Section 1: ID and Recognition

When someone comes to your establishment, checking ID upfront is a strong habit, not just a compliance step. It gives you something valuable: the ability to look the client up in the system and see if they’ve been in before.

If you recognize someone, even just a little, say “welcome back.” This costs you nothing if you’re wrong, a new client won’t be offended by a friendly greeting. But if it’s a repeat client and you don’t acknowledge them, they’ll notice, and they’ll be disappointed.

Keep notes on clients in the system. Personal details matter more than you’d think: if a client mentioned their son plays Little League, jot that down. The next time they come in, that small detail of recognition builds real rapport and makes them feel like a person, not a transaction.

Section 2: The Clock Method

When a client is going to be with you for an extended visit, for example, looking at multiple items over 90 minutes, set expectations early. Let them know after 30 minutes that they need to commit to selling what’s already been evaluated before you move on to look at more items. This keeps the visit efficient and prevents an open-ended process where someone keeps adding “just one more thing” indefinitely and then walks without doing a deal.

Section 3: Narrate What You’re Doing

Don’t work in silence. When a vendor brings items to sell, it can take 20 to 30 minutes to evaluate everything and put together an offer. Silence during that time creates anxiety and uncertainty for the client.

Narrate your process as you go. For example:

• “I’m putting all your jewelry marked 14K in this pile for you.”
• “I’m going to evaluate the condition of your coins now.”
• “I’m going to pull the live spot price from the computer for you.”

Adding “for you” at the end of these statements reinforces that everything you’re doing is in service of getting them a fair, accurate offer, not just busywork.

Section 4: Keep Items in Sight

Never take a client’s items out of their line of sight, no exceptions. Even with a client you’ve helped ten times before, on the eleventh visit they could still accuse you of switching something out if the items were ever out of view. Keeping everything visible protects both the client’s trust and your business from disputes that have no good resolution once an item has left sight.

Section 5: Presence and Communication Fundamentals

A lot of face-to-face trust is built before you ever say a word. A few fundamentals:

• Smile. It costs nothing and it sets the tone for the entire interaction.
• Make eye contact. Avoiding eye contact, even unintentionally, can come across as evasive or untrustworthy, the opposite of what you want when someone is handing you something valuable.
• Speak slowly and deliberately. Rushed speech reads as nervous or dismissive. A measured pace signals confidence and competence. Speaking too fast can also make you come across as a fast talker, which is the last impression you want to give someone who’s deciding whether to trust you with something valuable.
• Don’t talk too much. Every extra sentence is another chance to misspeak, to say something the client finds offensive or disagreeable, or to come across as a know-it-all. Say what’s necessary, answer what’s asked, and resist the urge to fill silence with unnecessary commentary.
• Don’t sound evasive. If a client asks something directly, answer it directly. Dodging a question, even unintentionally through vague language, immediately raises suspicion in a business built on trust.

When a question requires more than a yes-or-no answer, the same 3-step method from the phone training still applies here: affirmative statement, probe for details, answer the question. The mechanics don’t change just because you’re standing in front of someone instead of talking on a line.

Getting the Math Right

Accuracy matters more in person than almost anywhere else in this business, because the client is often watching you work in real time. If you’re doing calculations, weights, purity adjustments, spot price math, take the time to get it right. A mistake caught later costs far more in trust than a few extra seconds spent double-checking now.

Do your math somewhere the client cannot see each individual number as you write it. Watching a calculation happen in real time, with numbers crossed out, second-guessed, or corrected mid-process, can make a client think you’re confused or, worse, manipulating the numbers in front of them, even when you’re simply double-checking your own work the way anyone should. Work it out on a calculator and on paper privately, verify it, and only then present the final number with full confidence.

If a client is chatting too much or asking questions while you’re trying to concentrate, the first step is simply to ask for a moment: “Could I have just a minute of quiet to make sure I get this exactly right for you?” Most clients will respect that immediately.

If that doesn’t work and they keep talking over your concentration, it’s completely appropriate to excuse yourself and step into another room: “Let me step into the back for a few minutes so I can run these numbers carefully for you.” This isn’t rude, it protects the accuracy of the offer you’re about to give them, and most clients respect that you’re taking their transaction seriously enough to want quiet focus.

Section 6: Speak in Specifics, Not Vague Generalities

Vague language sounds made up, even when it’s completely true. A real employee once told clients things like, “If you sell some more at a time, we can pay you a little bit more.” The policy behind that statement was completely legitimate, the company has a real sliding scale, but the way he said it sounded improvised, like he was inventing a deal on the spot to close a sale.

The fix is precision. Compare the vague version to this:

Exact thresholds and exact numbers sound serious and official, because they are. Vague language, even when accurate, invites doubt. A client hearing a specific number and a specific condition will trust it far more than a soft, rounded statement, even if both are describing the exact same policy.

Know your company’s actual numbers, tiers, thresholds, and percentages, and use them. If you don’t know the specifics in the moment, it’s far better to say “let me confirm the exact tier for that amount” than to guess vaguely and sound like you’re making it up.