your product does? Does your potential customer need to touch the product to get an idea of ​​how it works? Does your prospect need product benefits and features explained? Does the prospect need to smell or taste the product before buying it?

While they were at the Farmer’s Market, other vendors were doing just that…providing samples of the food that people could try before they bought it. A cheese vendor was giving out samples of different types of cheese. There was a fruit vendor offering a sampling of different types of Asian apples and pears.

Now you may not have an edible product, but you can offer your potential customer a free trial of your product so they can start consuming it and see if it’s right for them. We sometimes call it a try-before-you-buy offer.

You can offer a money-back guarantee so consumers know they can try it out, and if it’s not what they thought, they can return it.

There is a lot you can learn from a soap salesman. How can you translate that into your business?