do me this one thing...

[lagilman]

General request out into the world, because this has been bugging me for a while now...

Can we put a kibosh on "if you'll give up your double-whatever latte?" as push to get people to give money elsewhere?  Most of us cut double-whatever lattes out of our budget a long time ago, and the assumptions of spendthriftiness (when I know damn few people who aren't economized to the bone) are really... irritating.

And if a double-whatever latte is what someone has budgeted to get them through the day?  Telling them even by implication that they're selfish gits for needing that is...not really a good motivator for them to do something nice for someone else.  All it does is weigh down the hammer of guilt on someone who might already be barely making it through that day.





this post has been Boomer-approved.

Comments

[axsister.livejournal.com]

for a short time in my life I worked as a rep for a pet product - (circa 2006) using someone's fancy coffee drinks as a sales tactic was one of the sales suggestions from corporate ... however, we weren't supposed to use it as a "give it up and spend money on this instead approach" but instead we were supposed to try and make people think about what they consider an inconsequential expense. Start with the question of "how often do you buy a coffee drink?" And in the case of what we were selling the point was to try and make them think about how they obviously don't love their pets since a couple of bucks doesn't mean anything for a drink they don't need but it's way too much money to spend extra a day for your beloved companion's food.

I'm not saying it's not still an annoying message. Being sold anything is annoying. I always got awful scores on not closing a sale. I liked to think that I was making them think enough and next time they might make a different choice.

The salesperson reading any script (and even if it is for charity they're still selling) really isn't thinking and you're right in that it's long past time for the person writing the script to get some new material. And it REALLY shows how they need to do more market research instead of writing scripts based on their own personal experience. Unless maybe they did, and you're not who they want money from.

[lagilman]

Generally, though, we're seeing this from Well-Meaning Folk trying to encourage us to dig a little deeper and give to some cause or another that they've taken to heart, not from salespeople...