Common Logical Fallacies in Sales Negotiation

What is a “Logical Fallacy”? A logical fallacy is an instance of faulty reasoning that renders an argument invalid or deceptive. It might sound reasonable at first, but it is non-rational, inaccurate or simply dishonest. A logical fallacy doesn’t prove anything, although seen from a superficial (or emotional) point of view it may have seem persuasive. Sales Negotiations are intended as the process that is prior to the “sale” itself; better said, it is what it is needed to persuade others (the buyers) to buy a product or service. And those are often driven by non-rational factors.

Below is a list of the most common logical fallacies I found in the Sales Negotiation Process, gathered (directly or indirectly) during my work experience as sales representative and Export Manager. As a simplification, they will take into account only two interlocutors, the Buyer and the Seller — not the only possible actors actually, but surely the most important!

A really important source of inspiration was the “Master List of Logical Fallacies”, by Prof. Owen M. Williamson, available for free on-line at the following link: http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacies.htm

- A Priori Argument: when the argument is based on a pre-existent bias, a dogma or a prejudice about something that is not proven (and/or cannot be proven) by the actual facts. BUYER: I won’t buy any product coming from Italy. Italian people are unreliable!.

- Affective Fallacy: when someone estimates his own ‘feelings’ as a sufficient reason to pursue an action, avoiding any kind of ‘rational’ thinking-through. BUYER: I’ve always bought this brand. I’m in love with it. I think the product they just launched will be hands-down the best on the market

- Alphabet Soup: Overusing (when it is not strictly needed) technical language, acronyms, figures, codes and abbreviations, with the intention to impress the audience, in order to show off one’s technical knowledge or to maliciously confuse the interlocutor. BUYER: Not sure that adv you are promoting is going to be any good for us. SELLER: OIS’s sales and marketing ROI is optimal, given the assumptions explicit in the OIS model. The OIS proof-of-concept model improved ROI between 28% and 158%.

- Appeal to Closure: Qualifying a solution or an action as valid only because it was “urgent to do something”. The only justification for said action is that “something must be done because the question could not remain suspended or postponed”, regardless if said action was appropriate or not (because it is reckoned that inertia would have been worse). SELLER: the new regulation concerning phone tariffs is close to being approved, and you need to choose which kind of contract you want to use as soon as possible.

- Appeal to Nature: Attributing a quality to something (material or not) only because it is, according to the speaker, ‘natural’, and thus, presumably, without any artificial contamination or additives. SELLER: You won’t regret buying this: it has no OGM or additives and it tastes exactly as if it was harvested just now.

- Appeal to Novelty: Considering something right and appropriate only because it is a novelty, that must be considered an innovation and therefore ‘good’. SELLER: If we want to change this situation, we must go for something new, non-conformist, ‘outside the box’.

- Appeal to Privacy: when a speaker is not willing to discuss a choice, standpoint or behaviour just because it concerns, directly or indirectly, his own personal or professional life. SELLER: Why would you want to buy from a competitor the same product I was offering you cheaper? BUYER: That is personal, ok?

- Appeal to Tradition: considering something ‘good’ only because it is what has been used (or bought, or done) for a long time and it appears to have worked. BUYER: I won’t switch supplier. We’ve been working with our current supplier for 30 years now and we won’t change — not even for a better product at a cheaper price.

- Appeasement: exaggerating the cliché of ‘the customer is always right’ and refusing to be involved in an argument, challenge or complaint pursued by the customer. SELLER: Myself or the company can’t be blamed for what happened, but because you’re a highly-valued customer we will offer you a discount on your next purchase.

- Argumentum ad Baculum: proving an argument using force, or threatening, directly or indirectly, to use it. Also, “using force” in the unethical (or even illegal) application of a strong economic or bargaining power. BUYER: We may go for a cheaper price. And losing us as a customer will put your company in financial troubles

- Argumentum ad Hominem: debating an argument by attacking the people involved on a personal level, instead of focusing on the topic itself. SELLER: Why do you buy from our competitors? They have really blurred ethics and their policy is very suspicious. I don’t know what kind of service they can ever give you!

- Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: claiming something to be truth only by the virtue of the fact that its confutation can’t be proven, instead of proving the statement itself. SELLER: Due to the financial problems of your supplier, you’d better switch to us. You haven’t heard anything about their economic situation because they don’t want it to be public, but you haven’t heard anything so far proving the opposite, have you?

- Argumentum ad Misericordiam: trying to prove an argument by merely relying on the sympathy or compassion of the counterpart. SELLER: I know you don’t need this product now. But if you don’t buy, I won’t hit my goal and I will probably be sacked. I’ve got a family, I can’t lose my job!

- Argumentum ad Speculum: pretending to prove something, based only on hypothetical assumptions. SELLER: You would have had problems if you had not bought at the moment I suggested. So now I’m advising you that it’s best to buy right now, and you must take my advice into consideration. (But who can say the buyer would not have bought anyway, maybe convinced by another source?)

- Argumentum ad Tolerantiam: stating that the most sensible standpoint is the one equidistant from the two (or more) most extreme alternative opinions, no matters of what this is about. BUYER: I want a 50% discount. You said you can offer me none. So, the most reasonable thing to do is me to buy it with a 25% discount. It looks like the perfect balance of what I ask and what you’re offering.

- Argumentum ad Verbosium: as Francisco Torreblanca said in his blog (in Spanish), “This happens when an argument is so complex, extensive and poorly presented by the speaker that the audience has no choice but to assume it to be true” (https://franciscotorreblanca.es/marketing-argumento-por-verbosidad/). Thus the definition of this is overwhelming the audience with definitions, statistics, quotations and technical data, often only marginally relevant to the argument and hard to decrypt for people who don’t have a technical background. This is done in order to distract, or to show oneself as an expert. SELLER: This item is the best you can have, with tons of new technical features that I’m going to show you very carefully.

- Argument from Adverse Consequences: suggesting that something cannot be accepted as ‘true’ because there will be bad and undesirable outcomes from it. SELLER: there cannot be any additional custom duty on this kind of product. The price is already high and if there were new duties it’d be a disaster!

- Argument from Incredulity: as Julian Baggini perfectly explains in his blog: ‘An argument from incredulity essentially works by taking the fact that one can’t believe or imagine that something is true (or false) to be a good reason for thinking it isn’t true (or false)’. (http://lclane2.net/argumentfromincredulity.html) And this is, I reckon, one of the most common logical fallacies in sales. BUYER: I buy the same product 10% cheaper from my current supplier. SELLER: It can’t be true. I know we have the cheapest prices for it, so what you’re saying can’t possibly be true!

- Argument from a Negative: assuming that since one position about a topic was proven false, its counterpart must be true, even without evidence. SELLER: the raw material price won’t be going down according to many analysts, so it will be for sure be going up.

- Availability Bias: making an argument overestimating the information most recent or close to the speaker’s own experience and ignoring a broader set of studies, statistics and research (possibly not immediately accessible). BUYER: I can’t go for an investment now, the recession is killing the economy. SELLER: Actually I’ve been reading in a few specialized magazines the economy has been recovering for the last couple of years. BUYER: It doesn’t look like that at all. I hear people complaining about the economic situation all the time.

- Argumentum ad Populum: claiming something to be true just because a broad group reckon it so. This logical fallacy also informs one of the most classic ways to advertise, but mentioning that the majority of people will choose that item (or that way to do something) doesn’t make it necessarily right. SELLER: Almost all of your competitors bought this product: they can’t all be wrong, can they?

- Argumentum ad Verecundium: appealing to some supposed authority, or famous person, who has nothing or very little to do with the matter, or who’s just spreading (knowingly or not) false information. SELLER: you people need this water purifier. Didn’t you read that blog about chemtrails? We are being poisoned on a daily basis!

- Blind Loyalty: trying to validate an argument just because someone such as an ‘opinion leader’, a well-respected authority or an expert says so. This fallacy is quite common among the type of person oriented to «imitate actions which have succeeded and which he has seen successfully performed by people in whom he has confidence and who have authority over him» (Mauss, M., ‘Techniques of the Body’, 1973). BUYER: Mr. X, who’s my business mentor, told me this investment may go wrong. That sly old fox always guesses right.

- Complex question: asking a question that implies an unproven statement in its premise. Said statement is often insinuating, or even libellous. BUYER: is your company still selling through the black market even after the fine they had? SELLER: my company was fined, but certainly not for selling through the black market!

- Contradictory Premises: as Professor Richard Nordquist states on the website ThoughtCo., «Contradictory premises involve an argument (generally considered a logical fallacy) that draws a conclusion from inconsistent or incompatible premises. Essentially, a proposition is contradictory when it asserts and denies the same thing» (https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-contrast-composition-and-rhetoric-1689798). SELLER: We never give discounts. Unless there’s some special occasion.

- Cost Bias: considering some product (or service) more valuable than others just because, ceteris paribus, it is more expensive. The common perception is that something that cost more must be worthier than a cheaper alternative. SELLER: Yes, my services are more expensive than my competitors’. That must mean something, right?

- Default Bias: this fallacy is caused by the «tendency of people to opt for the default supplied option» (Predicting Human Decision-Making: From Prediction to Action; Ariel Rosenfeld and Sarit Kraus, 2018). This situation can be the result of a reluctance to make changes, or from accepting the status-quo situation only because ‘it has always been like that’. BUYER: We are not going to have any computerization in our warehouse. We’ve always done things ‘the old way’ and nothing ever went wrong.

- Deliberate Ignorance: deliberately ignoring any argument, information or proof that goes against the interlocutor’s set of beliefs, ideology or, simply, his ‘comfort zone’. BUYER: This year we won’t have enough budget to benefit from your services. SELLER: I don’t wanna hear this! I’ll pretend you didn’t say so!

- Disciplinary Blinders: considering as not legitimate any opinion, statement or argument that comes from someone who doesn’t belong to that particular field (either professional or academic) regardless of what is said. BUYER: You can’t possibly suggest what is best for our company: you’re an agent and we have been doing this for ages.

- Dunning-Krueger Effect: in the words of its co-author, David Dunning, a situation «when poor performers in many social and intellectual domains seem largely unaware of just how deficient their expertise is». Thus, is the ‘ignorance of being ignorant’ that leads someone to be highly self-confident even in fields where he/she lacks the expertise, skills or knowledge to make a decision, a comment or a judgement. SELLER 1: Did you attend the refresher workshop for salesmen? SELLER 2: What would I need that? I already know every technique… I don’t need any more lessons!

- Emotional Invalidation: stating that something cannot be taken seriously because it was said or done during a strong emotional state. SELLER: Yes, I did say I wouldn’t sell anything to you any more, but you must understand I said that when I was under almost unbearable stress.

- Emotional Reasoning: ignoring any rational process, evidence or clue and relying only on feelings or instinct. SELLER: You can’t buy more than you can afford at this stage. BUYER: Things are gonna change. My sixth sense never disappoints me!

- Equivocation: Using ambiguous terms or sentences in order to lead the interlocutor to understand something that is not (or can’t be) clearly stated. SELLER: You can buy from us online with free carriage. BUYER: For what did I pay $10 more then? SELLER: That is just a fee for insurance, packaging and other details related to postage.

- Essentializing: Stating that someone or something is the way it is and cannot change or be changed, often mentioning that is because of his/its nature. BUYER: The economy in this market is difficult and no economic policies or private initiatives can do anything about it.

- False balance: when in relation to a given topic there are two or more sides supporting different views and, even if there is a huge difference in terms of evidence or consensus, it is assumed that they are both equally significant. BUYER: We pay attention to environmental issues, especially since global warming has became a hot topic even in our industry. SELLER: Well, do not forget that many scientists doubt its existence.

- False Dilemma: an extreme and fallacious simplification that occurs when two options are presented, deliberately omitting or ignoring others that might exist. Often it is followed by the claim that one choice will necessarily contrast or invalidate the other option. SELLER: Our products are innovative. You can’t miss this train to the future by not buying them!

- Genetic Fallacy: refusing an argument due to the personal background of the speaker, including his intelligence, his education, attitude, qualification or, more simply, his ‘past’. BUYER: That product you’re suggesting won’t work for me. You suggested some other items recently and none of them worked.

- Guilt by association: refusing a standpoint only because it is supported by someone who belongs to a group, lobby, political force or any other kind of association that is associated with some negative fact. BUYER: You were working for that company that was proved to have scammed hundreds of people: I can’t trust you. SELLER: But I worked there only a week as an employee!

- Half-Truth: selecting facts and deliberately omitting something important that would change the conclusion of the argument. BUYER: I spent way more than the price you promised me! SELLER: The price was correct. We had to add freight cost, taxes and mandatory insurance on top of that.

- Homophily: tendency to blindly believe only the sources that support one’s beliefs, practices, attitudes or stand-points, ruling out sources that state the opposite or support another point of view. SELLER: I just read on a news page on Facebook that next year there will be an increase of the raw material price. BUYER: I didn’t hear any of this, not even on the Bulletin Board Manufacturers. SELLER: They’re deliberately ignoring that, then.

- Hoyle’s Fallacy: rejecting something as impossible because the probability that it will happen is very low. SELLER: there is just a very small chance these stocks are going to lose any of their value. Basically, it is a 100% safe investment!

- Identity Fallacy: stating that someone can or can’t be trusted simply because he/she belongs o(r does not belong) to a particular group, nationality or other form of identity association. SELLER: Buy our products, made 100% in this country. You can’t trust something made god-knows-where!

- Ignoratio Elenchi: trying to prove an argument using one or more premises (which may logically be valid) that are unrelated to the conclusion. BUYER: We had a flood in our warehouse. That’s why I can’t pay for the last supply.

- Mistake’s inevitability: assuming that it is inevitable that there will be a part of audience/population not happy with the decision taken. But this fallacy does not take into account how big or small the percentage is. BUYER: I’m not happy with the fact that your company discontinued that product to make way for some new ones. SELLER: If we hadn’t, at this point we’d have customers complaining that we weren’t being innovative.

- Narrative Fallacy: as defined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one due to a “limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them”. The tendency to give to facts an interpretation and a posteriori explanation, leading to with an ‘illusory correlation’. It is the fallacy to build up a story to help ourselves understand abstract principles or logical arguments. SELLER: the average quality of the products is going down day by day because of all the imports from Asia.

- Nirvana Fallacy: considering an ideal but unrealistic solution as an alternative to an existent problem, discarding other realistic but imperfect alternatives. BUYER: I can’t invest money in something that wold be a palliative for my problem. I need a real solution that makes us the first company in the world as soon as possible, even if we’re newbies in this market.

- Noble Effort: considering something good, valuable or true just because someone has put great effort into it. BUYER: I’m not happy at all with your service. SELLER: If you knew just how many sacrifices it took, you wouldn’t say that!

- Non-Argument: informing the audience with selected facts (omitting everything that does not support the speaker’s argument and cherry-picking what’s best for this purpose) and then inviting said audience to offer an opinion. This is clearly manipulative, with the interlocutor (presumably uninformed at first) told only what is most convenient to the speaker. SELLER: In a few months the raw material price will be going up and the supply will be at its lowest point in years. You’d save lot of money buying straight away, wouldn’t you?

- Non-Recognition: choosing not to recognize (or even denying) an actual observable or perceivable deed because that would mean admitting an advantage for one’s competitors or opponents. BUYER: I heard your competitors are innovating. SELLER: There’s no such a thing as ‘innovation’ in our industry.

- Non-Sequitur: a fallacy that occurs when there is no logical link between the premise and the following conclusion. As Ann Casano writes: «A non-sequitur is all about taking a giant logical jump that is totally unreasonable» (https://study.com/academy/lesson/non-sequitur-definition-examples-quiz.html). SELLER: I saw your sales director is driving a Mercedes, so price shouldn’t be an issue for your company.

- Othering: disregarding, ignoring or even scorning an argument just because it is advocated by (or it concerns) people that do not belong to a certain identity-group. BUYER: the currency value in that country is constantly going down! SELLER: It is terrible, but they’re different and don’t think or act like us.

- Over-explanation: considering explaining or elaborating an argument beyond a certain point as useless or even counter-productive. SELLER: The market is experiencing some radical changes. There’s no need to say more about it!

- Pars pro Toto: extending the attribute of one or more singular case to the whole set of them, as a hasty generalization. BUYER: I’ve always been disappointed by the products I bought from that country. The same must go for the product of this company that I’ve never bought from before.

- Passive voice Fallacy: when the grammatical passive voice is used, often to de-humanize or to avoid taking any responsibility, or simply to give to the statement a suggestion of infallibility and/or finality. SELLER: I am sorry We can’t keep you giving that discount, but this is what was decided.

- Petitio Principii: this Fallacy is a ‘circular reasoning’, in which an assumption that should be the outcome (in the final conclusion) is taken as true in the premise. SELLER: You shouldn’t buy from my competitors and waste your money on useless products. Because we all agree there’s nothing worse than wasting money. BUYER: Why do you say those products are useless? SELLER: Because they would be just a waste of money!

- Plain Truth: preferring an explanation that is more comprehensible, accessible and/or familiar to one’s own knowledge or experiences, instead of something more complex and elaborate but closer to the actual truth. SELLER: You can read lots of analyses and data on the internet trying to explain this recession. But probably the truth is simply that people don’t want to spend money any more.

- Playing on Emotions: fallacy caused by not considering the facts, but focusing instead on feelings and emotions. SELLER: If you don’t buy from us, we will be forced to close down for good. Hundreds of families will be deprived of their most important source of income.

- Positive Thinking Fallacy: assuming that to achieve something it is enough to just ‘think positively’, underestimating, or even deliberately ignoring, the risks that may arise. BUYER: There’s no need of a Plan B for what we’re going to do. We are so excited and positive about it that nothing bad can happen.

- Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc: to attribute an effect to a cause only because it happened chronologically beforehand, even in the absence of a clear logical link. SELLER: How can you blame us for your financial problem? BUYER: Well, I bought from you once and a few weeks later we’ve got this problem.

- Procrustean Fallacy: the fallacious application of procedure standards, requirements or methods to a different field where they are not appropriate. BUYER: You must push your workers to make things faster, and punish the slower ones, like they used to do in USSR during the 1930s.

- Projection bias: a cognitive bias which makes people assume they will retain their preferences of a given time into the future. Thus the impact of potential change is fundamentally underestimated. SELLER: I won’t need any credit insurance, sinceall my customers are great payers.

- Prosolopepsia: judging someone by appearance, and on that basis giving more or less favours and/or respect. This fallacy lies in judging merely on a superficial level, without consideration of a person’s true merits, abilities, or character. BUYER: Should I buy from someone who got his ears pierced and his arms covered in tattoos? No way I’m going to trust someone like that!

- Red Herring: distracting (or trying to distract) the interlocutor with a different argument, often unrelated, but which can have an emotional effect on him. BUYER: Well, you point out I didn’t pay for the last two supplies, but you guys should focus on what the government is doing with the new tax policy!

- Reductionism: giving to a complex problem only hyper-simplified answers, which often are slogans or catchphrases. SELLER: Do you want a reason to buy? Well… You have to speculate to accumulate!

- Scapegoating: blaming someone else (who objectively has nothing, or very little, to do with it) in order to justify one’s own negligence, failure or violation of a rule. This is one of the most common fallacious behaviours in business. BUYER: You promised me an early delivery but It didn’t go that way! SELLER: Well, it’s not my fault. Those idiots at the office, and then the ones at the warehouse are so obtuse…

- Slippery Slope: taking for granted that one event must necessarily follow others, even when the chances of this are absolutely aleatory. SELLER: If you don’t buy today, then tomorrow there will be a shortage and the price will increase. That will probably endanger your finances.

- Star Power: assuming an item to be the best simply because one or a few market leaders bought it, or they are using it. And/or assuming an argument to be true just because one or few market leaders are making it. BUYER: What you are offering can’t be as good as the ones the market leaders have. They’re the leaders after all…

- Sunk Cost Fallacy: in the words of Dr. Hal Arkes, one of the most esteemed researchers in the field of “economic decision-making”, the Sunk Cost fallacy is the «tendency to continue an endeavour once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made». So, the first investment being irretrievable, one might be pushed to invest even more, because to do otherwise would be openly to admit that the time and the money invested so far are irretrievably lost. And/or because it the aim is to earn back the amount invested or part of it — as in the “Prospect Theory” of Kahneman and Tverski — one is inclined to overestimate the loss (and consequently the containment of it) and to underestimate the potential gain. SELLER: You can’t give up now that a considerable investment has been done. That money would be lost forever! Wouldn’t be better to go through with this till the end?

- Tone Policy: evaluating an argument just on the emotional tone of the interlocutor, without considering whether it is valid or not. BUYER: If your product were good, you wouldn’t have been so dull in its presentation. You would have shown a bit of energy and excitement

- Totum pro Parte: this fallacy lies in assuming that something that applies to the whole generalized set must be necessarily valid also for the singular case, disregarding how much the latter may be uncommon or out of character. BUYER: I am not going to buy any stock from that company. Lots of stock markets worldwide are expected to go down in the next few days.

- Tu Quoque: retorting to an argument criticizing the ideology, behaviour or the past of the interlocutor, perhaps when his past or present behaviour is in contradiction with his/her standpoint. Thus the focus on the topic is blurred, and the argument is moved to the personal level. BUYER: Well, you’re trying to sell me this product saying it’s the best on the market, but you used to sell the competitor’s one saying the same thing!

- Weak Analogy: assuming that, just because two things are similar or alike in one or more (often irrelevant) respects, they must be similar or alike in every other respect. SELLER: The insurance I sell it is like a life-jacket, and business is like the ocean. No-one would go in a boat floating on the ocean without a life-jacket!

- Worst-negates-the-bad: assuming an objectively bad scenario is not the worst possible, thus generating a fallacious tendency to underestimate it. BUYER: I hear you have had delays in supply recently. SELLER: Yes, but considering that some of our competitors have had to shut down for good, leaving their customers with severe material shortages, our delays are not so bad!