·By Linran YU
A Small Yes Is Not an Opening
What happens when a discount turns into a sales tactic.
A company offered a nonprofit a very low price on its product. A few days later the nonprofit wrote back: some of their volunteers would like to buy a small quantity.
The company replied that the low price was available for a limited time, and asked whether they would like to order more while it lasted.
There was no reply. There has not been one since.
Start by knowing what the other side expects
When a business reaches out to a nonprofit, the nonprofit generally assumes something is being offered to them. That is what these approaches almost always are.
So an unsolicited sales offer lands strangely. A nonprofit's budget is donated money, and spending it on something that arrived uninvited is hard to justify to the people who gave it, even when the price is good.
Which is why the reply, when it came, was not an order from the organization at all.
None of that is hostility toward business. It is just the shape of the organization, and it is knowable in advance by anyone who thinks about it for a minute.
Notice when someone is being generous
The reply that came back was a kindness.
Nobody had asked for the offer. Somebody inside the organization looked at it, saw that the budget could not be used on it, and found a way to say yes anyway: she and the other volunteers would pay for a small quantity out of their own pockets.
That is the moment the relationship existed. It was small and it was real.
Then it became a technique
Limited time. Order more while it lasts.
Everybody recognizes that sentence. It arrives three times a week in everyone's inbox, and the reader knows exactly what it is for. Used on a person who has just done you a favor, it says plainly that the favor was being read as an opening.
It also puts the person who spoke up for you in an awkward position. She brought a small purchase to her colleagues. Now she is bringing them a pitch.
Why urgency fails in that room
Deadline pressure is built for one person, deciding alone, spending their own money, where a little push tips a decision they were already close to.
A nonprofit is none of those things. The decision is collective, the money belongs to donors, and the person you are pushing has to repeat your sentence out loud to somebody else. Said out loud, it sounds like what it is.
Decide which one it is before you write
Either this is a gift or it is a sale. Both are fine. Mixing them is what causes the damage.
If it is a gift, give it, with no volume attached and no follow-up asking what else they need. If you want them as a customer, say the price plainly, once, and let them decide at their own speed.
What you cannot do is offer a kindness and then bill it as an opportunity.
Take the small order gladly
Somebody wants a small order. Send it quickly, packed properly, with a note that says thank you.
The next order is bigger, or it is not, and either way you are now a company that behaves well with people who have very little to spend. In a small community where everyone knows everyone, that is the thing that travels.
Nobody is fooled by the other approach. They are just too polite to say so, which is why the only sign you get is a message that never arrives.