When Melissa and I first bought our home, we got this thing in the mail that said that we could get a free $25 gift certificate for Home Depot just for allowing someone to come over our house to give us a free water test. I thought that was such an awesome marketing approach and made it really easy for me to give up my evening… I figured if they were going to pay me $25, I could afford an hour of my time. Obviously this part of the sales process was successful, as it generated a warm lead for the company… and got me to call and set an appointment.

Understand that we really were not in the market for a water treatment system at the time, but another house we had looked at before buying ours had one, so we were at least curious to find out more about them.

One evening about a week later, this guy shows up at our doorstep with a small briefcase of tubes, canisters, chemicals and such. This guy went to our kitchen sink and did a little magic show for us, showing us all the bad stuff that was in our water, in the form of some chemically congealed substance floating in a jar. I have to confess that it did look a little gross, but I’m always a bit skeptical with these types of things. He also showed us the PH balance… after having to add and then re-adjust and re-add the amounts of solution to the vial … apparently ‘red’ is bad, and our water was worse than any he had ever seen!

I asked him to test the filtered water from the refrigerator, which is where we actually get our drinking water from, to which he said … ‘we don’t normally do those, but rest assured… they don’t make that much of a difference’.

He had us feeling the water between our fingers… and then plugged his filtering device in so that we could feel the difference in the ‘texture’ of the water. I guess it felt like water.

So this whole process took about an hour, and I had not really seen anything but some chemically induced color and texture changes in our water. None of this really proved anything to me, as I understood nothing about what it was he was actually doing. All I understood was that he wanted to convince me that when he added chemicals to my water, and it changed in consistency or color… that was bad. However, my curiosity was already piqued before he got there… and I still wanted to at least know more about the science of it.

Once he finished the magic trick, he sat down and told us a bit about the manufacturer of his particular device. He taught us about the history of the company, the warranty on the product… and then finally the price, which I really can’t remember, but do remember was up around $8k, and here’s the clinch:

‘Buy today and ONLY today, and you get 50% off!’

I let him finish, and then commented something about how that statement was a bit high pressure for us… and that we seldom make large product decisions without first doing the research on our own. This actually made him angry and defensive… saying ‘It’s not high pressure, I don’t do high pressure sales! It is incentive!’. The conversation went downhill from there, with me practically having to escort the man out of our house and him throwing the burning Home Depot gift card into our yard as he peeled off down the road. I think i saw his car turn into flames too. I definitely heard a maniacal laugh. (kidding… at least about the flaming gift card)

The thing here is… My wife and I were actually pretty good prospects for this product… right up to the last few minutes of the conversation. We just moved into a nice new house in a great neighborhood, we were concerned for our health, and we had enough money or credit to make the purchase happen. What’s more, we actually invited this guy into our home … and we were obviously interested in the product. Most people would not waste their time for $25 if they did not at least have a small bit of interest in what is being sold.

My view of the situation is that an ‘incentive’ is 50% off at a book or clothing store, or ‘buy one get one free’, not 50% ‘Today Only!’ off an $8000 product purchase that after an hour of demonstration we only had more questions about. That is high pressure. The only incentive in the whole pitch was the $25 gift card that got me to setup the appointment in the first place.

The real shame here is that the guy probably could have sold us one if he had not gotten offended, and if his company’s policies had been flexible enough for him to say ‘do your research, and if you have any questions… give me a call and we’ll work something out.’ After a bit of research on our own, we found that $4k is still a bit high for his particular product, but  price is not a difficult obstacle to overcome in sales. Bottom line is, if they can offer a 50% discount on a product as part of the sales pitch… they could sell it for that price without the pitch. It’s the ‘Today Only’ thing that makes it high pressure.