Part 2: The Ultimate Selling and Psychology Checklist
April 10th, 2013 // 12:11 pm @ Scott Manning
Picking up where I left off last week on how to increase your selling power and get more people to buy… I’m going to give you my top 4 list for psychological buying triggers today.
Each of these triggers is a power point for key influence and persuasion over your potential prospects, they also apply directly to continuing your relationship and selling to existing customers.
I suppose it would safe to say that these work, period, with any type of communication. As I noted last week I use the word “checklist” because your power increases when you increase the number of these strategies employed. At the end of the day why not stack the deck in your favor.
Once you have sufficient practice you can write these as you go into your copy, for now, “check-list” your way through your existing copy, through your selling presentations and make sure that you have sufficiently covered each power point and strategy, remembering always that our rule on “sufficient” is do what you think is enough and then double it to over-emphasize to your prospect your positioning.
In sequential order as they would normally be organized in selling.
1. Arriving Pre-positioning, prospect pre-sold.
Your Credibility Package
This is often thought of as a Shock-n-Awe package, the use of authoring a book for positioning, or sending testimonials in advance. The easy shortcut to this is to make sure that from the time the prospect comes in contact with you whether through email opt-in or registration for an event or walking through your door you achieve immediate differentiation and separate yourself from all others by going above and beyond to prove credibility…by the way the advance strategy with this is to elicit curiosity about yourself at the same time. Make them want to know more.
2. Establishing Trust through affinity.
Your “connection” strategy
This is perhaps the most important one, if there had to be a priority placed on it. Maybe better said, this one has the most power and can often make up for others lacking or quite frankly your own skill, ability, or even credibility lacking – trust is everything.
People buy because they “trust” that what you say is going to come true. They “trust” that transplanting their money with you will give them the desired result they are hopeful of. I always say people buy confidence and they pay with trust.
You get trust by showing them that you understand who they are and what they are going through and you resonate, or build rapport with them so they believe you are the right person for the sale – whether you are selling pools, real estate, info-products, or other professional services you have to “connect” with your prospects.
Often this is by sharing your personal story, sharing others, and taking away the professional bells and whistles talk and getting personal with them.
If they like you, they don’t want to say no.
3. Creating the problem and expanding the gap.
Your making it real strategy
This is easy and normally people do this one well, but sometimes get it confused with #4. You must make the reason they are buying immediate, eminent, and NOW. This has to be done by carefully over embellishing their current situation and the COST of NOT BUYING and staying the same. You use examples, case studies, testimonials, paint the picture of life without you –
And most importantly, and here is the trigger, you have to make staying the same the problem they are facing, so real and so vivid and so painful that it is unhealthy and bad for them to not buy. Often this is done with the reality of how much life is left…and that they deserve this to be better. Guilt is good.
You can also apply the “everything happens for a reason” strategy and why you are meeting and why they are interested…obviously they came to buy…to fix something…point this out, call their “not interested” or “not buying” bluff.
It’s advanced, but it works, because it’s real, it’s how people think and it’s the true psychology of it all.
4. Selling for the future vision tied to immediate benefit.
Your here’s how to decide approach
Lastly, there are really only three reasons why people won’t buy –
One, they don’t like, trust, or believe you. Two, they don’t like, trust or believe themselves. Or three they just don’t actually have the resources or aren’t the decision maker.
I’m not going to fix all of those because I sort of already have. But, the best people get number 3 out of the way with their marketing strategy and sales process and certainly very early on in a conversation. So, #2 is always an issue because people operate out of fear and belief that everything will go wrong, they live disappointed and know that everything ends that way.
That is why you must emotionally engage them and bring them to a reality that they do not yet have – you have to create the perception of how things will be once they are “living in the future” with you as solution that they have bought.
Make their investment a MORAL VICTORY, a MORALE BOOSTER, a right of passage to get to where they want to be, next, in their life.
Relieve the pain now, sell the vision of tomorrow, and as the song goes, ‘it’s only a day away’ – success must be eminent and believable for them. Remember your biggest battle is what is going on in their head, always. Even and especially when it comes to money, why is it okay and good and right for them to invest now in you versus whatever else is competing for them time, attention, resources.
The advanced piece to your checklist is teaching them how to decide.
There you have it. Enhance all of your marketing and selling with these 4 psychological triggers. They will increase your power and influence over your prospect, you as authority and instilling emotional control as you communicate.
Category : Blog
