American View: Why do most sales pitches seem too good to be true?

Risk Management

I get at least two press releases a day claiming that some new product or service is going to “completely disrupt the market!!!” or “change life as we know it!!!” Sure, I understand that marketeers and sales folk are just doing their jobs, but c’mon! Very few new internet doodads ever truly disrupt anything. Most new initiatives fail from poor planning, poor execution, or bad luck before they become successful. Still, even if their launch had gone perfectly and the market was crying out for it and there were no viable competitors and the buying public had the money and attention span to appreciate its value proposition, that still doesn’t mean you were going to change anyone life forever with your shiny new whatsit. Can y’all hype mongers please get a grip?

This compulsion to egregiously downplay cost and exaggerate outcomes to make a sale reminds me of the time our neighbourhood evangelists tried to “save my soul” for points in a game. I know, I know … It sounds like I’m shifting topics without putting in the clutch. Trust me: there’s a direct connection. A word of warning, though … this personal anecdote involves zealots behaving badly.

I grew up in the Great Plains region of middle America, on the outer edge of a small city. As far as anyone could tell, there were only two major religious groups in our community: the evangelical Protestants and the Mormons. Nearly everyone in the schools I attended belonged to the former. Everyone who wasn’t part of that group tended to keep quiet about their affiliation. It was years before I learned that there were Catholics and Hindus in our development; those folks made it a point to stay well under the majority’s radar (so to speak).

That dominant position on community influence meant most of my classmates who claimed to be religious were members of one of the many evangelical churches in our area. Of those, most folks in our town seemed to be affiliated with just one church: a former Baptist franchise down the street from our High School that was forced to break away from the national brand after they got too right-wing for the mainstream Baptists to associate with. No mean feat, that.

Most of my school chums and one of my best buds were all members of this one evangelical church. I knew a little about them, as I’d been invited to events there before. I’d gone to be polite to my friends and their families. Going to their events was a mildly boring chore, as I didn’t understand what they were talking about most of the time. Still, sitting quietly in a pew wasn’t any different than sitting quietly at a school desk so I stayed out of trouble.

Fading into the background so you didn’t get called on was an art form … alas, one that seems to have lost in the mists … er, cigarette smoke clouds and leaded petrol fumes … of a century gone by.

One summer evening, though, these evangelicals decided they could enlarge their “share” of the market by holding a competition among their youth members to “liberate” souls from other faiths. The more souls that got “saved,” the more prizes and status the winners would earn. It was like selling overpriced band candy, only much more patronising.

I found out about this event on accident. My mate and I were aimlessly wandering our quiet little suburb looking for something to do when a pickup truck full of teenagers passed us, then quickly pulled over. Two of my classmates hopped out of the truck, ran over to us, and breathlessly exclaimed that there was a huge all-night party going on that everyone from school was going to be there!!! (yes, with the three exclamation marks; you could hear it). Our breathlessly excited classmates that they’d already called our parents and gotten permission for us to attend!!! Confused and bored, my mate and I hopped in the bed of the pickup and hung out while a half dozen other kids got rounded up just like we had.

The “we got permission” claim was a lie, obviously. The organizers didn’t take care of that until after they’d gotten us to the “lock-in” – a party that no one was allowed to leave under any circumstances – and told our parents that we’d wanted to attend. In retrospect, this was a more of a child abduction scam than a party, but whatever. Me and my mate were too intrigued by the prospect of having something to do that we didn’t give the ramifications of the organisers’ tactics much thought.

Once at the church, we joined a hundred or so kids and young adults from our neighbourhood playing games, listening to “acceptable” music, and snacking. I didn’t see anything wrong with that. We joined in, said “hi” to people we knew, and chatted about TV shows. Towards evening, the organisers gathered everyone into the chapel to watch a truly execrable film about “the rapture.” ^[1] I couldn’t follow the movie’s plot because I didn’t know any of the dogma it was based on. It seemed like one of the big 70s disaster movies I’d seen like The Towering Inferno or Airport ’77 only with a far smaller budget and really poor dialogue. Having nothing else to do, I watched it for the explosions and mostly ignored the impenetrable theological bits.

After the film ended, the organisers brought up the lights. A youth pastor – he might have been a high schooler or university student – told us kids that everyone who “wasn’t saved” could “get saved” right on the spot!!! He made it sound like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy beachfront property. All we had to do, the youth pastor promised, was to “invite Jesus into your heart.” This annoyed me. Not because I was offended by the proselytizing, but because the youth pastor didn’t explain what the heck any of it meant. He went on to tell us that if we “accepted Jesus” we’d immediately get fabulous prizes: we’d be “re-born” and be “filled with joy” and get “eternal life.” I didn’t want to be “re-born” but that “joy” thing sounded pretty cool.

Even as a twelve-year-old, the idea of people being happy all the time seemed so far-fetched that it had to be a cruel joke.

Now, if my parents had known that these people were attempting to change their child’s religion without their knowledge or permission, they’d have been murderously angry. This was some vile skullduggery, even for backwater community. ^[2] Trouble was, I didn’t recognize what was happening for what it was. As far as twelve-year-old overly literal Keil could work out, this was some sort of economic transaction: give-this, get-that. The youth pastor’s pitch sounded pretty good since I’d be receiving more value than I was required to invest. After all, if there was extra space in my heart not needed for pumping blood, then I wasn’t currently using it so … Trouble was, I couldn’t figure out how any of this proposed exchange was supposed to work. ^[3]

When the youth pastor got done with his spiel, he instructed everyone who wanted to “accept Jesus” to stand up and follow him. I shrugged and came along so I could learn what the heck he was talking about. I got shunted into a small room where a high schooler was clearly exuberant at getting “credit” for a successful conversion. He didn’t tell me his name and he didn’t ask mine. That was weird. For lack of facts, I’ll just call him “Bob.”

Bob asked me I felt “joy.” I said – truthfully – that I didn’t feel anything. This answer confused him. Bob then asked me if I could feel Jesus’s “presence” in my heart. I said no. I’d explained that I’d said the magic words that I’d been instructed to say, and nothing had changed. I didn’t feel any different at that moment than I had ten minutes prior. What was the deal? Where was my “joy”? did it take a while to spin up? Bob stared at me like dog that had been shown a card trick.

I asked Bob how this Jesus fella was supposed to get “into my heart.” Was there a hidden hatch? Was he going to be injected like the miniaturized submarine in Fantastic Voyage? Bob scowled at me like I was a “special needs” kid ^[4] and changed his tack. He gushed that I would now enjoy “eternal life.” I asked how that worked. Would I stop aging? Could he introduce me to someone who could no longer die so I’d know what to expect? How did eternal life work with car crashes, for that matter? Or global nuclear annihilation? Were we immune? Bob, exasperated, gave me a biscuit and told me to go back to the “party.”

To misquote Omar El Akkad, “That’s all there is to life …wanting to know, and the occasional free biscuit.”

After that useless non-conversation, no one that I knew from school there at the “lock-in” wanted to talk with me anymore. My name had gone on some roster so someone participating in the competition would get credit for a “conversion” whether one had happened or not. Maybe it had in their dogma. I didn’t know. All I knew was that no one at the “lock-in” wanted to explain anything to me or discuss what any of their beliefs meant. A sale had been made, so the customer no longer needed to be courted … or even acknowledged.

I remembered that “lock-in” when I got into the adult world and saw first-hand how sales weasels operate: most of them will promise you grandiose triple-bang outcomes that you can’t afford to pass up: You’ll slash your expenses in half!!! You’ll double your profits!!! You’ll never have customer or employee complaints again!!! You’ll get a corner office and a new Range Rover!!! You’ll be suffused with joy and bask in eternal life!!! It’s all the same pitch with the same improbably unbalanced value proposition. Get-so-much-for-so-little!!! WOOOOOOO!!!

Then, after the contract’s signed and the money has changed hands, you get far less than what you paid for … assuming you get anything at all. The sales weasel is nowhere to be seen and there are no refunds. In retrospect, this was an excellent lesson to learn … especially at such a young and formative age. It helped me see through my Army recruiter’s hyperbolic promises. It helped me understand the mindset and the terrified desperation that drives sales weasels to rationalize over-promising what they know they can’t possibly deliver.

To be fair, I’m not insinuating that all preachers are charlatans or that salespeople are sales weasels. I know – and deeply respect – many experts from both of those communities who are proficient, considerate, and trustworthy. People I respect and enjoy learning from. That said, the best representatives of both worlds are true professionals; they know their stuff and take responsibility for errors made by their respective organisations. It’s frustrating just how rare those sorts of folks are.

It’s the amateurs in both fields that seem to be the ones most prone to flat-out misrepresenting what they’re selling. The “say whatever it takes” crowd. The folks who believe that charm is more important than conscience (a.k.a., style over substance). These are the sort of people whose breathless triple-bang pitches keep befouling my inbox and interrupting me with unsolicited phone calls. Either play straight with me or stay out of my path, weasel-folk.

^[1] The Rapture is a 19th Century misinterpretation of the Book of Revelations that was (and still is) hugely popular with some American Protestants. If you haven’t seen any of the many films based on this fanfic premise … just don’t.
^[2] This is still a common practice in the USA. When my oldest son was in primary school, a local church group volunteered to run an after-school club. It was supposed to be secular fun and games but was secretly an attempt to convert children to their religion … again, without the parents’ knowledge or permission. I helped get that group kicked the hell out of the school. There will always be another one like them, though. It’s part of the culture: any lie or dirty trick is acceptable if it “saves a soul.”
^[3] My parents claimed they weren’t anti-religious, but they were, near-as-makes-no-difference. My grandmother once gave me a children’s Bible for Christmas (that I couldn’t make sense of) and that was the extent of religious talk and activity in our household. Left me unprepared for the proselytizing I was bombarded with living in nowhere, Kansas.
^[4] He probably wasn’t far wrong thinking that, in retrospect.