Beware of the Whistling Gopher

The first lesson I learned about sales, but has it aged well?

This is the first in an occasional series I’m calling Tales from the Boat Supply Store about my mid90s teenage retail work experience.

It’s 1993, I’m 15 years old and working at E&B Marine in Richmond, VA.

I had taken naturally to the electronics section of the store and enjoyed helping people buy VHF radios, fish finders, radars, LORAN navigation units, and new-fangled GPS units. Some of these even had maps charts in them making them “chart plotters.” That is a fancy term for what GPS maps were before smartphones. Also because mariners use charts, not maps.

This was a time of great transition in the area of consumer boating electronics. The US government’s Global Positioning System was now available to consumers — both in mounted form and handheld. It was supplanting the WWII-era LORAN system which was about to become legacy tech.

At the time, GPS didn’t work nearly as seamlessly as it does now. You had to worry about things like how many satellites were above you. GPS screens had a screen where you could see an LCD pixel view, like an original Gameboy.

Users also had to worry about “Selective Availability” or SA, which meant the US Government could fuzz the GPS satellite signal and introduce intentional, possibly extreme degrees of error to the baseline of the entire system. I assume they can still do this, and it just isn’t talked about as much. Supposedly they don’t do this anymore:

We even had units with those pre-printed LCD letters that “light up” on the screen. Think an old-school key chain LCD game. One time a customer brought in a unit that would show a message “SOL” — we determined that it meant exactly what you think it would mean, and you didn’t want to get that error out on the open ocean!

It was all new and of course people wanted the best, and it was expensive.

Encountering my first Whistling Gopher

I was in the back of the store, at the blue hightop bench table we had setup as a 12-volt electronics work station for demoing & testing customer gear, and whatever other redneck engineering we got into during slow times. Usually that involved developing elaborate pranks that escalated into an infamous Closers vs. Openers prank war one winter.

A customer ambled back my way and started asking questions about the fish finders, how the new GPS units worked, if a radar was really worth it for where they were going out.

It was clear they were a power-boater, which means they might be likely to spend some money, unlike the blow-boaters who came in trying to save a buck on the absolute most ridiculous things.

The guy was starting to get excited! Could I make a big electronics sale?

We weren’t on commission, so making a big sale was really about bragging rights.

He started asking about the combo fish finder + GPS units which are common now, but were quite new then. This was also before I had learned to steer people away from the combo units. I was more excited for the prospect of moving a combo unit than two separate units!

Then his gaze continued down the shelf to the fish finder + GPS + chart plotter + radar units from high end brands. No one ever bought these!

He locked in on one, lifted his finger to it, pressed a few buttons and slowly turned to look at me and while letting out a low whistle said:

“What’s this one go for?”

I told him, he thanked me, and then he wandered on.

The lesson my manager gave me that day

“Chris, that was a Whistling Gopher,” my manager said afterward. “They come in, they look at things, they usually let out a whistle and ask, “what’s that go’fer?”

He explained to me that they were the boat supply store equivalent of car sales “tire-kickers" and they weren’t worth my time.

BANT

Much later in my career, I was introduced to the idea of BANT — determining a buyer’s Budget, Need, Authority, and Timing during (early) in the sales process.

The Whistling Gopher is the cautionary tale of a buyer with (perceived) Need, but questionable Authority, Timing, and as signaled by the question: Budget.

What about the idea of “never pre-judge a buyer"?

Around that same time, a friend who worked for a large, now defunct electronics retailer who had commissioned salespeople on the floor (until they didn’t), told me a great story that goes completely counter to all of this and would guide one to never pre-judge a buyer.

So maybe the lesson of the Whistling Gopher hasn’t aged well, or maybe it’s all about context?

Like more of these Tales from the Boat Supply Store, that’s a post for another time…