Industrial sales professionals have long debated the effectiveness of various sales closing techniques. For example, a University of Akron study investigated the impact of five different closing techniques and a no-close condition on the level of a sales prospect's trust in the salesperson (Industrial Marketing Management, Sept. 1996). More recently, a B2B Marketing Insider blog (Oct. 7, 2010) examined five currently-used sales closing techniques. Consider the following study. Sales scenarios are presented to a sample of 230 purchasing executives. Each subject received one of the five closing techniques or a scenario in which no close was achieved. After reading the sales scenario, each executive was asked to rate his/her level of trust in the salesperson on a 7-point scale. The table reports the six treatments employed in the study and the number of subjects receiving each treatment.

a. Consider the following hypotheses:
H0: The salesperson's level of prospect trust is not influenced by the choice of closing method.
Ha: The salesperson's level of prospect trust is influenced by the choice of closing method. Rewrite these hypotheses in the form required for an analysis of variance.
b. Assume the ANOVA F-statistic is F = 2.21. Is there sufficient evidence to reject H0 at α = .05?
c. What assumptions must be met for the test of part a to be valid?
d. Would you classify this experiment as observational or designed? Explain.

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Treatments: Closing Techniques Sample Size 1. No close 2. Financial close 3. Time Line close 4. Sympathy close 5. The Visual close 6. Thermometer close 35 35 30 40 35