Manipulative Selling

October 5, 2007 |

“Selling IS psychological manipulation.”
(Message: get over it!)

- THE CLOSERS

In the past 5 years or so, there’s been an incredible proliferation of new approaches to selling and sales training that try to sound warmer, fuzzier, and, well, less like selling….like “non-manipulative selling”, “non-confrontational selling”, “win-win selling”, “stress-free selling” and the like.* This is all horse puckey if you ask me. Selling is manipulation. If you are going to feel guilty about designing and using a presentation and answers to questions and objections engineered to make people do what you want; accept your proposition; buy your product; choose the higher priced options; and so on, no supply of psychobabble-ish buzzwords will turn you into an effective salesperson (in person or in print). The tools of selling include fear, guilt, ego, and greed. Mainstream advertising is largely about association: wear these shoes and you’ll be like Mike, drink this stuff and you’ll be like Shaq, drive this car or drink this beer and attractive members of the opposite sex will think you’re cool. Asking someone any simple yes/yes question: would Tuesday or Thursday be better? - even offering choices of credit cards or payment terms - is by nature manipulative. Just about everything you do in selling has a manipulative effect even if unintended.

I feel fortunate that this never bothered me in the least. I’ve been selling my entire adult life, from the very beginning operating under the “no holds barred” premise: that my job is to make the sale doing and using anything short of lying or fraud.