What’s the exact opposite of a High Pressure Salesman? – It’s Me!

The best way to sell something is to create a need or demand for it

Borrowed from the Film  “The Wolf of Wall Street” :-

Wolf  “Sell me that pen”

Salesman  “Do me a favour write your name down on that napkin for me”

Wolf  “I don’t have a pen”

Salesman  “Exactly! Supply and demand.”

Over the years I have heard of plenty of Dodgy Sales techniques, one such firm who was well known for them were the people who sold a certain type of Vacuum cleaners. The Salesman would do a visit to the customer’s home and carry out a demonstration. Apparently, the cleaners really were very good. The customer readily agreed to the demonstration thinking that they would get their carpet cleaned for free, and then they could just tell the salesman that they were going to “Think about It”

The Salesforce, however, had been taught a trick to stack the odds in their favour, they would start off by cleaning the customer's settee, or carpet but they wouldn’t finish the job, they would clean a piece of the carpet in a noticeable area of the room, or half the settee, then pack up their equipment. The customer then was left with no choice but to buy the cleaner and finish doing the job themselves.

Back in the Eighties, there was a local Double Glazing Firm who employed a SalesForce and trained them in very High Pressure Techniques to Force a customer to buy their product. One such I heard of was when after the Salesman had finished his presentation, the customer said that he was going to sleep on it, un-phased the Salesman said, “No problem, do you have a spare bed, or should I stay here on the couch till you’ve made your mind up?”

Once the Double Glazing Salesmen had passed their probationary period they were given an amount of money to buy themselves a car. As he had to sign the cheques, It had come to the attention of the Owner that I had been selling his best Salesman a lot of cars, so unbeknown to me the Owner, and one of their trainers came to our garage to mystery shop me, see how I did it and also offer me a job.

They pretended to look at a car and ask for a part exchange price, I knew that there was something not right about them, but I persevered until the guy who turned out to be the trainer suddenly blurted out “I’ve got it, he uses the couldn’t care less technique!” The Owner of the double glazing business then came clean and told me why they were there.

I politely refused their offer and said “I will let you into a little secret, It’s not a technique” and it wasn’t, I knew if they didn’t buy the car, someone else would. At that time we just couldn’t get enough cars, and If I am honest it had made me slightly blaze, and unbelievably arrogant, it also made me think that I was a whole lot better Salesman than I actually was.  

How I long for a return to “The Good Old Days”