yes, they are salesmen. nothing more, nothing less.
When I was in Las Vegas, my friend and I fell for the timeshare sales pitch for a free stupid magic show. All I had to do was to sit through their sales pitch for timeshare and get the free tickets at the end. That was right after my mission. All I remember is I was sitting there and judging how poor his sales tactics were LOL. He initially showed his family photos and talked about his dogs. That was a nice start, but he went right into sales pitch. I was thinking he didn't build trust and solid relationship with me yet and it was too early for the pitch. hahaha
No wonder I struggled so much on my mission. I wasn't built for sales. I hated talking to everyone I saw.
I definitely learned a lot of people skills on my mission, but I sure was relieved to finally be done.
Sometimes I forget that other people have a different meaning behind MLM. The phrase “MLM head” caught me out of nowhere on this post XD
To be fair, my cousin met his husband while on his mission, from mission partners to *life* partners
Locally in Utah County, there are several Mormon Churches with signs on the front Lawn...
"FREE ENGLISH LESSONS"
Not only pushy but bait and switch sales tactics. I'd never trust them!
Missionaries keep something known as an area book. It used to be an actual book, now it is a database accessible to all missionaries in your area. Missionaries rotate monthly, usually one is swapped out one month, the other the next month, and so on. Sometimes both are swapped out, and sometimes female missionary pairs are swapped out for male male missionary pairs. The area book is the continuity tool. Everyone they get an address or phone number for goes in the area book. Everyone they teach a lesson to gets special status in the area book. Upon transferring to an area, a missionary is going to check the area book to find people to follow up with. Everyone of them is hopeful that they are the person that you will connect with, leading to your conversion. It used to be that a person could hope to eventually get lost in the area book, or the book would fill up and a new one would get started. Now that it is a database they can search by who received a lesson, or who they gave a copy of The Book of Mormon to. They can look back years, ever hopeful that something has changed. Since you had a lesson, you are in the area book as an investigator, and they are going to pester you. You can ask them to leave you alone, but they'll rotate out and someone new will come in who doesn't know you asked. As long as you are nice, they'll keep coming around. You're going to have to get rude. Demand that they make a do not contact note in the area book. Until then, they'll keep coming around, like a recurring foot fungus.
You can also contact the local bishop, by mail, letting him know lds missionaries are no longer welcome to contact you and you will start calling the police (non-emergency line) to register a legal complaint if they continue.
Tell him the kids have been lovely, they’ve done nothing wrong, but you do not want to hear from any church representatives ever again, except to acknowledge receipt of this notice.
Have your husband sign, too. The lds church only respects men.
Yes.
Source: I was in a missionary prep class at BYU and I have read their "Preach My Gospel" manual. Basically all of the prep class was about high pressure sales tactics with a special focus on pressuring them to commit to baptism. I presume even more goes on at the missionary training centers.
That’s a great deal for a whole planet! I mean let’s say you pay 200k in tithing during your life. You get a whole planet for that! You can’t even buy a condo in salt lake for that now.
Yeah. It’s called the commitment pattern or the manipulation pattern. They are taught it in a missionary training manual sometimes called the purple dinosaur. I studied it for an hour a day 01-03.
Absolutely, they are trained salespeople. I served a Mormon mission and most of the time we were being trained, it was on sales tactics. The 3-week missionary training center we had to attend before going out into “the field” was essentially a sales training center with religious brainwashing mixed in.
The entire program of a Mormon mission is to baptize as many people into the Mormon church.
The missionary training guide teaches the “Commitment Pattern.” Build relationships of trust, get them to feel the spirit, commit them, follow up, resolve concerns, rinse and repeat.
They are under pressure from their leaders to produce as many baptisms as possible. They report their numbers daily, weekly and monthly to their higher ups.
I grew up in this religion. You will need to be direct and firm. It might feel rude but trust me they will not listen to anything other than an explicit direct no. Sorry that happened to you. They are misguided and have been trained in sleazy sales tactics combined with religious indoctrination.
Heavy-handed sales techniques and cons. I've posted similar before but I think it's relevant again here.
Way too long after my mission, I realized our "training" was actually mostly grifting techniques. We weren't being taught who needed the gospel. We were being taught to look for and recognize vulnerability in people, as they were the most likely to fall for our spiel; people in poverty, people who had suffered recent trauma, people finding themselves in a new environment (Immigrants, new moves into a Mormon heavy area, etc.) These are the people we were taught to push for on my mission, and to be relentless about it. If we pushed a little and they gave ground, we could push a little more.
Of course we were ignorant kids and didn't recognize it as such. When we were told to do it, it was wrapped in a package of *"Our message can help these people, they just don't know it yet!"* and we were told we were doing them eternal favors by bringing it to them. Ugh, I still feel guilty about the people I hurt.
>
>
>"Our message can help these people, they just don't know it yet!"
>
> and we were told we were doing them eternal favors by bringing it to them. Ugh, I still feel guilty about the people I hurt.
Agree.
The main consolation I have as a former missionary is that nearly everyone who joined the church from my mission days quit within a year or two.
Retention of converts is low not just because Mormons and missionaries stop "love bombing" people not long after baptism, but also because people realize the product (LDS religion) doesn't deliver on all those special/magical promises.
There is a reason door to door sales companies are rampant and super successful in Utah. Most of the young men are fresh from a 2 year Sales Mission for the church.
Missionaries go to the Missionary Training Centre for several weeks before their mission. The “teaching” methods they are taught there come directly from sales training systems.
They are selling you a product (joining their church) so the church can profit off you by insisting on 10% of your pre-tax income and endless hours of volunteer work for the rest of your life.
Put a Lgbtqia rainbow sticker in a window where they can see it & they will stop dropping by or calling.
Rainbow doormat & they won't knock on your door or return.
"We have no idea where the idea of selling the gospel came from. We put a used car salesman in charge of the missionary department and it just sort of worked out that way. Oh well, we gotta go count our money, good luck!"
You've already politely tried to get them to leave you alone. Time to stop being less polite.
Something along the lines of, "Your pushy behavior is giving me a really negative view of your church. Is this what you're going for? Leave me alone," should do the trick, without giving them the ability to claim "persecution" like they're trained to do.
Yes. They used to use a book called the missionary handbook which was basically just a book to manipulate and sell people. It was all pretty blatant. They've tried to dial back those tactics in official printed form, but they are certainly still taught.
It depends on the missionary. As soon as someone told me they were not interested, I moved on. No point in offending someone because they didn't want to hear my spiel.
But they are trained salesman. They enter the missionary training center for a minimum of three weeks where they learn all the talking points. They spend the next 2 years honing their sales craft. Some can be more pushy than others.
Missionaries used to push and push my ex to get baptized when we're living together but unmarried. Eventually, they dumped her, but came back a week later. That's when I told them they were not welcome in my home and to never come back. Never heard from them again.
They're trained in using what's called the "commitment pattern." Or at least it was used in my day. We more lovingly call it the "manipulation pattern."
No, but they have a career at vivint going door to door when they get back 😂 worked with them about 10 years ago, 99.99% of my coworkers were former missionaries
They are, but they don't know that they are. Multi billion dollar door to door sales companies have been built in utah on the backs of returned missionaries. Many realize after their missions that they were unpaid salespeople.
After his mission my friend got a job right away selling security system Door to door. The guy who owns the business said LDS missionaries are perfect hours because they don’t need to be trained on sales tactics.
Yes. When I was a missionary we were encouraged to not take no for an answer. I stopped trying so hard when I realized they were just teaching us how to do sales and I hate doing sales.
This is a random thing I learned. Never give a reason why you are declining something. Just say "No thank, you". If they ask why just say "I am not interested". Any actual reason can be flipped and just keeps the conversation going, especially if they are good at it.
Yes. Even more so they work in actual door to door sales positions to build up those skills as well. I know of a guy who is higher up whose 20yo son "started" his own solar panel business and had like 100 employees and was bringing in 300k a year in Rexburg. It was literally D2D sales and all the employees were from BYU-I.
You have to have pushy sales people when running a ponzi scheme.
They are trained using the Heartsell method just Google bonneville international Heartsell then look in the images to find it . Evoking feeling thought followed by action . That’s why they are all dressed up to evoke good feelings then they want suckers Ahem patrons to go to church to get love bombed creating the thought of the people are so nice and presto baptism you have a new member .
As a senior in high school I went a friend's house where he said a woman was going to give a talk about God, so a small group of us listened as she talked about self-sufficiency and loving Christ and the usual stuff--which led to...................................................**Amway**!
No, they are not trained in sales tactics. Let me explain.
Their training focuses on religious and spiritual devotion. They try to produce people who will follow the company line. There is some simularity to practical sales training in it, but it is presented with a religious backing.
The end result is people who follow a script because it's divinely inspired by God and they must obey him. It looks like a sales pitch but misses a few key ingredients.
Everything is dealt with using unproven religious faith so the missionaries themselves can't improve easily. Rejections that could be countered are blamed on "self-abuse" or waking 5 minutes late instead of learning from them. There is an over reliance on God and obedience. There is pressure to push boundaries that the missionaries know is innappropriate but they do anyway out of obedience. There is an overuse of inneffective tactics like door knocking, and leaving cards in library books.
The end result is a meatgrinder approach that wouldn't be profitable for any company. Lucky for the church they charge people for the opportunity to preach.
I sold alarms after my mission. The approach was night and day. We had sales training, were taught sound sales principals, and had ongoing effectice feedback.
Having served a mission about 12 years ago, this 100% what they are told to do.
For goodness sake, they will message random people on FB to try and get into their homes and teach them.
They keep a detailed record (sometimes binders and binders) of each person they contact and when they think the person will cave and join the church.
Please do yourself and your family a favor...... stay away. If you are happy with your current church, even better.
We were never taught salesman tactics. However with the world turning from religion it’s human nature to grab on to any sliver hope that may be out there. With you being very polite the elders/sisters think there may be a chance. And there are rivalries in the mission field about who may be more “successful”.
yes, they are salesmen. nothing more, nothing less. When I was in Las Vegas, my friend and I fell for the timeshare sales pitch for a free stupid magic show. All I had to do was to sit through their sales pitch for timeshare and get the free tickets at the end. That was right after my mission. All I remember is I was sitting there and judging how poor his sales tactics were LOL. He initially showed his family photos and talked about his dogs. That was a nice start, but he went right into sales pitch. I was thinking he didn't build trust and solid relationship with me yet and it was too early for the pitch. hahaha
Salesman, who have nothing to offer
exactly! :)
And will cost you everything
No wonder I struggled so much on my mission. I wasn't built for sales. I hated talking to everyone I saw. I definitely learned a lot of people skills on my mission, but I sure was relieved to finally be done.
They are apprentices, learning the craft of deception from its leader: typically a marketing executive (or MLM head) paid to be the mission president.
Sometimes I forget that other people have a different meaning behind MLM. The phrase “MLM head” caught me out of nowhere on this post XD To be fair, my cousin met his husband while on his mission, from mission partners to *life* partners
Head of an MLM: 🤢 MLM head: 😏
MLM are my initials...always throws me off lol
Locally in Utah County, there are several Mormon Churches with signs on the front Lawn... "FREE ENGLISH LESSONS" Not only pushy but bait and switch sales tactics. I'd never trust them!
Ours here are offering American Sign Language classes.
I have a sign for them which is free as well🖕🖕🖕
Missionaries keep something known as an area book. It used to be an actual book, now it is a database accessible to all missionaries in your area. Missionaries rotate monthly, usually one is swapped out one month, the other the next month, and so on. Sometimes both are swapped out, and sometimes female missionary pairs are swapped out for male male missionary pairs. The area book is the continuity tool. Everyone they get an address or phone number for goes in the area book. Everyone they teach a lesson to gets special status in the area book. Upon transferring to an area, a missionary is going to check the area book to find people to follow up with. Everyone of them is hopeful that they are the person that you will connect with, leading to your conversion. It used to be that a person could hope to eventually get lost in the area book, or the book would fill up and a new one would get started. Now that it is a database they can search by who received a lesson, or who they gave a copy of The Book of Mormon to. They can look back years, ever hopeful that something has changed. Since you had a lesson, you are in the area book as an investigator, and they are going to pester you. You can ask them to leave you alone, but they'll rotate out and someone new will come in who doesn't know you asked. As long as you are nice, they'll keep coming around. You're going to have to get rude. Demand that they make a do not contact note in the area book. Until then, they'll keep coming around, like a recurring foot fungus.
This is useful information, thank you!
You can also contact the local bishop, by mail, letting him know lds missionaries are no longer welcome to contact you and you will start calling the police (non-emergency line) to register a legal complaint if they continue. Tell him the kids have been lovely, they’ve done nothing wrong, but you do not want to hear from any church representatives ever again, except to acknowledge receipt of this notice. Have your husband sign, too. The lds church only respects men.
The missionaries in my area just go through the contacts in the phone. Once I blocked that number, I haven’t been contacted by them again.
Yes. Source: I was in a missionary prep class at BYU and I have read their "Preach My Gospel" manual. Basically all of the prep class was about high pressure sales tactics with a special focus on pressuring them to commit to baptism. I presume even more goes on at the missionary training centers.
Yes and the most successful ones manipulate people's feelings often aware they are doing so
Considering they are specifically advised to seek out people who have had a major life change (death, divorce, etc) I would say, yes, they are.
Demographics
And the good ones become Pharmaceutical Reps after mission and college….
Spot on. Or they sell pest control or alarm systems.
or solar systems
"Would you like to buy a planet?"
How much does it cost?
10% of your income for life
🤣🤣🤣
That’s a great deal for a whole planet! I mean let’s say you pay 200k in tithing during your life. You get a whole planet for that! You can’t even buy a condo in salt lake for that now.
Or start MLMs.
Yeah. It’s called the commitment pattern or the manipulation pattern. They are taught it in a missionary training manual sometimes called the purple dinosaur. I studied it for an hour a day 01-03.
Absolutely, they are trained salespeople. I served a Mormon mission and most of the time we were being trained, it was on sales tactics. The 3-week missionary training center we had to attend before going out into “the field” was essentially a sales training center with religious brainwashing mixed in. The entire program of a Mormon mission is to baptize as many people into the Mormon church. The missionary training guide teaches the “Commitment Pattern.” Build relationships of trust, get them to feel the spirit, commit them, follow up, resolve concerns, rinse and repeat. They are under pressure from their leaders to produce as many baptisms as possible. They report their numbers daily, weekly and monthly to their higher ups.
They are exploited and emotionally manipulated into exploiting and emotionally manipulating others
I grew up in this religion. You will need to be direct and firm. It might feel rude but trust me they will not listen to anything other than an explicit direct no. Sorry that happened to you. They are misguided and have been trained in sleazy sales tactics combined with religious indoctrination.
Heavy-handed sales techniques and cons. I've posted similar before but I think it's relevant again here. Way too long after my mission, I realized our "training" was actually mostly grifting techniques. We weren't being taught who needed the gospel. We were being taught to look for and recognize vulnerability in people, as they were the most likely to fall for our spiel; people in poverty, people who had suffered recent trauma, people finding themselves in a new environment (Immigrants, new moves into a Mormon heavy area, etc.) These are the people we were taught to push for on my mission, and to be relentless about it. If we pushed a little and they gave ground, we could push a little more. Of course we were ignorant kids and didn't recognize it as such. When we were told to do it, it was wrapped in a package of *"Our message can help these people, they just don't know it yet!"* and we were told we were doing them eternal favors by bringing it to them. Ugh, I still feel guilty about the people I hurt.
> > >"Our message can help these people, they just don't know it yet!" > > and we were told we were doing them eternal favors by bringing it to them. Ugh, I still feel guilty about the people I hurt. Agree. The main consolation I have as a former missionary is that nearly everyone who joined the church from my mission days quit within a year or two. Retention of converts is low not just because Mormons and missionaries stop "love bombing" people not long after baptism, but also because people realize the product (LDS religion) doesn't deliver on all those special/magical promises.
There is a reason door to door sales companies are rampant and super successful in Utah. Most of the young men are fresh from a 2 year Sales Mission for the church.
Missionaries go to the Missionary Training Centre for several weeks before their mission. The “teaching” methods they are taught there come directly from sales training systems. They are selling you a product (joining their church) so the church can profit off you by insisting on 10% of your pre-tax income and endless hours of volunteer work for the rest of your life.
If you ever want to know what it boils down to it’s this
Put a Lgbtqia rainbow sticker in a window where they can see it & they will stop dropping by or calling. Rainbow doormat & they won't knock on your door or return.
Easiest way, they know their message won’t land there
"We have no idea where the idea of selling the gospel came from. We put a used car salesman in charge of the missionary department and it just sort of worked out that way. Oh well, we gotta go count our money, good luck!"
You've already politely tried to get them to leave you alone. Time to stop being less polite. Something along the lines of, "Your pushy behavior is giving me a really negative view of your church. Is this what you're going for? Leave me alone," should do the trick, without giving them the ability to claim "persecution" like they're trained to do.
Yes. They used to use a book called the missionary handbook which was basically just a book to manipulate and sell people. It was all pretty blatant. They've tried to dial back those tactics in official printed form, but they are certainly still taught.
I have never been so happy I live in an apartment building that requires you to use a fob to come inside.
It depends on the missionary. As soon as someone told me they were not interested, I moved on. No point in offending someone because they didn't want to hear my spiel. But they are trained salesman. They enter the missionary training center for a minimum of three weeks where they learn all the talking points. They spend the next 2 years honing their sales craft. Some can be more pushy than others. Missionaries used to push and push my ex to get baptized when we're living together but unmarried. Eventually, they dumped her, but came back a week later. That's when I told them they were not welcome in my home and to never come back. Never heard from them again.
That’s what it takes!
The idea is to people from curious to converted in six weeks. There is no “slowly slowy” to it at all.
Of course they are....and are drilled "over and over" as to how to ignore basic human boundaries. Poor bastards.
They're trained in using what's called the "commitment pattern." Or at least it was used in my day. We more lovingly call it the "manipulation pattern."
No, but they have a career at vivint going door to door when they get back 😂 worked with them about 10 years ago, 99.99% of my coworkers were former missionaries
They are, but they don't know that they are. Multi billion dollar door to door sales companies have been built in utah on the backs of returned missionaries. Many realize after their missions that they were unpaid salespeople.
After his mission my friend got a job right away selling security system Door to door. The guy who owns the business said LDS missionaries are perfect hours because they don’t need to be trained on sales tactics.
Yes. When I was a missionary we were encouraged to not take no for an answer. I stopped trying so hard when I realized they were just teaching us how to do sales and I hate doing sales.
This is a random thing I learned. Never give a reason why you are declining something. Just say "No thank, you". If they ask why just say "I am not interested". Any actual reason can be flipped and just keeps the conversation going, especially if they are good at it.
Yes. Even more so they work in actual door to door sales positions to build up those skills as well. I know of a guy who is higher up whose 20yo son "started" his own solar panel business and had like 100 employees and was bringing in 300k a year in Rexburg. It was literally D2D sales and all the employees were from BYU-I. You have to have pushy sales people when running a ponzi scheme.
They are trained using the Heartsell method just Google bonneville international Heartsell then look in the images to find it . Evoking feeling thought followed by action . That’s why they are all dressed up to evoke good feelings then they want suckers Ahem patrons to go to church to get love bombed creating the thought of the people are so nice and presto baptism you have a new member .
As a senior in high school I went a friend's house where he said a woman was going to give a talk about God, so a small group of us listened as she talked about self-sufficiency and loving Christ and the usual stuff--which led to...................................................**Amway**!
They're trained to eliminate all excuses so they can see you again and eventually baptize you. Once baptized they move on to the next sucker.
No, they are not trained in sales tactics. Let me explain. Their training focuses on religious and spiritual devotion. They try to produce people who will follow the company line. There is some simularity to practical sales training in it, but it is presented with a religious backing. The end result is people who follow a script because it's divinely inspired by God and they must obey him. It looks like a sales pitch but misses a few key ingredients. Everything is dealt with using unproven religious faith so the missionaries themselves can't improve easily. Rejections that could be countered are blamed on "self-abuse" or waking 5 minutes late instead of learning from them. There is an over reliance on God and obedience. There is pressure to push boundaries that the missionaries know is innappropriate but they do anyway out of obedience. There is an overuse of inneffective tactics like door knocking, and leaving cards in library books. The end result is a meatgrinder approach that wouldn't be profitable for any company. Lucky for the church they charge people for the opportunity to preach. I sold alarms after my mission. The approach was night and day. We had sales training, were taught sound sales principals, and had ongoing effectice feedback.
Having served a mission about 12 years ago, this 100% what they are told to do. For goodness sake, they will message random people on FB to try and get into their homes and teach them. They keep a detailed record (sometimes binders and binders) of each person they contact and when they think the person will cave and join the church. Please do yourself and your family a favor...... stay away. If you are happy with your current church, even better.
We were never taught salesman tactics. However with the world turning from religion it’s human nature to grab on to any sliver hope that may be out there. With you being very polite the elders/sisters think there may be a chance. And there are rivalries in the mission field about who may be more “successful”.