Let's make this concrete by considering what I believe to be the most common sales tactic, and certainly the one which I personally am most interested in beating:
The purpose of this sales tactic is to thwart comparison shoppers, and thus avoid the inconvenience of competitive market pricing. A salesman may attempt to disguise this tactic from unsavvy individuals by:
- giving a fake price
- claiming repeatedly that "I'll have that price right out to you; just ten more minutes..."
- claiming that they cannot access the price Of course, if I am a savvy person I will see right through these blatant attempts at deception (and others like them), but I still won't have the price. So, how can I beat the tactic? Well, this first tactic has one huge glaring weakness: the salesman has to disclose the price before closing a sale. Unfortunately, I now run up against the second sales tactic:
The purpose of this sales tactic is to filter for individuals who are committed to making a purchase, thus thwarting comparison shoppers and avoiding competitive market pricing. In the context of a car dealership, the way this plays out is by making the would-be buyer wait 8+ hours before moving to close the sale. Fortunately, this means we can get the price if we are simply willing to wait. Once we have the price, we can leave. At this point, I should be wary of a third sale tactic:
In other words, they become very angry or upset. The purpose of this sales tactic is to discourage comparison shoppers and avoid competitive market pricing. Fortunately, this tactic is easily bypassed; at this point, the unsavvy person might attempt to reason with the unhinged schizo sales maniacs and crazy seething managerial psychos (I definitely learned this the hard way by being the unsavvy person myself), but the savvy person will realize it's nothing but empty bluster. To bypass the third sales tactic, I suggest:
- Have my phone charged and ready to call (don't spend the 8+ hours scrolling on my phone lol), with the exact address.
- Proceed directly to the exit; do not engage in any way.
- When they attempt to physically block me, immediately call the police. And that's it! So, to summarize, I believe I can beat Sales Tactic #1 as follows:
- Feign interest in making a purchase.
- Wait 8+ hours until the price is disclosed.
- Call the police if needed to help me escape with the price. So, in short, I do believe Sales Tactic #1 can be beaten, but this approach leads to a pyrrhic victory; the 8+ hour wait is still far too long and discourages me from comparison shopping. This approach to beating Sales Tactic #1 is far too costly to be characterized as "immunity" in my opinion.
I can look for a second approach to beating Sales Tactic #1 by one of three avenues:
- an individualistic approach
- look for legal avenues of approach
- look for helpful organizations I already outlined an individualistic approach and found it lacking, so next I will look for legal options. Sales Tactic #1 is obviously an anti-competitive business practice