If a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.

So the next time a salesman gives you a free gift or consultation, or makes a concession of any sort, duck. Don’t let him press your reciprocity button. The best way out, Cialdini advises, is to fight reciprocity with reciprocity. If you can reappraise the salesman’s move for what it is — an effort to exploit you — you’ll feel entitled to exploit him right back. Accept the gift or concession with a feeling of victory — you are exploiting an exploiter — not mindless obligation.

He believed that you were either selling or being sold: if you weren’t selling a customer on your product then the customer was selling you on why she wasn’t going to buy

...only those who have been really dry know that there is no drink like chaggle water, brackish, chlorinated, with a fine earthy silt at the bottom, pure Gunga Din juice. We hated it and would have sold our souls for it.

We would have won, but the other guys gave the deal away.” “The customer selected us technically and thinks we are the better company, but our competitor just gave the product away. We would never sell so cheaply as it would hurt our reputation.” Anybody who has ever run an enterprise sales force has heard this lie before. You go into an account, you fight hard, and you lose. The sales rep, not wanting to shine the light on himself, blames the “used car dealer” rep from the other company. The CEO, not wanting to believe that she’s losing product competitiveness, believes the rep. If you hear this lie, try to validate the claim with the actual customer. I’ll bet you can’t.

Every Sunny Delight commercial is exactly the same, three guys in the back yard, and one of them is like, “What do you got to drink in the fridge!?” Like so excited about the crappy fridge, and then they go to the fridge and its like, “Well, we’ve got some soda, some purple stuff, SUNNY D!!!” It was always there, behind Brand-X soda and some purple crap, that they couldn’t even identify. Of course you’re going to pick Sunny D, that doesn’t mean it’s a good drink you guys. If you came to my house and you’re like “What do you got to drink?!” and I’m like “Well, we’ve got some ketchup, some gravy, my grandma’s piss, SUNNY D!!!” You’d be like, “Is there any lead in your water, because I hate all four of those.” That should’ve been their slogan, “Sunny D, for when your choices are even worse than Sunny D.”
Sunny D tasted a little bit like a fat clown’s asshole, didn’t it? Who came up with Sunny D and was happy? Some guy was like “I like the taste of orange juice AND baby medicine, can we combine that?” That would taste like shizzie nizzie, that’s rap for shit.

One of the biggest problems of people in love is that we can’t tell a false “salesman” smile from a genuine nurturing smile. One smile is delivered for the benefit of the smiler; it’s essentially predatory and self-serving. The second is delivered for us, the smile. It’s true, open, and giving.

Bad sales sound like selling.
Bad marketing looks like marketing.
Bad copy reads like copy.

You don’t hate marketers, salesmen, or copywriters. You just hate the bad ones. The good ones you buy from every day and don’t even think about

It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled 'His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America'. The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost 'His Excellency' less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!

when customers tell you why they won't buy your product, that you should listen to. They can occasionally be mistaken, but not as often, and there is an iterative process for converging on the truth.

I took one sip and literally spit it out. It was the grossest thing I’d ever tasted. I remember once getting a Diet Coke at a Subway without realizing that the fountain machine didn’t have enough Diet Coke syrup. That’s exactly what this fancy place’s “sparkling” water tasted like. “Something’s wrong with that water,” I protested.

Who was the guy who first looked at a cow and said 'I think I’ll drink whatever comes out of these when I squeeze ’em?

i said get me a glass of juice.. NOT GAS THE JEWS

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