How to Scare Your Customers For Fun and Profit.

 We'll look at two case histories and see how they're related. The first case history is taken from stories I heard from eyewitnesses to the Nazi rise to power. The other is compiled from things I witnessed professionally. And the only thing that links them together is fear. Pay attention to Horst and Sam because I'll often refer back to them in future posts.

Horst is your average German for his day. And a really decent guy. He has no problem with Jews, but he's steamed at the Communists for a few solid reasons. The Commies really screwed up after the Kaiser fell. All of Germany is feeling the Treaty of Versailles and the infrastructure damage from the failed German-Soviet Revolution. Inflation is out of control, and Horst can't really afford the one beer he's enjoying before going home. A friend is reading from the newspaper that the government will devalue the mark again! After that, beer was going to be out of the question. Horst has a wife and two sons, and they're already eating nothing but potato soup. Now they might not be able to afford to buy that. Horst is terrified for the future. 

Right on cue, three guys in identical brown shirts come into the tavern, and their leader buys a round for the house. The second beer in one night is a gift from God! Horst toasts the nice young gentleman in the brown shirt. The brownshirts start working the room, and Horst listens to them, telling about how the National Socialist Party will save Germany and the world. Under normal circumstances, Horst would have humored them for the beer. But Horst is very scared. His short-term memory has been silenced, paralyzing his critical thinking skills. His long-term memory is wide open, and he is willing to consider anything that promises a means of escape from the fear. His brain is working entirely on impulses received from long-term memory. 

Horst is in the middle of his second free beer and getting a little drunk. Then the leader stands on top of a table and makes a speech. Horst could only follow bits and pieces of what the man was saying. What did stick was the emotionally laden words like "prosperity," "German superiority," and "take our country back from the Jews and the Communists." They stuck in Horst's mind after he forgot all the rest of the speech. And they were stuck in his long-term memory even after his short-term memory recovered. And when the Brownshirts break into the Horst Wessel Song, Horst joins in. He doesn't know the words, but he hammers the chorus. He feels hope for the future. Horst doesn't have to be scared anymore. 

It's not long before Horst has a brand new brown shirt of his own. And he's one of the guys working the crowds in taverns. Or handing out leaflets in the street. Or beating Jews on the road. Horst marched on the Bundestag. And was in the thick of Kristallnacht. Finally, Horst finds his miserable ass on the curb watching Russian troops marching through Berlin. His kids died in the Ukraine invasion, and his wife died of dysentery. He heard about the death camps, and Horst wondered how the hell he got caught up in all the crazy bullshit. 

Body slide a hundred years into the future. Sam is a successful entrepreneur, but his business isn't doing well. Covid and the economy are kicking his ass. His oldest child is 14, and Sam hasn't begun planning for college. His daughter is nine, but there's college and a wedding to prepare for. And if Sam's business tanks, there will be no college, wedding, or future. Sam is terrified of failing his family. Failure will lower his standing in the community, and his children will be ashamed of him. Sam's convinced his wife will drop him for a more successful man. He has maybe a million dollars left in savings and looking for a secure investment to protect his family. Sam goes to bed scared, and he wakes up scared.

One morning, a life insurance salesman contacted Sam. He invited him to a lunch seminar hosted by a famous financial expert Sam had never heard of. But this renowned financial expert just wrote a book you can purchase at the door. Sam figures, what would it hurt to listen? It's a free lunch at a restaurant he usually can't afford. So why not? Sam comes in. He probably has his wife with him. These nice young men in thousand-dollar suites greet them at the door. They show Sam and his wife to their seats and tell them that a universal life insurance policy is the only way to a comfortable retirement. The three young men in the 1000-dollar suits work the restaurant the same way the brown shirts work the tavern.

Then comes the main event. The famous financial expert nobody ever heard of but who wrote a book (we'll just call him Seminar Guy) gets up behind a row of tables. They're covered by a tablecloth with the agency logo embossed on it. He has a projection screen next to him, and one of his young men is working on a projector. And Seminar Guy is wearing a five thousand dollar hand-tailored Italian silk suit! He sure looks like he knows what he's talking about.

Seminar Guy gets very technical about the stock market and the security of the mutual fund portfolio attached to the policy's death benefit. Meanwhile, spreadsheets and memes are projected on the screen to illustrate the speech.

Sam only understood one sentence out of five. He's a great bookkeeper but not a CPA. So he barely understands the spreadsheet, but the memes stand out in his mind. Seminar Guy throws in words like "high yield," "compound interest, and" guaranteed returns" stick in Sam's mind like they were wrapped in flypaper. This is another use of neurolinguistic programming, like the Brown Shirt Boss used in the tavern. We'll be returning it in later posts. Right now, it's one of the processes used to direct Sam's fears.

Sam has been programmed like a Moonie. Seminar Guy showed him the sure path to financial security, and he doesn't have to be scared anymore. But when Sam's short-term memory wakes up, he will ask questions that Seminar Guy doesn't want to answer.  

Here you have it. Two people from two entirely different social classes, nations, and periods. The only thing in common is they're being manipulated by fear. Horst is convinced that if he helps the Nazis come to power, he will have no more economic worries. Sam figures all his problems will disappear if he invests in a Universal Life Insurance Policy. Fear is an emotion and not rational. Fear also triggers survival reflexes beyond most people's ability to control. (Unless they found a good therapist. Therapists are horrible customers because they understand the concepts I'm explaining from a completely different angle.)

Fear causes the long-term memory to take over, and the short-term memory becomes an ignored voice in the back of the head. And if the short-term memory can't find the easy path out, long-term memory will obsess over the problem. And once the long-term memory sees a way out, it will follow that path, no matter what. 

Give Sam and Horst enough time; they would probably have talked themselves out of their disastrous courses of action. The fear needed to drive somebody to buy a junk investment or kill 10,000,000 people has to be deliberately maintained and directed. Otherwise, the victims will wake up and walk out. So at this point, we can divide fear into two types. We have natural fear, which is the fear of something happening like a bad economy. The other is manufactured fear, like what we hear in the media daily. Manufactured fear can be stirred up on its own. But that's going to take a lot of time and effort. But if there really is something to be afraid of, there is no end to the fear you can manufacture.

In the case of Horst, he was kept scared through indoctrination and the human need to have a peer group. As soon as Horst got his brown shirt, he had a brand new peer group, all wearing sharp brown shirts. And he was separated from his old friends, just like they do in the Moonies or the Jehovah's Witnesses. And when he's not working, he's out goosestepping with his fellow Nazis or going to Nazi meetings where fear is reinforced with every word. The Jews rule the world! The Communists want to take away your freedoms! (See? Another example of "take it away.) They hate you because you're German and superior! And if that reminds you of the hilariously named "Right to Life" movement: you would be right. 

Horst might have come to his senses if he had taken a week off. Many people who tried to do that were beaten to death by their former comrades. That may also have kept Horst goosestepping. Once you are in a situation where a brown shirt or a salesman is in control, it's dreadfully hard to get away. 

If you gave Sam some time, he would definitely come to his senses. Sooner or later, he was bound to hear a Universal Life horror story. Maybe he'll actually read Seminar Guy's and recognizes it as the same crap he gets in his news feed. So the Seminar guy plays another variation of "take it away ." One of those nice young men in the $1000 suit calls him and offers to sell Sam a Universal Life Policy. He has an opening on Thursday at 2:00 or Friday at 10:00. But then he's booked all the way into next month. 

Of course, the young man isn't booked into the month. That's something a salesperson that when you have a product that depends on impulse buying. Rather than give Sam the chance to back out, the salesman created false urgency by threatening to move the appointment back a whole month. By now, Sam may be getting second thoughts and is desperate to keep his false sense of security. So he caves and moves his and his wife's schedules to buy this policy. 

Sam should have said no thank you when the salesman tried to pressure him with a long wait time. No sales associate will be so busy to wait an entire month for a sale. The only exceptions are with written offers, like mortgages or loans. They have expiration dates. But for an investment, savings vehicle, or anything else, don't let them pull that "I'm booked crap." That's a sure sign you're being played. 

Sam fell for it and paid a million dollars into a Universal Life Policy. The salesman walked away with a million dollar check, of which he got 2% or Twenty thousand dollars. The seminar guy walked away with half a million less the 2% he tossed to his trained monkey, But the catch is they get it as an advance on future commissions. Neither the nice man in the 1,000 suits nor Seminar Guy get to keep that money until the policy is seven years old. If Sam rolls it over to another company or ends the policy, the insurance company charges back that commission. And the salespeople have to pay it back out of pocket. So the Seminar guy and his assistant will have to keep Sam on the hook for seven years.

Of course, the stock market crashes and that million dollars worth of mutual funds attached to a term life insurance policy crashes with it. Sam finds himself shoveling money into the policy to keep it from going into the red and losing his death benefit. His family will have to make sacrifices until the mutual funds recover.

The junior salesman has to stay in contact with Sam, reassuring and making promises to keep him on the hook. But as soon as the mutual funds recover, that policy is rolled over into an annuity or whole life policy, which Sam needed in the first place. And in another ten years, Sam's millions could grow into two million or more.

This is the difference between sales and politics. Sales have to deliver. It's okay to sell some chump a universal life policy because the company offers big bonuses. And bonuses are never charged back. Sell enough junk policies, and you can live off the bonuses and invest the advances against commissions, so the chargebacks don't kill you. In the case of Sam, his rollover causes a chargeback, but the new sale compensates for that. And the continuing rollovers replace lower commission policies with higher commissions. Through skillful management of fear, Sam became a gift that keeps on giving.

There's also the chance that the guy in a thousand-dollar suit can't cut it in financial sales and vanishes. Sam might have to find another salesperson to roll over his universal policy. No problems. There's always another salesperson down the road. Maybe Sam loses his shirt, his wife leaves him, his kids despise him, and he picks up a job as a production manager. Seminar Guy and his trained monkeys don't care. They'll forget about Sam once he's out of their sphere of influence. There are more fish in the sea and another seminar lunch next week.

No matter how good or bad Sam has, it will not compare to Horst. When we left Horst, he watched the Russians march through Berlin while mourning his dead family. Local opinion toward Nazi party members has changed in the last few days. Horst has to avoid his neighborhood, or he might be the next poor bastard kicked to death in the street. Horst was taken on by a political movement, chewed up, and spat out. There are no consequences to politics. Nobody got chargebacks after Hitler shot himself in the head. All of the big players, like Bayer and I.G. Farben, got to keep their profits.  

Sam and Horst could have saved themselves a lot of pain and heartache if they understood that fear is only an emotion. It can't hurt them.

Fear is traumatic. And the more times people get scared, the harder they fall victim to it. And the longer you're scared, the harder it is for the reasoning faculties to return. It would have helped Sam and Horst if they had taken the time to develop healthy habits in dealing with fear. And there is nothing more that can help bring fear under control and help create workable solutions than a good therapist. As I mentioned, therapists make the world's worst customers because they understand how to deal with anxiety. And while Horst lived in a time when therapy was unheard of, it sure as hell would have helped Sam.

Another way to control fear is to avoid manufactured fear. Once you're frightened, it's too easy to blow these fears all out of proportion. You have enough things to be genuinely afraid of without CNN manufacturing fears of Nazi Republicans or FOX manufacturing terror over socialist Democrats. Both claims are equally absurd. The same is true about social media. Many scam accounts are specifically there to manipulate people with fear.

While I'm on both Twitter and Facebook, I'm only there to promote my two blogs and the series of novels I'm writing. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. I had once been very active on Facebook. Tribe.net before that. But my therapist talked me into staying away from social media for a year. I have to say, my anxiety has been much relieved by not subjecting myself to that sort of manufactured fear and stress.

I use the internet for digital subscriptions to the Irish Times because of its reputation for impartiality. I read the Guardian because they report events in my neighborhood more accurately than my local news. But I pay no attention to CNN, FOX, or the ghastly tabloids on my Bing homepage. It all reminds me of the supermarket tabloids they had in the 1990s. The headlines may be amusing, but the content is crap. The internet is a fantastic tool for doing actual research. But if you dive into the shallow end, like Twitter, you're liable to crack your skull.

Learn to check primary sources like The Congressional Record when researching politics. Learn to use ConsumerReports, AARP, and Better Business Bureau, when researching products.

Most importantly, listen to your real-life support group. The naysayers in your circle are trying to help. Listen to them. Even if they're telling you what you don't want to hear. Other people's experiences and feelings are valid. Especially if they're real people and not a troll farm account on Facebook. 

Fear can't be avoided. But we can manage it. But it's tough to scare a mind that knows how to fact-check. Learning to research before acting is the number one way to manage fear. It's better to carefully research and be wrong than to not research, be wrong, and get screwed over. Also, remember that kindness to others cannot be monetized or manipulated. So when in doubt, always choose kindness.