The Sales Pitch

You have probably heard of those infamous summer sales men who go door-to-door alarm systems and end the summer with 100,000 dollars in the bank. Well I did go out and sell this past summer, I GOT SOLD! The sales pitch was great.

The target audience tends to be returned missionaries that are college aged. These are apparently the prime door-to-door salesmen because they had to sell the gospel. If you can call it “selling!” These recruiters spend most of the time around campus from February to April reeling the students.

This was his WATCO and Enthymeme…

What are the consequences of spending your summer selling alarm systems on the status of your bank account.

Enthymeme: Spending the summer selling alarm systems will rapidly increase the amount of money in your bank account because selling alarm systems pays out very high commissions per sale.

The recruiter makes an appeal to pathos and ethos. All selling is extremely emotional and what better way to stir emotion than to appeal to your wallet. He really painted the picture of what I could buy with that much money and did not focus of tell me about any of the negative aspects of the work. It was all made very possible in my mind from what he said. The recruiter also focused on ethos because he is certainly the success story and knows from personal experience because he has been doing if for a long time. I should not have trusted only his authority and looked at all the cases. I think the possibility of money blinded me and for that reason my decision was purely pathos based.
When looking at what he used from STAR I realize that his reasoning was not sufficient, typical or accurate is was however relevant to what he wanted from me and that was to come out and sell. You could argue and say that it was accurate or typical to assume that all people my age want money and he knew that and used it to convince me.

It was a very effective pitch and not just because it worked. I still had a great experience selling and realize now that it was effective because even when selling the security systems my pitch was pathos based. If you can find what people need or even create that need, just as the recruiter did, it can be effective.