Question

Explain what the “hard-sell” approach is and why it is unethical. Provide an example of a piece of professional communication using the “hard-sell” approach.

Answer 1

Ans- Hard-sell is the way of selling in which extreme pressure is given to the customer to buy the goods or services from a company and it includes cold calling or calling an individual even if they are not interested in receiving the call. It is that approach which is used to sell a product to a customer by any means and does not give time to customer to make their decision and wants them to purchase instantly.

It is unethical as it puts the customer into a pressurized situation and sometimes too many calls disturbs them mentally and the customer gets so much annoyed over receiving such calls that they behave differently with other important people in their lives and sometimes the annoyance level goes up so much that they get angry over others unnecessarily. They tend to put their annoyance on others and this can harm them and also in this kind of approach the seller is more concerned with their needs and does not see whether the other person's needs are getting fulfilled or not.

An example of a piece of professional communication using the hard-sell approach is given below-

Here an insurance agent does cold calling to one of the customers to pitch an insurance plan and the conversation goes on like this-

Salesperson- Hello sir, I am Mr.X calling from YZ insurance company and I have a product for you which is a health insurance plan.

Customer- But I am not interested in this product as of now.

Salesperson-But sir this product will give you so many benefits and you would not be in loss after purchasing this product.

Customer- I have already said you that at present I am not interested in this product and that I do not have enough money to buy it. Please try to understand.

Salesperson-You can pay a little money as of now and the remaining money can be paid in installments and you do not need to worry about that.

Customer gets annoyed and says Listen I do not have a little money also to buy your product

Salesperson gets angry and cuts the call abruptly.

So, the above example shows how the salesperson just thought about his needs and without even asking the customer about his needs he approached him directly with an insurance plan and wanted to pitch his product even if the customer said no at the first place itself and the customer got annoyed when the salesperson repeatedly asked him to purchase that product.