Patter

The door bell rang.

It was the man from the double-glazing company. Don't worry, he had been invited. It was time that the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen thought about what they should do about the porch.

The pitch was entirely predictable:

• Open - get on good terms with the victim client. Try to be personable. Try not to bore them to death. Impress them with your importance and credentials (however inappropriate). Compliment them on their taste / location / coffee etc. Call the office to say what a good catch they would be and get permission to give them a good discount.
• Determine the need - speak to the victim client about what it is they they they need, what they know about the company, and try to understand the competitive pressure. Try to ascertain the victim client's expectations on cost - this will be relevant in the next stage. (Look confused when the victim client says that cost is not the main determinant - ignore commenst regarding design as that is not within the abilities of your software). Take some notes as if this matters. Just as their eyes start to glaze over...
  
• Propose - start trying to sell them whatever you came to sell (make it sound relevant to what they defined above, if necessary). Take lots of measurements. Suck on your teeth. Go and fetch some samples and give a totally inappropriate sales pitch considering they want a porch not double-glazed window units). Go and fetch the laptop to create some relevant designs. Huff and puff a bit as the software fails to draw anything more significant than a glass box and can't scale the door to the right size. Get out a calculator to start gathering some numbers (apparently the laptop's software isn't capable of managing costs). Treble the victim client's cost estimate and discount back to double the estimate. Test the water. Offer finance. Realise that you are losing... start to pack up. Make the all important (and expected) call back to HQ to say the sale is lost - this predicatably allows the manager to authorise a further discount to bring the price in at 1.5 times the victim client's original estimate.
• Close - do a runner while there is still a chance that client may accept the offer once he has performed due diligence and got quotes from competitors.

And of course the client had already deflated his own estimate to start with, knowing exactly how the game works!