The Lies and Fallacies of the Buyer and Seller

The existence and necessity of sales is a middle finger to the classical economic assumptions of perfect information and rational buyers.The stereotype of the sly salesperson using devilish tricks to bypass your rational faculties and hypnotise you into a decision you would not have made upon reflection is partly true. However, less appreciated is that much of the salesman’s role is to tactfully expose you as holding contradictory or counter-productive beliefs, and win the sale by dissuading you of the genuinely irrational reasons holding you back.The dance of the buyer and the seller is one that involves an escalating back-and-forth of lying to each other, making fallacious arguments, and exposing the lies and fallacies of the other party, until one person’s frame remains. Whoever wins this exchange decides the outcome of the sale.Surprisingly, the first lie is customarily told by the buyer, not the seller.The dance begins when the salesman asks for the sale, and the prospect politely replies…“That sounds great, let me think about it and get back to you”One of the central tensions in a sales conversation is the buyer’s unwillingness to say “no” outright. Telling a friendly person who has given you a compelling set of reasons you should buy a thing, “no”, because you’re afraid of them scamming you, or unable to afford it, or have a vague sense of hesitation you can’t articulate, tends to make people sheepish.If you haven’t been on the seller’s side of the conversation, this being a lie may strike you as an unfair assumption. Of course they need to think about it - thinking about it is perfectly reasonable.However:P(they buy it next week | “oh yeah, sounds great lemme get back to you”)Is tiny - close to 1% in practice.And so, the lie is twofold:“that sounds great” (implying likely eventual acceptance - a conscious lie),“let me think about it” (implying they will actually do that, which they won’t - often a lie to themselves).It’s much easier to pretend to be eager, g