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

Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

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 learned this much selling cars: offer the customer something he doesn't want, to make what he half-wants look better.

“I’m a terrible salesman,” he finally said. “I always tell the truth about what I’m selling, and then nobody buys it.”

Everybody knows by now, all businessmen are completely full of shit; just the worst kind of low-life, criminal, cocksuckers you could ever wanna' run into – a fuckin' piece of shit businessman. And the proof of it, the proof of it is, they don't even trust each other. They don't trust one another. When a business man sits down to negotiate a deal, the first thing he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete lying prick who's trying to fuck him outta his money. So he's gotta do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder. And he's gotta do it with a big smile on his face. You know that big, bullshit businessman smile? And if you're a customer – Whoah! – that's when you get the really big smile. Customer always gets that really big smile, as the businessman carefully positions himself directly behind the customer, and unzips his pants, and proceeds to service...the...account. I am servicing this account. This customer needs service. Now you know what they mean. Now you know what they mean when they say, "We specialize in customer service." Whoever coined the phrase "let the buyer beware" was probably bleeding from the asshole. That's business.

mktg case study #9: mktg lies
OCCASIONALLY, JUST OF COURSE, YOUR COMPANY WILL BE CAUGHT IN A LIE. THIS IS NOT GOOD. IF POSSIBLE, IMMEDIATELY FIRE SOMEONE EXPENDABLE AND PUBLICLY APOLOGIZE. IF NOT, YOU MUST STICK TO THE LIE. PERCEPTION IS REALITY.

On one such call, a salesperson described an account that he’d forecast in detail: “I have buy-in from my champion, the vice president that he reports to, and the head of purchasing. My champion assures me that they’ll be able to complete the deal by the end of the fiscal quarter.” Mark quickly replied, “Have you spoken to the vice president’s peer in the networking group?” Sales rep: “Um, no I haven’t.” Mark: “Have you spoken to the vice president yourself?” Sales rep: “No.” Mark: “Okay, listen carefully. Here’s what I’d like you to do. First, reach up to your face and take off your rose-colored glasses. Then get a Q-tip and clean the wax out of your ears. Finally, take off your pink panties and call the fucking vice president right now, because you do not have a deal.

Because in a business like that what your customers are buying is not your business’s ability to give them what they want but your ability to give them what they want. And that’s what’s wrong with it!

"The typical industry approach is [retailers] to treat vendors like the enemy... If vendors can't make a profit then they don't have money to invest in research and development, which in turn means that the products they bring to the market will be less inspiring to customers, which in turn detriments the retailer's business because customers aren't inspired to buy. People want to cut costs and negotiate aggressively because there's a limited amount of profit to be shared by both sides. As a result of this "death spiral", most retailers fail."

When a company starts to lose its major battles, the truth often becomes the first casualty. CEOs and employees work tirelessly to develop creative narratives that help them avoid dealing with the obvious facts. Despite their intense creativity, many companies often end up with the same false explanations.

companies trying to misrepresent the product they sell by playing with our cognitive biases, our unconscious associations, and that’s sneaky. The latter is done by, say, showing a poetic picture of a sunset with a cowboy smoking and forcing an association between great romantic moments and some given product that, logically, has no possible connection to it. You seek a romantic moment and what you get is cancer.

The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer’s problem. Instead of marketing themselves to millions, they sold themselves to one.

That's what annoys me about sweepstakes companies, they always tease you with that, "You may have already won," and we all buy into it. [...] I'd like once for a sweepstakes company to have some guts, come out with the truth, just be honest with people one time. Send out envelopes, "You have definitely lost." You turn it over, giant printing, "Not even close!"