The Close, Part 2

You may try to escape by telling him that you have to “think it over", or that you have to talk to your friend. He has a veritable mountain of quick responses to your evasions.

The simplest of his convincing “completely spontaneous thoughts” concerns your home and how everything else you have purchased has gone down in value and your house has gone up. Almost anything you do to your house will increase its value and that value will go up by more than you can make keeping that money in the bank. And it’s almost all true. See, I told you.

There are about 50 different closes that he may use on you.

Someplace around here in time he will start asking about how you intend to make this new investment (how you will pay for this).

Sometimes it all becomes laughable. The meaningless terms and strange twists of reality are like the term “unexpected bed vacancy” - which in hospital terminology means.... dead patient.

This direct exploration of your finances is part of his plan to intimidate you into buying. He is trying to get you to “prove” that you are a worthy person and have money - through your ability to purchase his products. Of course, the abject reality is that you may have no money and will have to mortgage your home at a 14% interest rate - with payments of $400 a month (that you don’t have because you are on Social Security) to prove to him that you are a person of substance. It works.

Then he might try to close in on you by making you a “deal” where if he can get this or that extra savings from his “boss” you will agree to go with the deal. He might even offer an extra window or even a sliding glass door. This second type of offer is truly evil and makes a victim of the homeowner and the salesman and is the company’s always- suggested-solution to making the sale.

Yes, he could offer to drop the “investment” by $1,000 or he could throw in an extra window. If he lowers your investment then he and the company are out the full $1,000. If instead, he simply adds another window then the company is really out only about $280., but he is out the full price of the window -- $1,600 -- as far as calculating his commission and the homeowner is still out the $1,000.

Of course, his company orders him to toss in an extra window, not drop the price.