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• hard sell
  hard sell

  noun

  a method of advertising or selling that is direct, forceful, and insistent; high-pressure salesmanship (opposed to soft sell).
• hard-sell
  hard-sell

  verb (used with or without object)

  to sell or advertise (something) in a forceful and insistent way.

hard sell

¹ American  

noun

1. a method of advertising or selling that is direct, forceful, and insistent; high-pressure salesmanship (opposed to soft sell).

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hard-sell ² American  

[hahrd-sel] / ˈhɑrdˈsɛl /

verb (used with or without object)

hard-sold, hard-selling

1. to sell or advertise (something) in a forceful and insistent way.

   to hard-sell new car models to reluctant buyers.

2. to convince (someone) in a forceful and insistent way.

   to hard-sell customers on a new product.

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adjective

1. characterized by or promoted through a hard sell.

   hard-sell tactics.

hard sell British  

noun

1. an aggressive insistent technique of selling or advertising Compare soft sell

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hard sell Idioms  

1. An aggressive, high-pressure sales practice or promotion, as in Used-car salesmen tend to give you a hard sell . This expression gave rise to the antonym soft sell , a low-key sales approach that relies on gentle persuasion. [ Colloquial ; c. 1950]

2. A difficult sales prospect, one who resists sales pressure. For example, Those brokers who call us at dinnertime find me a hard sell—I usually just hang up on them . [Late 1900s]

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Etymology

Origin of hard sell¹

An Americanism dating back to 1950–55

Origin of hard-sell²

An Americanism dating back to 1955–60

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hard sell hard-sell hard-selling

But costs rise first, and that can be a hard sell for Americans who see all their expenses moving in the wrong direction.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

That makes it a hard sell for most retirees, which is why less than 15% of Americans have bought into this process.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026

But innovation will remain a hard sell so long as users remain entranced by the big blur, where art becomes media, media becomes content, and content becomes time tossed into the wind.

From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026

In a world where investors are increasingly only interested in artificial intelligence and little else, even retail winners can be a hard sell: Better prospects still often translate into worse stock performance.

From Barron's ● Jun. 4, 2026

A month ago, it would’ve been a hard sell.

From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland

This is a far cry from the hard-sell approach beloved of many corporate players and not everyone is happy.

From BBC ● Apr. 17, 2023

Only here she’s parodying not only herself, but also the whole idea of hard-sell beauty commercials.

From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2022

Only 10.7 percent of its headline revenue number came from real money donated by those responding to its hard-sell television advertisement.

From Slate ● May 10, 2018

Medea was a hard-sell protagonist in ancient, male-dominated Athens, in a play with clear feminist overtones.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 25, 2016

Private service enterprises are no different in that they hard-sell services.

From Down with the Cities by Tadashi Nakashima

Purplebricks said it entirely rejects any portrayal of its service as pressure-selling, adding that it does not promote hard-selling and that it focuses on the benefits, not price, when recommending services.

From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2025

They also hang out with stars of the day such as Burt Lancaster and George Raft amid plenty of hard-selling commercial interludes for Ajax and Palmolive soap.

From Washington Times ● Feb. 17, 2018

Yet when it comes to 700 asylum seekers detained on the remote Pacific Island nation of Nauru, Australia is hard-selling Cambodia as something unexpected: their new promised land of opportunity.

From US News ● Apr. 23, 2015

They would have to gen up on their products beforehand, and there would be no staring down the camera, hard-selling – the high-pressure tactics of the infomercials were out.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 9, 2010

Of late, Karras' threatening visage can be seen hard-selling everything from Enden shampoo to Apeco copying machines.

From Time Magazine Archive