Author Description

Market pitchers routinely transform a patch of bare ground into a sea of eager purchasers using little more than their ‘gift of the gab’ and some homespun ‘psychology’ to convince passers-by to stop and buy their goods. Employing some of the world’s most successful selling techniques, in one of the oldest and most difficult of all marketing situations, their rhetoric and social skills have to equal that employed by the most accomplished salespersons, politicians and professional persuaders.Between 1984 and 1994 sociologists Clark and Pinch video recorded over 75 pitching routines on street markets and other sales sites throughout the UK, mainland Europe and the United States. Using examples of pitchers attracting a crowd, describing and demonstrating their goods, building bargains, cajoling the unconvinced to make a purchase and coping with problem customers, the authors reveal, for the very first time, the reasons for these traders’ extraordinary success—both on and away from the markets. Comparing their findings with more orthodox sales situations—direct response TV home shopping and infomercials, as well as other forms of grass-roots selling (fly pitching, the mock auction sales con, street entertaining and urban ‘hustling’)—the authors highlight many important lessons that have relevance for everyone involved in all types of marketing, advertising and persuasion.In this revised, updated and extended edition the authors also reveal why, today, pitching on markets appears to have become a dying art and why many of the pitchers we studied are now so successful in other walks of life. Original, authoritative and highly readable, The Hard Sell is an essential and often hilarious guide for anyone who wants to understand how real-life selling really works.“Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! Let Colin Clark and Trevor Pinch tell you all about the market and sidewalk pitchmen—the guys who may just sell you something you don’t want for more than you ever thought you’d pay. Take advantage of the many hours and days of intensive observation and deep thinking the authors did to produce this brilliant example of theoretically informed participant observation. This book is really a kick. I loved it. Buy two copies of The Hard Sell and give one to a friend!”Professor Howard S. Becker (PhD, University of Chicago, 1951) is a sociologist, educator and musician. His books Outsiders (1963), Art Worlds (1982), Writing for Social Scientists (1986), Tricks of the Trade (1998) and (with Robert R. Faulkner) Do You Know...? The Jazz Repertoire in Action (2009). He currently lives and works in San Francisco.“Almost everything we do in our daily lives involves some form of selling and persuasion. In my line of work I’m continually trying to sell TV shows, or ideas, or myself and my company. Tonight, like many other people, I’ll probably also have to summon up a whole sales pitch about why we need to watch the football instead of Coronation Street. Before I started writing for television I worked for twenty years on the markets where, if you couldn’t sell, you didn’t eat. This fabulous book is about how some of the world’s most gifted and successful salespeople accomplish their extraordinary feats of selling in one of the most difficult of all marketing situations, and it’s been written by two academics who left their ‘ivory tower’ and bothered to spend some time seriously studying real salespeople doing their jobs out there in the real world.”Tony Jordan, Director, Red Planet Pictures (recent production credits include BBC TV’s Death in Paradise and By Any Means); former lead writer and story consultant for BBC TV’s EastEnders; creator of TV series including Hustle, Holby Blue and The Nativity; co-creator of Life on Mars; former trader and pitcher on English street markets.