Читать книгу Media Selling - Warner Charles Dudley - Страница 163

In 1957, books on selling, such as Sizzlemanship!, Frank Bettger’s How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, and Og Mandino’s ode of humility, The Greatest Salesman in the World, preached a model of selling that was developed in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. These books on selling urged the use of techniques and tricks that were relatively successful for products that could be sold in one encounter, that were often low‐cost, and for which people could be badgered into buying, often just to get rid of the salesperson.

These outmoded selling models used simple mnemonics to guide salespeople, such as AIDA, which stood for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action and ABC, which stood for Always Be Closing and which was made notorious by Alex Baldwin in the David‐ Mamet‐scripted play and movie “Glengarry Glen Ross.” The old‐time sales practitioners urged outrageous, often silly, techniques for getting a prospect’s attention and closing sales. They advocated manipulative techniques such as “sizzlemanship” to get interest and create desire (usually by overselling and overpromising). And they advocated a number of techniques, such as ABC, that pressured prospects to act immediately and which allowed a salesperson to slam down a one‐time sale. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with the AIDA and ABC mnemonics, these old‐fashioned, hard‐sell techniques, which include the “tell‐and‐sell” model, are largely responsible for the bad reputations that salespeople are often saddled with today.