It definitely depends on customers - for example the normal HN crowd is not the normal retail crowd. Most people are not informed consumers. But, even those guys I worked with back in undergrad have moved on and used the same techniques to sell $100k+ deals. Though it's kind of unfair to call them techniques - it's just their personality. They just get people excited and get them to say yes, whether it's for a DVD player or a $50k project. There's a science to it, but I'm guessing everyone here probably already knows that.