The Salesman

 

Yesterday, 2/24/25, I was off from work and suddenly, in the early afternoon, the doorbell rang. I was taking a nap, and it irritates me to be awakened.

 

I went to the door and a young man, rather handsome, blond, and presentable looking, immediately launched into a sales pitch: “I have been helping your neighbors to save money on their electrical bills. Wouldn’t you like to save money as they are doing.”

 

I could barely hear him because the dogs were making a fuss. I asked him to repeat his pitch, which he did.

 

I said no thank you.

 

He asked, “Don’t you want to save money?”

 

He was smiling but his eyes were taunting and defiant.

 

I just shook my head and closed the door. That was the end of it.

 

When my wife came home later, I told her about the salesman and his clever sales pitch, how, in a short few words, he instilled three emotional appeals which might capture the gullible, which I am not. I listen carefully and words matter.

 

First, he insisted that he was on this block helping people. That appeal comforts people or is meant to, that he is here to solve a problem for people, to make their lives better, not make money for himself and his company. That is what he implies.

 

Second, he mentioned that he was helping my neighbors. Well, most people are group-oriented, so if his selling his product on this product is benefiting everyone, and group-identifying is my mode of existing, then it might nudge me to receive “help” from him as the neighbors were putatively receiving, for we all know, wink, wink, that I will do what the neighbors do, just to fit in, because remaining popular is my primary objective.

 

Third, he claimed to “save” them money: well, who can argue with this appeal to personal greed, to save money. What could be better than that?

 

Whoever was the psychologist that wrote his script was shrewd and slick.