
Bertrand Russell, "On Sales Resistance" - cousin_it
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/Hearst_Essays/On_Sales_Resistance.html
======
lazyant
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
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.

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edw519
_...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
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.

~~~
billybob
"I don't need a shiny car, but I often feel like I want one."

I think you're hitting on something here. Maybe more to the point is that
there is something else you want more - either to save your money for things
that give you more security or enjoyment, or to follow your principles, etc.
In you heart, you feel that NOT buying a shiny car will make you happier than
buying it.

Much of our unhappiness comes from sacrificing our higher desires - health,
security, accomplishment - for lower ones: junk food, instant gratification,
laziness.

The salesman in the article is pushing his customer away from a higher desire
to a lower one. And helping to make him less happy.

~~~
joe_the_user
Ah, "higher desires" and "lower desires" is quite a judgment!

It is even more an extreme judgment when you are talking about what you think
other people should do.

I am not saying that I disagree with you, necessarily. The problem is that
human societies have evolved from smaller scale societies where "higher" and
"lower" desires were well-defined by social consensus to the present large
scale societies where there is no consensus definition of virtue however much
it might be talked about.

I won't say that there's a solution here but we've got to take into account
the problem...

~~~
billybob
"It is even more an extreme judgment when you are talking about what you think
other people should do."

No. You're missing my point. I don't mean "higher" and "lower" in terms of how
other people judge them. I mean in terms of how happy they make you.

If you are overweight AND you wish you weren't, you make yourself unhappy when
you choose to eat junk and not exercise. For a moment, the junk food tastes
good, but then it makes you unhappy all day. (If you don't mind being
overweight, fine.)

On the other hand, if you force yourself to get in shape, going running makes
you momentarily unhappy, but overall you feel more satisfied with your life.

It's the same reason you go to work when you're tired, clean your house when
it's filthy, etc. The reward is worth the pain.

Everyone is welcome to define their own goals in life. If your goal is to be a
Level 5 Million WOW player, and you don't mind losing your health for it,
fine. But if you kick yourself every day for your habits (whatever they are)
and wish you could change (in any way), you've got a priority problem. You
should be sacrificing lower desires for higher ones.

------
sethg
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. :-)

------
msie
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
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
_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

------
shrikant
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?

~~~
cousin_it
_So.. one is supposed to feel sorry for the guy who prioritises his immediate
convenience over any future utility?_

No, for the resulting inefficiency of the economy as a whole. How you choose
to divide the blame between salesman and customer is your own business, of
course.

 _Who's to say the 'older daughter' in the story wasn't Constance Keene?_

Statistics can say that with over 99% confidence.

~~~
shrikant
_No, for the resulting inefficiency of the economy as a whole. How you choose
to divide the blame between salesman and customer is your own business, of
course._

I don't see how this makes the economy inefficient. Could you elaborate? And
in this particular analogy, the purchasing decision was clearly the buyer's,
so the worst you could say about the seller was that he was pushy and
obnoxious. I can't see why one would 'blame' him for the inefficient economy.

 _Statistics can say that with over 99% confidence._

That's disingenuous. What I meant was, based on the story of the pushy piano
purveyor alone, without knowing what use was made of the instrument, you can't
really say it was a useless purchase. Serendipity happens.

~~~
cousin_it
_I don't see how this makes the economy inefficient. Could you elaborate?_

Deals are supposed to create value. For example, if a house is worth $2M to
the seller and $3M to the buyer, there's $1M potential surplus to be captured.
A deal at $2.5M makes that makes that surplus real, in effect giving $500K to
each. If a potential deal doesn't create net value - if the buyer doesn't
receive enough benefit from the good, or the seller spends too much
manufacturing it - the total wealth in the economy goes down as a result, even
though the buyer OR the seller might win personally.

 _Serendipity happens._

Yes, and statistics can tell us what credence to assign to the chance of it
happening. I certainly see no reason to assign 50% or similar credence to
serendipity in the described case, or indeed any credence high enough to
dominate the certain loss of value. Do you?

------
fburnaby
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
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>

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.

------
mseebach
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.

~~~
jwhite
I don't mean to be impolite, but your response to the article seems a little
defensive to me. The illustrative story he uses is contrived, but if you read
his other writings at that URL, it seems to be that his general style leans
towards hyperbole. That doesn't mean the point is invalid.

I think it is certainly valid to question the merit of using known techniques
of influence to convince others to buy things that may not be of value to
them. Where is the line between this and the promotion of things of value that
people might not think they want currently?

We have seen a decade or more of intense innovation in which many new things
were created that people had to be convinced to buy, but that did ultimately
provide them with great value. At the same time, we still have MacDonalds
marketing junk-food to kids. Was it "Supersize Me" that showed an interview
with a fast food sales/advertising type brazenly describing how they can
convince kids/parents to buy just about anything, whether they need it or not,
whether they previously wanted it or not? [1]

I have an experiment to suggest to you and anyone else on HN who might be
interested: sell your TV, cancel your cable, and don't watch anything that you
didn't specifically choose, for one year. (i.e., DVD's, etc. that you make a
conscious choice to buy/rent are ok). When the year is up, start watching TV
ads again. My guess is that a lot of the advertisements will look ridiculous
and cynically manipulative [2], and you'll wonder how they could convince
anyone to buy the product they promote. But you know they work, because people
pay for them.

[1] If you recall the scene I'm referring to please feel free to correct me if
I got the details wrong.

[2] If they don't already seem that way to you.

~~~
mseebach
It is defensive. I'm sick and tired of this movement. As I replied to gjm11, I
believe that this story is a hyperbole because the real world don't lend it
self well to the point he wants to make.

> I think it is certainly valid to question the merit of using known
> techniques of influence to convince others to buy things that may not be of
> value to them. Where is the line between this and the promotion of things of
> value that people might not think they want currently?

There are two parties to this, the sender and the receiver. The receiver needs
to process and act on this information for the sale to take place. I see this
movement as extremely condescending because it all too readily assumes that
because consumers make "wrong" choices, they don't have free will. The line
goes where people chooses to make a purchase. McDonalds: it's not healthy, and
_everyone_ , including kids, know this, still consumers want the product,
because they like it. I like it, and no-one else provides the convenient
package of fat, protein and sugar I need at 3 am returning from a night on the
town, and no-one else can give me that small energy kick as fast as a
cheeseburger can to get me through the last hour of a long drive. (I haven't
seen Supersize Me, but I'm familiar with it's conclusions)

Regarding your experiment, I've all but stopped watching programmed TV, but
yeah, I find ads obnoxious. Manipulative? It's not like they lie about their
purpose.

~~~
three14
I'm the consumer in question. Example: I went to the gas station - they had a
promotional discount carwash. The windows on my car were filthy, so I went.

I got upsold to an inside cleaning as well. It certainly needed the cleaning,
but if I didn't have to tell someone, "No thanks" (implying that I'm OK with
the very dirty carpets in the car), I wouldn't have paid for the more
expensive wash. If I _really_ didn't want the inside cleaning, it wouldn't
have affected me, but I was just conflicted enough to be vulnerable to the
sale. Did the sales guy do me any favors?

------
RyanMcGreal
Silly Russell: didn't anyone tell him about credit cards?

 _Edit:_ sarcasm fail?

