Welcome to Bill's Sales Seminars, where a retired salesperson teaches you how the top professionals do it. I'll share the secrets of such professionals as John Connor, former Secretary of Commerce. Gary Kinder, Master of infomercials. Ken Bohannon, King of the 412(i) tax-free trusts. And Ed Zucker, who created the anti-abortion campaigns for the Catholic Church. None of these people want me to share their secrets with the general public. So you better read this, print it out, and save it before they have their lawyers make Blogger take it down.
See? I hit you with as many sales tricks as a Trump campaign commercial. First, I implied secret knowledge. Everyone from Mega-Churches to Scientology hooks you by promising you secret knowledge. Of course, they don't have any secret knowledge, and that's where the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect kicks in. The cult leaders pretend all their followers have that secret knowledge. This shames people into acting like they have secret knowledge. Nobody wants to admit they've been fooled, and they'll savage any heretic who suggests they're being played.
Nor am I offering you any secret knowledge in this blog. Much of what I learned was on the job and perfected through practice. And while I did learn things from some of the people I listed, I only chose those names to grab your attention. I can avoid any accusations of lying because I knew these people and picked them for their obscurity. They sound like people you should have heard of. That piques your curiosity. See? Another sales trick.
The only two names who taught me anything directly were Bohanon and Zucker. I worked for Zucker twice. I was his college intern when he was still writing antifeminist copy for the Catholic Church. He didn't even remember me when he hired me as a life insurance agent years later. I met Kinder when he gave a paid lecture at my insurance agency. It was a very informative lecture, and I'm glad I took notes. After his presentation, we met, and he gave me tips on giving insulin shots to my cat. And as for the secretary of commerce, I met him because I was his daughter's part-time butler. And he didn't teach me anything. But as you can see, name-dropping is almost as effective as testimonials.
My claim that Blogger would take down my website is a blatant sales trick. You can't look at your newsfeed without seeing paid content claiming to reveal "What the (fill in the blank) don't want you to know. It triggers the same reflex as "don't think about elephants. chances are, you'll be tempted to hit the link just to see what they're talking about. t's a physical response that occurs when short-term and long-term memories are confused at the same time. And the more intelligent and mentally flexible you are, the more effective it is.
Finally, we have my all-time favorite sales technique in the world. "Take it away." I learned that one selling timeshares. If you give the customer a moment to think about what he's doing, he won't do it. So you threaten to take it away to deliberately cause fear. I offered people a weekend in Atlantic City and a few other trinkets to come to an office for a presentation. That's called "the hook." Now, if you give the customers a chance to think, they won't bother to come in. Half my prospects never showed up. I'd call the no-shows and tell them they still had another week to claim their weekend. Then I'd toss in some complementary casino chips. Out of a dozen such calls, maybe two people, three at the most, missed the next timeshare presentation.
See? I just hit you with a testimonial: "facts tell, stories sell." So watch out for the storytellers. The more entertaining the stories, the more careful you need to be. Anecdotes are used to gain your trust and lower your guard.
I was bullshitting when I said I feared this blog would be taken down. It was another variation of "take it away. Don't believe it if the talking heads try to scare you by saying Biden is coming for your guns or Trump is coming for your healthcare. This variation of "take it away" triggers your fears and insecurities. Nobody wants to have something taken away by the authorities. Not even this blog.
This blog could help if you're a small business owner, a working salesperson. Don't be afraid to use your imagination and experiment. Change things around to suit your style. Creativity is a mark of a successful salesperson or business owner.
Here's the real reason I started this project. I was on Twitter the other night and saw an underground guerrilla marketer promoting hate crimes against Ukrainian refugees. And the troll used the same advertising techniques that enraged crowds against the Central American and Muslim refugees. This is in no way acceptable and has to be confronted. But I knew better than to try to do it directly. I could tell the troll was a professional and could rile its supporters against me. So I decided to go full-on weasel and try an indirect approach.
The Underground Guerrilla Marketer didn't use any of the evident and hamfisted techniques I've introduced. That vile excuse of a human being used much more subtle emotional manipulation and distorted facts with clever use of logical fallacies. I'll be going over all of this in upcoming posts.
Sales and advertising are the practical applications of all the articles you read in Psychology Today. Some people graduate with advanced degrees in psychology just to mind fuck you. I've met people who delighted in it. This blog is a how-to guide on how to spot them and ignore them. Never confront them because they all have carefully planned rebuttals for every truth you throw at them.
Finally, I want to emphasize that nothing I share is arcane or hidden knowledge. I'll even be compiling a reading list for anybody wise enough to fact-check me or who wants to learn more about the subject. And I'll also be sharing stories about the practical applications of this knowledge.
Most importantly, remember that these tricks are designed to trip-up people with very high intelligence and exceptional education. Some tricks even use the media to confuse the brain. So don't feel bad about yourself for having been tricked. I still get fooled, and I used to scratch out a living doing this shit.
If you would like some context as to where and how I learned all of this, you can visit my other blog, The Traumatic 90s, which is a memoir of surviving that dumpster fire of a decade. (And did you notice I just used another sales trick by using this project to promote an older project?) Stay tuned for more sales techniques. If nothing else, I hope you enjoy them. And remember, in all things, choose kindness.
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