The Motivations of Sales
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In more talking on this, I've identified an important concept of micro vs. macro manipulation in sales. To me this is just obvious but I now realize that people are not seeing it. Let me give an example....
The base prices of fries, shirts, whatever are set not to make a sale, but to provide a foundation for sales. This is macro-manipulation. Big picture stuff that sets the stage before you get involved in the sales process.
By doing manipulation at a macro scale, sales people can use other tricks like discount prices, bundling, upsells and such to make inflated prices or overselling sound like a sweet deal to the buyer by messing with their ability to determine value. And because the value manipulation happens BEFORE the sales process begins, it can be difficult to identify it because it is not personal in any way.
But like the fries... the second fries are not a "deal" in any way, they are required to make the price of the first fries rational. But by manipulating the prices in this way, it makes an overall higher price seem acceptable when if presented in a more straightfoward manner, they would not.
Bundling often does this as well. Bundle pricing is normally higher than unbundled because we buy things we don't value as highly and in some cases the prices are literally higher because there is an emotional reaction to bundling conceptually by many people.
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The trick of a macro manipulation is to get the buyer to ignore the false original price and only focus on the discount portion.
Example, by one sandwich, get a second for very little. The buyer will become obsessed with getting the second sandwich as such a "deal" price, they forget to look at the full price of the sandwiches together or consider what the actual value of the second sandwich is (or maybe even the first one.)
A handy way to combat this is to always combine all prices and look at totals. Some of us do this inherently and never actually see discount prices mentally, making it far easier. I'm lucky that the way that I approach life statistically, I often think in weird terms like "cost per hour" that other people do not and naturally reduce sale prices or discounts in such a way that I never really see them.
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Clothing is done this way all the time. Macro manipulation through high "normal" prices and then discounts to make people say things like "but it is half off." How many memes are made about women buying clothes that they don't need and repeating the sales percentage as a "savings" when we know it is actually overbuying. Spending $10 on a shirt that isn't needed is still $10 lost, even if the shirt is 99% off the fake inflated non-sale price.
The same thing happens with sandwiches, french fries, cars, and even IT equipment.
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I know a sales rep (sales to sales people) for a phone vendor. They use "how to get more sales" as a sales technique to sell to the next tier sales people. Things like "if you sell us, you get to make so much more money by selling this other things bundled in - so why sell the competition when we earn you so much more"?
This is how the channel works. Channel product sales people go to their resellers and train them to make selling easier and then "sell" to them based on the potential profits down stream. Meta sales, if you will.
Even if YOUR sales guy is trying to act in your interest alone (hint: he's not, not ever) he is subject to being "sold to" by the channel above him. Even if he didn't mean to, there is little chance that that won't pass on to you regardless. Even just the selection of products that someone carries is a reflection of this process.
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Another aspect worth noting here is that talking about sales in a business context is easy, it's crystal clear how the sales process exists to sell things that are not needed and the role of the business buyer is to buy what is best for the business and best is always in terms of ROI so there is straight math that always tells us what the right answer is or should be. It's super simple, there is no room for emotion. It's "just business".
When we mix in consumer sales, the sales side remains identical. Sales people are always doing business. But consumers are not, they are buying normally for emotion. the choice between a red car and a yellow one is all emotion, not money. The choice between a burger and chicken fingers is emotion, not money. Sure price is still a factor, but convincing someone that they want a yellow car instead of a red one doesn't require making it cost effective, only making it seem cool or presenting it well.
When we buy for ourselves, it's not about profits or 99% of the time we'd simply not buy at all. But personal buying is not like that. We buy for luxury, prestige or fun. So using consumer buying like "I'm happy with my purchase" tells us nothing about the process because of course you are and of course you had no criteria to test against. So using those examples, while we can trivially show how sales people manipulate your emotions to upsell you, is easily confusing because of the "I like what I got BECAUSE the salesman talked me into it" aspect.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
Sales people are an important part of any ecosystem. They have a lot of value.
Can't live without sales people. It's what greases the wheels of the world. It's how you tell the world that you have a product that they might want. As long as people look for things to buy, someone will look to sell them things.
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It's true. Sales people are very necessary. Without them there is essentially no means of disseminating information about new products.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
It's true. Sales people are very necessary. Without them there is essentially no means of disseminating information about new products.
It's just the unfortunateness of the adversarial nature of it.
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@dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
It's true. Sales people are very necessary. Without them there is essentially no means of disseminating information about new products.
It's just the unfortunateness of the adversarial nature of it.
In many (most?) cultures this is considered fun. Think about the markets of north Africa.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
It's true. Sales people are very necessary. Without them there is essentially no means of disseminating information about new products.
It's just the unfortunateness of the adversarial nature of it.
In many (most?) cultures this is considered fun. Think about the markets of north Africa.
Shopping is fun because of the social and biological changes enacted in your brain by being in a different environment. The video below touches on a lot of it, but simply doing different things, being in different areas makes you happy.
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In many cultures, shopping is an event. Something to go do.
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These last few posts are crazy.
Shopping is fun? Shopping makes you happy? Since when? That video probably made by sales people trying to sell you something.
If i go to the mall, here is what happens.
Find a parking spot while trying to avoid the legions of the walking dead staring at their telephone screens constantly.
Get inside the mall, get stuck behind a large group of large people walking 1mph like they are the only creatures in the world. I call these people shambling mounds. Get to the store i want, instantly get harassed by staff trying to sell me something i dont want. Pick something out, wait in line for half an hour, wondering what the point of continuing living is. Pay too much for whatever i bought. Leave the store, get stuck behind another group of shambling mounds. Get back to my car, avoiding the walking dead, sit at the traffic light leading out of the mall for half an hour.
At no point is any of that fun.
Grocery shopping can be even worse. I try to use the self checkout lines, but only when i have less than 5 things. I also never need to have the attendant come and assist me. Others however, get in the self checkout line with an entire cart. these are also the type of people who can barely send an email or text message without asking for help. Yet they get in the self checkout line thinking they are doing others a favor. They f up their checkout at least half a dozen times, requiring constant supervision of the grocery shop employee, while people in line behind them fantasize about 'erasing' them(maybe just me, i doubt it though).Shopping online is better i suppose due to not having to deal with zombies and shambling mounds, but Amazon only shows me adverts for things i have already bought. I dont need another ups battery, or another shower curtain, or another television.
The only part of shopping that is fun is putting on that new shirt the first time, or opening that tv. But eventually you have to wash and fold the shirt, and hook up that tv.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
In many cultures, shopping is an event. Something to go do.
Ugh... way too much forced social interaction.
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@momurda so you just want to take the cling wrap off of new items. . . are you coming to MangoCon? We might need to get you laid. . . .
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So after reading all of this, do smb's or enterprises have any 1 single person or a team in the IT department that are trained to just deal with sales people? It seems if you had someone go through some type of training you would have to worry less about emotional responses to buying and therefore only buy what you need. Does anyone do this at all?
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@jmoore said in The Motivations of Sales:
So after reading all of this, do smb's or enterprises have any 1 single person or a team in the IT department that are trained to just deal with sales people? It seems if you had someone go through some type of training you would have to worry less about emotional responses to buying and therefore only buy what you need. Does anyone do this at all?
I've worked in companies of 1,400 people that had departments that were solely meant to do that.
But this is a MAJOR component of all IT work. Unless you are in an IT department that interacts with no vendors.
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I get that. I just know some are better at it than others. Just seems that it would be in a company's best interest to only have someone trained deal with salespeople if that were possible of course.
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@jmoore said in The Motivations of Sales:
I get that. I just know some are better at it than others. Just seems that it would be in a company's best interest to only have someone trained deal with salespeople if that were possible of course.
Right, but the theory is that the term for those people is "IT". Only the IT staff has the possibility of being this role, because if you had someone able to do this role that wasn't IT, they should be IT.
