All You Need Is Love

 Face it, customers are only ATMs on two legs. Your presentation is the PIN and Ka-ching! Only customers are much more complicated than an ATM. It doesn’t matter if you manage a retail store or sell complex investments; you must make the customer feel special. Otherwise, that ATM on two legs will turn around and march away. So you have to make your customers feel special for them to keep giving you money. 

Imagine how customers feel if they walk into a grocery store and all the clerks treat them like crap? This happens to me frequently because I rely on a service dog. In one case, I told a store manager to be a good little drone, put my groceries back, and walked out of the store, never to return. I spend my grocery money where the staff is trained to help disabled people. This makes me feel as if my business is appreciated. And if you’re looking to sell them something costly, you have to make them feel like one of the elite. 

If you read my last post, you’ll remember Horst. He was in a Berlin tavern back in the late twenties. A group of Brown Shirts bought a few rounds and gave their Nazi shtick. Horst liked what he heard. But he didn’t go straight home and say, “Darling, have you seen my crowbar? I just joined the Nazi Party, and I’m going out with the boys and beat some commies after dinner.”

No, Horst underwent a long sales process before he donned the Brown Shirt. Today, most of us are familiar enough with the Nazis to see through their crap. You have to be really sick in the head and ignorant to fall for it. But it was all new to Horst. German Nationalism, eugenics, and the word “Aryan” were all unfamiliar. He had to be taught from the ground up like he was converting to a new religion. 

Like any other cult, the Nazi's love bombed the living hell out of Horst when he walked into his first meeting. This was balm to poor Horst’s frazzled nerves. His brain relaxed, and his long-term memory was open to anything his new friends said. Love Bombing is such an old technique that I wouldn’t be surprised if Pythagoras used it in his cult. But the Nazi upper echelons were very familiar with the new psychological research from the universities. They knew exactly what they were doing when they started love bombing Horst. And unlike past cults, the Nazis made it part of a step-by-step process. We’ll be going into the steps in detail, but love bombing is the first step in all sales and advertising. 

The secret to successful love bombing is constant affirmation. Horst was told he was one of the elite because he was German. He didn’t even have to do anything to be one of the elite. All he had to do was embrace his German heritage. And if this parallels accepting Jesus, you would be absolutely right. Once Horst walked into the Nazi party, he was assigned a friend to make sure he stayed on the straight and narrow. In Horst’s case, he became the protege of one of the Brown Shirts from the tavern. Goebbels probably lifted the sponsorship idea from AA.

Sam was love bombed as well, but in a much more refined way than Horst. Love bombing has been studied and refined so it can be used to sell anything. Right off the bat, Sam was told he was more intelligent than most others. He was an entrepreneur, the elite of American capitalism. Sam was better than everybody else and worked too hard to have to pay taxes. He owed it to himself to come to the Universal Life Insurance seminar.

I can think of dozens of variations, but that’s the gist of the spiel that got Sam to go to the seminar. And once Sam and his wife got there, a very subtle love bombing began. They were greeted by the same sales team member who initially contacted Sam. It was a similar personal contact as used with AA sponsors. The young man helped them mingle for the social half hour and even introduced them to Seminar Guy, who sold them an autographed copy of his book. Sam and his wife were deeply honored that an important man who wrote a book autographed it for them. 

When Horst arrived at his first Nazi Party meeting, the same Brown Shirt he spoke to in the tavern welcomed him. He introduced him around, and everybody seemed happy to meet him. Horst probably met Ernst Rohn, the leader of the Brown Shirts, and Rohn treated Horst like a long-lost brother. And Horst felt deeply honored that he met a very important man he never knew existed until then. 

The problem with love bombing is that it doesn’t work if the victim has a strong support system. Horst’s wife might have talked him out of the Nazi madness. Sam’s wife might have done some research on Universal Life Policies. Nothing kills a deal faster than a loved one who knows what they’re talking about. This is why cults like the Krishnas split families and separate their customers-ahem- excuse me, I meant their victims from their friends. Indoctrination doesn’t take unless it’s constantly reinforced. 

Peer pressure is a powerful reinforcement tool. As long as the people in Horst’s life believed in the Nazi Party, Horst believed in the Nazi Party. And he was never allowed time to rethink his involvement. His own wife would correct him if he did. And if she didn’t, Horst’s fellow Brown Shirts would. Sometimes to the point of violence or murder. 

Seminar Guy wasn’t trying to conquer Europe and exterminate ten million people. He wanted to pocket Sam’s million dollars. So he needed to work fast before all his indoctrination was wasted. The same trained monkey who invited Sam to the seminar called him up the day after and used a variation of “take it away” to get Sam to the next meeting. The papers and check were signed, and the salesperson held his breath for the three days Sam had to change his mind. 

Love bombing is also where the customer is introduced to the GRAND CAUSE. Every public relations campaign has a GRAND CAUSE. It could be the end of godless communism, the great evangelical commission, the ethnic cleansing of Europe, financial security, or whiter teeth. The grandness of the cause is equal to the expense of the product. Selling toothpaste doesn’t take the careful preparation that selling a junk financial product does. And creating a massive socio/economic movement requires the most effort. 

See how cults and sales are interlocked? They both come out of the fascist movement of the early 20th Century. Especially the works of Joseph Goebbels, who should be remembered as the father of modern public relations. Nazi organization was a primitive mass marketing campaign. And it operated very much like modern Christian proselytizing and Communist organizing. It was a “big tent” where everybody was special, and the people outside the tent had to be dragged into it or were the enemy.

Seminar Guy wasn’t that competitive. He had short-term goals and a huge turnover. He wasn’t a “big tent” operation and didn’t want to sell to everybody. Seminar Guy didn’t want to waste his time with people who had sales resistance. Better to have a seminar where ten couples show up, and you sell to half than go to the expense of trouble of having a hundred couples show and only five buy. 

Hopefully, you know to recognize love bombing and avoid it like COVID! The heavier the love bombing, the faster you should run. Especially when it comes to investments. We no longer have the consumer protections we had during the 1960s and 70s. There are a lot of quasi-legal scams out there. The best investment decision you can make is to go to your bank. Bank Financial Advisors work on salary instead of commissions. They don’t have to worry about chargebacks and will do an excellent job for you. 

If you find yourself love-bombed by a political or religious group, run for the goddamned hills. They’re out to get you to do something that is not beneficial to you but very profitable for them. I was once love-bombed on an author’s Facebook page. She was promoting the Democratic party and had this health insurance agent hawking his business. Which is a violation of California Insurance Regulations. So while I was being love bombed, I was reporting that bastard of an agent to the commissioner. So as you can see, love bombing can also be a smoke screen for all sorts of zany shenanigans.

Always remember to research before you buy anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tube of toothpaste or an insurance policy. Know what it is you’re buying. Please don’t trust any authority that does not back words with verifiable facts. Ignore anecdotes. And when you do choose, choose with kindness.