Build your fences
Disclaimer:- We are all sure when we know little; with knowledge, doubt increases.
The world is a big market for salesmen. If you look around, you shall find everyone (me included) trying to sell something or the other to anyone who could fit into a potential customer. Newspapers, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TV Channels, OTT platform are the wholesale markets, where every other product, other than their own contents, are flushed with so many products that customers gets spoiled for the choices they have on offer.
A salesman is the face of the company, and their marketing strategy is the canvass, wherein a need for their product gets created, and marketed extensively, enabling them to ensure that customers, when contacted, gets hooked to their products.
We all know:-
- All salesman are smart people. They persist with their catch till they have it.
- All salesman are good orators, and have good knack to tell a story.
- All salesman are suave talkers, and are too convincing. They maintain good eye-contact, and make sure that they have both your ears when they are speaking.
- They are able to anticipate your expectations very well and speak juicy language, show you your dreams coming true, and are able to show you heaven on earth.
- They lift your hopes, make you salivate for quick returns, and quickly have their hands in your pockets, and blind you to their real nefarious plans.
But in this game of sales, you also have conman and scammers who have to be guarded against. They are as smart, and a shade better salesman; for they are able to sell without having any product of their own, and at hands.
They are like termite who eats into socio-economic fabric of society, play with the 'trust' factor involved in any sales/inter-personal communication, and create an environment where everyone doubts everyone else.
So when you meet smart people, how to ensure that they do not belong to conman and scammers tribe. Here it is.....It's only indicative and one can set their own yardsticks to spot them early, cut them off immediately, and shun them once for all:
- If you feel like agreeing to whatever is being said, and you start believing in whatever they speak, with no eyebrows raised, getting carried with the story being told, there is a distinct possibility that the smart guy you are meeting is one of those.
- They tend to take larger part of your time and attention as compared to a genuine smart salesperson. They speak more than you ask for. They literally take over control of your mind, and once they succeed, there is no way you can come out of their clutches.
- They are highly manipulative, and have the ability to change the script if they have the slightest feeling that the other guy may get to see their hidden agenda.
We all know lot of highly qualified senior level professionals, including bankers, engineers, doctors, govt officials, IT professionals falling prey to such scammers despite they being fully aware of such scammers duping other people, and yet falling prey to it. Accept, the one who is going to play this scam on you is going to be smarter than you. Be alert, always.
Smart people surely are good people to deal with. You enjoy hearing them out. You learn a lot by interacting with smart people. But beware of the trap (taking over your mind). Hold reins of your mind in your own hands. Set your own filters not to get gobbled with their gullible talk.
Someone asked a question in Quora:-
" Q. What scams attract particularly smart people?
A. ALL scams can and do attract “smart people”.
If you do not believe that you can be scammed, then you have already been scammed or you haven’t come across the right person yet and you are waiting to be victimized."
Here the scammer, of course, is a smart person, and the potential target (like you and me), I believe, are also smart people, and yet we get carried away if caught in their web.
Build your fences. Exercise your discretion judiciously.