In the book Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion by Robert Cialdini, there are many examples of selling persuasion techniques that executives can use in their daily work. Below a list of 5 best techniques listed,
Foot-in-the-door to trip-wire technique!
Best way to convert a prospect to the 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 lowest cost say 1Rs or 10 pieces and make him a customer. This is different from free offer. Here you want to move the customer to buy but paying the lowest.
Ones they pay and become the customer, then you have moved the prospect to a customer which is a significant achievement.
Why getting Yes is first step to increase 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 use 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 team, rather 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 quite a 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 authors, during the negotiation, your negotiating partner is likely to see you as more trustworthy if you mention it up front 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 persuasion tool?
The last but not least selling persuasion technique is, whenever clients ask for something, the best way to build rapport with the client by first repeating customers’ verbalisations back to them, regardless of whether those verbalisations are in the form of questions, complaints or even orders
e.g. If clients say, I would like to try with small quantity say 10 units and then explore for 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’.
By repeating what customer has said, persuades 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 sales executives can use some of the best selling persuasion techniques in work area as well as other parts of life!
