Scare Customers into Buying

Never overlook the value of a good scare. Yes, it's true that coming across to your customers as the villain from a horror movie might succeed only in scaring off the sale. But consider this: Life insurance sales professionals regularly bring up to prospects the rather frightening possibility that the prospects could die at any time.
     What are two lessons we can learn from the successful life insurance sales tactics to apply to our retail selling, whatever the product or service?

• People usually avoid what they should prepare for. As a Californian, I can bear witness to how well we all ignore the possibilities of major earthquakes, for instance. When we as retailing professionals make customers aware of the true risks facing them, we are doing a favor.
• Raise the fear because you've a product or service to offer that will substantially reduce the worry. Unless the customers come to believe that you've a remedy, many will ignore the risk in order to make the fear go away. But other customers won't ignore the risk. They'll stay afraid and probably just get quite irritated at you for getting the fear started. Either way, you've lost a sale. Many consultants advise retailers to arouse enough fear to scare people into action, but not so much that they tune out the retailer. In my opinion, a better guideline is to raise enough fear of a real danger to win the customer's attention, but only to the degree that you've a guaranteed way to substantially reduce the risk. Don't oversell.
• And a bonus tip from retailers who sell skydiving lessons: There are customers who are not at all uncomfortable with a sales situation that raises fears. There are people who find that a good scare spices up the total experience.