How to lose Clients, Part 2 - Insult Them

An effective insult requires offence to be taken by the insulted. For example, you decide you want to insult someone. Do you choose

1) Meta-method direct and specific insult (DSI) "You D***head, Bitch, Motherf****r, Slut etc"

or

2) the more subtle Miltonesque indirect, non-specific (INSI) "Of course I don't know your specific problem but I do know that we all have the resources at some level to overcome the difficulties of being a complete D***head, Bitch, Motherf****r, Slut etc."

Who, in their right mind, would insult a client? But we all know offence can be taken without insult intended.

Insults can be delivered, or offence taken, through any of the Representational Systems:

Visual

The one-fingered salute 'the bird' is Emphatic Visual, while a disdainful raising of the eyebrows could be Subtle Visual. Both actions are Response Insults as, generally, the Insulted would have said or done something to elicit the VRI.

It is unlikely that, in the case of a client, one would select, for example, giving them the bird, unless of course one were deliberately trying to lose them and possibly get a smack for good measure. (Anyone who has experienced giving or receiving the bird when not in a car, please let me know for my research into this form of VRI).

The disdainful raising of the eyebrows however, or, worse, just one eyebrow might be your VRI to a client's unconsidered remark.

Auditory

A speaker, hoping to attract clients from a public taster-session, starting by taking the mick out of his competitors, describing their followers as robotic. The competitors being in the same field it might be expected that some of those followers could be present, perhaps wanting to learn more about the subject, possibly seeking a different perspective, even thinking of switching from the competitor to the speaker. Rick was one of the latter but, hearing himself described as a robot, developed an aversion to the speaker.

Speaker also reprimanded a man without a partner for being single with the words, 'we are mammals, and mammals have partners.' Others in the audience were singles too, but none dared say so after that. (He didn't distinguish between dog-mammals who shag anyone including their parents, siblings and offspring, and polar bears who live in solitude except for the mating act.)
Rick wondered, has this speaker thought how many robotic followers were in his audience, or how many were single, and would members of either group be flocking to his workshop after the Unintended Generic Insults?

Bernard told me of his mentor dismissing a potential student who had changed her mind about joining a course "If I had a pound for everyone who said they were going to do a course I would never have to run any," an Intended Specific Insult consigning the no-longer-potential to the mass of the human condition.

Kinesthetic

At school they punished us for falling asleep in church - an insult to God. We would plead mitigating circumstances such as, not intending to fall asleep, so the punishment would be from the venial rather than mortal category.

In a particularly boring lecture a student at the back nodded off. The lecturer said, "Wake him up, will you," to the sleeper's neighbour who replied, "You sent him to sleep - you wake him up!"

An effective KRI or Kinesthetic Response Insult would be to ignore or not respond to something a client says or does. To ignore a proffered handshake, for example, or a remark.

Gustatory

"I can forgive a man insulting me in my own home, but not being served lukewarm soup in his."

Taken to extremes, poisoning would be a superb insult even in the medical sense.

Olfactory

The Skunk has raised flatulence to the level of strategy, a fine General Defensive Insult.

We in the everyday world can be offended by a lack of personal hygiene, halitosis or tobacco-fumes, but is taking offence the same as being insulted?

Does not the very advertising of deodorant imply an insult? Better, dress it up as imbuing irrestible powers of attraction. Can you conceive of someone abstaining from washing or applying deodorant in order to insult? Yet inattention to personal hygiene could successfully lose a client, especially in close-quarter situations like bodywork.

Blowing cigarette-smoke in someone's face is a first-class Direct Specific Insult but nowadays a little more difficult to deliver, requiring the intended Insultee also to be a smoker, or first invited into the smoking-zone of a public place. Smoking in a non-smoking household of course counts as a Non-Specific Gratuitous Insult.

Terry, a commercial real-estate consultant, made a call on a potential client. He was shown into a vast office, at the far end a panoramic window, outlining a man behind a massive desk. Barely had Terry stepped across the threshold when the man said, "Smoker! Stay at that end of the room!"

Up to that moment Terry, who shared his own office with other smokers and home with a smoking wife, had not given a thought to the smell that announced his presence. It was a key moment that started him on the the way to quitting.

I remember, years after quitting myself, one of my challenges was giving shiatsu to a smoker client whose breath had that touch of brimstone. I used to dread his call.

At school they told Smith Minor that farting in church was an insult to God. God seemed to take offence at a gross variety of actions, observed we Smith cohorts in the Lower Remove, and must have a really noxious time up there in the rainclouds. But on adult reflection, would God really have been bothered? And was SM's intention to insult the deity? Unlikely - a serious boy, he never made it as a grown-up salesperson, settling instead for life as a parson and consequentially a more intimate relationship with the divine wherein, as other intimate relationships, what begins as offensive evolves into innocuous as the recipient develops a kind of hapless immunity.

Smith Minor's services were never popular.

Do you have a good insult to share? or a new Insult Category? Or another way to lose clients?