As I stated, the automobile industry.
We sold to all end-users, including businesses and private parties.
And we never left a penny on the table if we could help it. If we left them with any money in their pockets, it would only have been because we failed to get them to empty their pockets onto the table before sitting down at said table and scooping up said money. (That's a verbal smackdown and a firing if I found money that wasn't hidden but wasn't offered when I came out to close a deal. My job as a closer was to polish the gems, not to dig for them.)
Were we concerned about customer satisfaction? No. We were concerned that customers would tell Corporate that they were satisfied. So the left hand picked the pocket of thousands of dollars while the right hand graciously, and with great fanfare, offered a free oil change (retail value $20) if our customer satisfaction survey came back with 100% positive replies.
It's not rocket science.
I was encouraged to do despicable things, which I did. I spent four of a man's last hours on earth talking him into paying full sticker price for a Chevy S-10 that we would easily have sold him at invoice price.
He sat there on oxygen, suffering from cancer, and I, on my first day after my promotion into management, was told to show my boss what I could make happen profit-wise.
So I did it.
Wow! I am so cool! I wasted a dying man's time because being a "closer" and working in sales is an honourable profession. Not!
Every salesperson I know who has heard me tell that story says "Good job! It's not like he was going to take it with him!"
Every civilian says "How could you do that?"
How? It was my job, and it was legal, and I felt obligated to do the best job I could (which was pretty darned good) for my boss.
I understand why I did it. It is also some of what motivated me to not put myself in a position where such a thing was required of me again.
At a certain point, Tom, you will cheat your boss, yourself or your customer.
Salespeople do not create anything of value. Salespeople, at best, transfer sales from one company to another. There is no added value, other than a larger profit which might be extracted from a customer by feigning a "friendly" relationship or a spurious "special deal."
Salespeople are there to inflame people's materialistic desires, feed them fantasies of "value" and separate them from their money.
It's not really much different from being a stripper or a prostitute. You make people want things and convince them they NEED those things and stir the desires until they lose all rational sense and pay you whatever you tell them it will take to satisfy their lust.
Maybe one day you will see things more clearly.
At a certain point, I realized that my abilities to talk people into buying things and teaching others how to overcome objections and build value into relatively worthless products was just as dangerous as a gun or a knife.
I surrendered my weapons and moved on.
As the Gospel says, when one is a child one plays with childish things.
-Stumbler, a poor sinner