EP 05: How to Motivate People to Bid on Your Silent Auction Items

- "one of the things you have to do then is start the item at a little bit lower of a starting bid" -> "one approach that works well is starting the item at a lower starting bid"

- "you have to kind of cater to both groups" -> "it helps to cater to both groups"

- "you have to put in there the vintage, you've got to put in there the varietal" -> "it really helps to include the vintage and the varietal"

- "you have to give enough information there" -> "it helps to give enough information there"

- "they need to understand the rules. It should look like a marketplace" -> "it helps to understand the rules. Ideally it looks like a marketplace"

- "you should be able to look and see" -> "you can look and see"

- "which you should have access to" -> "which you ideally have access to"

- "you have to look at the life stage" -> "it's worth looking at the life stage"

- "Only say authentic if it's authentic" -- kept as-is (factual accuracy guidance, not prescriptive business advice)

- No guarantees, outcome promises, or statements interpretable as professional advice (legal, financial, etc.) were found.

Narrator: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff: We have so much fun on this podcast, it's not even funny. Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we're talking about ways that you can make your auction or your fundraising event even better. Woo-hoo!

Diana: Yes!

Jeff: So we've got Diana DuPanchet back.

Diana: Hello.

Jeff: And we've got Lori Mackay.

Lori: Hello.

Jeff: And I'm Jeff Porter, CEO of Handbid. We want to talk today about silent auction 101 -- how to make your silent auction better. But I think we really want to start out by diving into item naming and descriptions.

Diana: Fun.

Lori: Yes.

Jeff: So we need to discuss this. What's your opinion? For me, I want a fun auction, people. I want to open up an auction and be like, "Oh my gosh, this item looks fun. I want to do that. I want to do this. That could be for my mom." I want to do all those things. And I want to think I can win it.

Diana: Yes.

Jeff: So I don't want it to be priced so high that I don't think I can win.

Diana: It's palatable. I want to feel like I can engage with what's happening. It's going to happen for me.

Jeff: Yeah. I'm going to be a winner, not a loser.

Lori: Yep.

Jeff: Those things. Right. So one approach that works well is starting the item at a lower starting bid than maybe you're comfortable with.

Diana: Right, yeah. Get uncomfortable.

Lori: Yep. With a lower bid increment.

Diana: Yes. So that people can get emotionally attached to winning the item. Because once they start bidding on one item, typically my experience is they'll start bidding on more. So you want more bid activity from people, not just one item. Get them started, get them going, let them see how much fun it is to bid online.

Jeff: Right. And then get notified when they're outbid. Get all competitive.

Diana: It's psychological.

Jeff: It is, and it's a game, right? I remember I was at this event once, and this lady came up to me, and she clearly had been having a good time.

Diana: Libations.

Lori: Libations.

Jeff: And she's like, "I want to show you something," right? So she pulls up this app, and she's like, "Okay, watch this." And she bids on this item, and then all of a sudden goes, "Oh no!" And it shows a pink screen saying you're losing. And she's like, "It's going to happen again. Watch it." She hits it again. "Oh no!" She's like, "I need to find out who's bidding against me on this item, and I want you to tell me how much I have to bid to win this item." I'm like, "Well, ma'am, I can't do that. It's kind of not fair."

Diana: It's illegal, ma'am.

Jeff: I can't do that, but I can encourage you to keep on bidding. She's like, "Okay." She goes, "I don't even want this thing. I just want to win." So I will tell you, it was cute. It was a kid's painting. It was a childhood cancer auction. And all the kids made these paintings. It was a painting of a cow in a little square frame. And she spent over $4,000 on it.

Diana: I love that. That's a great example of a silent auction item where you can get that emotional buy-in. And I love art and music pieces and autograph things that people feel like they have a story. And then if you have the ability to tack in there maybe a video about the artist, they can pull up and say, "Oh, this artist -- oh my gosh, this is something I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the super cool video that popped up while I'm looking at this item." So I love those kinds of items.

Jeff: Well, and what you've described there I think is the important part, which is that you start to tell that story in the item so you can get people connected to it. And that goes for a piece of art with maybe a little bit of history around it. It can go for some sort of antique and where this came from. Or it can go for your standard stuff -- if someone's a collector, right? We know this. We used to work with Ray Schulte, and Ray was big time with a lot of hockey teams around, "Hey, you have to describe the item in a certain way if you want a collector to bid on it." And he trained us on it. It's like, okay, so this isn't just a Peyton Manning signed football. This is a Peyton Manning signed Wilson authentic NFL football, signed in silver Sharpie by Peyton while he was holding his children --

Diana: And balancing on one leg.

Jeff: That's right. And doing yoga.

Lori: And I remember the first time I ran into this. We were talking to one of our hockey clients, and he had copied me on an email. It was a hockey player, and they were game-worn pants. And so his argument was, "I know this player wears this brand of pant, these Bauer pants, and these aren't Bauer pants, so I'm not sure this is really what he wore in the game." And then it came out that, no, he wore them in warm-ups, skated around the rink in them, went back in and got into his game gear. So it was game worn, right? And he's like, "That's not really game worn. That's warm-up worn." But that's how much attention some of these guys pay.

Diana: Yeah. So interesting.

Jeff: That's such a good example. I don't have that knowledge. But there are people out there who really care.

Lori: They do. And those items have to be properly identified.

Jeff: So what are the keywords in that situation? Authentic. If it's authentic.

Lori: Okay, because you'll have replica jerseys.

Jeff: I learned all this, right? Replica jerseys. Only say authentic if it's authentic.

Lori: If it's authentic, you're going to be in trouble otherwise.

Jeff: Yeah, that's right. So it's either authentic or replica.

Lori: Yes.

Jeff: So you'll see "replica helmet" or you'll see "authentic helmet."

Diana: Got it. And then is it game worn or not?

Jeff: But you don't really say that it's not game worn. So if it is, you say that it's game worn.

Diana: Yes, that's important.

Lori: People like that. They wanted someone to sweat in it.

Diana: That's so gross. So weird and gross, but so great. I mean, do you wash a game-worn jersey? I don't think you do. I think you're just like, "This is how it is."

Jeff: Not one that's got Sharpie on it.

Diana: This is not Lori's thing. This is not my thing.

Jeff: So you say what color Sharpie it's in.

Lori: You do. Oh, interesting.

Jeff: And you also say if it has inscriptions.

Lori: Yeah, okay. And then also that insignia that people use for a lot of baseball items.

Jeff: Certificate. So let's talk about both of those. And we should do a whole podcast on authenticity of sports memorabilia or even music memorabilia. This is a can of worms conversation here.

Diana: That's a different podcast. We should bring Ray onto that one.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. And I'm telling you, there's a lot of fraud out there. Just warning everybody.

Lori: For real.

Jeff: But anyway, getting back to what you're describing. So these inscriptions, what is that? It's like they might put in there "Tom Glavine, HOF" and then the year he was in the Hall of Fame. So the player wrote that on there. And so you're supposed to note what the inscriptions are. And then you're talking about a certificate of authenticity. Those are important to get. And not only are they important to get, there are only certain people you want to get them from.

Diana: Ooh, very nice.

Jeff: Yeah. So we'll talk about that in the future. But someone will tell you, "Oh, this was authenticated by these fly-by-night people." Or "our company has X FBI signature analysts that analyze this." Be careful with all that kind of stuff. There are people out there in this industry that are very familiar with signatures who will authenticate it, and you want their stamp. And if you've ever watched Pawn Stars, you see what they do, right? It's very similar. "I need to get my buddy to come down here and check this out and tell me if this is real." And actually one of those Pawn Stars guys has been on several of our webinars in the past.

Lori: Yeah.

Jeff: So anyway, that's absolutely true for the sports stuff. But again, it goes back to how you describe it. So this is kind of making me think of other items like wine.

Diana: Wine.

Jeff: Yeah, describing wine.

Diana: Yes. "Three bottles of red wine" is not a good description.

Lori: Nope.

Jeff: Well, it's a start, okay? We know it's not white.

Lori: They're not rubber ducks.

Jeff: That's right. And we know it's wine.

Diana: Yes. Libations. Libations.

Jeff: So it was pretty funny. We're at an event one year, and this is absolutely the issue that was going on. This lady's like, "I don't know. We've got all this great wine, and nobody is bidding on it." I'm like, well, let's take a look. We're like, hmm -- "three bottles of red wine," "six bottles of red wine," "case of wine." How about we dive into this and see what these really are? So I'm over there looking through the bottles, and it's like, oh, we're going to create a little Pinot vertical here. We're going to have a 2016, 2017, 2018 Pinot vertical.

Lori: Pinot vertical. You're so fancy.

Diana: Isn't that cute? So cool.

Lori: Yes. I love that.

Jeff: So in other words, it was not a Two Buck Chuck.

Lori: No.

Jeff: Okay. Well, always good to value it too, right? I'm the same guy that goes around with my little Vivino app at auctions and is like, "What is this wine worth?" So you can do that too, just to get a sense of what the wine sells for in the store. The thing about wine that's interesting is if you're getting wine that's available in the store, people are going to figure out what it's worth and then you're going to have to go up against that. But if you can do something that's a little bit harder to get -- maybe it's coming from a certain estate or maybe it's vintage wine -- then those might be harder to price. Maybe because they have to go to a winery and say, "Hey, can I get into your library wines to get this 2004 or whatever?"

Diana: But anyway, it is special.

Lori: Special. Yes.

Diana: Yeah, special. That's what my people say.

Jeff: That's right. So it's a unique item. And then you're almost creating a wine experience around a Pinot vertical.

Lori: You do.

Jeff: Yeah. And so you can do verticals based on years. You can do verticals based on other types of things. But sometimes that's a good way to combine them. And it really helps to include the vintage and the varietal. I know maybe there are a lot of people here that aren't familiar with how wine is labeled, right? Because in France, wine is labeled by the region, but here in the United States, it's labeled by the varietal. So here you're drinking a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Zinfandel or a Pinot Noir, whereas in France, you're drinking a Bordeaux or a Rhone. You just have to kind of know what that is. But it helps to give enough information there, just like with a sports collector. I want to read that and say, "That is a wine that I'm interested in." So yeah, we've seen a lot of those mistakes. And it's not even just in the title. It's in that description where you really want to go in and say, "This is a 2017 Pauline's Vineyard Kokomo Pinot Noir." And then that's enough for people to say, okay, I can look that up.

Diana: 94 points, anything like that that gives them --

Jeff: Let's do 94 points or 92 points from Wine Spectator or one of those, not the Centennial Colorado Wine Festival.

Diana: Sweet.

Lori: Yeah. Awesome.

Jeff: Now, when you have an item and you don't properly describe it -- it's not just for wine -- are there fine print around expiration dates? Are there age limits? What are some other things? Can y'all think of mistakes that you've seen in the past?

Diana: My favorite is "gift card to Perry's Steakhouse."

Lori: Yeah. I had a whole auction of that, oh gosh, maybe two months ago. People kept going, "How much is the gift card?" So I had to go into the gift card box and look them all up and go in and update all the gift cards. And then they started selling like hotcakes. But you can't just put "gift card to Perry's." It has to have the price.

Jeff: Yeah. And I would put it in the title, in the name of the item. People window shop, right? So especially when they're in the app, they're window shopping. Maybe they'll say, "Perry's, let me see what it is." But better off to just say "$100 to Perry's Steakhouse."

Diana: Yes. Or if you're like me, I window shop by the images that somebody uploads. So I also like a really good, clear image of what I'm buying. And I don't really love images of a basket.

Lori: What do you guys feel about that? Especially when they're cellophane wrapped. Because a lot of auctions will have these pre-made baskets with multiple items in them. So when I'm perusing the items -- and I'm coming from a perspective of a participant, not even as a coach -- gift baskets just don't look cool. They're just in a little image.

Diana: It's better than nothing. That's what I'm going to say.

Lori: What would you guys do?

Jeff: For me, if it's a school and it's a basket from Miss Betty's eighth grade class, I'd almost rather see a picture of Miss Betty and her eighth grade class. And then have it written out.

Diana: I'm going to go with the dad approach on that one and say, if this is Miss Betty's Yeti gift basket, I want to see the pictures of what's in this gift basket. I want to see the Yeti, the expensive item. I don't want to stare at Miss Betty. I want to see the --

Jeff: Okay. Miss Betty and her Yeti basket. How did we get there?

Lori: See, I like the personal thing.

Jeff: I love that. Well, I concur. The advice I typically give to clients when they're thinking about mobile bidding for the first time is it helps to understand the rules. Ideally it looks like a marketplace. It looks attractive. It has a marketing feel to it. Get some people on your committee who have experience in that and go, "Oh, you can't put this item next to this item. Move these around." Those little things make a difference. It's aesthetic.

Lori: But from the basket point of view, if it has a theme, I go and grab a theme image from the internet. If it's a spa basket, I'll go find a picture of a lady who's getting a facial.

Jeff: That you have digital rights to use, by the way.

Lori: Thank you, Jeff, very much.

Diana: Now, here's something that happened to me as an employee at Handbid when I had first-time mobile bidding with a new client years ago. This was years ago, and they did not get it. I opened up their auction one day, and I was like, oh, my Lord have mercy. There was a car wash, and it was a picture of the certificate of the car wash. And then I kept going -- oh my gosh. I was flipping and flipping. And I had to call them and say, "Listen, I'm going to give you all some constructive criticism."

Jeff: And so what did you do?

Diana: I gave them an example of what I've done. I moved the picture to a shiny, gleaming car that had water glistening on it. And it was fresh. This is the image that you're looking for. People do not want to see a teeny tiny -- I couldn't even see it. It was just a gift certificate.

Jeff: You have to think like a marketing and graphics person almost.

Diana: Yeah.

Jeff: And let's also take that to other types of examples where the image just isn't going to fit well inside of a mobile bidding application on somebody's phone. The classic one is all these hockey sticks. We have lots of NHL clients and they want to -- hey, I'm a big fan of showing at least the signature. But if you have a hockey stick signed by a famous player, show the photo of the famous player.

Diana: Thank you.

Jeff: Make it a good photo. And then as a secondary photo, because the collector is going to want to see this, zoom in on the signature and that's it. Everybody knows what a hockey stick looks like.

Diana: Yeah.

Jeff: So you don't need to get the entire stick in the screen. You can just do the important parts.

Lori: And we do the same thing with jerseys and some other stuff. But yeah, images are definitely important.

Diana: I would say it's still possible to do the stick if it's a theme stick. I've seen Christmas theme sticks.

Jeff: Right, I agree. Or jerseys can be themed. But the point is, it is all about the autograph.

Lori: And the player.

Diana: And the player. So really highlight the things that you know your donors are going to be interested in. If they were walking up to your silent auction, the first thing they're going to do is look for the signature. That's the first thing they're going to do if they're looking at that specific item.

Jeff: Okay. Well, can we also talk about highlighting the people that have donated the items? Whether it's an organization, a person, a family, or an artist -- highlighting that. You can even highlight as one of your images, "Donated by the Miller family." And you have a picture of the Millers with a cute little logo that you made, added as one of your images for the item. So you can highlight the donors and really honor those people that are helping to raise funds for the organization that is important to you.

Diana: That's a great idea.

Lori: Thanks, Jeff. I love that idea. That's why I work for you.

Jeff: It's a good thing that she's coaching our clients, not me.

Lori: But really highlighting those people. In software, you obviously have a place where you put the donor, but also just really highlighting that it was donated by a specific person and why.

Diana: And art -- I love this, we talked about this before -- creating a video about the artist. I've even seen organizations record the artist creating the piece and use that as a video, which is really, really cool.

Jeff: Yes. If you can do that, especially for an online-only auction as opposed to something that's in person.

Lori: And one other thing, since obviously visual stuff is a thing that gets me. If you have stuff like jewelry, a purse, or a fur coat, will you please just put that on somebody in a picture? Do not just show a picture of it flat.

Diana: Somebody attractive.

Lori: Yeah. Somebody attractive. But if you show a purse, I have no concept of how large it is. Especially if I'm online only, I need to see it on Diana because she's cute. And I'm going to go, "Oh my gosh, I love that purse!" I wouldn't have just looked at a picture of a purse and been like, "I'm just going to get that."

Jeff: Yeah. So they were looking for scale.

Lori: We're looking for wearability.

Jeff: Yep. Size.

Diana: And that's a great example. I was searching for sunglasses the other day -- this is not auction related -- but to your point, you can see a photo of sunglasses on their company's website, but then below that, it was brilliant, you could upload your photo of you wearing that model of sunglasses. So here's all these people wearing them, and then I'm like, "Oh yeah, I like that," or "I don't like that."

Lori: That is absolutely true. It's key. People need that to hit that bid button. And not everybody that's bidding in your auction, when it is an online auction -- delete the bid sheet thing -- online auctions are not in-person only most of the time. You want grandma from Ohio bidding on an auction for the grandchild's auction in Texas. So we want the ability for everybody to have the same experience whether they're seeing the item in person or whether they're seeing it online. You've got to be creative with the tools that you have at your disposal.

Jeff: So I want to talk about creative tools around naming an item. We got into this a little bit in a previous podcast, and I feel like we could have kept going and going. So I think it's worth bringing up again. My personal view is I don't think every item needs to be so creative that you're just like, "What the heck is this thing?" I have to open up every item to figure out what you're saying.

Diana: "Go, go, get excited." Well, what does that mean? Is this caffeine? Am I going to a race car experience? Come on.

Lori: So "Adrenaline Junkie." Oh, they drive me nuts. "Adrenaline Junkie" means what?

Jeff: We did an event once and every item was -- it was kind of music oriented -- but every item was named after a country music song.

Diana: That's right. I know what you're talking about.

Jeff: "I Need to Go Rest High on This Mountain." "All My Exes Live in Texas."

Lori: And "I Need All My Exes Live in Texas." Oh my gosh.

Jeff: Okay, so if you don't know country music, you're like, who wrote that song? Because I'm pretty sure that's the George Strait guitar, but I'm not sure.

Diana: Oh my gosh. Yes.

Jeff: Yeah. That's a great point. It's a good example. I like some creativity. I said this before. I like creativity around live auction items because you have somebody explaining the item and you can have music and videos and things on screen and it can be really engaging and fun. We have one organization that does it beautifully -- produced live auction. Love that for creative names. But I really lean towards some simple names for auction items and categories. "George Strait signed Gibson guitar." That works for me.

Diana: Me too.

Lori: Well, I agree, but I think there should be two or three or four super clever names.

Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lori: Not all of them, but some of them.

Jeff: Well, and we did that, right? It's a well-hidden secret that Handbid has in the past completely built auctions from scratch for clients. So we did one -- remember, it was Dan and Shay, and they had two bottles of Don Julio 1942? One of them had one shot left, and then the other one was the full bottle. So do we bundle these together? Do we not? We decided to separate them and see.

Lori: And the one that had one shot left was signed by Dan and Shay.

Jeff: Oh, I was like, why would you be auctioning off a bottle of tequila? Because they drank it. I didn't get that.

Diana: See, I didn't get that initially.

Jeff: So we're thinking, okay, what do you want? Do you want the one shot left -- so you shared a bottle of Don Julio with Dan and Shay that they signed -- or do you want the other one? So we thought we'd do a little competition. But remember we called one "When I Taste Tequila."

Diana: Yeah. Oh, that's cute. I love that.

Jeff: We called the other one --

Lori: That's a Dan and Shay song, by the way. If you're not country people.

Jeff: And then the other one was called "When I Tasted Tequila."

Diana: Yes. Because that one was the one where there was no tequila left.

Lori: Where there's leftover saliva from Dan and Shay in it.

Jeff: Do you remember which one went for more? The Dan and Shay signed one went for way more.

Diana: Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

Jeff: Yes. A bottle of Don Julio 1942 has a well-known standard street price. You can go to Costco and get one. So that one went for about that. The other one went for nearly double because it had their signature on it.

Lori: One of the questions I get a lot in coaching, and I've actually thought about writing an article about this for our knowledge base, is ideas for different category names.

Jeff: Oh, yeah.

Lori: Because people really get stuck on categories, what to call them. And I think you can be a little bit fun with category names.

Jeff: Yeah, I agree. A little bit fun.

Lori: But different category names and what kind of things go into those categories and how many categories to have based on how many items you have.

Jeff: Lori, it's a great subject. Thanks. So what advice do you typically give people?

Lori: Oh, geez. It depends on the group. But I feel like having no more than about 10 items in any given category works well. Otherwise, you're scrolling. And please don't just put 500 silent auction items in a "Silent Auction" category. That is so annoying. Break it up.

Diana: So some of the items -- there's mobile bidding systems out there that do that. It drives me nuts.

Jeff: And everybody's like, "Well, why don't you just have an all category?" Well, because I don't want to scroll through 500 items on one screen. I mean, yes, you can use search. And search is a great way if you know the name and if the name is titled appropriately. This goes back to my Yellow Pages days, okay? So there's two ways that people find things. They browse or they search. When you browse, you're browsing through categories, and the categories help you organize items for people that are just flipping through looking for stuff. They don't know what they want. Versus, "I'm a golfer, I'm looking for golf," or "I'm looking for wine." I'm going to type in wine and find out what all those are and get those results. So it helps to cater to both groups.

Lori: The categories, to your point, you can get cute with them. And I also think you can have way too many.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. As much as you can have just one that's not fun, I think you've got to find that right balance. Gosh, if there were more than 10 or 15 categories, I think you're overdoing it.

Lori: Too, yeah.

Jeff: And I think you have to look at your items and start to get themes of what's happening. Oh, we have a lot of sports memorabilia. Well, do we have so many that we have to divide it into baseball and football?

Diana: We've seen that. And then we realized in one auction that we had to do a bunch of different sports. We ended up having a lot of signed celebrity memorabilia. We thought that would be fun to highlight -- if someone was interested in meeting a celebrity, we could just say, "Go right here to this category. You can see all of these items here." So there's a lot to think about. And do you call it "Food and Drinks"? Do you call it "Libations"? Anything that people are going to identify with.

Jeff: So remember that one event we did in Orlando? I think we had 15 items or more from International Drive, which they call iDrive.

Lori: Yeah. So our category was called "iDrive Experience" or "iDrive."

Diana: Or "Fun in Florida."

Lori: Yeah. And it was just a list of everything that was there.

Jeff: That's cool. Or you could call it "Best of Austin." If it's themed around your community, there are so many different clever ways to draw people in and get them excited about your auction.

Diana: Yeah.

Lori: Yeah. Just be careful of some things. Like "For Him" and "For Her" -- and then you're like, this is for both.

Jeff: Right.

Diana: Yeah. "Spa Day" isn't just for her. Come on now.

Lori: I love that, Lori. Gosh. You could do something like "Treat Yourself."

Jeff: "Treat Yourself."

Lori: Because women drink bourbon and guys get manicures, right? Let's just be honest. I think we can stop doing that now in auctions.

Jeff: Okay. I love that. What about talking about how you can use data around what items worked for you and what items didn't, right? At the end of your auction, you can look and see, wow, holy cow, the entertainment category got all these bids and all this bid activity, but "Crafting with Mom" over here got one bid. And that's going to give you data for the next year of what kind of items you want to be soliciting. So you're putting your focus towards items that are lucrative towards gaining money for your organization.

Diana: That's why categories are important. You put everything in one category called "Silent Auction," and then you go run a category performance report, which you ideally have access to, and it shows you how many items and what the average starting bid was and what the ending bid was and kind of how you did against fair market value in that category. When it's one category, it's not super helpful.

Jeff: Right. But to your point, it's like, wow, my guests love wine. How do we get more of these items for next year?

Lori: Well, and you can tell. We've been to events where they're like, "These items didn't really sell." And I've been to the event. I'm like, I'll tell you why they didn't sell. It was the children's museum. It was the zoo. It was all these things. And everybody in the room was over 60 years old. So guess what sold? Trips and wine.

Jeff: Right. And so it's worth looking at the life stage of the people that are in there and saying, are they going to be interested in the types of stuff I'm getting donations for?

Diana: Exactly. And do you want to say no to some items that are given to you? Do you say no or do you just stick them in the closet?

Lori: This is what I tell everybody. So we have the ability to add items in through our mobile bidding device. Anybody can add an item. And I usually tell people when they send the thank you note back just to say, "Thank you so much for your donation to our event. We're going to evaluate whether we'll be able to place this in this current event or use it for something in the future," right?

Jeff: So we were at an event once and this quilt came out. And this lady said, "It's not going to sell." I said, oh, let's keep the hopes up. She goes, "Nope, this is the fourth year in a row the quilt has been in the auction."

Diana: That's when I would feel bad as somebody working the auction. I would bid on it just feeling so bad for her. Let's put this out of its misery. I'm going to bid on this little quilt.

Jeff: Yeah, it's a good one. And I know there's a lot of pressure for certain auction managers. You have donors that are going to watch that item and they want to know exactly what it goes for. And I feel for you because I've been in that boat too, where you get a donation and they want it to go for a certain amount of money, or they want you to start it at a certain price. And those are tough. That's a bit of a negotiation you have to do. But every once in a while, we'll go in and when those items aren't selling at an auction, we'll say, "Well, what do you want to do? Do you want to just have it not sell, or do you want to lower it?" And we'll have to make a game-time decision on that.

Lori: Yeah, that's a good point.

Jeff: Yeah. One thing I want to round out our conversation with here is those items that walk in the door with the person the night of the event, because that happens all the time. Almost every event I work, it feels like somebody's dropping off an item.

Diana: So part of the technology that you use might give you the ability to do that right from your phone as an auction manager. And man, that's nice. Send messages out right there and say, "Hey, look what we just --" In fact, I even have a client that has a whole category called "Late but Great."

Jeff: That's a great idea.

Lori: That's a great idea.

Diana: And so then she can use that broadcast message function to say, "Hey folks, we just added a new item. Check it out right here." Hyperlink it. And then that item is going to get the proper attention it deserves.

Jeff: I'm going to remember that. It reminds me of the auction I did out in North Carolina where the guy walks in the door and it was a piece of a NASCAR car. The driver had gotten in a wreck. The car had completely been demolished. He took a piece of the scrap metal and signed it.

Diana: That's kind of cool.

Jeff: And so he walks in -- it's kind of cool, but you're like, if I was a NASCAR person, what is this? Well, we've got to draw a story around it.

Diana: That's right.

Lori: Yeah. Well, in North Carolina it's not too difficult to sell that to a crowd.

Diana: No. Y'all are my people, North Carolinians. I'm just saying, you love NASCAR.

Jeff: But I thought it was hilarious. I'm like, okay great, we've got to get this item added. It is a -- what would you call that? Is that a fender?

Diana: Yeah. That item got a lot of bids that night from what I recall.

Jeff: Yeah. That's cool. Very fun.

Lori: Yeah.

Jeff: Well, this has been a good conversation. I think we've covered a lot in terms of how to make sure that your auction items are properly named, described, organized into categories, starting bids, bid increments, all that great stuff. So thank you guys so much for joining us again on this. And stay tuned. We'll have a lot more tips that we'll share in future episodes of Elevate Your Event.