What would you rather do: sell your thing one at a time to many people? Or sell your thing all at once to many people?

Hmmm. I thought so.

So why do we — so often — attempt to find new clients and customers one at a time?

Group sales are not a new concept.

Folks have been offering group sales forever — for everything from theater tickets to ball games to workshops.

What about you? Have you ever done a group sale?

Could you find a gathering of like-minded folks (e.g., a service club, a large employer, or a professional association) and make them an offer based on filling X number of seats or buying X number of things?

And if you could, why wouldn’t you?

The group would do the selling for you to their people. You’d deliver the product or service all at once. Easy peasy.

But what if you don’t have access to a formal gathering of like-minded folks?

Usually, we substitute an official group sale with offering a discount to a group. “You and your pals get a 10% discount.”

And that does work. Sometimes.

When it doesn’t work it’s because people being presented your offer don’t really know you or your product.

A better option is to encourage word-of-mouth referrals. (Because we’re much more likely to purchase something based on a recommendation from a friend or colleague.)

Many folks incentivize — sometimes formally — a special offer for existing clients. BOGO (buy one, get one) offers fall into this category as well.

Word-of-mouth is both the highest AND the most coveted source of new business for companies in nearly every industry.

Even online.

So how do you lean on the power of your audience or existing clients in new and interesting ways?

Time to consider a Crowd Sale

There’s a newish option out there that rewards buyers by lowering a price based on the number of people who are willing to buy it.

You pledge to buy something at a discount. AND you’re encouraged to share the offer because the more folks who also pledge to buy, the deeper the discount goes for everyone.

That’s the idea behind a Crowd Sale. And it’s a model being employed by The Game Crafter to help their clients sell more products.

The Game Crafter is an online shop for print-on-demand game components — you know, all those things you might need to make if you’d invented a new game: a board, cards, playing pieces, and the box they come in.

When you’re putting together a prototype of your new game, you can order wooden bits and dice and plastic pawns, or even custom-printed cards and boards. And once you’re happy with your design, you could even put it up for sale in TGC’s online shop. Just decide how much profit you want to earn from each sale, and The Game Crafter does the rest.

This is the company I’m using to create and sell my Tarotic Story Prompt Cards and they’ve been awesome to work with.

TGC’s crowd sale model is pretty unique.

I was unable to find other examples of this sort of discount/purchase structure, probably because the purchase mechanism to do so isn’t widely available.

(If you’ve seen or participated in anything like this before, or know of a shopping cart tool or plugin that could manage something like this, please let me know in a comment below or send me an email).

To be clear, a crowd sale offers EACH buyer the same discount based on the final total of buyers who pledge to purchase.

So if you pledge to buy on Day 1, you’re guaranteed the starting discount (which in my case is $5), but nobody actually pays anything until the sale is over and the number of pledges have been counted.

My Crowd Sale lasts for one week, starting tomorrow (Tuesday, September 8th). And we only need to get to 100 copies pledged before we ALL get the full 41% discount.

Here’s the breakdown:

Yep, this is — for me — an experiment in pricing models.

And the story this model tells.

Do you feel like this is a gimmick? Or do you feel like you’re part of a larger community with this kind of offer?

It’s important to me to know!

So, if you’ve decided to buy a Tarotic Story Prompts deck or two, I’d love to hear from you (either in a comment below, or via email).

Tell me anything and everything you feel comfortable with sharing. About how and where you shared the offer. And what kind of response your friends and colleagues have to something like this.

Definitely tag me online when you share (if you can).

On Facebook, I’m Tea Silvestre and Story Bistro. On Twitter, @TeaSilvestre. And on Pinterest, Story Bistro.

I’m gathering data about how much the offer is shared and where, and I’ll share with you once the crowd sale is over next week. I’m sure you want to know whether or not something like this could work for you.

Let’s find out together.