The Gift of the Gab

"Never trust a salesman" people tell you, but why do people do anyway? What is it that sales people do in order to 'twist your arm' into buying certain upgrades or attachments to your original product or needs?

 

Language and technology has a rather peculiar relationship, as both evolve constantly the library of technology as a lexical field grows yet many people refer to many parts of technology with their own idioms, in order to understand what the aim of the technology is.

 

In my job I experience the "dumbing down" of technology daily, for example a processor suddenly becomes "the brain" of the computer and with that people will understand more clearly. In my job as computer salesman, convergence is a very useful skill; it allows you to match your customer's mood, background and level of knowledge - all of which allows you to create a rapport with almost anyone.

 

A huge part of my job requires you to be able to judge people and adjust your lexical choices accordingly. This is shown by the idea of a good salesman having the "gift of the gab" as they are able to convince people to agree with them without the individual even realising.  This then relates to Brown and Levinson's politeness theory of the positive and negative faces. A sales colleague must utilise a positive face in order to create a rapport with the customer, but they must also implement negative face threatening acts on the customer by suggesting and advising they choose a different product or to add something else to their sale. Another negative face threatening act sales people employ is 'offers'; by doing this the pressure is put on the customer to decline or accept, but who would decline 'such a great offer'?

 

Selling a product to someone follows a question and answer discourse structure, with the sales person and customer swapping roles in asking questions, the customers asks genuine questions in order to improve their knowledge, but the sales person asks questions in order to use their negative face threatening acts on the customer; yet while still using a positive face to seem they are intrigued about their customer and their life.

By Rob Viles