Salespeople, love bombing and emotional abuse

[Yorkshirepuddingtime]

I’ve name changed for this thread.

In the past I’ve been in two emotionally abusive relationships. They’re both long gone now, but I’m still affected by it, and afterwards I educated myself as much as I could. One thing that came up again and again was love bombing, where they tell you how amazing you are before eventually pulling away. It’s a huge red flag for me when someone is overly charming.

Recently I stopped to speak to a chugger. I don’t even know why, because usually I say no, or just walk by without saying anything at all. I don’t know why I let my guard down this time.

I did tell her straight away that I wouldn’t be signing up to anything, but I would at least have a chat with her. I don’t even understand why I did this. But anyway, this woman was laying on the compliments thick and fast, being overly friendly to a ridiculous degree, telling me I looked great etc, and then her colleague joined in and it felt so over the top.

I eventually got away without signing up to anything but I felt violated, like I’d let my guard down when I’m supposed to know better. I felt like I’d been love bombed, and it got me thinking about the emotional abuse from the past, the way that people manipulate you.

Is there anything in this? Are manipulative sales tactics a type of emotional abuse? When an abuser is trying to woo you at the beginning, could you say they’re trying to make a sale in some way? I felt so upset after this incident as I didn’t realise it would bring back all these memories.

What or who is a chugger?

Well some abusers are purely being manipulative, where as some are genuinely idealising you as they temporarily think you're the magic solution to their empty, bottomless nothingness.

I wouldn't agree that sales peoples compliments are necessarily emotional abuse. But chuggers can feel predatory and certainly push boundaries. They ignore our uncomfortable body language and sometimes even our protests of 'no'. In the same way abusers do. So they can absolutely trigger the same panic in us we've felt during abuse.

They may fixate on us with the same predator gaze abusers do and once you know that that shit is not a compliment, it's quite intimidating.

I'm sorry you're feeling distressed at the encounter. At least the silver lining is, it seems you can recognise now when someone is making you a target. You have a better idea when to run.

Charity mugger. People who stand in the street and try to get you to sign up to monthly charity donations. They don’t work directly for the charity, they get paid by an agency and they’re on commission.

@Pinkbonbon Thank you.

My friend's abusive ex was a salesman.
Very charming.

They are paid and probably had training to do a job, just say no people seem to need to practice it

Well I mean, look at Death of a Salesman. The psychology of sales, relationships, and western culture goes deep and lovebombing chuggers are the least of it.

I usually say no. I don’t know what happened that day, or why this woman caught my attention. I did tell her I wouldn’t be signing up to anything.

I’m not familiar with it.

It makes you feel uncomfortable because you can see it for what it is. Its a manipulative technique that tries to con you into confusing sales patter with friendship, or a relationship; and you think relationships are worth more than that.

Pick up artists base their methods on sales techniques and now salesmen are using PUA techniques to improve their sales. Its all very manipulative.
https://www.tuni.fi/en/news/aggressive-and-misogynist-sales-talk-revealed-dating-game

This happened to me too. A random lady walked up to me and complimented my coat. I was about to respond, pointing out it’s wonderful long sleeves, when she dived into a sales pitch for a mattress. Felt properly silly!

The most manipulative sales techniques are inspired by MLMs. Some of the original MLMs (and some modern ones) use tactics that have a lot in common with the techniques used by cults (and some MLMs have been linked to cults).

All this to say yes, aggressive sales techniques are designed to be emotionally manipulative, and chuggers are often paid based on how much they raise, so are incentivised to "sell" often quite emotive causes aggressively.

Yes. The most nefarious expression of this would be the way cults seduce their victims. It's all rigorously devised, tested and taught. As @Pinkbonbon says, individual abusers may not be doing it consciously or to plan - but it's all the same thing, really. Humans need 'social strokes', and we can be vulnerable to excessive stroking. You can congratulate yourself on identifying it!

I should say that I worked in sales, in very effusive industries. I liked living amongst all the reciprocal boosting and am naturally interested in psychology, which helped. The boundaries between mutual appreciation and overkill change with circumstance - I can't call everybody darling in normal life, for example - but it's always worth taking a few steps back to analyse our interactions.

I love this topic! Hope some others weigh in.

This is interesting. I work in Sales, though not an actual salesperson. I support the sales guys and, in 5 years (and turnover is high), I've yet to meet one who doesn't have a glaring personality disorder.

You would not believe how calculated everything is. They study NLP etc to get people to respond in certain ways. I'd see it as a compliment that you get taken in by the odd one, shows you are a normal human being! They really are a different breed of person.

Ouch, @AIstolemylunch!

I've been professionally diagnosed (twice) as not having a personality disorder ... although the fact that this happened probably says something 😳

I'd agree sales people are a breed. Impervious to rejection, no shame in crossing boundaries, keep going until they win. They are not my favourite people. I would not get in a relationship with one for the same reasons OP experienced. They trigger me.

But with chuggers you could easily give them a false name and rattle off any old numbers and say it's your bank number, how on earth can they make you prove it's right or not?;

This isn’t actually true - most work on targets. If they don’t make their targets over a timespan - normally around 3 sign ups a day so not huge - they are at risk of losing their job. It’s much more linked to targets and there’s no commission. There is occasional bonuses, but it’s not big money.

Some of the fundraisers are aggressive yes, but most are just people doing a job. Street fundraisers suffer a horrible amount of abuse, and their own mental health gets affected from that. And charities hugely rely on the income from street fundraising.

That sounds horrible.

I've not thought about it before, but I think you're right: they are being fake. They want to flatter you into buying their product so it's a form of abusive, coercive behaviour.

Ha ha, there are always exceptions! 😄

And I work with IT salespeople who are possibly amongst the most extreme examples of salespeople sociopaths (Im saying that tongue in cheek or course, they are just extremes of personality). (No I take that back, some of the men I work with are actual psychopaths ...)

Dont get me wrong, I couldn't do that job and I admire their persitence and rhino like hides. I just wouldnt want to be in a relationship with one as they will say anything to get what they want and I think are fundamentally untrustworthy because of that. Their single mindedness is inpressive though in some ways. I just find it interesting as I can see now from a young age the personality traits that lead them to this profession (one of my sons will no doubt go into sales).

It shouldn’t need to get to that point, and if someone is intimidated into signing up then it might not occur to them in the moment to give fake details.

I actually feel sorry for chuggers. Many of them arent hardcore salespeople (yet) but are students etc just trying to earn some money and are often misled into it by unscrupulous job agencies. The ones that can hack it (not many) often go into sales afterwards though.

That being said, their very existence is an outrage and I actively enjoy avoiding them. I just say no thanks and storm past. They are all somebody's kids though so no need to be rude to them i think (unless theyre being really obnoxious).

I’m still thinking about why I actually stopped to speak to this woman in the first place, when I would usually just keep walking. I don’t know if there was something interesting about her or what.

It was a split second decision, and knowing why you stopped that one time won't help you the next time because it can happen again. It might be something as simple as she caught your eye and smiled.
The real point to consider is why you feel unable to walk away as soon as you realise you don't actually want to stop and talk. You don't have to worry about appearing rude - you are wasting their time if you won't sign up, and they could spend that time talking to someone else.

Exactly. I really have no idea.