Trent Gillaspie

Interesting article from upstate New York gives some great ways to get an additional discount on your holiday shopping to keep Santa alive for the kiddies.

Many retail stores will allow salespeople and managers to make price adjustments. All you need to do is be nice, charming, and don’t get frustrated if they’re not willing to budge. Below are five ways that you can take advantage of a holiday discount that others may not get.

1. You’re a repeat customer. Tell them, “Don’t forget to add in that frequent shopper discount. Just check my credit card account.”

2. You’re buying something in bulk. “Hey, with 37  George Foreman Grills, you get another 10% off, right?”

3. You’re buying the last one of something or it’s a floor sample. “You’re going to give me another 15% off because other people have used this toilet, right?”

4. You decide to buy more than you really need. “I only have to buy one new kidney, but I’m getting two. That ought to be worth a little discount.”

5. You could buy it elsewhere. “I could get this exact same washer and dryer at Burger King (or appropriate retail store) for $20 less, but… [you're nicer than their salesperson OR I'd rather not use the gas to get over there].”

I’ve modified the tips a bit to be more appropriate, but you can check out the full document here.

Happy shopping, and go out there and enjoy those killer discounts!

When given the challenge of being in a managerial or similar position that requires availability to those working under me, I felt like I needed to assess where my hours were being spent. I was getting complaints that I was not available enough or accessible. Giving my cell phone number or e-mail and having 24/7 access to communication simply wasn’t enough.

So, I put together an Excel spreadsheet for each day of the week. This enables one to be conscious of where they are spending their time, and also forces us to start being more available in order to put more time on the spreadsheet. While I increased my available hours from one week to the next by nearly 50%, the people that needed me said I was available and accessible just as much, if not less than the week prior.

I concocted another experiment and simply dropped the people who I was responsible for simple handwritten notes that said, “Hi!” or a similar greeting on it a few days out of the week. The result? While the week I wrote these notes marked my availability at 75% lower than the original week without recording my hours, all parties attested to me being around more and it felt like I was much more available if they needed me. 

That being said, it’s essential to find that “physical note” that can go the extra mile in showing people you are around, but in fact, it enabled me to be unavailable even more of the time, spending only a few minutes a week with the notes I put together. This is a time saver, as well as a somewhat deceptive trick. While it appeared I was more available, I was not actually around, but I still had the capacity of the 24/7 virtual availability. None of that had changed.

Productivity Death Match has a lot more to say in terms of lifestyle design and management regarding similar topics and strategies.

If you ever get stuck with your landlord or management agency not fulfilling their end of the work order for 4 months (and we all know that will happen eventually), sometimes simply telling them to fill it won’t work. After 3 solid attempts of stopping in and talking with the management company and even filing a second work order, I was recommended to “drop them an e-mail”. Needless to say, I took the approach of making our place seem like a dump to get things done. While a tad deceptive in terms of hyperbole, all of the problems mentioned are in fact real. Here’s the e-mail I sent the manager of our housing management company…

Ray, 

I stopped in today to drop off our rent check for [123 ABC St.] and mentioned that our work order of 4 months still hadn’t been fulfilled. We’ve since had to screw in the door that was off its hinges on our own, but we still don’t have a working fireplace, the door to the garage is loose from the wall and lets bugs in along with the front door having poor insulation to keep insects out, and the master bedroom bath is leaky and the upstairs bath has a broken shower handle that doesn’t stay on. We filed the report back in July and didn’t hear back, went in at the end of September to ask again, and they made me fill out another work order. We want to just get the work done ourselves and deduct it from our monthly rent, but I was instructed that should not be done. Then, we’re up a creek without a paddle, and we’re cold, bug-filled, and having shower problems. I was suggested to write you an email as that was the best way to contact you. It would be great if you could get back to me and let me know if this will ever get fulfilled by the time our rent runs out.

Thank you for your time and understanding

Trent”

I may have made our place seem like an exaggerated dump, but everything was completely fixed within 24 hours. Sometimes it pays to be up front, even if there is some exaggeration. We weren’t happy with the previous results and now we had the expedited turnaround we originally assumed would happen. It simply gets things done.