Selling the Price Increase

3Awareness and the Origin of Fear

The noncommissioned officers – military recruiters – laugh nervously in acknowledgment of the uncomfortable truth: They would rather take live fire in combat than approach 18-year-old recruits with an offer to join the US Army.

This is a common finding in our Fanatical Military Recruiting training programs where we confront the real reasons why military recruiters struggle to make Mission (quota). It is not because they lack talent or passion, not because they lack training, and not because they lack experience. It is rarely any of the reasons people think.

Military recruiters fail most often because they are afraid of rejection. For them, speaking to teenagers and their parents is a daunting emotional obstacle. The soldiers (most of whom are combat veterans) fear these conversations. So much so that they would rather face bullets and death than the potential for rejection.

If this seems completely irrational, then you are not alone. On the surface, it makes no logical sense that brave soldiers who have endured the hyper-emotional environment of an active battlefield, where death is around every corner, would be afraid of getting rejected by teenagers. That is – until you consider that the two things humans fear the most are death and rejection, and it is not uncommon for people to fear rejection more than death.

The Origin of Fear

Imagine for a moment that it is 40,000 years ago. You live in a cave with a group of people in a hunter-gatherer ...