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ITEM
#2: People in a slum moan and
bitch about their living conditions. The government steps in, tears
down the slum and builds shiny, new apartment buildings into which the
ghetto folks are allowed to live rent-free.

What
happens? The ghetto folks spray graffiti on the walls, use the
elevators as toilets and, in general, trash the building.

ITEM
#3: A guy who has never broken
100 is shooting a round of golf. After the first 9 holes, he notices
he's doing exceptionally well and has only used up 36 strokes. And, if
he keeps this…

What happens? On the back 9,
he reverts to his normal game (and then some) and finishes the course
in 103 strokes.

ITEM
#4: A self-made Cuban with good
self-esteem has all of his property and wealth confiscated by the
Castro regime.

What
happened? The Cuban moves to Miami, starts a business and, within a
short time, becomes prosperous all over again.

What
does all this suggest? Actually, these little mini slices-of-life tend
to confirm one of Halbert's Major Laws Of Marketing which is:

HUMAN
BEINGS WILL DO

ALMOST ANYTHING TO REMAIN

IN THEIR COMFORT ZONE!

Have
you ever heard about the hierarchy of human needs? Maybe you studied it
in sociology or psychology. Anyway, according to what you learn in
college, the #1 human need is survival. After that comes sex. Then,
further down the line is the need for an extended family…

I
beg to differ. As usual, those college guys have got it wrong. I'll
agree that the #1 need is for survival but #2 is not sex. No sir, #2,
just below survival, is the need for humans to remain in their own
comfort zone. Not only that, sometimes this need is so strong, it actually eclipses
survival.

An
example: remember my issue on grabbers, those little devices you attach
to a letter to grab your reader's attention. Well, there is more than
one kind of grabber. For example, many restaurants keep a quite
different type of grabber on hand. It's like a huge pair of plastic
tweezers and it is used to grab chunks of…

You
see, many Americans, because of haste or denture problems, are often
not able to properly masticate a mouthful of meat. So, when they try to
swallow, the meat gets stuck in their throat, blocks off their air
supply and, if not removed promptly, causes them to die of suffocation.

This
is no laughing matter. It actually happens quite often. But, you know
what? Whenever it does happen, often the suffocating person will be more worried about
being embarrassed than he will about dying.

Same
thing with heart attacks. Ask any doctor. Often a poor soul in the
throes of cardiac arrest will say something like:

"Excuse
me, I hate to bother

you but I think I'm having

a heart attack."

Very
polite. Very eager not to make waves. Very concerned about not being
too much of a bother to anyone. Very concerned…

ABOUT
NOT DOING ANYTHING

THAT WILL MAKE HIM

PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNCOMFORTABLE!

Now,
when you ask someone to buy your goods or services, you are asking him
to disrupt his comfy routine. And, if
what you're selling is new to him, you're asking him to do something
very uncomfortable which is to make a decision
that will alter his lifestyle…

And
listen, it is just as uncomfortable to alter your lifestyle up as it is
to alter it down. You see, in a word, the thing that's most
psychologically uncomfortable for humans is...

CHANGE!

Any kind of change, good or bad.
Which means you must use great skill in order to sell someone a new
product or service. Most…

Which just ain't so.

Look,
if you're a dope dealer and you walk into a room full of strung-out
junkies, you can get away with a simple pitch like...

Hey
scumbags! You

wanna buy some heroin?

And
that's the way all too many folks in our business approach

their
would-be-customers – as though they were already eager for what they're selling.

Let me tell you something: the average American is subjected to some
1,500 sales pitches every
day.

HEY
SCUMBAG! YOU

WANNA BUY SOME

HEROIN?

HEY
YOU!
HERE'S YOUR

CHANCE TO GET TIME-LIFE AT

HALF THE NEWSTAND PRICE!

HEY DUMBO! YOU

WANNA BUY SOME

GOOP THAT GROWS

HAIR ON BALD HEADS.

ARE
YOU FAT?

OUR NEW PILL LETS YOU

EAT LIKE A HOG AND

LOOK LIKE AN ANOREXIC!

BUY
PRODUCT X,

IT'S CHEAPER

BUY
PRODUCT Z,

IT'S SMALLER

BUY!
BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY!

And
so on. No warm up. No dignity. No simple respect. No sales savvy,
whatsoever.

Believe
me, there is a far better way.

Listen
to this: it has been proven that music really does have the ability to
elevate our mood. However, if you're in a sad mood, what you shouldn't
do is start right out by listening to happy music. No. What you do is
start out with music that matches your…

If
you don't, if you instead start with super bouncy music being played to
a super depressed person, then the mood of the music and the mood of
the person will be so far apart they will clash and you will not
achieve the desired result.

In
other words, if you want to warm up a room full of people, you achieve
better results by gradually turning up the rheostat then you will by
setting the room on fire.

Let's
talk about tugboats. Hark unto me. When a tugboat goes out to rescue an
ocean liner, the main thing the tugboat captain has got to…

The
answer is simple. What you do first is, you take a thing sort of
like a high-powered harpoon gun and you shoot a skinny, lightweight
nylon or silk rope across the bow of the ocean liner. Then the guys
on the ocean liner start hauling in the skinny rope which is attached
(maybe 40 yards later) to a…