You wouldn’t do this!

Have you ever had someone jump on you unawares with a sales trick?

Someone just did that to me. I’d no more than come out my gate when this man I presumed was a tenant in the crowded neighborhood I live in, bumped into me and mumbled something that was supposed to be a sales pitch, though I didn’t catch it in the beginning.

It was when he rudely thrust a packet of sweetmeats at me, an action that pushed me involuntarily to the other side of the narrow lane, that I understood the setting.

Ah! Now here’s What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School.

Why would someone trying to earn a living by selling his wares, especially those bits and ends that you don’t really need, want to intimidate a prospect? Those sweetmeats looked appetizing, the sales pitch wasn’t.

When I conveyed the same to the poor salesman with a dismissive “No” and crossed the road, the man actually served a curse my way too.

Charming!