The Little Book of Vargas

There's a great little book about this, called Miracle on 34th Street. A guy is hired to play Santa Claus for a large New York department store. He starts sending parents to other stores whenever he knows they can get better deals on toys elsewhere. The store manager finds out about this, and is about to fire him. Just then a flood of people come into the store, because they've heard that this store has a Santa who won't just try to con them into buying junk. And of course they sell out the store completely. Most salespeople are shortsighted, and never consider the long–term benefits of recognizing when there isn't a valid way to make a match between product and buyer. The problem that reframing addresses is the way that people generalize. Some people don't ever consider that they will be in the same Position three years from now if they buy a car that won't last. Or they buy a used car because it's cheaper, and they don't think about things like not being able to depend on it, having to rent a car while it's being fixed, and so on ...»