Talk with Patty Madigan for five minutes and you’ll come to several conclusions:

1. She loves her job and cares about her customers, sellers as well as buyers
2. She knows, and will share with you, the history of Nashua through its people, and
3. You'll understand why she has successfully built her company through personal referrals only.

Patty is the owner of Estate Sales by PM. As she says, she handles these sales with courtesy and care. Patty started with one or two sales a year while she worked full-time in the Nashua school system. She collected names and telephone numbers of the customers coming to the sales, and when she had another, she personally called every one on the list to say there was another sale. She also placed ads in the newspaper, but that didn’t increase the number of buyers. Personal contact did.

Then several things happened: Patty decided in 2000 that it was time to make Estate Sales by PL her full-time job; the internet brought us email; and Patty met Vinnie who was running sales in nearby Massachusetts. They joined forces, and shared the names in their databases. Then Patty saw an estate sale advertised and went to checkout the competition. That’s when she met Jan. Jan became a third member of this informal network. They grew together, shared sales if one of them was booked. They now send out notices about 7 to 10 days before their sales to the people in their database which is currently about 2000 names. The notice includes photos of some of the items that will be available. Each sale draws an average of 400 buyers.

The sellers also invite their friends to attend, which is how her database grows. There’s always a sign up sheet on her sales table. Some neighborhoods have their own association, formal or simply word of mouth, that brings in new buyers.

Today, Patty runs 25 to 32 estate sales a year. She has sales that include the contents of 4 to 5 room homes; she has sales that have included 20 rooms. Every one of them has come as a result of a personal referral.

Surprisingly, only about 10% of her buyers are resellers. Those buyers are mostly interested in antiques or simply used furniture. The other 80% are collectors, collectors of books, records, military items, and just about anything else. Patty says people collect “anything and everything.”

The buyers come to Patty’s from as far away Boston, the North Country of New Hampshire, and Connecticut.

If you’d like to have someone come in to help you have an estate sale, or if you’re an interested buyer, Patty says to Google ‘liquidation sales,’ ‘estate sales,’ or check out your Yellow Pages.

She highly recommends this line of business to anyone who likes people, is a self-starter, and has lots of energy. She says there’s a need for more estate sales consultants in New England, especially in northern New Hampshire and Massachusetts, but any area of the country is fertile ground. After all, there are baby boomers everywhere, ready to downsize their homes, or the homes of elderly parents and relatives.

Patty explained that there are two ways of getting into estate sales. You can do it on your own as she did, or you can buy a franchise. lifetimeliquidations.com/. She thinks Lifetime Liquidations is probably the better way. They provide the training to make it easy.

We think it’s a great service. We are currently in the process of downsizing. After years of collecting ‘things,’ we are ready to share our goodies with others, and Patty has helped make that an easy thing to do.

Contact Kathy and Louis or Post a Comment via TNNW Blog.
 

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