Don't forget the little stuff

I was at a Van Heusen store recently and bought a pair of slacks, a couple of polo shirts, and some socks.  The cashier asked whether I needed a belt.  I asked him why he asked and he said:  "you seem to have everything that goes with an outfit but the belt and thought I'd ask."
So then I asked him where his salesmanship came from.  He said that his grandfather, a sales rep for a chemical company, used to take him on sales calls.  Sales was in his genes.
What do we learn from this?
A salesperson goes in to sell his main product, but all the stuff that goes with that product is forgotten.
There is a current theory in sales called "The long tail".  For example, once Apple developed iTunes, adding more songs to iTunes was relatively cheap.  The incremental cost of adding a piece of music that may sell very little was easily overcome with just a few sales.
The point here is, once the salesperson is making the call, once he's in the customer's office making the grand pitch, the cost of pitching additional products is infinitesimal.  The big expense is getting in front of the customer.  The Van Heusen cashier had me in front of him.  That was the biggest thing--the long tail is anything else he could convince me to buy while I was there.
When you go into a Men's Wearhouse and buy a suit--by the time you're fitted for the suit, an assistant has the shirt, tie, socks, etc. that will go with the suit all laid out.  That's The Long Tail theory of sales.

More on this later.