Here is a tool you can use.

In making a DEAL (to bring this to the topic) you have to KNOW what the person wants/needs/ is preoccupied with.

I like the car dealer analogy...

I'm looking at a particular car to buy. When I do I am looking for its suitability to My Purposes - which are many. Among them are; driver vision of what's around them, understanding of the vehicle's dimensions and knowledge of its physical presence on the road (do I know where the front bumper is for example), head height, eye line from my eye through the front window (am I looking through the tinted bit at the top, does looking straight ahead see me looking at the dropdown visor, etc.), access and egress ease, clear instrumentation or is it obstructed by the wheel, fuel economy, front leg room, rear use possibilities, and many others. None of which is easily conveyed to a salesman's "what will you use the car for?" question.

For MY purposes, how fast it does 0-60 or 0-100 or how many HP or Kilowats it is has no interest. Whether is has 2 valves per cylinder or 4 is insignificant. Its dimensions in terms of numbers is not important. Its wheelbase length doesn't concern me. I am NOT preoccupied with those things. So the moment a salesman goes into a spiel about them he switches me off. My brain fogs over and he loses my interest.

One car I looked at, the saleswoman gave me the key to unlock. I thought this was odd. I put the key in the door and unlocked it. An alarm started to sound. She instructed me to push a small barely noticeable button on the key and the alarm deactivated. I told her, she had done that on purpose so I would think the auto alarm anti-door-pick device was nifty as I saw it work first hand instead of being Told about it. I saw through her ploy.

Since then, since the car buying exercise, I have now zero interest in car marketing. Throw as much at me as you like, I am NOT in the market. The need to buy a car is not pre-occupying me. And you can present as many dragons as you like their effect on me is Zero.

Take this latest Flu Scare. Just like the one a few years ago and SARS before that, it's all media hype fueled with govt help. But I ain't buying it. Since their scaremongering just bounces off of me, I thus don't buy into their Solution either. BUT, that doesn't mean other people don't. There are plenty people who do buy into it all. Recently it was revealed that in the state of NSW down here in Oz, 1 million people rushed to get Tamiflu within the last 79 days. That's over 12,500 a day! The makers of Tamiflu must be laughing all the way to the bank.

So with the flu thing we have...

1: Reveal the flu

2: Hype it up - media steps in does job nicely; quot experts; ample use of words like COULD, as in COULD kill millions *small print, if it mysteriously mutates and becomes bad and extra nasty.

3: Offer salvation - useless Tamiflu; govt closure of access into areas; extra flu tax, mandatory flu shots, yadda yadda yadda

All hobgoblins work the same way. Whether it's Man Made Global Warming which was changed to Global Warming and has since been renamed the generic Climate Change - or - The Global Financial Crisis - or - The Jobs Crises (which in Oz is odd when media try to report on how bad the job situation is down here while figures show the unemployment rate is Dropping!) - The Swine Flu Outbreak - or - Home Grown Terrorists (wow, right after the Dept Homeland Sec released their Homegrown Terrorist document they discover some dimwits to be the patsy, as if on cue) - or - Obama declaring the need for Cyber Security w/ him having supreme control over the internet because cyber terrorism is a threat (and also as if right on cue suddenly the Pentagon is hacked) and so on and so forth. The hobgoblins all work the same way. Watch, you'll see it for yourself and get a free lesson on mass marketing at the same time.

It's the oldest trick in the book.

Michael Ross