Persuasion Tactics That Win Customers
Are you a business owner?
I can”t stand it when customers complain. Not only do I have to put on a smiling face, I also have to put up with the lousy feelings I have later. It”s not helping me with other customers who hear me over the phone either.
Are you a manager?
I work with a great organization, but my team is just not producing the results they deserve. I feel as if I want to reach inside and rewrite their brain. If only they didn”t feel so upset when the director reprimanded them for their tardiness. I mean, shouldn”t they feel they ought to drive themselves to success? After all, the director said it only because he expected so much more from them.
People in the world today are constantly being harassed by emotions that they don”t seem to be able to control. It”s pretty much like a guerilla attack on your senses! I used to wish people could learn how to control their responses more, but then I stumbled upon an opportunity. Since most people are not in charge of their emotions, why don”t I find out how to change them?
I discovered that everyone is in a trance-like state every day. They don”t look where they are going – I mean there was a time when a man simply dashed across the street while my dad was driving. Luckily my dad saw him and screeched to a halt in time. Imagine if my dad”s mind was also on vacation!
To help people to buy our idea, it is essential that we shift them into the appropriate state. Hitler tapped into emotions of his masses in order to convey the idea of supremacy. Churchill tapped into emotions to rouse his men to fight bravely. Every major script writer in history has learnt how to use words and behavior to generate emotions in their audience. This world of make-believe then turns into reality.
Why do we want to move people from one emotion to another?
Let”s say I was an insurance sales person. What kind of emotion would be useful for my client to buy from me? If my client was skeptical, would I get a sale? Most definitely not! On the other hand, would I get a sale if my client began to feel fearful for the future? Or the fear of security in old age? You bet!
So, to become a master in emotions, we need to do five basic things.
1. Be in the emotion yourself.
We know that in order for others to experience emotions, we must feel the emotions ourselves. This psychological “vibration” is the key to getting others connected. Very young children are great at doing this – when one child cries, the other tends to join in. If you want someone to go into the state, you need to get into the emotion yourself by playing the right mental images and sounds in your mind.
2. Engage the right tone of voice.
Your tonality has to shift accordingly. I”ve heard people sabotage themselves when they attempt to get me to buy something over the phone, because they sound so nervous! Can you imagine how I feel when I hear a nervous tone? It makes me feel nervous.
The right tone of voice must match the emotion you are selling. Speak more softly if you want a person to feel fear compared with anger or frustration. If you are creating the emotion of excitement, then your volume and pitch generally need to rise. Practice this more frequently so you can have an idea as to how to engage your voice effectively.
3. Engage the appropriate physiology.
The body is also a messenger. If you don”t get your body moving in the right manner, you won”t sound right. I use the term physiology rather broadly. It includes the chemical changes in the body, but also refers to the means by which those things change, such as your facial expressions, gestures, muscular tension, breathing rate and posture.
By engaging the appropriate physiology, you allow yourself to get into the right state more rapidly, thus allowing the contagion effect to get the person you are speaking to in that state as well.
4. Anchor the desired buying state.
Have you watched TV infomercials? Do they just tell the features of a product, or do they engage you in all your emotions? They build up your buying state, then anchor it at the end of the infomercial.
You”re capable of doing this in person too. Whenever an emotional state gets built up to its peak, and sight, sound or feeling that gets associated with it will trigger off the same feeling again.
If you saw an advertisement and got excited as you read it, then you have just associated the advertisement to excitement. The next time you see that same ad, it is likely that you will feel excited about it again.
At the point of writing this, I got myself excited because there is a whole lot of stuff that I do on my computer that excites me. This feeling gets carried over to my writing when I pen down my ideas. So, the good news is that each time I see my computer, it triggers off the feeling of excitement and I want to write again.
You can create anchors for people. First, tell your story in the most congruent manner possible to the emotion. Once your tone of voice and physiology engage, observe the person you are speaking to. Did the breathing pattern change? Was there a change in the posture, muscular tension or in gestures? When there is a visible shift in physiology, anchor the person by touching that person or making a sound.
Touch is easier because you”ll always feel a touch. A sound may be more difficult to replicate especially in a noisy different environment, but is useful nonetheless.
To test an anchor, you have to build the emotions as intensely as possible. The reason why phobias are so strongly anchored is because the associations made with the phobic stimulus were very strong. By the same rationale, you can create intense feelings of excitement and anchor your prospect”s excitement to your face, your company logo
whatever you need to make a favorable impact the next time around.
5. Use that desired state when making a close.
I was having a sales pitch at a company once, pushing a team building seminar. In order to get the deal, I realized that the manager in charge was rather un-involved and did not really feel like any training would help, so he was rather closed. It was tough at first because he didn”t even give me a chance! Then, I shifted my seating position (because it was anchored so badly to being closed and I pointed to my previous seat, saying you wouldn”t want any training because you don”t know if you can benefit. I can sense your skepticism, not just because you aren”t giving me much to help you, but because you haven”t heard how I have helped your competitors increase their sales revenue by 72%.
The moment I mentioned those figures, I saw his face change. He sat up and leaned forward and asked 72%?
Immediately, I took out my proposal, pointed to it and said the exact same program.
I had visually anchored him to the proposal, and passed it to him, together with the proof of the research we had done (we used the internet to help track the results, so it was simple). All I had to do was to uncap my pen and place it next to the space which he had to sign on. He did.
So, in conclusion, make sure you know what state that person is in, and don”t let him go away with a bad feeling. Make sure you take all positive feelings and anchor them to you, the persuasion expert, so that they like you and enjoy doing business with you.
To get a copy of The 33 Killer Persuasion Tactics, go to http://www.stuarttan.com/33persuasion.htm today!
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