As fire protection and life safety professionals we are in the business of selling fire safety. Whether you work for a Fire Department, a consulting firm, are a technician or are involved in any facet of this field, it is important to understand that throughout your career you will be required to persuade people to choose fire safety. You will need to sell it! 

Unfortunately, throughout my career, I have found that there is a lot of the “it won’t happen to me syndrome”. I have sarcastically joked with colleagues that never did I imagine when I first entered this industry that I would have to debate with people about their own safety.

It did not initially dawn on me when I entered this field that I would have to be a salesman. I had never ever wanted to be a salesman and I thought that by choosing the fire protection and life safety field, people would just naturally choose to take the safe approach. Wow, was I ever incredibly naive and wrong and learned quickly the following two truths: 

1. You need to be able to persuade people to choose fire safety and prevention, and
2. Unfortunately, if not educated and informed in a persuasive manner, there is a significant percentage of people who will choose to cut costs / corners by eliminating or ignoring fire safety practices (potentially to their own detriment). 

There is a quote I came across by famous motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar that I find to be very true and has stuck with me:

“I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.” – Zig Ziglar

The art of persuading people to choose fire safety and prevention is an on-going learning process and my approach is based on what I have found to resonate with people and turn the proverbial light bulb “on” in their head. I have learned through unpleasant and unsuccessful experiences, and I am still learning how to sell fire safety. I suspect that I will continue to learn how to do it for my entire career and beyond.  

One thing I have learned that is not effective in persuading people is “negative messaging”. I have told people that if they do not do this or that, they will get injured or face a potentially life-threatening situation and, counterintuitively, I have found that I was not getting through. Doom and gloom is not effective. People are generally desensitized to this kind of messaging as we have negative messaging pushed at us constantly (just pick up a newspaper and you know what I mean). There is a psychology behind the ineffectiveness of negative messaging, and I will leave it with the reader of this blog to do their own research on that. 

The opposite is “positive messaging”. Generally, people respond well when they are educated on certain things they can do or modifications in behaviours that can be made that lead to positive benefits in their own lives. They need to understand the value. It does not matter whether you are a Public Educator with the Fire Department teaching a class of Grade 3’s or you are a consultant convincing a business owner to pay you to prepare a Fire Safety Plan; people generally respond well to your “pitch” if you can explain to them the positive benefits of taking a fire safe approach. 

I have learned a few approaches to take when trying to educate people on choosing fire safety and prevention, and I believe that these “pitches” can be used in both the public and private sectors to the benefit of the fire protection and life safety professional and the person they are trying to persuade. As such, here is an example with some talking points: 

Consider a building owner who is either opposed to, or on the fence about having a fire safety inspection done in their building (doesn’t matter whether it’s a Fire Department inspector or a private consultant). They are hesitant and maybe even defensive about the process. Here is what I believe to be some good persuasive points to educate the owner about the inspection, that either directly or indirectly benefits him or her: 

• It is an insurance policy against a major life or business disruption. Many people have never experienced a fire and the enormous time impact it can have on whatever it is that you do. Time is money. 
• It will save you money and make you money. Knowing what needs to be done to have a fire safe building will save you money by avoiding disruption, legal action and liability. It will also make you money in the long run through equity and saleability: What building would someone rather buy? One with fire safety deficiencies, lack of permits and outstanding orders? Or one that is up to Code? 
• It is an insurance policy against your insurance policy. Let’s face it, if a fire happens in your building, insurance companies will be looking for any reason not to pay you. Fire safety violations give them a perfect reason to deny your claim. 
• Follow the proper processes and avoid future headaches. If a building permit becomes necessary, going through the building permit process will be an exercise in avoiding future problems. Do you really want to avoid this process, be found out, be required to uncover the work, be ordered to acquire a permit anyway and potentially have to do the work twice? It makes logistical and financial sense to do it right the first time. 
• You can sleep at night. I know this may seem like it falls into the doom and gloom side of things but hear me out: it is one less thing that the building owner must worry about. If you are armed with knowledge of any potential fire safety issues and you act on it and fix the problems, you can now get back to focusing on your business and life. 
• Again, while counterintuitive, sometimes the last thing to talk about (or maybe not at all) is the potential for destruction, injury and death. My natural instinct is to talk about this first because I have seen it first-hand, it is horrible and I don’t want it to happen to anybody. If someone asks or wants to talk about it I can talk to them all day about this, and sometimes people listen. However, in my experience it is not the most persuasive approach because it is negative messaging and people have a lot of negative information pushed their way every single day, such that it gets tuned out. 

This blog is simply giving an opinion of potential approaches that you may want to think about when trying to persuade people to choose fire safety. These modified approaches were formulated over time following unsuccessful experiences I have had when discussing fire safety and prevention using negative messaging. I had to learn and adapt how I explained to people the benefits of fire safety as opposed to focusing only on the doom and gloom.

My overall point is this: you need to try different approaches if you’re not getting the response that you feel is in the best interest of your clients’ fire safety situation (and by “client”, I mean anyone you’re talking to about fire safety). Fire safety is obviously something that we should try to never walk away from without being as persuasive as possible. The reality is, if we are in this industry, we need to sell it. 

I am still learning in this regard and will continue to “hone my pitch” throughout my career. You may have other suggestions / approaches and I encourage you to share them in the comments section. Let’s have a discussion on how we can sell this life saving concept.