Even though convincing people to take a certain action is an art, a part of it is also science and can be easily learned through the science of marketing.
This article will deliver to you the most powerful ways that can help you convince people to buy from you based on the most important concepts of persuasion.
Most probably you are aware of the fact that trust is what sells products to people so unless you know the techniques that build trust in you and your suggestions no other technique to sell something will work.
Building trust is a matter of making people like you and appearing an authority. And you should support these objectives by powerful techniques like building relationships with your customers, without forgetting storytelling which is great persuading method.
Convincing customers by making them like you
Why we trust people we like? We trust them for a simple reason: We feel that we have a lot of similarities with them. After all he must be a great person if he resembles you, isn’t he?
The opposite of this is also true, we tend to like more people who seem to be similar to us, because we feel safe around them. That’s why too many sales are made from similarities between customers and salesmen.
One of my friends went to buy an used car in a big Albanian town called Durres. He is so undecided when it comes to buy something and I thought he would spend 10 years before he would decide to buy his car.
But I was surprised when I heard he bought his car in the first day he visited used car shopping there. When I met him I immediately asked him what happened.
He told me that he bought his car from a great person that is more than trustworthy about car suggestions. When I asked him to tell me more about that guy, he said me that he was bla bla bla and he remembers almost all the Koran ayets.
Since my friend was a muslim, he felt so similar to that other muslim who had memorized all the Koran, so he trusted him absolutely without even figuring out if he knows cars as well as he knows religion.
So the first conclusion of this post is: Show common interests and qualities with your customers and they will trust you more, because they will like you.
Authority and persuading people to buy from you
Authorities are people we trust the most, because we consider them more competent and intelligent than others.
If you are ill, you will go to get advices from a doctor and not from a policeman, and you will do the opposite when someone mysterious has threatened you.
We are programmed from our childhood to trust these credibility elements. So there is no better way to increase your sales than becoming an authority in what you do.
Certificates and your grades can be great indicators of your competence, so if you have any don’t hesitate to indirectly show them to your customers and you will have their trust.
Just make sure that your graduations are somehow related to what you do, or that makes you more competent and knowledgeable in the products you sell.
Build relationships with your customers to increase your sales
If you manage to build great relationships with people, they will feel more like taking your suggestions seriously and buy from you.
Nowadays every type of business is transforming their marketing strategies into building relationships with their customers, because they have understood how powerful this technique is.
One of my sister’s close friend was responsible for the marketing of a big and expensive hotel here in Albania. She was a very creative person and she did something that doubled the customers within 3 months.
She collected all the birthdays of the richest people of our country and she sent a written message to each one of them in their birthdays.
When she congratulated them for their birthdays in the name of the hotel, she maintained the tone of communication very personal in order to build a relationship with them.
This created relationship between them and the hotel name was the reason why those people became loyal customers even though the price was too high.
Now this technique isn’t about selling people something they don’t need, because this may force them to lie you and say sorry but… however you can increase your sales dramatically if you use relationship building the right way.
Using storytelling to convince people to buy from you
Storytelling is one of the most effective weapons of the art of persuasion. Those who perfect the art of storytelling will never suffer to make people believe them.
I said before that you should show common interests with people to make them like and trust you, also you should show them your qualifies to appear an authority.
But if you show off so directly and people understand that you are doing that on intention, then you are game over. No one will trust you that way.
People resist to believe those who try to make them believe in something, but they will totally believe something they discover on their own.
So you should find a way to make people think they are discovering things themselves and since that will be their discovering, they won’t only believe in it, but they will try to convince others about that idea too.
As you have understood now, storytelling does exactly this. It’s very difficult to argue with a conclusion that comes from a detailed and true story.
So use questions that people ask you to start a great story that stresses everything you want to show them and people will think they are revealing those points on their own.
Stories are also used to stress the superior advantage of a certain product too, and people usually will believe it even though they might never trust a salesman.
Apart of this article I have written many other posts that are talking about the art of persuasion. You will find a whole category dedicated only to this topic. Enjoy your reading.
The Code of Influence is one of the most life-changing programs on the market. It is filled with an abundance of information on persuasion, influence, making decisions and so much more. Check it out here.
You might also like to read:
Art of Persuasion Using Trends
Persuading Someone Using The Law Of Expectation
How Do Minds Get Programmed
Storytelling Persuasive Technique