The art of the deal

Santa Claus is probably the world’s savviest businessman. His enthusiastic workforce toils 364 days of the year in a tax-free zone called the North Pole. He keeps his costs low by using an antiquated, homemade delivery system.

You can bet that Santa has never made a deal based on a gut feeling.

To illustrate, here’s a totally hypothetical scenario: Say that, one day, when you go for parts, you notice the farm implement dealer has a sweet little loader tractor in the lot. It has everything you want: all-wheel drive and a deluxe cab with numerous cup holders and a cubbyhole where you can hide your secret stash of hard candy. Your gut says that you don’t just want that rig; you need it.

You fantasize about driving that tractor as you wait for your parts. On your way out of the store, you stop at the salesman’s office — “Just for the heck of it,” you tell yourself.

You plop down in a chair and eyeball the salesman across his cluttered desk. You make small talk, warming up, feeling each other out. If the salesman knows his stuff, he’ll have a dish of hard candy sitting on his desk. You help yourself to a piece of candy and slip it into your pocket. That’s the signal you’re ready to talk turkey.

You mention, with exaggerated nonchalance, that you happened to notice that rickety little loader tractor out on the lot. Perhaps you’ll do him the favor of taking it off his hands.

The salesman will probably say something like, “What do you have to trade?” This next part is extremely critical.

You tell the salesman about your beat-up old loader tractor, using the best possible spin. For instance, it’s OK to momentarily forget how many times you’ve welded the loader. You never quite got around to painting all those welds, so the loader is peppered with gobby, rusty welding. You also neglect to tell him that a big branch fell on the hood when you were trimming trees and left a humongous dent. It slips your mind that the transmission has been making weird sounds lately.

Instead, you detail all the tender loving care you’ve lavished on that tractor over the years. You talk about how you faithfully changed its oil and how you always used the good stuff; nothing but the best for your tractor, by golly. You tell the salesman how you wanted to enlarge your bedroom so the tractor could spend cold winter nights inside, close to you, but your wife wouldn’t allow it.

At this point, the salesman will probably do some scribbling, then throw out a number. You calmly take the candy out of your pocket, pop it into your mouth, and work it around as you furiously try to think. Is that a good price or not? You suddenly wish you had done some homework. But, dang. That is one sweet little loader tractor.

“Well,” you say slowly as you adjust the candy, “I thought my rig was worth more than that.”

The salesman asks what you think the “boot” should be. You knock a good chunk off his price. The salesman squirms slightly and says, “If I’m going to do that, I’ll have to come out and take a look at your rig.”

Yikes. That’s exactly what you don’t want. He’ll take one peek at your rusty, dented hulk and walk away laughing.

You struggle to conceal your rising panic. “Tell you what,” you say. “If you’re willing to make a deal right now, I’ll meet you halfway on the difference.”

The rest of the experience passes in a blur. There are papers to sign, and you have to call your wife to get the serial number off your tractor (you can tell by the tone of her voice that you’ll be doing a lot of explaining later) and then there’s all that unpleasant financial stuff.

You drive home with a sack full of parts, a complementary cap with the dealer’s logo on it and a song in your heart. Yessir, you made one heck of a deal today. Maybe the best in history.

At least, that’s what you think until a couple of weeks later when a buddy reports how he saw a rig just like the one you traded for sell at an auction for a fraction of what you paid.

And, at that moment, you know. You know that you’ll mentally kick yourself every time you make that stupid tractor payment.

You can bet nothing like that has ever happened to Santa. Which explains why you never see him wearing a complementary farm implement dealer cap.

Jerry Nelson is a recovering dairy farmer from Volga, South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live on the farm where Jerry’s great-grandfather homesteaded over 110 years ago. Feel free to email him at jerry.n@dairystar.com.