Ben Carlson - Don't Fall For It

“Because of engineering faults, costly repairs, and political problems I cannot discuss, the tearing down of the Eiffel Tower has become mandatory,” he reportedly told this group in a quiet hotel room. The Count then shocked the small group of metal dealers by announcing the Eiffel Tower would be sold to the highest bidder. Many at the table were in disbelief but Lustig assured them if the government was able to turn a profit on the deal, it would minimize the protests from citizens. [6]The 1,000-foot tall structure contains more than 7,000 metric tons of iron, along with 2.5 million rivets that held it together, so these scrap metal dealers could calculate the sale of this amount of metal would net a fortune to those who tore it down and sold off the parts. To make the process more believable, the dealers were even taken on a tour of the monument to give them a better sense of the scale of the operation.

Bids were due by the next morning along with the promise of complete secrecy from those involved. Lustig told his marks the government didn’t want word to get out for fear of a public outcry against tearing it down. Although he took bids from all interested parties, the patsy was picked out well in advance. Andre Poisson was relatively new to the area and trying to make a name for himself. What better way to make a name for yourself than by winning the biggest scrap metal project in the country’s history? A few days later Lustig informed Poisson his offer of 250,000 francs (roughly $1 million today) was in fact the winning bid. Once he learned he won, Poisson finally became wary of the whole operation. So to seal the deal, Lustig demanded a bribe for securing the transaction. Everyone assumed all Parisian government officials were corrupt, so the bribe was the final nail in the coffin to make it seem legit. Poisson was in. [7]

Lustig secured the cash and handed over the “official” paperwork to finalize the sale. After a number of failed attempts to claim possession of the Eiffel Tower, Poisson finally realized he’d been swindled. By this point, Lustig had already fled the country. But a funny thing happened as he waited to see a news story about the man who tried to sell the Eiffel Tower – the story never came. Lustig was initially befuddled, but eventually realized Poisson was so embarrassed he was taken advantage of that he never bothered telling the authorities to save face. Never one to rest on his laurels, Lustig decided to test his good fortune by going back to Paris to try selling the Eiffel Tower a second time! This time he wasn’t quite so lucky. The potential buyer went to the police before handing over the money, and Lustig was forced to flee the country yet again. [8]

Back in the States, the Count perfected his counterfeiting skills to the tune of more than $2.3 million over a five-year period. When the police finally apprehended him, Lustig had one more trick up his sleeve. As he awaited sentencing he pulled a jailbreak fit for a scene right out of a movie. Using a pair of stolen wire cutters (no one knows how he came to possess them) to open up his third-story window, he tied nine bedsheets together and used them as a rope to climb down three stories. The only problem was there was a crowd of roughly 100 people on Eleventh Avenue in New York City who saw him climbing down. Once he realized people were onto him, he took a rag from his pocket and pretended to clean the windows on his way down to pass himself off as a window cleaner. When he planted his feet on the ground, he gave the crowd a bow and ran away. [9]

Once the authorities finally caught up with the notorious con man, they took no chances, sending their new prisoner off to Alcatraz for a 20-year sentence. His death certificate listed his name as Robert V. Miller, but to this day no one knows his true identity or where he really came from. It wasn’t until 1906 that Parisian officials extended the Eiffel Tower’s contract to 1915, and a number of years later that they finally made it a permanent piece of the city’s magnificent landscape. [10]

In the movie Gladiator , Russell Crowe’s character Maximus seeks the counsel of Proximo, a former champion gladiator, on how to win in the arena:

Maximus:You ask me what I want. I too want to stand before the Emperor as you did. Proximo:Then listen to me. Learn from me. I wasn’t the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd. And you will win your freedom. Maximus:I will win the crowd. I will give them something they have never seen before.

Maximus did just that, shouting the best line of the movie to the crowd after one of his victories:

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

Maximus was a strong fighter and intelligent strategist but needed to sell himself to succeed. Lustig was one of the greatest con men ever because he knew how to win a crowd through some tried-and-true sales tactics. The actual product or service involved in his scams didn’t matter all that much because Lustig was selling a dream, an easy way out, or an opportunity to get rich quickly. In a way, he was also an entertainer, giving the people what they wanted because he understood his marks so well. Even though his sole goal in life was to con others out of their money, there are some lessons we can learn from how Lustig approached the sales process.

Those in the sales profession get a bad rap in that most buyers assume salespeople are always trying to rip them off. But most things in life have an element of sales involved. Finding a good job is about selling yourself and your strengths. Finding a spouse is about marketing your good qualities. To put forward the thoughts and ideas that you care about requires the ability to convince others your opinions matter. This is especially true when you’re first coming up in the working world without the requisite experience. Networking plays a huge role when finding a job these days, so you need the ability to convince others they should make a sale on your behalf to help with job opportunities.

Here are some of the most important aspects of the sales process to remember:

Know your audience. When Spike Lee was making Malcolm X he knew the movie would go over budget before they even began shooting. The studio didn’t have a budget for a three-hour movie but that’s what Lee wanted. Out of that same budget, Lee was being paid $1 million to direct the film so he decided to put that entire amount right back into the movie, but it still wasn’t enough. To get the movie made to his liking, Lee knew he needed to call up prominent people in the entertainment and professional sports worlds to get the remainder of the money. This would allow them to shoot a pivotal scene in South Africa as opposed to recreating South Africa on the Jersey Shore.Lee was able to secure money from the likes of Oprah, Prince, Tracy Chapman, and Janet Jackson. The last call he made was to Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. But Lee went to Jordan’s rival Magic Johnson first. Johnson asked how much he needed, Lee told him, and Magic immediately sent the money. Knowing Jordan was one of the most competitive people on the planet Lee admitted, “I just happened to let slip how much Magic wrote on his check,” to which Jordan replied, “Magic gave how much?!” Not to be outdone, Jordan gave even more than Magic to seal the deal so the movie would be done to Lee’s liking.[ 11]If you want to get people to act, you first have to understand your audience.

Everyone can be sold to. Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvador Mundi, a 500-year-old painting of Jesus Christ, was rediscovered in 2007 at a regional auction where the original painting was masquerading as a copy.[ 12] Da Vinci’s masterpiece was sold for a record-breaking $450.3 million in November 2017. Christie’s handled the auction for the painting. To drum up interest they staged high-profile public exhibitions of the painting around the globe and created a video that was more or less an ad for the painting.[ 13] This confused some people at the time because the market for buyers of a painting that could sell for nearly half a billion dollars is quite small.The sales staff at Christie’s personally knew the list of potential buyers because it was such an exclusive club. By making a show of the process and planting the seed that it was an iconic painting, they got this small billionaires club to value the painting more highly based on the premise that it must be more valuable if others consider it valuable. You may roll your eyes at the actions of people with more money than they know what to do with by “wasting” it on art, but this is simply human nature in action. We perceive value to be higher when others perceive value to be high. It’s a vicious cycle but that’s how all of this works in some ways.