My buddy Cooper, he has a lab?

June 23, 2023 8:20 AM

I had someone come to my house to give me an estimate on some work. He was giving a bit of a hard sell but not too excessive. Then he said it was a funny coincidence but his friend lives 4-5 houses down my street. He said the first name and breed of his dog but it didn’t ring a bell. It felt like a sales tactic to make me more at ease; is this a common/known sales tactic?

I realize that it is possible that he was telling the truth but it made me uncomfortable. I’ve certainly had door-to-door salespeople gesture vaguely in the distance and say “hey we’re working with your neighbor” which I have always understood to be bullshit. I live in a huge city for what it’s worth. I did google the name and my street but nothing came up, although i know those records aren’t perfect. And I’ve already decided to go with another company for this project, just trying to satisfy my curiosity.

posted by acidic to Work & Money (16 answers total)

Might be a sales tactic, but seems too high risk for the associated reward since that's close enough that there is a decent chance it's a neighbor you know.

Also, as his friend, it's almost a negative. His friend might hire him no matter how much his product/service sucked!

That said, the "effectiveness" of a tactic doesn't necessary dictate if it's used.

I once was interviewed by a Customs and Border Patrol officer to get into a fancy border crossing program (SENTRI), and he asked about my job and team in a "Oh, so you work with my brother on the X?" i such a specific way that not only would I know the people well enough to know who had a brother in CPB (none did), but I'd be obligated to tell my internal security people that someone on my team was telling family members too much about work. I guess the thought was perhaps I'd blurt out "I'm really an agent of the Mossad!" if they pressed my "fake story". Which if I were such an agent, I'd probably be pretty good about answering questions about about fake background.

In conclusion: who knows? I vote not likely a sales tactic.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:42 AM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Of course it's a sales tactic. He's trying to establish a personal connection to you via someone you might also know, which conveys trust, and trying to establish credibility by implying others in the neighborhood trust and use them, so you don't need to waste your time to personally vet the company.

It's not a sales tactic if he mentions it after you have signed the contract.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:54 AM on June 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

I agree it's a sales technique in the literal sense, but it's still possible they were just mistaken about where the friend lives and wouldn't have said it if they didn't at least sort of believe it. People have said things like that to me before while trying to build a normal social connection–not sell anything–about folks who've turned out to be more like 4-5 blocks away, or who were perhaps just staying somewhere briefly at the time their friend knew about their address. That feels more likely than having deliberately made up something that could have easily gone sideways when you turned out to know all your nearby neighbors personally and thus caught them in a specific lie.
posted by teremala at 9:02 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I had someone show up and offer to do yard work. Pickup truck and a few guys - small business type. Said they had worked the yard many years before. Gave quote. Seemed reasonable for what was discussed. And we called them back to do the work.

They showed up with three head of crew wielding chainsaws and proceeded to rough cut bushes and load up the debris and after 45 minutes pronounced they were done. Wife was home alone, pointed out a few things that were discussed in original plan and they dispatched that as fast as they could. At that point the jacked up bushes were a done deal.

They were paid with a check, and the crew chief said it was more work than they thought and he’d have to have a couple hundred more, check was already written so no more to be had. Asked where the bank was.

My thinking was dude said he worked there before to get his “in”. If we said different, he could always say he was mistaken. He was very agreeable to everything asked for while quoting job. Very much not when doing job.

When they showed up to work, they seemed aggressive and in a hurry, and although not overtly threatening, seemed very forward and intimidating to my wife, who, again, was alone. Felt like a cash grab for minor shitty landscape job.

Asked for bank location so he could cash asap before a stop payment.

Actually came back the next week and asked if he could pressure wash the house. We declined.

We took it as tuition. Never accept a cold call. If I want yard work by outside party, I’ll contact them.

Your crowd might be on the up and up. I just don’t handle cold calls anymore.

You can tell I’ve thought about this a bit in the aftermath.

Good luck!
posted by kabong the wiser at 9:04 AM on June 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

And maybe my post isn’t what is needed here. Please delete if you agree, moderator.
posted by kabong the wiser at 9:05 AM on June 23, 2023

What he said and whether that's a common sales tactic doesn't matter, what matters is how he made you FEEL, always trust your gut instinct.
posted by Lanark at 9:09 AM on June 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

It may be a lie. It sometimes is. There's a company here that does these extortionate contracts for solar and in a local reddit thread about them, lots of commenters posted about them saying this very kind of thing, so much so that we marveled at the uniformity of the experience. Apparently this tactic is part of their actual sales training.

These were door-to-door cold calls, though, and very aggressive. They're betting you won't ask a followup.
posted by mochapickle at 9:13 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just (two days ago)had the same thing happen with a door to door pest control thing. He kept talking about my neighbor Susan, and the Garcias and the Vargases. He very deliberately mentioned each name twice.

I have no idea if those are legit names from the neighborhood, but it felt kind of creepy and very "tactic-y"
posted by Gorgik at 9:26 AM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Like Gorgik, I see this with pest control salespeople in my neighborhood. “We’re going to be servicing the Smiths’ property tomorrow, so if you sign with us we can do yours, too.” It’s never a name I recognize. It always feels salesy. I don’t care if they actually know my neighbors, it feels icky either way.
posted by theotherdurassister at 9:37 AM on June 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

It sounds like a "social proof" tactic to me.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:37 AM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

The question is not whether or not it’s a sales tactic. It is. The question is whether it’s true, or whether they’re lying to get your business. The latter is, of course, a pretty serious red flag for someone you’re entering into a relationship with, even if it is “just business”. The good news is, it’s easy to fact check. You have a name and a street, and that’s all you need to google. I just tried it with my last name and my mom’s street name and city, and there were hundreds of “people finder” results. I tried the same for my street, and there were results even though I’ve only lived here less than a month. They’re not perfect, but if you’re not finding anything at all, that’s not a good sign.

You can ask questions to prove it, too. For example, at the end of my block is a corner store that’s extremely well-known among people in my small town, but unknown to anyone else (because why would you go to a corner store in another town?). So I’d ask around that: “oh, so he’d be right next to Jeannotte’s?” Note that the expected answer here isn’t “yeah, by Jeannotte’s”; it’s “yeah, I love hanging out at his place because we always get sandwiches from there”. Their deli is famous and nobody who has ever been there talks about it without mentioning their sandwiches. Or you could be tricky and ask about something that’s not there. “Next to the railroad tracks?” Ron Howard voice: there are no railroad tracks in the neighborhood.

Less nefariously, I think a lot of people just don’t have a very good sense of spatial geography, especially in places they’re not familiar with. When I describe my small town to other people who’ve never been here, I’ll often say I’m “just down the street” from whatever, whether that’s Walmart or a coffee shop or City Hall or whatever. I mean, I live a half a block from one of the main streets in the town. A lot of things are down that street. I don’t need to explain that it’s actually like five miles down that street, and then a quick left for three blocks. If you’re not familiar with the geography of Manhattan, it’s not *wrong* to say that the Financial District is “just down the street” from Times Square; it’s just that there’s kind of a lot of stuff on that street in between. One of my favorite geographical misconceptions is when I include the state when mentioning where my wife grew up. People will go on and on about sightseeing at the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, delightfully unaware that Buffalo is actually hundreds of miles away. It’s possible this guy just thinks his friend lives closer to you than he actually does.

But also, if the breed of the dog was indeed a lab, that’s so broad as to be meaningless. “You know my friend Steve, the guy with two eyes and ten fingers?” Oh yeah, of course, ten fingers is so uncommon. That’s a red flag that it wasn’t real. If he’d said “cavalier King Charles spaniel” or something, that’s a different story.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:44 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

The good news is, it’s easy to fact check.

Absolutely check with the neighbor. Even if it's just to confirm the relationship and not about work quality, it provides a baseline for his honesty and might give additional insight. We just had a "guy who does a lot of work in this neighborhood" do work for us. I hired him based on repeatedly seeing his truck around and rather wish I called some of those neighbors. His work was fine but there were other issues that might have come out in a conversation.
posted by beaning at 11:51 AM on June 23, 2023

We occasionally get a cold-call salesperson asking to do work on the house who mention they know someone down the street who pointed them our way.

Funny thing is, when talking to us they always use the legal name my partner used on the paperwork to purchase the house and pay taxes and not the nickname our neighbors know and use. Hmmmmmmm. I wonder...
posted by telophase at 11:53 AM on June 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

To be clear, this was NOT a cold call? If this was someone you reached out to after local research, it feels like their sales tactic was simply "being friendly". Do you have a dog? If not, mentioning a dog name/breed feels like a detail that's too easily disproven.

If this WAS a cold call or you reached out after getting a flyer on your door or something, then my suspicious meter definitely goes up to the next color level, because it's more of a tactic to establish their legitimacy in the neighborhood and convince you they're not scammy. If you're the one who reached out, it feels like there's not as much of a need for them to legitimize themselves.
posted by redsparkler at 12:08 PM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you are saying a stranger showed up at your house and asked you to hire them, then you should be very wary. In this economy, there are more scams than ever and on the r/Scams subreddit people regularly post descriptions of experiences just like the one kabong the wiser had.
posted by pickles_have_souls at 7:06 PM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Definitely a sales tactic, used to get you to trust them when you have no other reason to do so. Door-to-door sales tactics 101. I wouldn't say don't trust them because of this because it's so common, but I'd just ignore it as part of their sales patter.
posted by dg at 4:45 PM on June 25, 2023