In the book Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, and Steve Martin, many case studies reveal the persuasion techniques that any sales executives or business leaders can use in their daily work to boost their sales success.
These techniques are highly effective and can immediately increase your success. The best part implementing these techniques requires small changes. Here these are called SmallBIG, which means Small changes that deliver BIG Wins.
I have chosen 5 powerful techniques for this write-up that you can implement immediately, say tomorrow or even in your next call. Go ahead and read on.
Foot-in-the-door to trip-wire technique!
The first one that works in almost all cases and I have used it personally many times.
It is the best way to convert a prospect to a customer is,
‘To pave the way for full-line distribution by starting with a small order …
Look at it this way – when a person has signed an order for your product or service, even though the profit is so small it hardly compensates for the time and effort of making the call, [he or she] is no longer a prospect – [he or she] is a customer.’
This has been used extensively by many companies now though from a marketing point of view. Make the tentative prospect purchase some value of your product or service at the lowest cost say 1Rs or 10 pieces and make him a customer. This is different from the free offer. Here you want to move the customer to buy but pay the lowest.
Once they pay and become customers, then you have moved the prospect to a customer which is a significant achievement.
This is why many businesses have the lowest offer which starts at say $1 or Rs.10. Selling vs any other relationship, in selling there is a transaction of money and if you can get the prospect to transact money you have to move them from prospect to customer!!
Why getting Yes is the first step to increasing support for you and your ideas
Among the selling persuasion techniques, as for me, this stands out the best.
Imagine you want to start your field staff using the new software to update the daily status. Now in this case, generally managers inform the new initiative and explain the benefits.
As a return to this, the manager will get some verbal support from team members, such as Yes, we will do it regularly. But in reality, we all know, how many such initiatives have succeeded.
The % is quite low. So, what is critical is, making that verbal support to real action. How do we do this?
Now, as per Robert Cialdini and the team, rather than just explaining to team members what benefits they would derive from supporting this initiative, you should ask the team members whether they would be willing to support such an initiative and wait for a ‘yes’ in response.
Following that agreement, you should ask them to describe their reasons for supporting the initiative. This way it helps the team member to think and feel a sense of ownership in the initiative.
How to turn your interests into real commitments?
The 3rd selling persuasion technique is unique not just for sales, but across any of our life commitments.
The Amway Corporation, one of America’s most profitable direct-selling companies, encourages its sales personnel to soar to greater heights by providing the following advice: One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim – and that you write it down.
There is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You’ll be off and running.
If you’re a sales manager, asking members of your sales team to write down their goals will help strengthen their commitment to those goals and ultimately boost everyone’s bottom line. Similarly, it is wise to ensure that, during a meeting, participants write down and publicly share the actions that they have agreed to take.
What’s the best way to turn a weakness into a strength?
What will you do if you know that your product is inferior to the competitor in a small area? Would you upfront explain to the customer or wait for the customer to find out? As per the authors, during the negotiation, your negotiating partner is likely to see you as more trustworthy if you mention it upfront rather than leaving it to be discovered later.
In the book, the following example of direct sales is given: if you are selling color copiers to a business, and your copier holds slightly less paper than your competitors, it might be helpful to mention that fact early on in the process to earn the potential buyer’s trust.
Then it would be easier to convince the buyer that the truly superior features of your copier really do surpass the competition in those areas. Note, however, that you’re only going to be able to use this strategy effectively if most of your weaknesses are minor ones and you have compelling value to showcase.
Imitation as a persuasion tool?
Last but not least selling persuasion technique is, whenever clients ask for something, the best way to build rapport with the client is by first repeating customers’ verbalizations back to them, regardless of whether those verbalizations are in the form of questions, complaints or even orders
For if clients say, I would like to try with a small quantity say 10 units, and then explore for a larger order say 20 units in May. You would be better if you repeat to the customer saying
‘So you’re saying you’d like to purchase ten units now with the possibility of increasing that to twenty units in May’.
Repeating what the customer has said, persuades the customer to know that you are genuinely interested and listening to him.
If you haven’t read the “Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion ” yet, give it a look.
You’ll learn a lot about the science of persuasion and how it can be used in your sales ethically to increase your success at YES with small changes and the best part these work in other parts of life as well!
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