Are You Being Sold?
Frank Furness' humorous motivational talk for sales people (positing two Indian con-girls as the world's greatest salespeople) advises six basic concepts for making a winning sale:
• Greet
• Develop Rapport
• Present The Product
• Deliver Emotional Connection
• Upsell
• Close The Deal
So let's flip the script. Next time you find yourself in accosted by a sales agent on the retail floor, observe as they move through these steps. Laugh. You'll find their persuasive powers diminished if you can identify which part of the sequence they're in.
Though, if you're a Consumerist reader, you're probably already fairly adept at dodging sales staff. A polite but firm, "no thanks," always does the trick for us. — BEN POPKEN
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Comments:
"Two of the best salespeople I've ever met" "an 8 year old and a 5 year old", "two illiterate little girls..."...yes, these future motivational speakers started young.
Please, Mr Gullible...child slave labor...hopefully they can avoid more serious slave labor in India (such as child sex trafficking) Hopefully
I feel like I do this in my business (estate planning), but for me it's ... a lot less sleazy and manipulative. Which I think means this is either the natural way buisness interactions progress, or, hey, I'm a natural-born salesman!
(Except I don't upsell. In my business I consider that unethical.)
Aw, c'mon Eyebrows, you only die once. I know I'd want a pure platinum, lead-covered/plated coffin, and my biggest enemies assigned as pall-bearers. Can you hook me up on that?
Um... how many basic concepts did you say there were?
"I know I'd want a pure platinum, lead-covered/plated coffin, and my biggest enemies assigned as pall-bearers."
*shudder* -- I'm always trying to steer my clients away from funeral homes that do that, to the ones that I know don't price gouge.
I don't, however, go so far as to tell them a pine box will work JUST AS WELL as a mahogany BOAT. Because I don't think most of them are as comfortable with the idea of decomposition as I am.
Only a true salesman could make money by selling books and giving seminars on how he got ripped off.
Ever since my first sales job at Circuit City (yes, I am ashamed of that time of my life, but I was only 18), I have been aware of and annoyed by the stages of "selling" someone. Knowing the routine doesn't make me want to laugh about seeing the steps going on. It makes me want to scream "LEAVE ME ALONE YOU REPTILE!" whenever I go into a store already knowing what I want to buy. I especially hate it when people try to upsell me or tack on extended warranties or whatever.
'He's such a good salesman, he could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing a white dress'
- Don't remember what movie that was from, but I love that description.
Those six concepts bring back nightmares of my Marketing class in high school. We'd get points taken away if we missed any of those.
yeah, I've been to the Gateway of India, they are very very god salesmen/women. No thanks only works if you know you're being sold. And when in a foreign country, unless you want to come off as a stodgy bastard, you're usually adventurous and easy going. Nothing wrong with falling for a good sale, its the natural way of the business world. Shit service, annoying salespeople and so on is another story.