Hard Selling: Does it Still Work?

In general we’ve been hearing all semester from both Daniel Pink and Mattson that hard selling is a thing of the past and that it really doesn’t work anymore.  For the most part I would whole-heartedly agree.  The truth is that consumers have become adept at seeing through the ruse of hard selling, not to mention, for most people it’s very annoying.  According to an article in Inc. magazine, there are some companies that still employee a high degree of hard selling.  Companies like Staples, the office supply store, and car rental facilities that hard sell rental insurance and upgrades, as well as the typical car salesman.  The author of the article points out that, he too, believes that hard selling is a thing of the past, but he further points to the fact that some companies still employ it’s use in their training.  Apparently for those companies it must be more effective than another approach, or they wouldn’t be doing it.  There are two options here; either the sales execs’ in these companies have run the numbers and it makes sense to push the hard sell or these companies are run by dinosaur execs’ that don’t realize that it’s not effective anymore.  Either way, hard selling is still employed in some industries and with some very big companies.  However, I would strongly suggest that as salesmen we take a different approach, one that has been proven to be more effective when trying to move the modern consumer; soft selling.  The Inc. article I reference can be found here.