If there were a record for selling the most ballpoint pens in the shortest time to American restaurants, I would probably hold it.

This was one of my part-time jobs in graduate school, along with college teaching. In fact, it was this work that enabled me to make payments on a sparkling sports car during that time, making me a rare visage among my academic peers.

The pen-selling story is worth telling because it demonstrates an amazing, simple, and powerful point about increasing your sales.

When I was trained, I sat next to a guy who was pitching pens to bakeries, a gross, or twelve-dozen pens at a time. The most common objection he heard was Hey, thats too manyI cant use that many!

So, hed cut back the offer to six-dozen and then to three-dozen, of course, cutting his commissions along the way.

I decided to do things differently. I figured restaurants use a lot of pens, losing many to grabby or otherwise preoccupied customers. But I also determined that if I went in with a bigger initial offer, theyd cut me back, but Id end up at a higher volume than my mentor who was selling to bakeries.

Sure enough, I offered restaurant owners two small boxes of pens, with a gross in each. When they said I was overloading them, I replied, Fine. No problem. Lets cut that in half to just one small box, ok?

It worked like a charm.

I became the ballpoint pen king of the crew.

Do you want to double your sales in the blink of an eye? Start with a bigger order, and then, generously offer to cut it back. Youll appear cooperative, and youll surpass your sales if you went in with more modest amounts.

One more thing: Every now an then, your prospects will seize your initial offer, and you wont have to cut it down, at all!