At noon, after having lunch in the mall, Tian Mo and the newly made-over Zhuang Dong returned to the store.
To celebrate, Tian Mo had specifically treated Zhuang Dong to an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. Both of them ate until their mouths were greasy, and they were in excellent spirits.
After the stylist’s careful makeover, Zhuang Dong finally looked somewhat presentable.
Of course, there couldn’t be any earth-shattering changes—after all, a person’s temperament is innate, and the subtle movements revealed in gestures and mannerisms couldn’t be changed overnight. The stylist couldn’t possibly spend that much time correcting these subtle body movements.
But just looking at his clothes and appearance, Zhuang Dong was no longer that silly and stupid-looking country bumpkin. His overall impression had improved significantly.
After lunch, the two returned to the store and officially began business.
Although it was Saturday and there was quite a lot of foot traffic in the mall, the store’s location wasn’t exactly prime real estate on this floor. Combined with the understated sign at the entrance, there weren’t many people coming in for the moment.
At first, Tian Mo sat upright with a serious expression, looking like he was ready for battle, but he soon slumped down.
A few customers did pass by the entrance, but they only casually glanced inside before leaving, seemingly not very interested.
Tian Mo was getting bored.
After thinking for a moment, he handed the small notebook containing the principles to Zhuang Dong, telling him to read and memorize it slowly.
Zhuang Dong received it like a treasure, holding the small notebook with great reverence. He found a spot inside and sat down, studying it with utmost seriousness.
Tian Mo turned on the TV, browsed through the physical game discs, and finally selected “Struggle” to play.
His reasoning was that “Struggle,” as an interactive movie-type game, didn’t require too much focus to play and could be paused at any time, making it convenient to attend to customers promptly. Plus, the game’s graphics were nice and could leave a good impression on customers.
After playing for a while, a customer finally entered the store.
Tian Mo immediately put down the controller and stood up to greet them.
The customer who came into the store was a man in his thirties wearing a leather jacket, looking like someone who wasn’t short on money.
He casually picked up a display phone from the counter and asked, “You guys sell phones here? What brand? I don’t think I’ve seen your store here before.”
Tian Mo quickly replied, “This is an OTTO phone, developed by Tenda Group. We’re a Tenda exclusive store, selling only Tenda products.”
The man suddenly realized, “Oh! I thought that logo at the entrance looked familiar. So Tenda has opened exclusive stores now, not bad, not bad. How much is this phone? Is it the price on the tag? Are there any discounts?”
Tian Mo secretly rejoiced—this question I know! Mr. Pei taught me this!
He immediately answered truthfully, “Sorry, there are no discounts. And I completely advise against you buying it now because this is a model from over a year ago. The specs are somewhat outdated in various aspects, so the price-to-performance ratio isn’t good. Buying it now would be a very bad deal.”
The man looked up at him, almost thinking he had misheard.
“You advise against buying it? It would be a bad deal to buy it now?”
“You’re quite interesting. This is the first time I’ve seen someone do business like this.”
The man put down the phone. Actually, he was just asking casually and hadn’t planned on buying it anyway. Besides, now that the salesperson himself had said this phone was a product from over a year ago, who would buy it unless they had bubbles in their brain?
The man looked around the store a bit more and spotted the Automatic Contrarian Machine.
“What’s this thing?”
Tian Mo immediately explained, “This is called an ‘Automatic Contrarian Machine.’ Its main function is to be contrarian, and its secondary function is to serve as a soundbar. Let me demonstrate…”
Fortunately, Tian Mo had already familiarized himself with how the products in the store worked; otherwise, having to check the manual on the spot would have been too embarrassing.
Clearly, this gentleman didn’t know much about Tenda’s products.
This was normal because although Tenda’s products were quite popular online, their influence was mainly among young people. People like this gentleman in their thirties or forties, or even older, might have only heard of Tenda Group’s name and probably didn’t know much about products like phones or the Automatic Contrarian Machine.
Tian Mo followed Mr. Pei’s instructions and started by talking about the Automatic Contrarian Machine’s shortcomings, saying that the hype was greater than the substance, and if considering value for money, buying a soundbar from a major brand would be more cost-effective.
The gentleman listened attentively throughout. After Tian Mo finished his introduction, he remarked with a sigh, “This one has problems, that one has defects—why does everything sound like poor value for money according to you?”
“So basically, you don’t recommend buying anything in your store?”
“Then why do you display all these things?”
Tian Mo was momentarily speechless: “Ah, well…”
Indeed, according to Mr. Pei’s instructions, he shouldn’t recommend buying this or that—so what was the point of opening this store?
Tian Mo himself didn’t know why, so how could he explain it to the customer?
Seeing Tian Mo frozen, the gentleman laughed: “Forget it, I’m just joking with you. I feel like you young folks are quite conscientious about selling things. Other salespeople try every way to hide the flaws, but you guys are different—you honestly state the shortcomings upfront. It’s a bit like ‘take it or leave it.'”
“Alright, thank you. I’ll come back when you have new products.”
The gentleman strolled away.
Tian Mo scratched his head and sat back down on the sofa to continue playing his game.
…
In the blink of an eye, the entire afternoon passed.
Tian Mo checked the time—it was already 5 PM, the usual time to get off work.
According to Mr. Pei, working hours in the sales department were relatively flexible, with weekends off and an eight-hour workday. Once more people joined, Tian Mo could freely arrange rotating days off.
Now the entire sales department consisted of only Tian Mo and Zhuang Dong, so they couldn’t be too particular about such things. If they came in late or left early, Mr. Pei wouldn’t hold them accountable, and naturally, no one else could either.
Quite a few people had come by that afternoon. Basically, anyone browsing digital product stores on this floor would at least take a look.
But Tian Mo discovered a very awkward situation: If the visitors were young people, most of them already knew about OTTO phones and the Automatic Contrarian Machine and other Tenda products. Those who wanted to buy would have done so already and wouldn’t wait until now. As for older folks, although they hadn’t heard of these products, after Tian Mo’s honest introduction, they had absolutely no desire to purchase anything.
So, for the entire afternoon, the store’s revenue was zero.
They hadn’t sold a single thing!
Forget about big items like phones or the Automatic Contrarian Machine—they hadn’t even sold a single game disc.
There was even an older woman who got very angry and scolded Tian Mo because she felt that he wasn’t properly introducing the products, constantly saying this product was bad in this way and that product was bad in that way. She thought he was being disrespectful, leaving Tian Mo unable to defend himself.
The afternoon passed in a daze.
Zhuang Dong hadn’t gotten involved in these matters. He had been sitting on the sofa in the demo area, memorizing the principles while observing and learning how Tian Mo received customers.
After observing for a while, Zhuang Dong was clearly puzzled too.
Although he didn’t understand sales very well, he had bought plenty of things throughout his life.
He’d never seen anyone selling things who kept emphasizing the flaws of their own products.
But the principles he was memorizing indeed required this.
“Dog Bro, I’ve pretty much memorized the general idea of these principles. But I have a question—are you sure these are the boss’s exact words? I feel like this approach is so unreliable! We haven’t sold a single thing all afternoon. We’re such failures! Won’t the boss be angry?”
Zhuang Dong was obviously confused.
Tian Mo was confused too, but these words were indeed spoken by Mr. Pei himself—he was 100% certain of that.
“Let’s call it a day. Let’s go have dinner and then go home to rest.”
“I need to think carefully about what went wrong. Did I misunderstand Mr. Pei’s true intentions?”
“This afternoon was really a waste of time. We didn’t sell anything at all. All we got were a few compliments saying our sales approach was very conscientious and considered the customers’ interests…”
“But what’s the use of compliments? We’re supposed to sell as many things as possible!”
Although Tian Mo had anticipated encountering this kind of embarrassing situation, he never imagined that in a mall with such high foot traffic, they wouldn’t sell a single item.
He had expected business to be poor, but not this poor!
The key was that Mr. Pei had also mentioned letting him practice here, with larger stores waiting for him to take over in the future.
After practicing like this, how could he have the face to take over larger stores?
Tian Mo felt extremely frustrated. Now he just wanted to go home, get some good rest, and deeply reflect on what had gone wrong.
Mr. Pei definitely wasn’t the problem. If there was anyone to blame, he could only blame himself for his lack of ability.