The Daunting Comic Convention: Neighbors

Conventions are always filled with many characters! 

Neighbors... They can be amazing, sharing a spoon of sugar, a cup of salt. Or they can blast R&B music at 4am during the work week. They truly can make life hell.

In the case of conventions especially when you are just starting out its good to find people to share tables with. This can help cut costs and help your table appear full if you still only have a limited amount of product. The right person can also help you engage your audience and customers, as well as share their convention experience with you, for example providing insight on what are good events to attend as well as what the audience is like at those events.

To find people to table with you can attend a convention yourself, and search around. If when talking with someone at a table you gel well you might consider requesting to share a table with them in the future. Additionally you might want to share a table with someone whose content is different from your own. For example two people sharing a table that each have their own noir stories might cause a bit of redundancy, and end up unintentionally cutting out sales for the other.

A hard seller can be a bit threatening
and intimidating

At a convention its not just table partners that can depend on your success its also neighboring and nearby tables. These neighbors can either make or break your success as a salesperson. We've been fortunate to have had really good neighbors. The Barbarian Brothers, Henchgirl, Monster Haiku, Immortal Lycanthropes; these have all been amazing people to meet, and work near, even share a table with. People like these create a great atmosphere and help engage with the community of convention goers. However, everyone is not the salt of the earth like these. Recently however we attended a convention were our direct neighbor was a hard sell.


Hard sellers are individuals who use any method at their disposal to get people to buy. From spouting
the merits of their work to all out guilt and shaming anything goes with a hard seller. Our table mate
at this convention had this to say about our hardselling neighbor:

                     "The guy at the table next to us at East Coast Comicon was a real 

                hard sell guy -- he literally demanded a customer go out and prostitute

                himself to make enough money to afford the wares he was selling.

                Presumably he was joking. But he wasn't joking when he demanded that 
                people who already owned his book give it away to "a worthy friend" and 
                buy another copy RIGHT NOW. "Be a man! Be a man!" he screamed at 
                people who would not buy, as they slunk away from his table."

Its hard to do anything in this situation. You can't reprimand them or lambaste them as it only creates an escalating conflict. In addition to these comments the gentleman wreaked of weed and the smell and his shaming would have people steer clear of him, this included avoiding that section which included our table. In the end we did the best we could in light of the circumstances, but this is reality. You will always encounter individuals who tend to alienate people for their gain.


Our own belief in salesmanship is a bit different than this character but we'll cover that next week in "Making the Sale."

Sir Gryphon is trying to sell people on edible chia pets, and Frankenstein vs. Dracula with Gryphon Knights Comics. Please patron to help these visions come to light and for blog content to continue!