EPISODE 18

“Rogaine” I said, knowing that this was what I was supposed to say.

“Exactly!” Bosco exclaimed.  “All that’s left for him are lotions and potions and we all know that the secret behind them is that they don’t work.

“No, our prospect is trapped because even if we put him on a Rogaine regimen, we all know that eventually he’s going to realize that it won’t help him.”

Keith interrupted.  His tone was serious now and he almost snapped as he spoke.

“Ya, ya.  We all know that Bosco.  Rogaine just gives us a way into the client’s pocket.”

“Wait a minute!” I cut in.  “It’s also a holding pattern strategy.  We charge the guy sixty bucks and reevaluate in a month.  If he doesn’t like what he sees, we credit him the money he’s paid to upgrade into the next program.  A lot of studios are already doing that and it seems to work for them.”

“Right,” Bosco agreed.  “But this is bigger, Michael.”

He looked back his to laptop and continued.        

“The most common objection we hear today from a prospect is that the hair is too expensive.”

“What about the fact that the hair just wears out?” Keith cut in.

“I’ll get there, Keith.  First you’ve got to get him to love the hair.  He’s got to need it like a junkie needs his fix.  It’s got make him feel better than cocaine and we need to do that by dealing with the price objection, otherwise we’re just spinning our wheels.”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it that way,” Keith objected.  “I mean, shit!  Can’t you find a more dignified product to allude to than coke?”

Bosco ignored him and forged ahead with the nut of his plan.  “What we’re going to do guys, is we’re going to give the hair away for free.”

And that was it.  Keith exploded in the way that only he could.  When he got excited, the words sometimes got so piled up in his mind and in his mouth that he would appear to be just short of speaking in tongues. 

“Oh fine!  That’s a really great idea, Bosco.  We just lay down in the clover and let the client roll all over us and then we all pretend we’re Santa Claus and it’s ‘Ho ho-ho ho-ho’ all the way to the bank at the end of the month because there’s no goddamn money in the till to pay the damned rent.”

“Keith” Bosco said softly, but Keith wasn’t going to stop.

“I’m sure Michael will love this one, Bosco.  I bet he doesn’t need to pay his bills either and so he’ll be jumping up and down with excitement when his commission checks disappear and he can come live with you and your damned horses in the barn because there’s no place else for him to go.  Hell, he could always find a nice warm grate to curl up next to outside at night and bum quarters over at the train station so he can buy coffee.”

“Keith.”

“And it’s good for me too because I’ve got all this hair in the warehouse with nowhere to put it and now we just going to give it away to every Johnny Joe Bob who walks in the damned door just because we’re such kind and wonderful people.  No inventory problem, I’ll give you that.  And the warehouse pickers can just go pick their noses when the hair’s gone because I can’t pay the factory in China to…”

“KEITH!”

“Bosco?”

“Yes, Keith.  Are you finished?”

“I will be if we do this.”

“Are you done?”

“Okay.”

“Thank you,” Bosco said briskly.  “Now it’s obvious our clients need to make money on this deal.  What I’m proposing is that they just don’t make it on the hair.”

“But, Bosco…”

“Stop, Keith!  Just stop and listen to me, all right?  You’re going to make plenty of money, more than you ever have before.”

Bosco paused briefly before continuing.  He often did this to build a little suspense when he made presentations.  When he started speaking again, he kept his voice low and for the first time I could ever recall, he sat perfectly still in his chair.

“I want you to picture that the studio owner has a prospect in a consultation.  He asks him if he wants to see the product and our guy takes a unit out of the box and shows it to him.  The prospect looks at it and doesn’t really know what to make of it.  The only way he’s going to get hooked on hair is if we can get it on his head and that’s just what we offer to do.  We tell him he can have the hair for free.  We’ll put it on him, for free.  We’ll cut it in so it looks nice, for free.  And if he doesn’t like it, we’ll take it off, for free.”

“Now, Bosco – are YOU finished?”

“Nope.  There’s one last point here.  When we put the hair on him, we go all the way.  We use a bonding agent and we glue it on, just as if he’d already bought a service program.”

“Oh, Jesus” I whispered. 

You have to understand just how evil this was.  In order to attach the unit to a person’s head, you first have to shave the scalp clean.  Essentially you take away what little hair the guy had to begin with and then you adhere the hair replacement system onto his head.  If he decides he doesn’t like it, he has to face the fact that while he walked into the studio with thinning hair, he’s going to walk out with at least part of his head completely bald!

“I think Michael’s got the idea,” Bosco laughed

“This is kind of sick, man,” I told him.

“Yeah, but it’s smart” he replied.  “He’s never, ever going to leave that studio with a naked head.  No way!  We get him addicted to the hair in that one moment.”

“So the studio owner makes his money on a service plan?” I asked.

“Sure.  The hair looks great that first day, but those units only have a life of maybe six weeks before they start to lose hair.  So, he signs up for a service plan and our guy pulls in a good $2400 a year keeping the guy looking good.”

“It’s like a cell phone plan” I said.

“Right!  The phone is useless without the plan, so why charge an arm and a leg for it when all that really matters is the ability to connect to the wireless network?  The phone is a thing.  It’s worthless.  So is the hair.  You could hand the unit off to the client at that first consultation and what’s he going to do with it unless he knows how to put it on?  What’ll he do when it starts to look a little ratty?”

“Does the studio owner sell him the subsequent units?” Keith asked.

“No.”

“They’re always free?”

“Correct.”

The next installment will be posted on January 6.

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