Reason #3: “No Money” (aka “The Big Lie”)

I can almost 100% guarantee you will have a few listeners who call you and say “I’d love to donate, but I don’t have any money.”

Of course, some of your fellow staff members will believe a statement like that.

The problem is, without any kind of substantive research, proof, or verification some programmers will then expand this comment to ALL of their listeners by saying “my listeners don’t have the money to make a donation.”

The problem is, the excuse of “no money” is usually a big hairy lie.

If your listeners truly had “no money”, they wouldn’t have a radio to listen to your show with.

They wouldn’t have a house or apartment.

They wouldn’t have food to eat.

They wouldn’t be buying gas for their car. In fact, they wouldn’t have a car, they wouldn’t own a bicycle, and they wouldn’t be able to take the bus anywhere.

They would have had to sell everything they own, and then have lost or given away all the money they made from the sale.

THEN they would truly have “no money.”

So let’s agree on something ... most of, if not all of, your listeners have money. They are just saying they have “no money.”

While they are telling you this, they are paying roaming charges to call you from their cell phone on their way out to buy lottery tickets, beer, cigarettes, candy and the newspaper.

Tonight they’ll buy a ticket to a show at the Agora or Beachland that you mentioned on-air during your show. Plus they’ll buy a few drinks.

Then they’ll go online later through their DSL, Cable or 4G connection and order music from iTunes.

Tomorrow, they will be buying blank CD’s so they can copy the music they have purchased online.

Later in the day, they will buy a fast-food lunch at McDonalds, pay for a sit-down dinner at Hunan Coventry, shoot a game of pool at Jillians, and then go home to watch the movie they received through their subscription to NetFlix.

Yet, they say they have “no money” to give to WRUW.

Folks, it's about how you spend discretionary income!

Each of those purchases I itemized above is a purchase made with discretionary income. Donating to WRUW would also be another use of discretionary income.

So ...

When a listener says “I have no money”, what they are really saying is “you haven’t made a compelling case as to why I should give WRUW some of the money I have available to spend.”

The excuse of “no money” stops very few people from buying.

People routinely buy what they don’t need, simply because they want it. Credit is rarely an issue. Bankruptcy ... no problem. Bad credit ... no problem. No job ... no problem. Too stupid and lazy to pay your bills ... no problem. A lack of money is just not an issue for most people. They have the money, but they just don’t want you to know it!

People always get in a hurry to buy and find the money to buy if they want something badly enough.

Or, they willingly go into debt to fund the purchase.

Stop Beating Your Head Against the Microphone

Why would you waste your time trying to convince people who have “no money” to give money to WRUW? Why not focus your attention on the people who DO have money? It makes your life sooo much easier.

Believing your listeners have “no money” is your self-limiting head trash. You don’t know anything about your listener’s incomes, jobs, resources or backgrounds.

You can just as easily believe “all of my listeners have discretionary income and I’m going to succeed in getting a few of them to contribute to WRUW.” Your choice.

Most of your listeners DO have money and are simply waiting for you to give them a COMPELLING reason WHY to give it WRUW!

So, come up with some compelling reasons and talk about them during the fundraiser!

For more on this topic, read this posting

The real biggie in the list of reasons why people don’t buy.