FUD, or "fear, uncertainty and doubt", is the strategy employed to erode the confidence a prospect may have for a competitor and his products. The term was popularized by Gene Amdahl in the early '70's to describe how his former employer, IBM, was scaring its customers away from Amdahl's new company.

Those taking the high ground say that bad mouthing your competitor is not a successful message, but, even though it had great products and strong corporate backing, do you see the Amdahl brand around any more?

IBM's systemic FUD sales training brought it great success. Then payback came when Microsoft used FUD to scare users away from using IBM's competing operating system, PS-2 (The result: IBM's PS-2 is history). Today, the Linux community uses FUD to overwhelm us about the security dangers of Windows.

Here's how it works. A competitor plants seeds of doubt to get his prospect's heart rate pounding with thoughts of dire consequences from dealing with the other guy. He asks:

• How long have they been in business? Will they be around next year?
• How many offices do they have? How many trained technicians?
• What happens if the bank calls their line of credit?
• How big is their inventory and what happens to replacements if there is a shipping strike, or oil prices rise, or there's a terrorist attack?
• What happens if the sole proprietor dies, get divorced, or goes to jail?
• What if both the Yankees and Mets win their divisions and a local world series ties up road traffic so that they can't send a service truck when you need it?

Questions that get a prospect to fear buying make the competitor's sales job that much harder. Of course, the more brazen don't just ask questions, they provide misleading answers. In politics it's an art form.

How about "Bush is too dumb to be a leader." Or "Kerry can't make up his mind about anything." You probably believe one of these is true, but, evidence shows that neither are. That's FUD at its finest.

Ask any experienced business person about the FUD factor and you'll get a smile of recognition, maybe a laugh and a few war stories of how sales were made, or lost, using FUD on the front lines, or not being fast enough to combat it (like Kerry's slow response to the swift boat saga).

Bottom line: negative selling, like negative campaigning, while disdained at cocktail parties, is very much practiced in the real world for one reason: it works.

Sink to it or not, as you see fit. But be on guard for the probability that it is being used by others against you.

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Stan Rosenzweig, president of Office Technology Consulting Inc., Stamford, CT, can be reached through www.phoneguru.com, or at (203)323-6070, ext. 82409.