Best Answer to “Sell Me This Pen” I Have Ever Seen (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Best Answer to “Sell Me This Pen” I Have Ever Seen (2017)

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23 pointsquickthrower217 comments

This long manipulative answer just reminds me why I hate salesmen.

All I need to know is whether a product is either cheaper or better in some way. And I need to know it quickly because I’ve got a lot of stuff to do at work.

It's definitely a white collar answer. Try to sell someone a hammer this way and I imagine you'll be laughed out of the workshop.

Which is why you wouldn't sell a hammer this way.

Instead, you'd listen to what they have to say about the hammers they do use. Maybe they don't like the grip, or the balance, or maybe it's too heavy or light for the job. Maybe they don't like the claw digging into them from their tool belt while they crawl around tight spaces. Maybe the quality is crap. Maybe it's damaging the thing they're working on.

The point is, you find out what they need, you make it, and then you sell it by using their own language to explain your product and how they'll benefit from it.

But he does explain why 'the pen' is better. He explains that his "nice" pen is a good way to honor important milestones of the company which in turns leads to better productivity. His argument is one of morale (i.e. 'honor important milestones with a tool worthy of said accomplishments builds morale, which is important for productivity.')

Whether you believe his argument or not is up to you, you're the customer. But he makes a well rationed and reasonable argument in a very short amount of time which is impressive. Not everything is sold on "speed and feeds" as they use to say in the old computer days.

I think the stereotype of salespeople being manipulative is unfortunate because sales actually serves an important function of delivering information about the product to the customer. Researching that info on your own is time consuming and the salesperson should be familiar with the product and its competitors. Unfortunately many unscrupulous salespeople use their position to lie and try to close a sale which leads to a less effective marketplace for everyone.

... And the result is clogging the gateways for doing one’s own research. Sales and advertising have nothing to offer. Customers would literally be better off without them, and so would art and entertainment!

You also seem to assume bringing another cook into the kitchen is going to make things better, as long as they have good faith.

Both of my parents were in sales. I truly believe they were the types you speak of. Their jobs were not easy, competing with dishonesty, but they did well in the right environments. Their careers were based building trust in the long term. This can never work in an aggressively corporate world as we have created today.

I'm not sure why every time there is mention of salespeople being good, there also has to be a caveat at the end about the tactics bad salespeople use.

For example, I wouldn't say, "Engineers serve a very important function in our society, designing and building the things we need. Unfortunately there are many unscrupulous or lazy engineers who have built bridges that collapse or unsecure code that fails which leads to litigation, high insurance premiums, and costly preventative measures which are bad for everyone."

There's shitty people in every job. Get over it.

Because engineers have little incentive to lie, while salespeople have a very strong incentive to do so, maybe?

>Because engineers have little incentive to lie,

Really? They have just as much incentive. Tight deadlines, bonuses, promotions, etc. You've never see an engineer push through questionable code to make a deadline or launch a product so they can get that promotion?

The half-post long huff and puff pump up of the importance and the context for the content which followed was... really distracting. Almost to the point of diluting the message, which was quite valid.

I was half expecting "... and then they all clapped" at the end. The whole self-aggrandizing thing belongs in /r/thathappened

I was thinking just now about some sentences I would use if I was selling pens on a corner for making the rent and cigarettes money: If I saw a young couple coming to take a quick look of curiosity, I would ask to one: Did she/he ever wrote on your arm that he/she loves you? _ If I saw an old lady taking a quick look, I would say, in a humorous joking way: Those are lucky pens to write the lottery black rectangles, you may spend a dime on the pen and get a million in return, if you dont get the million, you get a cheap but good pen to write lottery tickets for a good time. I should think of more sentences someday, it is a fun exercise.

Typical salesperson, he lies in his presentation. Says he just sold some to Elon Musk and this is his last one available. Do you want your salesperson misleading?

The article reminded me that the first time I heard of that was when I saw the movie "The wolf of wall Street".

https://youtu.be/90Xx7PAiqY8

"Just this week I shipped ten new boxes of these pens to Elon Musk’s office..."

Unless this was somehow literally true, the use of a lie to name-drop would have me interrupt the salesperson right there and tell him to leave.

Too long a speech, not really a daily life situation. Try for free for a whole week is hard to refuse, want to try this box of colorpens free for a week? Well , Yes.

Published in 2017.

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