Comments on: Marketing Psychology

By: jo5ef

jo5ef — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:14:11 +0000

Well I’m in sales – I sell scientific equipment and I’d just like to counter the rather paranoid view that seems to be prevalent here. Fact is that sales guy has to feed his family too, if you don’t like his style tell his boss.
Many sales people now avoid the old school techniques that have given sales people a bad name and genuinely wish to help their customers. For anyone who dislikes being at the receiving end of shonky sales techniques, I recommend buy only from sales people who don’t use them – if everyone did this, the shonks would die out.

By: tmac57

tmac57 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:45:43 +0000

Regarding car sales, a great book on this is ‘Don’t Get Taken Every Time’ by Remar Sutton. It is a hilarious inside look at car sales, and has been revised 6 times since I 1st read it. He also has a web site by the same name.
Also a very good strategy when looking for some expensive purchase that you might not want to buy impulsively, is to take someone with you who is clear headed and not emotionally tied to the purchase, and can help you to walk away and not be pressured to “buy now”.

By: taustin

taustin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:07:28 +0000

@davew: The trick is to have the willpower to say no. One of the more common of the very dishonest tricks sales drones use is to be passive/aggressively rude to you, to the point where the only way to shut them down is to be deliberately rude in return. A lot of people seem to have a pathological fear of confrontation, even when the other party is asking for it. A lot of people simply can’t say no to a salesman who pushes that hard.

As for buying cars, the most fun I ever had going in to debt was the last new car I bought. Just make a real commitment in your head that you are *not* going to buy today, and go shopping. And when they start to high pressure you, look them right in the eye and tell them “If you push me even one more time, I’m going to take my business somewhere else, and I’m going to make certain your manager – and every other customer here right now – knows why.” And mean it. The little weasels will dance for you, and put on a show, and in the end, give you a decent deal, because they are so driven to succeed by their managers that you can counter-manipulate them through it.

By: krazy9000

krazy9000 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:59:29 +0000

I sold cars for a couple of months, and you learn a lot of psychological tricks really quick. On top of that you learn how to lie/cheat the customer in as many ways as you can. i hated that job.

By: sowellfan

sowellfan — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:41:52 +0000

@davew: You’re absolutely right.

This principle can be extended to the area of shopping for a car, also. If you will research your car purchase online, and arrange for financing through your bank, then you’re halfway there. Also, most dealerships now have an “Internet Sales” department – where you can contact them online, negotiate prices, arrange a test drive, etc., all without even having to come to the dealership to be subjected to the high-pressure tactics of the salesmen who are working the lot. Even better, by working with the internet sales departments, you can deal with multiple dealerships at a time, and figure out who truly has the best offer. This works for used cars as well as new, and it’s a terrific solution, in my opinion, to the problem of being on the lot, having the pressure of making a decision right then and there.

By: davew

davew — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:50:16 +0000

When someone calls or shows up at my door I just say, “I never do business with anyone who comes to me.” This works equally well for magazine salesmen to Greenpeace. It’s amazing how quickly this shuts down the conversation. The most I will do is accept information to research later on the web, but I’ll never make a promise or a pledge.

I don’ think salesmanship counts so much when people are doing research on the web. There’s too much time to think and balance opposing sources.

By: Michael Kingsford Gray

Michael Kingsford Gray — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:38:41 +0000

I recommend that anyone who wishes to learn the basic tenets of marketing psychology to actually complete a good sales marketing course, and try to do well at it.
Choose one that has supervised one-on-one testing of the acquired skills with a professional sales-person.

It tends to inoculate one against being ‘taken for a ride’.

By: krazy9000

krazy9000 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:15:41 +0000

Great post! That is all.

By: artfulD

artfulD — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:11:05 +0000

The methodology that persists in celestial’s example seems to be that you feed people information under a pretext that it will be helpful in a non-manipulative context, and then introduce a problem to them in another context through which they can be expected to use the planted information to make a decision without realizing this was the use it had been intended for to begin with – and thus had no reason to distrust its authenticity.

By: Celestial

Celestial — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:36:52 +0000

Well, I’ve found it a fairly interesting read myself; I’m a bit of a hypnosis/ persuasion/ manipulation/ suggestibility/ psychology nut on top of being a scientist, so a lot of stuff in there’s really cool.

There’s actually a fairly big snake-oil market out there in self-hypnosis, the cult of positive thinking, and NLP-peddlers, but in between the dredge of useless junk there’s a bit of insight that can still be had about the way people think, how it shows and how it can be influenced and controlled. As a professional poker player on the side, this kind of knowledge is pretty critical to my living. I’ll have to tell you about talking someone into handing me $300 with a silly face and moose-hands sometime.

Toss up a link to the post when and if you do write it, I’d love to read it!