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Reblogged:Defusing High-Pressure Salesmen

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snake_oil.jpg
Image of snake oil salesman via Wikipedia
Over at Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney offers some good advice for countering the kind of salesmen who give the profession a bad name. Over the years, I have become quite comfortable with getting rid of salesmen, especially when I know I am not interested or have lots of options, but I still found her advice worthwhile.

Suppose you are in the market for something, but want to be ready for the misfortune of ending up with a high-pressure salesman. Or, for some reason -- like it's the only dealership for a hundred miles -- you choose to deal with such a person, anyway. Then you might want to go over her scripts for pushing back against the pressure. For example:
"When would be a good time?"

"That assumes that this is high enough priority for me to make time. I don't see that. You are welcome to send me written materials, and if I see from them that this would be worth more of my time, I'll set up a call with you. But right now, my priorities lie elsewhere."
There are two other scripts, along with explanations of the kinds of fallacies that underlie the questions and the rationales for the answers. And all of these are built on the underlying premise of maintaining control of when you do your thinking. This is worthwhile because there is no end to what sleazy salesmen will cook up to get a sale. When he goes off script, you will at least have the right general approach in the back of your mind to be able to resist the pressure.

-- CAV

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Recognizing when someone is testing if you are susceptible to their agenda is interesting.  Increasing your awareness or radar for detecting manipulation from various pressure groups is helpful in deconstructing their tactics. 

'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin DeBecker is a great read, he spent his career protecting high profile people from predators.  How to spot a predator, tactics predators use.  He helps people stop living in fear so that they can recognize the rare moments of real danger.

Another interesting tangent, I watched a bunch of youtube videos about pick-up-artists to get an idea of how to recognize the difference in a guy who is genuinely interested in me as a person, and a guy who just wants a fantasy to jerk himself off with. 

Edited by Tenderlysharp
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