Actually, I'm just having a very trying day, and I had to let some steam off.
I never sold anyone anything in audio. I always let them buy. All I did was to demo the equipment and explained how things work together.
Quite often I would let the customer walk out of the store with no sale, when I could have sold him something at a low price. And also quite often, that same guy would show up at the store 6 months later saying,"I've been saving my money for 6 months to buy that high end rig, because after I heard it, I knew it was what I wanted." I never jammed anybody into anything, and they always got a fair demo from me. I spent the time to educate them on audio principles, and showed them that those principles held true in practice.
I never had a returned sale, in all the days I worked in audio, because I made sure that people got what they wanted,and took the time to make sure they were comfortable with it. I often sold Rega, with the customer fully knowing they would come back for a Linn in a year. Because that was what they wanted to do. I showed them the upgrade path that made sense to them, and that they could hear for themselves. After that, the sale closed itself. I never had to close a sale like that.
You can give somebody a fish, and they have a meal for one day. If you teach him to fish, he can feed himself forever. That's what I did. I taught my customers the principles of audio, so they would never be hooked again by a mid-fi shoe salesman working in a audio store. Our store sold products that adhered to the principles of audio, and we knew that if the customer knew them, he'd be back. We had a very happy clientele, and it was a very friendly atmosphere in our store. We'd have lunch with the customers and spend time talking to them, not because we had to for sales purposes, but because we became friends. We didn't have to jam them into a sale, because they knew what they wanted. If they wanted something that we didn't sell, we didn't bad mouth that product. We just worked around that to make sure that he got what would work well with it.
I try to do something similar to that, with what I post on this forum. It's of no matter to me what people buy, but I'm trying to help people to understand the basics, in a world full of hype. I don't know everything, but I do know some things, and I try to make that info available to those who will listen.
