Hmm...I am not, by nature, a sexy person. I'm confident about my brain, quite possibly some talents, but sexy...nah. Really, I wouldn't know where to begin, and really, I'd be the last person to advise anyone on how to be charming, sexy, or just generally capture someone's eye. However, this one time, back in school, I was somehow miraculously able to call upon these abilities to help a younger student deal with a problem that had been affecting our entire journalism class for years.
We had this one group of guys who would always harass my reporters when we tried to sell our paper. It was student run, and I had been the editor-in-chief for a long time. It came with a lot of non-writing/non-editing responsibility, including organizing the sales, etc. All of my staff were younger than me, but the group who did the harassing were in my year, and generally had been jerks since my first day as a humble reporter. They were more or less led by a guy who had bullied me since we were little, and I kind of thought the others got messed with because they were my staff.
They would always say the same thing. First they would ask how much the paper cost? My reporter would tell them $1.25, then the jerk leader would say, "oh that's too much, but I'll give you a quarter for it." We couldn't accept that, so no sale. Then the table would laugh at the embarrassed reporter as they walked away.
On this one occasion, after putting up with their crap for the greater part of four years, I had had enough. I was sitting on the stage in our auditorium/lunchroom, and had my reporters making their sales. We had already sold out one box, and most of the other, but there were a handful left...just enough.
I picked one of my freshmen who hadn't ever sold before, a blonde girl who, though tall and pretty, didn't know she was attractive at all. Just the lead jerk's type, though. I handed the pile to her and told her to take them over to the jerk table, BUT not before giving her a script. I told her to ask them if they would like to buy a paper. I explained that he would ask how much. Then, I told her to say this, "well usually it's $2, but for you, I'll make it $1.75." (They were still only $1.25.) She was so nervous, but for some reason I was confident about the plan. The worst I thought might happen is that she would have to negotiate down to the actual selling price. We practiced it a couple of times, first with me being her. I even showed her how to smile coyly, make your voice just a little bit flirty, and flash him a grin with a side hip tilt. Buoyed by my confidence, my reporter headed off to the table.
The rest of us watched from the stage, as she approached with sloped shoulders. Once she got there, though, she picked up steam. I'm not a lip reader, but I could see from my position that the jerks were saying the very thing I knew they would say, and my reporter even copied the grin with the hip tilt to perfection! One minute later, my reporter returned. She had followed my instructions to the letter, sold every last copy to every jerk at that table, and all of it overcharged at $1.75. Ha!
Henceforth, my blondie got a little more confident, and the rest of my staff thought I was a sales god. I've never tried anything like it since, though, and still have no idea what possessed me!
