Big League Sales
an Art of Dying fragment
During my Sea Org years, my understanding and hope was always this: that what Our Prince taught us was so immensely true that when communicated properly, when understood properly, and when applied properly, we would have to beat people from our doors with sticks, and make sure they all formed an orderly line down and around the block while we found and appointed more registrars to received their applications along with plentiful and generous donations.
After all, we were in the miracle-production business and I had my 1968 light experience to bear witness to how wonderful spiritual awakening was.
I also knew that this miracle was for everyone and I knew (as in assumed without a doubt) that Our Prince’s word would see everybody there.
However, when in 1972 Our Prince, fretting about low world-wide gross income, deemed it necessary to teach all registrars, and all other point-of-sales personnel (just the term “sales” sent shivers of revulsion down my spine) the closing techniques that would prevent those applicants we did have from escaping our grasp without first paying, something dark and ugly made itself at home in my chest: to me, the need for Our Prince’s Closing-Techniques solution smelled, nay screamed, of failure.
The real solution, I felt, should simply have been for our Prince to ensure that the promised miracles occurred daily — and word would soon spread and orderly lines would soon form around blocks: no more world-wide gross income problems.
Not so, however: the days of “Big League Sales” had arrived, and they had come to stay.
Along with the rest of the crew, I first got wind of this when Our Prince mentioned in the Orders of the Day (OODs) that he had studied a small library of books on sales and closing techniques (so he obviously was taking the gross income problem very seriously) and he had found the book by Les Dane the best and hard-sellest of them all.
He then decreed that all sales positions throughout Scientology were to be trained to become closing experts — big time closers. The curriculum would consist of the one book LRH had found best: Les Dane’s “Big League Sales Closing Techniques” along with the drills based on the book devised by those who devise drills. This book was to be studied, understood, drilled, and applied by all sales personnel, planet-wide.
Immediately.
In retrospect, LRH must have concluded, based on available information, that too many prospective preclears and students were let out the door without signing up (and paying) for a service, never to be heard from or seen again.
Solution (logically): do not let them leave the building without signing up and paying for a service.
Of course (I explained to myself in order to live with this) we need money to save the world; buildings don’t come free, nor does electricity, postage, telephones, et cetera. Of course, he has to worry about money. Look no further, look no deeper.
I looked no further. I looked no deeper.
The central question with which Big League Sales grapples, and which Our Price likewise must have been trying to resolve, is: “Why does prospects balk when they find themselves face-to-face with the decision to buy or not buy?” i.e., the decision to pay or not to pay — for, yes, this all really came down to money.
Drawing upon his personal experience and upon the experience of fellow salesmen, Les Dane, in his book, describes “step-by-specific step” how a salesman ought to deal with the case of a reluctant purchaser who is wrapped in a “brick overcoat” of his or her individual fears: “Remove the bricks,” he suggests, “until the prospective buyer is stripped of all his or her fears, (i.e., sales resistance) — and becomes susceptible to a close.”
As an example: Chapter 1, “The Brick Overcoat of Resistance to the Sale: How Five Key Bricks Can Help You” contains eleven sections discussing the various types of bricks and how to remove them, each one of these with a step-by-step solution: “Scaredy-Cat,” “The Legitimate Objection,” “Listen For the Close,” “The Night Shift Close,” “You and the Finance Man,” “Anything Goes,” “Fool-Proof Financing Formula,” “The Shopper Stopper,” “The Go-Ahead,” “The Today-Only Close,” (the prices will double tomorrow), and “Simple Sell Close.”
The book also identifies the “four basic buyer types” as “the professional buyer,” “the individual,” “the unattached female,” and “the family buyer.”
With respect to the professional buyer, the book urges salesmen to “[s]ell him facts, hard prices and, where possible, demonstration of the product or service,” as he is someone who “wants facts, demonstrations, and proof that yours is the best service or product he can buy for the least money.” The Scientology sales drill states: “The student must make the close by showing with cold facts and demonstration that the service or item will produce the results required. The student must have such facts, proof and demonstration at his fingertips.”
Another example is the book’s description of the “unattached female.” An unmarried woman, according to the book, is someone who is susceptible to “a dab of flattery here, some good, practical (condescending) advice there.” The book then relates an anecdote from a salesman who confided to the author, “[W]hat they (these women) really want is to be able to trust what I tell them.”
As another example, Chapter 6 of the book is named “All in Favor Nod Your Head: Three Basic Musts and Four Ways to Apply Them to the Close.” The reader is admonished to stick to three basic musts: “You control the conversation, you offer a choice rather than a yes-or-no, and you deliver your sales talk in a positive, ‘nod your head’ nature.”
Of course, the key closing technique every registrar and sales personnel had to master was “Never to take ‘No’ for an answer.” Never. Ever.
This last, never to accept ‘No’ for an answer, soon became (and possibly remains to this day) the darling of every registrar and other sales personnel; they simply would not let the prospect out of the room (having placed her farthest from the door — another sales technique) until the answer was ‘Yes’ even if it took hours and hours and hours by the end of which the prospect would capitulate, especially if the poor potential buyer was double (or even triple) teamed. Very few prospects made it out alive (i.e., without paying).
I read this book along with the rest of the Apollo crew — we were all required to do so — and as I read it my dislike of it, and my sinking feeling about Our Prince’s solution, only grew stronger and stronger: why, why, why must we sell the Bridge to Total Freedom, when people should simply — by word of mouth alone — be beating down our doors? Why? For the love of God, why, why?
In 1972, Scientology morphed from a (promised) miracle-making machine to a (de facto) sales machine, and it has been a sales machine ever since, for the promised miracles were rarely, if ever (despite LRH’s Senior Policy: “We always deliver what we promise”), actually delivered.
© Wolfstuff
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