Research Proposal

For the past month or so, I have been struggling to narrow down my inquiry topic, and unsure about how I was going to go about my research in detail on the specific topic. I am now more confident in how I will be going about and attacking my research, cutting “Body language” out of my topic. I will be focusing primarily on the language of good sales pitch, meaning how salesmen and women use words effectively when they are trying to sell their products to their customers. I have always wondered how salesmen are always so convincing, and why I almost always buy in to their merchandise.

As of right now, I am still at ground level in the retaining of information. However, I feel that I have a pretty good grip on the subject, because I have been able to see good examples of excellent salesmen in the area of my work at my boss’ Farmer’s Market.

What interests me about this topic is that people use these sales pitches everyday. I think to some extent, even non-salesmen use the craftiness of wordplay in order to get what they want. For example, I wanted to get a newer car, so I told my parents, hey I need you to spot me some money to buy this new car, I can pay it in full, by the end of the summer. I gave them a sheet of paper with the amount of money I would pay them each week. Then they asked me, why do you need a new car? I told them that my old car had bad gas miles per gallon, and that if I could get this new car, I could get like 15 or more miles to the gallon. They new that driving 32 miles to work and 32 miles back from work 5 days a week would be harsh on my gas bill, so I was able to almost make them feel as if they needed to spot me the money up front. I don’t consider myself to be a great salesmen, but in this instance, I was able to convince my parents to spot me some cash, by giving them reason to believe that the deal I proposed, was worth their investment.

I think everyone knows that good salesmen believe that their product is indeed quality stuff. What I will need to find out, is if the people who seem to be able to sell air or dirt to anyone, are born that way, or did they learn over time, how to read people in ways that they could be more persuasive.

I have already made plans to interview some of the best salesmen at my farmers market to get first hand experiences on this matter. I will also be looking up books at the library here at UNCC to find even more credible points on this subject.

            Honestly, I came up with this topic, remembering the day I watched one of my co-workers sell a grocery bag (The reusable kind you see at Harris Teeter) that a previous customer had forgotten for $2.00 to a different customer. I was definitely impressed on how some people can really be easily persuaded to buy something that they really don’t need at all.

            Some of my main questions that I still am wondering about, are if people are naturally born with the gift of the art of persuasion, or if one can simply learn how to read people over time? Is there a balance between the two? Another question I might look into is, does the salesperson have to be interested in the merchandise they are selling, or can they just pretend.

            To formulate a question for my Inquiry Project, I guess I would use this question, how does the art of persuasion in speaking benefit the life of a salesman.