I like my neighbor, with one small exception - he raises pit bulls. He's got 8 of them, with 3-4 rotating in to live right next door all the time.
Justified or not, the entire neighborhood is scared of them, with parents being unwilling to let their kids play outside unsupervised (a first in my small subdivision.) My wife's terrified of them, and if she's outside when he lets them out to do their business she goes inside until they're done.
It's even gotten to the point where calls have been made to the police several times by various neighborhood members for various infractions.
So I admired the way he pulled off a public relations coup this week.
Most of the neighbors were out enjoying a summer evening (hey, when it's too cold to go outside for much of the year, we Northerners take advantage of every nice evening we can get!), watching the kids play and enjoying parental conversation, when the neighbor walked out of his house carrying a laundry basket onto his driveway.
That attracted a few eyeballs. But when he reached inside and pulled out a 10" long, 4-week old puppy, it took just a few minutes before the entire neighborhood was gathered around, and each of the 8 puppies had someone cuddling it.
They were awfully cute puppies and they did what puppies do naturally - they captured the hearts of everyone.
As I was holding the puppy, I mentioned to him that I should get my wife to try to remove some of her fear of the pit bulls. He not only thought that was a good idea, but told me to take a puppy to her. A few seconds later, my wife was right in the midst of the cuddle session.
It's been interesting to watch my neighborhood ever since. Each night, the puppies come out, and everyone gathers around. Barriers are being broken, fear is being reduced, comfort is increasing.
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I'm not saying that the neighborhood has lost their fear of his adult dogs, but the edge has definitely been taken off, conversations have changed from fear and accusation to intelligent communications, and he has made progress in gaining acceptance in our small community.
There's a PR lesson to be learned here. When you're trying to remove fear, one of the best ways is to educate through experiential interactions.
There are lots of ways to do this.
We've all heard that you're 29 times more likely to get killed driving in a car than in an airplane, but those facts aren't enough to change the minds of many of those who have a fear of flying. What does seem to work is fear of flying lessons, putting people into classrooms, then airplanes sitting on the ground, and eventually an actual short flight.
Another example: there's an upscale neighborhood in the Milwaukee area that suddenly had a huge printing plant built right beside it. The printing plant put up a 40' berm between them and the houses, but it wasn't until they held openhouses for all of the neighborhood, fed them, and most importantly took them on tours of the facility, showing them that the chemicals in the plant were relatively harmless solvents, and that they were properly stored and carefully disposed of that talk of mass selling dissipated.
But my favorite fear removal story comes from my days as a salesman for a paper company. We had just launched thin disposable diapers (remember the old thick ones that took up half your shopping cart for a week's supply?) and were trying to sell them into all of the retailers. One major chain refused to buy them, not saying why.
Salesperson after salesperson, even up to corporate VP's and marketing people had come in to present to the buyer, with no luck.
I was the youngest, most junior salesperson in the district. But when I heard that the district manager had given up after 7 unsuccessful calls, I asked permission to try one last time.
As I arrived with my district manager at the appointment, the buyer gave a wisecrack about how all of the old guys had failed, so now he was turning to a teenager (I looked really young in my 20's). I sat down and said, "I hear that you've said no to this product 7 times now. I'm not going to give you all the reasons why you should buy them, you've probably got the presentation memorized. I'd like to make a deal with you. If you'll tell me the real reason why you're not buying, I'll make sure that nobody else will waste your time trying to sell you them anymore."
He looked at me and scowled... and thought... Finally he said, "OK, I'll tell you. I'm sick of you guys wasting my time anyway. So, [turning to the district manager] you'll back his guarantee?"
My district manager had already given up anyway and he quickly agreed.
"OK," the buyer said, "I'll tell you. But you've got to keep your promise. I'm terrified that we're going to get dragged into a class action suit for killing some baby by exposing them to dangerous chemicals next to their skin."
My reaction? I laughed. Not only had we just made a breakthrough, but it was an overcomable objection. I reached into my bag and pulled out a little bag of the magic stuff that makes thin diapers work, a white powder called superabsorbent.
(By the way, you wouldn't believe the number of times that I got pulled aside in airports, and even strip-searched one time, for carrying little bags of white superabsorbent powder in my carry-on...)
I carefully explained that the superabsorbent used to make the thin diapers had gone through literally years of testing that proved it harmless. In fact, it is an ingredient in many different food products, including beer. I ended by saying "You could eat this bagful, if you wanted, and it wouldn't do anything to you, besides giving you a very dry mouth and throat."
"Really?" the buyer said.
"Really."
"Prove it!"
Now, I'd heard in the sales meeting that eating it was perfectly harmless, but I'd never actually sampled any. But I decided that the risk was worthwhile. So I asked "Another deal? If I eat it and don't die on you, will you place an order?"
Big grin "Sure, but you won't do it."
"OK," I said, and gulped down a full 2 tablespoons.
Now I have to admit, my mouth, throat and stomach got really dry instantly, and I felt like I was turning into a prune. But once I got a quick couple of glasses of water, everything was fine.
I offered him a bag to try for himself. He declined...
But I walked out of his office with a 1.5 million dollar order.
Not bad for a junior salesman!
What are the lessons to be learned here?
1. If your product, company, or service scares people, the best way to resolve it is through experiential training
2. The best education occurs when they actually can get directly involved in the process (if I could have gotten him to eat the superabsorbent) and see that it won't kill them
3. If you can't get them involved, actually seeing someone else experience it first hand is the next best thing
4. Sometimes logistics or regulations make it so you're unable to actually get the public directly involved in the training. This can be an excellent opportunity to bring in a reporter and camera crew or a documentary crew and let them record the experience for their audiences.
5. It is generally much better to reach out and proactively remove fears than to shut down communications. Privacy breeds imagination, which will almost always create fears that are worse than the actual risk involved.
Just remember that justifiable fear never really goes away...
And keep in mind that if your company has something that people are afraid of, you have a special need of a crisis communications plan to deal with situations that could destroy you. We recommend checking out Crisis Communications Planning: Organizing and Completing a Plan That Works
Have fun educating!
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