If you have not come across FUD before, it's stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt".

It can often be used in sales, as we know we should never directly attack the competition, but we can use FUD.

When I used to work at a market leading company and we were competing with small players, I would say something like "these small players are great, but we just cannot work out how they will keep up with the technology changes taking place in the market."

When I used to work at a small company I would say, "the big companies are great, but we find clients are looking for personal service today".

You can see from those two examples that I am not slagging off the competition, I'm spreading, fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). 

Where does the term FUD come from?

Spreading doubt is a centuries old technique, in Shakespeare's Othello, the villain, Iago after being passed over for a promotion, spreads a rumour that Othello's wife is having an affair.

From a sales perspective, the term FUD seems to have come from IBM sales training.  Microsoft used it against IBM to sow the seeds of confusion and hesitancy from the IBM PC operating system, OS/2 versus, Windows 3.1.

There are 4 flavours of FUD

1. Urgency

If the prospect delays the decision, then it will cost the prospect more money.

"This is a time limited offer, we can only give you this discount for this week / quarter only"

"My manager signed off on the discount on the basis you get a purchase order to us this week"

2. Scarcity

This is based on the fact that people value things more that are hard to get.

"I checked with stotes and they only have 5 left".

"If you sign by today, we can the get the deliver by the date you require".

3. Wallowing

This is making the customer stew on their own discomfort.

"I know you team are in agreement that the way things are happening today are suboptimal are you should you want to move down that path or move forward with our solution?"

"I hate for you to be stuck with your current platform any longer."

4. Isolation

The idea here is to freeze the customer out and make them feel isolated.

"I hate to tell you this, but our team estimates you guys could lose up to $1 million by delaying the decision by a quarter".

"Are you worried about the impact on your team by delaying the decision.  You said you were losing staff because of your use of old technology".

Thanks to the book "The Jolt Effect" by Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna for detailing this.

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