Fake Money Blog

I’m 100% sure that you thought this to be about a salesman who only goes after big sales - it’s not. It’s about a customer who happened to have an extraordinary hobby - big game hunting.

BEAUTIFUL SUMMER DAY

It was a beautiful day with sunshine and those white fluffy clouds with frosting on the top. I parked my Z3 (leased, naturally) on the housing company’s parking lot and walk to the customers apartment carrying a tune from the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai“. Life was good.

THE CUSTOMER

A man in his seventies with an iron-grip hand shake. I’d say that Iggy Pop comes to mind just substitute that long hair with a short army style haircut. Army clothing and very spartan flat, he offered coffee, black coffee. He was a nice enough man, however I immediately got an impression that he looked down on me, probably because he saw my car. So while we chat lightly I scan the apartment, but nothing really jumps off as a give-away, well maybe two large cabinets and a head of a rhino.

GIVE ME SOME CREDIT

Every salesperson knows that people present certain objects because they are proud of what they mean to them, objects like: photos of loved ones, trophies from bowling competitions, expensive looking books, paintings etc. If you are not a salesman you can still reach this conclusion in 4 seconds and if you don’t you’re an idiot. People display fancy stuff because they want respect.

THE OBVIOUS

So I ask about the rhino head and open the flood gates. First he tells a story of his father who taught him to hunt - and he liked it. He liked it so much that he spent practically all his spare time hunting with various arms and methods - water, air and land that didn’t matter. When he got old enough he traveled outside Finland after ever bigger animals. He estimated the total cost for his hunting travels to be neat 2 million euros.

It wasn’t long after he opened those two large cabinets and started to pull out guns and demonstrate how to handle them and to what kind of prey they were the best. Luckily I know a thing or two about guns and managed to put together a semi automatic shotgun that he put in pieces. Then I had to look through tens of photos of him in all corners of the world. It was just like your normal tourist photo, except he was always standing over some dead animal.

CLOSING THE SALE

I started to feel slightly weird about the situation and decided to make my elegant escape. But first the sale, I just had to close it first. I decided to skip everything and just said something along these lines: “You really know when to pull the trigger, I’m sure you also know when to buy land. I can have the papers ready in ten minutes”. That was it, about 30 minutes later I shook his hand again and he told me how he had immediately seen how a great young lad I was. Less is more even in sales.

Do you feel happy now?