Week#1 Sweetest Sweat

it was still dark in the morning,  i and my family were waiting for my Dad. we're going to UIN Sunday Market this morning. there were a lot of stuffs that might be brought to the market. i have one motorcyle and it's not enough to bring them all.

why was it so many things to bring?

actually, i and my wife had decided to become a goodiebags distributor since i had completed my "creative thinking" training. sales is not something new to us. we had ever built a garage sale in our grandma's house and it had a great result. to become  a distributor is something new to us and it challanging. to add more challanges in our selling experience, we decided to go down to sunday market, to become a real "marketer".......and here comes the story :

UIN sunday market is a small market, it opens every sunday morning up to 1200 WIB. It's about 50 or 100 merchants join the market. they sell food, clothes, beverages, herbal medicines, shoes, stationary and many other stuffs. basicly, the market is already full. there is no more space for me. but fortunatelly we have one slot infront of motorcycle parking lots. it's not a good spot to sell anything, there won't anybody walk through our store except they are getting lost or disoriented about the place. it's practically a deadlock.

got into the market, we set up our store, i put my stuffs over the mat and hung them up on the pole (tiang jemuran maksudnya). stuffs were set and i started my selling strategy. what was the strategy?? shout out loud in the market "ma blas, mba blas, ma blassss!!!", i shouted. it was very hard to make even a single person to get into my store. they were so far from me and they did not know that there was a new kid on the block.

the sun was getting higher and i had sold nothing!!it was about 0730 AM  and i tried to comfort my self, "tenang Gus, ini kan penjualan pertama, wajar kalo gak laku", said me in my heart. I stood up and shouted again "Lima Belas, Lima Belas!!Tas Anak, Tas Anak, Aneka Kartun, Lima Belas Ribu sajah...!!". And nobody was coming !!

i asked my mother to bring the goodiebags to the gate of the market so that visitors would see the bags and bought them. i kept shouting while my mother was selling the stuffs infront of the gateway. my wife fed up my children and managed the stuffs. there were two or three visitors came and asked "Apa ini pak? pajangan dinding yah?" they asked. i explained that it's not wall display art, its goodiebags. another minutes a mom came with three children, not too much talked but then she bought 1 piece of my goodiebag!!! "Berhasil, alhamdulillaaah !!!", i shouted in my heart.

0800 AM and it was 30 minutes since i asked my mom to get to the gateway, she came with sad face and said some words silently "ga laku........". again, i felt so sad to see my mom's face and continued shouting "Tas anak, tas anak! lima belas ribu saja!".

0830 AM we closed our store and went back to home. we calculated our sales result. Yup, today we sold 4 pieces of goodiebags!!!it was not so many, it was not good to me but it was quiet good for first time selling marketer. but then, Fatima, my first daughter said "papa gagal hari ini". we were still in motorcycle to go back home and i said "what?papa gagal mima? no way, papa berhasil menjual 4 pcs hari ini", i explained her.

Fatima (mima) tried to understand my words, but i kept thinking why did she say i failed?! that triggered me to do something to improve my sales result!! it was sweaty, but the sweat was sweet....lot of lesson learned.

and you can see some improvements in my next stories. and ofcourse, improvements must bring something good : increasing sales result!!