On Sales Resistance
22 June 1932
Throughout recent years, a vast amount of money and time and brains has been employed
in overcoming sales resistance, i.e. in inducing unoffending persons to waste
their money in purchasing objects which they had no desire to possess. It is characteristic
of our age that this sort of thing is considered meritorious: lectures are given
on salesmanship, and those who possess the art are highly rewarded. Yet, if a
moment's consideration is given to the matter, it is clear that the activity is
a noxious one which does more harm than good. Some hard-working professional man,
for example, who has been saving up with a view to giving his family a pleasant
summer holiday, is beset in a weak moment by a highly trained bandit who wants
to sell him a grand piano. He points out that that he has no room large enough
to house it, but the bandit shows that, by knocking down a bit of wall, the tail
of the piano can be made to project from the living room into the best bedroom.
Paterfamilias says that he and his wife do not play the piano and his oldest daughter
has only just begun to learn scales. ``The very reason why you should buy my piano''
says the bandit. ``On ordinary pianos scales may be tiresome, but on mine they
have all the depth of the most exquisite melody.'' The harassed householder mentions
that he has an engagement and cannot stay any longer. The bandit threatens to
come again next day; so, in despair, the victim gives way and his children have
to forgo their seaside holiday, while his wife's complaints are a sauce to every
meal throughout the summer.
In return for all this misery, the salesman has a mere commission and the man
whose piano is being sold obtains whatever percentage of the price presents
his profits. Yet, both are thought to have deserved well of their country since
their enterprise is supposed to be good for business.
All this topsy-turvydom is due to the fact that everything economic is looked
upon from the standpoint of the producer rather than of the consumer. In former
times, it was thought that bread is baked in order to be eaten; nowadays we
think that it is eaten in order to be baked. When we spend money, we are expected
to do so not with a view to our enjoyment of what we purchase but to enrich
those who have manufactured it. Since the greatest of virtues is business skill
and since skill is shown in making people buy what they don't want rather than
what they do, the man who is most respected is the one who has caused the most
pain to purchasers. All this is connected with a quite elementary mistake, namely,
failure to realise that what a man spends in one direction he has to save in
another so that bullying is not likely to increase his total expenditure. But
partly also it is connected with the notion that a man's working hours are the
only important part of his life and that what he does with the rest of his time
is unimportant unless it affects other men's working hours. A few clergymen,
it is true, speak of the American home and the joys of family life, but that
is regarded merely as their professional talk, against which a very
considerable sales resistance has grown up. And so everything is done for the
sake of something else. We make money not in order to enjoy what it provides
but in order that in spending it we may enable others to make money which they
will spend in enabling yet others to make money which.... But the end of this
is bedlam.
On
Denoting (1905)
Vagueness (1923)
Icarus
or The Future of Science (1924)
What is an Agnostic
Knowledge and
Wisdom
Why I am
not a Christian (06.03.1927)
In
Praise of Idleness (1932)
Of Co-Operation
(18.05.1932)
On Sales Resistance
(22.06.1932)
On Modern
Uncertainty (20.07.1932)
What is the Soul?
(28.09.1932)
On youthful
Cynism (1930)
Philosophical
Consequences of Relativity (1626)
On Astrologers
How
to become a Man of Genius
Education
and Disciple
What
Desires are politically important? (Speech at the Nobel Award, 11.12.1950)
Prolog to his Autobiography: What
I have lived for