8 ms·

Bertrand Russell, "On Sales Resistance"

• RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Silly Russell: didn't anyone tell him about credit cards? Edit: sarcasm fail?
• lazyant 17y ago
  Slightly off-topic but I use a couple of things as a consumer to defend myself (or "from myself") from "spur of the moment" purchases. I never buy anything over $100 the same day I see an item in a store or online; I wait at least one day. (Then I can so some Internet searches etc). Same thing when some service is offered to me over the phone or at my door. Telemarketers I pretty much hang up on them as soon as I hear the code word "on behalf of". For salespeople I explain that I cannot sign right now, because it's my policy and they don't find arguments against that. Another rule of thumb is that if I haven't thought or being worried about something before, probably I don't need it. Also for some services/products I already have an "ideal" on mind that I have already researched, so I don't have to think or make decisions about that any more. For example, for long-distance calling I use the $10/month Skype services which gives me unlimited international time. I don't think this can be beaten, and if so, probably the hassle in changing is worth more than the $10/month. I also read books like "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini which I highly recommend, so we are aware of our irrational mind.
  • lsc 17y ago
    I think avoiding products that you must buy through salespeople is another good defense... Assuming the same good is sold by two companies, if one requires you to dicker over a price with a professional, it costs them much more to provide you the service than it costs the other company, who just puts a price on the website.
• fburnaby 17y ago
  I completely share Russell's distaste for the practices of pushy salesmen, but I absolutely can't side with him in condemning them and blaming the cultural problem that he identifies on them. The salespeople are a wasteful symptom of our (the consumers) weakness for consumer crap and for their antics - they're not the cause of it. Also, while (again) I completely agree that because they are driving over-consumption that this is a problem, it's very difficult to tell how much of problem it is. Maybe some people really enjoy owning useless shit and are taking advantage of an opportunity while it's made convenient by the sales person. Has anyone attempted to do some science to understand this? What proportion of purchases "induced" by pushy salespeople are customers unhappy with X weeks later, as compared with "other" purchases - ones made with previous intent?
• amtiskaw 17y ago
  Try the BBC documentary 'The Century Of the Self' by Adam Curtis. You'll have to torrent it because no US TV station has dared show it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self It documents (with gripping style) the activities of Edward Bernays and others in their efforts to manipulate people's subconscious - to make them buy stuff.
• shrikant 17y ago
  The 'customer' in the anecdote doesn't really fall for the actual sales pitch, and makes his purchase solely to get rid of the salesman. So.. one is supposed to feel sorry for the guy who prioritises his immediate convenience over any future utility? Cry me a river. Also, 'sales resistance' is hard to quantify. Does he not want to buy because the widget being sold carries no value to him? Or because he doesn't perceive any such value? Who's to say the 'older daughter' in the story wasn't Constance Keene?
  • krauses 17y ago
    I agree with you, even though your opinion seems to be unpopular in this thread. I read nothing about a gun being held to this poor old man who was obviously crippled by his lack of a back bone. Why was this man talking to the salesman about a piano in the first place? He must have wondered into a piano store, thinking it was a travel agency in hopes of booking his summer vacation. But right at the moment he realized he had stumbled into the wrong store, the salesman caught him with his tractor beam and would not let this poor man leave. I agree with most comments, there is something wrong with society, but I'm not so quick to judge the salesmen. Why not blame the guy shopping for a piano when what he really wanted was a vacation?
  • jacquesm 17y ago
    You took that literally ?
    • shrikant 17y ago
      I'm not sure what you are referring to by 'that'? (Anecdote: My dad ended up buying a set of the World Book encyclopaedias by a pushy salesman - ended up tremendously enriching my life over the next couple of years.) I realise that anti-consumerism is viewed as a Good Thing, but some of the onus is on the consumer - his 'duty' is to think and buy. The producer will gladly cater to the second half of that, and manipulate the first bit to the fullest extent he can to enable the buying. This hardly makes the producer (and his agents) a 'bandit'.
      • 17y ago
• mseebach 17y ago
  What do you know, this whole holier-than-thou anti-sales/advertising trend is that old? The essense is of this entire, and apparently 80+ years old, movement is that "the little man" spends his money and otherwise prioritises in ways that we, the holders of truth, find odd, even repulsive. We therefore conclude that the error must clearly lie with salesmen and advertisers pushing unvirtuous products and service. That said, there's a line being crossed when apt salesmanship and glossy advertising becomes threatening, harassing or are downright scams.
  • gjm11 17y ago
    Eh? Russell's complaint is not that "the little man" prioritizes in ways Russell dislikes. It's that he prioritizes in ways that (a) he doesn't like when he can think it through clearly, and (b) produce results that he doesn't like when he experiences them; and that what salesmen and advertisers are doing is to interfere with his ability to think it through clearly and anticipate the likely results of his actions. Or, to put it differently: the goal of (many) salespeople and advertisers is to make their targets sillier and stupider, and that's seldom in their interests or those of the community / nation / world as a whole. I've no idea what's supposed to be "holier-than-thou" about that, even if it turns out to be dead wrong; perhaps you could explain? (It need hardly be said -- but I'll say it anyway -- that the sneer at "the little man" here is mseebach's invention, and doesn't e.g. occur anywhere in Russell's piece. Russell introduces his victim as "some hard-working professional man", and if mseebach sees that as patronizing or insulting, so much the worse for mseebach.)
    • mseebach 17y ago
      My rant including the "little man" was no so much directed at the article in question as it was at the movement in general. But Russels depiction of this hard-working professional as a victim is condescending. He can provide for his family, but can't in the face of a simple salesman say "no, go away, and if you come back next week I won't be this polite"? This is obviously a contrived example, because the real world don't lend itself well to the point he wants to make. > the goal of (many) salespeople and advertisers is to make their targets sillier and stupider, and that's seldom in their interests or those of the community / nation / world as a whole. Obviously there are scammers out there, but the average advertisement/sale caters to the average consumer, and by declaring that the actions of these consumers make them "sillier and stupider" (than what?) and that they don't act in their own interest or "those of the community / nation / world as a whole" is "holier-than-thou". How do you objectively define the best interest of the "community / nation / world as a whole"? To take a very current example, the current financial crisis is caused in (a large) part by the political system (a democratic president and a republican house -- no-one gets away clean) deciding that is was in the best interest of the nation and its citizens is to lend a lot of money to a lot of people who couldn't really afford it to buy their own home.
• msie 17y ago
  I find that the older I get the more 'sales-resistant' I get. Maybe it's because I'm running out of room to store everything. :D
  • Leon 17y ago
    It may be that the older you get the more oblivious you are to sales-marketing; since you can point out several blatant sales-marketing techniques, you fool yourself into believing you are safe from them all. Don't become too overconfident or you'll end up buying something ridiculous and not even know it.
    • msie 17y ago
      Don't become too overconfident or you'll end up buying something ridiculous and not even know it. Heh, I try not to make the same mistake twice! There must be some website where users post pictures and descriptions of ridiculous things they've bought and the money they've spent. How about calling the website: ThinkTwiceAboutThePrice.com or IOughtNotToBought.com or BuyersRemorse.com. Then with enough membership you can turn it into a swap/auction site. :D
  • timcederman 17y ago
    For me, part of it has been realizing the actual cognitive reasons behind sales tactics (I was a sucker for buying wine at wine tastings up until a couple of years ago thanks to the reciprocation principle of sales), but part of it is realizing "I just don't need this." You can't realize you don't need it, or won't use it, until you've bought something like it in the past, or as you say, you run out of room and think "do I really need something else here taking up space?" The paradox is that I am now buying less as my income increases. The good thing is it puts me in a better position to buy a house, start a family, etc.
• sethg 17y ago
  When I was a teenager, my parents and I were in a piano store, and I remarked that I could tell that the expensive pianos had better sound quality than the cheap ones. This fact seemed to help the salesman close the deal. Of course, ungrateful wretch that I was, I hardly played the piano after it arrived. Maybe they should have bought a more expensive model. :-)
• edw519 17y ago
  ...skill is shown in making people buy what they don't want rather than what they do... This is where he gets it wrong. There's a big difference between "buying what they don't want" and "buying what they don't need". Of course they don't need it. Hardly anything we buy is actually needed. But "want" is a different story. Of course we want it. We want all kinds of things we don't need. Any good salesman will tell you that all he has to do if find that emotional want and the rest of the sales cycle becomes natural, like judo or ballet. Driven by the buyer's emotion and justified by the salesman's logic. Funny a philosopher as brilliant as Bertrand Russell didn't understand something so fundamental. I guess that's why he was a philosopher and not a salesman.
  • Confusion 17y ago
    Firstly, his first paragraph is an example, whose details don't matter. It's the third paragraph that is most important. Secondly, if you initially have no need for something and wouldn't have felt any need for it if no one had pestered you about buying it, then 'I did not want it' is an entirely acute way of phrasing the way you felt about it, before you were brainwashed into buying it. Thirdly, your use of 'want' and his use of 'want' may be different. In 'ye olde English', "having want of something" means: needing it. For Russell, want and need may be more synonymous than for you. You could read "buying what they don't want" as "buying something they don't have want for". I'm not sure this is the case, but having read other writings of Russell, I am sure that his English and our English are different creatures, with some differences that can cause strange misinterpretations. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, there is a world of difference between wanting something because you think you need it and wanting something because you have been assaulted with so much glorious reports on the goodness of 'it', that not having 'it' leaves you with a nagging feeling that you should want it. As an example of the last bit: I consider a car a utility. I have an ugly and scratched car, but it serves me very well and I like it this way. However, that doesn't mean that I can avoid conversations about shiny Ferrari's or someone's brand new SUV and I can't avoid being given the feeling that I should care about my car. I constantly have to stand up to the cultural indoctrination and reconvince myself that what I'm doing is perfectly fine. I don't need a shiny car, but I often feel like I want one. That is what Russell is talking about and that is still something that is very wrong about our society.