Do you disapprove of this sales tactic, or is it a legitimate business technique

Question

Do you disapprove of this sales tactic, or is it a legitimate business technique? How might it morally be defended? (500 word reply)

Please use the below case study to answer this question:

Closing the Deal

Now that she had to, jean MCguire wasn’t sure she could. Not that she didn’t understand what to do. Wright Boazman, sales director for Sunrise Land Developers, had made the step clear enough when he described a variety of effective “deal-closing techniques.”

As Wright explained it, very often people actually want to buy a lot but suffer at the last minute from self-doubt and uncertainty. The inexperienced salesperson can misinterpret this hesitation as a lack of interest in a property. “But,” as Wright pointed out, “in most cases it’s just an expression of the normal reservations we all show when the time comes to sign our names on the dotted line.”

In Wright’s view, the job of a land salesperson was “to help the prospect make the decision to buy.” He didn’t mean to suggest that salespeople should misrepresent a piece of property or in any way mislead people about what they were purchasing. “The law prohibits this,” he pointed out, “and personally I find such behavior repugnant. What I’m talking about is helping them buy a lot that they genuinely want and that you’re convinced will be compatible with their needs and interests.” For Wright Boazman, salespeople should serve as motivators, people who can provide whatever impulse was needed for prospects to close the deal.

In Wright’s experience, one of the most effective closing techniques was what he termed “the other party.” It goes some- thing like this.

Suppose someone like Jean McGuire had a hot prospect, someone who was exhibiting real interest in a lot but who was having trouble deciding. To motivate the prospect into buying, Jean ought to tell the person that she wasn’t even sure the lot was still available because a number of other salespeople were showing the same lot, and they could already have closed a deal on it. As Wright put it, “This first move generally increases the prospect’s interest in the property, and more important to us, in closing the deal pronto.”

Next Jean should say something like, “Why don’t we go back to the office, and I’ll call headquarters to find out the status of the lot?” Wright indicated that such a suggestion ordinarily “whets their appetite” even more. In addition, it turns prospects away from wondering whether they should purchase the land and toward hoping that it’s still available.

When they return to the office, Jean should make a call in the presence of the prospect. The call, of course, would not be to “headquarters” but to a private office only yards from where she and the prospect sit. Wright or someone else would receive the call, and Jean should fake a conversation about the property’s availability, punctuating her comments with conta- gious excitement about its desirability. When she hangs up, she should breathe a sigh of relief that the lot’s still available—but barely. At any minute, Jean should explain anxiously, the lot could be “green-tagged,” meaning that headquarters is expect- ing a call from another salesperson who’s about to close a deal and will remove the lot from open stock. (An effective variation of this, Wright pointed out, would have Jean abruptly excuse herself on hanging up and dart over to another sales represen- tative with whom she’d engage in a heated, although staged, debate about the availability of the property—loud enough, of course, for the prospect to hear. The intended effect, according to Wright, would be to place the prospect in a “now or never” frame of mind.)

When Jean first heard about this and other closing tech- niques, she felt uneasy. Even though the property was every- thing it was represented to be and the law in her state allowed purchasers three days to change their minds after closing a deal, she instinctively objected to the use of psychological manipulation. Nevertheless, Jean never expressed her reserva- tions to anyone, primarily because she didn’t want to endanger her job, which, as a single mother with two children to support, she certainly needed. Besides, Jean had convinced herself that she could deal with closures more respectably than Wright and other salespeople might. But the truth was that, after six months of selling land for Sunrise, Jean’s sales lagged far behind those of the other sales representatives. Whether she liked it or not, Jean had to admit she was losing a considerable number of sales because she couldn’t close. And she couldn’t close because, in Wright Boazman’s words, she lacked tech- nique. She wasn’t using the psychological closing devices that he and others had found so successful.

Now as she drove back to the office with two hot prospects in hand, she wondered what to do.

Explanation / Answer

The use of Machiavellianism in organisations is described using manipulation to perform a task or achieve power. There are varying degrees of scales known as the Mach scales used by the psychologists to describe the degree of Machiavellian orientation. This proves that the use of manipulation in the case of selling a lot cannot be tagged as merely ethical or unethical.
It is alright to indulge in moderate manipulation to perform the task of selling a lot. Customers make their decisions based on emotions and feelings; when it comes to persuasion then it is important for the customers to be aware of the benefits which do not last for a really long time. Thus it is only apt to make them aware of the availability of the lot as scarce; this will actually push them into buying it if they really want to but have been procrastinating otherwise.
People do look for value in intangible products and when this value attached to something is exclusive to them then they want to go ahead and make the purchase. If we apply the same logic in the case of the lot which is portrayed as scarce and ‘now or never’ then customers will act upon it if they place a high value on the lot.
The value will be demonstrated by making a quick purchase. This is not morally wrong as people are not being forced into buying anything.
There is a difference between pushing customers to buy and enticing them. In this case, the customers are being enticed to purchase the lot.

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