Dirty Sales Tactics

a.k.a. sales shenanigans

Sales Shenanigans

Ah, the world of sales. The needle doesn't move in the economy until sales occur.

We love to conjure up archetypes of salespeople, like the cutthroat Alec Baldwin character in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), or the very truth-challenged Danny de Vito in Matilda (1996), and of course the William H. Macy character in Fargo that same year.

While I personally believe that most salespeople are honestly trying to earn a living, it's the few bad apples that give the rest of them a bad name. As some are not above using more insidious means of parting you from your money. And if the whole culture's rotten, well... then that's another story.

Whether you're dealing with salespeople for personal goods and services, or on the business side, there's usually going to be something they know that you don't - and they don't plan to reveal what that is. Or, they'll have a base offering, to which they apply add-ons as per your requirements. Maybe the "add-ons" just happened to be already included in the base, but if that remains hidden from view, then...that price tag is like a helium balloon. And if it's on the business side, forget about asking your competitors.

Remaining alert and even a tad cynical can ward off these dirty tactics. Here are a few of them:

1) The "I went to the trouble of doing this for you...so..."

Ah, yes. The quid pro quo - yes or no?

It's ingrained in us humans to reciprocate in kind, even when the other person may then reciprocate in kind, without the kind part.

I can recall a time when I was with a certain bank, that the rep on the phone told me I was "pre-approved" for some privileged gold card. I refused, thinking that something was afoot, and the response "But sir, you're pre-approved!!" as if they went to great trouble to treat me like I'm really somebody, so I owe them now.

Of course, if they were from Wells Fargo circa 2016, well...they'd avoid pressuring you - they'd go ahead and sign you up for extras anyway. Because the whole consent thing is just a big hassle, right?

2) The "you'd have to be crazy to pass up this offer."

Yes, because they drew an arbitrary deadline in the sand when a promo expires. Maybe it's tonight. Sometimes this dirty retort will "piggyback" on (1) above.

But where it spurs some people into reaction is that it conveys a certain stigma of mental illness. Inserting "crazy" in there, or if they've got brass balls, they might use "insane". Since mental illness has long been a stigmatized quality in any given society and culture (and has only relented as such more recently thanks to online campaign awareness), people's more primitive brains will have a knee-jerk response to this.

Well, realistically, the only insane response would be to drop all your cards on the table when they're still clutching their best ones to their chest.

What was that that the late Kenny Rogers said again??

3) "I'm GIVING you this [on top of such and such]."

Again, very much aligned to the whole reciprocity mentality. But their added package isn't purely noble or charitable - it may be a low-value item that's dressed up in some way to appear fancy (like cosmetic packaging), or they've played around with the base offering price vis-a-vis the total package price. But as soon as we hear the word "giving", it implicitly connotes "FREE", one of the sweetest words to our ears. Guard dropped!

4) "People do this all the time."

Said in regards to signing something prematurely when the fine details are filled in later, or specifying some extra or add-on feature. It's a subliminal prompt to be agreeable and not be difficult. Even when this is the moment when you need to push back THE MOST.

There are two big problems with this line: one, there's no relative degree expressed, and two, who's to say that all those who did such-and-such aren't regretting it now??

5) "So, I guess you don't want to save money...(?)"

This just oozes with passive-aggressiveness, whether there's a question mark or a period after it.

It's the final parting shot of a salesperson who's resigned to being rejected but making one last-ditch barb at their prospect.

Not to mention, it's like the mother of all loaded questions.

See above for not wanting to appear insane.

6) "You owe it to yourself" or "you deserve to have..."

In a dryly ironic sense, one might expect these dirty tactics to come from a narcissist. No, they're not the entitled one, of course not - they're saying YOU are. Just listen to the slant of their words.

It's been said that narcissists are over-represented in the sales profession. Which also raises another alert (no, not just the super-fancy suit), but the inability to take rejection. Whereas most salespeople would take rejection as part of the territory, the narcissist would pull out all the stops and throw every manipulative line they could at you - because they take rejection personally - and you can rest assured that what they're claiming about their product or service is as overdressed as they are.

7) The fixed choice; e.g. "Would you like to book a session for Tuesday at 1pm, or Thursday at 11am?" Or "Which of these three plans works for you?" - not giving them the option of saying "no" - but not as bad the "I guess you don't want to save money...?" (sigh.)

8) The sunk time fallacy: this dirty trick typically comes up after watching a demo of some product and going through some informational material, then deciding not to buy. Then there's an explicit or more subtle protest evoking guilt that you spent all this time and you're not buying anything?!? I recall reading about aggressive door-to-door tactics from carpet cleaning firms some years ago, and homeowners were subject to this line where a manager would come to their house to pick up their rejected/dejected employee and they'd protest with "The kid just spent over an hour demonstrating this for you, and you're gonna send him packing without any deal??" Well, those who did managerial accounting 101 would know about the fundamental axiom of the sunk cost fallacy, and I'd say that a sunk time fallacy falls in the same bucket... let's call it out for what it is, an attachment to more visceral emotions but not pragmatics.

9) The "you never know, one day" or "just in case" peddlers...

A.K.A. "The solution in search of a problem."

I've had this come up when I had to redirect a vendor who "lukewarm-called" me (not totally cold but not exactly warm) about their offering, which had nothing to do with what I was involved in and so I politely declined, yet he insisted because "you never know!" - but to me this just came across as disingenuous and a mutual waste of time. So I redirected him to our organization's vendor portal.

Being of a strong business analyst persuasion, I'm very much about problems in search of a solution, and not the other way around. To concede otherwise is to concede that the vendor's goals are more important than yours, when there should be some meaningful alignment or you're at least on the same level.

I'll elaborate on this last one in a separate article coming here soon, so be sure to check back :)

Thank you for reading!