TICKER: LEAKED: Apples sales manual shows how the company tries to play with your head

A new manual for sales that was leaked this week to Gizmodo.com shows just how far Apple is willing to go when it comes to playing with your head to get you to buy its products.  The manual describes everything a sales rep should do in order to get you to part with your dollars, including empathizing with you and playing on your emotions.

The “Genius Training” manual gives a 14-day training program that might be even more entertaining than the recent “Rules for Pimping” list that was confiscated from a pimp earlier this month.

“No need to mince words: This is psychological training,” Gizmodo says after reading the manual entirely.

Some of the words used in the manual are just a wee bit creepy.

“Show empathy,” the manual tells its employees. “Our stores are a happy place … We deepen and restore relationships, we help them discover, we enrich their lives.”

Another section discusses the “empathy exercise,” which shows employees how to handle disappointed customers.  It teaches you how to convince a customer to change his/her mind, while making the person believe that it was their idea to do so.

“Three Fs: Feel, Felt and Found. This works especially well when the customer is mistaken or has bad information.”

The manual also helps employees to get over customer unease about little things, like not being able to use a mouse anymore.  In that case, a good response might be, “I’m a mouse fan and felt as if I’d never get used [to the trackpad], but I found it becomes very easy with a little practice.”

The workers are also taught how to read customers based on how they look.  For example, a coat that is not buttoned shows that they are willing to cooperate, or stroking their chin means that they are considering various alternatives.

There are also words that are banned, such as “bomb,” “crash” or “hang.”

Scott Sobel, president of Media & Communications Strategies for Apple, said this to MacNewsWorld.

“Isn’t Apple in the business to sell products?” he said. “Doesn’t literally every kind of business have to be sales and psychologically savvy to some degree of sophistication in order to be successful? Should we be surprised that the company founded by the intuitive and measured marketing genius of an innovator like Steve Jobs actually has instruction for ways to bond with and serve customers?”

Techyville

Comments (3)

  1. I dont get…its simply called marketing. They understand their customer and can bond with the, thats most imprtant unlike our communication giants tha provide crappy service with dull customer care agents who toss your line after complaining

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