Triggers by Joseph Sugarman
It is estimated that 95% of the reasons a prospect buys involve a subconscious decision.
As a direct marketer, I have determined that the most important thing you can do to turn a prospect into a customer is to make it incredibly easy for that prospect to commit to a purchase, regardless of how small that purchase may be.
Once a commitment is made, the tendency is to act consistently with that commitment. The customer nods his head.
One of the important points to remember is to always make that first sale simple. Once the prospect makes the commitment to purchase from you, you can then easily offer more to increase your sales.
Learn about the emotional appeal of the product or service to a prospect.
If you don’t understand the nature of the product you are selling, you won’t effectively sell it. Every product has a unique nature to it—a unique way of relating itself to the consumer. If you understand this nature and find the way to best relate the product to your prospect, you’ll hold the key to a successful sales program.
The prospect has basic emotional needs that your product will solve, regardless of how sophisticated or simple your product offering is. Examine those emotional needs. For the moment, forget the logical needs. It is from the perspective of emotion that you will reach the core essence of your prospect’s motivation. And it is from this essence that you will get all the clues you need to uncover the way to that prospect’s heart and soul and eventually to his or her pocketbook.
Whenever I sold a product that contained some obvious blemish or fault, I brought the blemish or fault up first in my copy. In short, I shared my dirty laundry openly and honestly right up front.
By presenting the negatives up front, I reduced and often eliminated a major objection to a sale.
You are wasting your time resolving any objection unless you raise it first. And if you don’t raise the real objections that your prospects have in their minds, then you’re totally wasting your time.
Resolving an objection does more than build confidence, inspire respect, and reflect your integrity. It resolves a conflict in the mind of the consumer that must be resolved to consummate a sale.
Advertising copy that involves the reader can be quite effective, especially if the involvement device is part of the advertising.
Establishing your authority is something that should be done in each sales presentation, regardless of how big or how little you are.
When I am selling in print, I have noticed that when I offer two versions of a product, it is best to offer the less expensive model first or as your featured item. For example, if I were offering a blood pressure unit, I would offer my $99.95 version as the main item I am offering. Then I would offer the $149.95 deluxe unit as an alternative.
Once the shopper was in the store, I would pitch the more expensive product first to get the prospect eventually to see the lower-priced model as a greater value.
We buy on emotion and justify with logic.
Instead of using the word “buy,” you might suggest that somebody “invest” in your product. Wouldn’t you rather invest in a product than buy it?
The consumer who emotionally wants to buy still needs the security of knowing that logically the purchase makes sense.
Remember two main points about logic as a trigger:
You buy on emotion and justify the purchase with logic.
View logic as the answer to the unspoken objection, “Why should I buy this thing?”
At a very low price, you don’t have to say much about the product. Just present the product. If people understand what the product is and the perceived value is far greater, there will be people who will buy it whether they need it or not. No need for long copy, no need to explain much of anything. Just let greed do its natural thing.
If you convey honesty and integrity in your message, chances are you’ve gone a long way toward establishing your credibility. However credibility is not just honesty and integrity. Credibility is being believable.
If you can create a powerful satisfaction conviction, this simple psychological trigger will do a great deal for the success of whatever you are selling and may just double your sales results.
The key is to simply close your sales presentation with a passionate resolution of any possible objection by offering a satisfaction conviction that goes beyond what the prospect normally expects or would be entitled to from anybody else.
Linking is a basic human emotional system of storing experiences and knowledge and then recalling those experiences and linking them to something we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Presenting your product or service by linking it to something the consumer can relate to and understand is very powerful in that selling process.
In direct marketing, which is a very scientific field, we segment our mailing lists both demographically and psychographically, to make the mailings more efficient and profitable.
The desire to belong is one of the strongest psychological triggers on why people purchase specific products or services. Use it to your advantage by realizing what groups your prospect belongs to and then matching the needs and desires of your prospect with those of your product.
In selling, the concept of a sense of urgency involves two emotional aspects in the selling process. One is loss or the chance of losing something, and the other is procrastination.
Wheeler recognized that if you reached a point when your prospect says, “Let me think about it,” or “Let me discuss this with my partner,” chances are you’ve lost the sale. He therefore reasoned that you had nothing to lose if you tried something bold and almost dangerous to make the sale, even if it meant being kicked out of the prospect’s office.
A common excuse by a spouse is to have the other spouse approve of a purchase. This is a very common delaying tactic. Wheeler talked about the time when a salesman, trying to sell a housewife on purchasing an iron, got the very common response, “Well, let me discuss this with my husband.” The salesman shot back with, “What day of the week does your husband do the laundry?” The woman, taken aback, told the salesman that she did the laundry, to which he replied, “Then it is your head that aches on wash day, and your back that hurts—not your husband’s.” The salesman allows these comments to sink in and then murmurs confidentially, “Your husband never discusses with you the labor-saving devices for his back and head in his office, does he?”
Use your imagination and come up with a dozen ways you can make your product more exclusive, unique, or rare. You can limit quantities, sign and number your products, or underproduce them. Then share that information with your prospect. We all like to be treated as special, and one of the best ways to do it in a very emotional way is through the power of exclusivity.
To give the consumer a confusing array of choices meant that the consumer would back off and not buy. First, they would have to make a choice. This is often not easy. Often you must make the choice for the buyer, by selecting the best model or style and making it the one you feature. In fact, your prospect likes that and appreciates it when you do it.
The biggest problem I have seen in selling in general comes when the offer is much more complicated than it needs to be. Simplify your offer. Make it so easy to buy that the prospect simply needs to pick up a pen and sign on the dotted line. Then you’ve got a sure-fire road to sales success.
Consider many of the creative ways to instill the feeling of guilt in your prospect. You’ll find your selling to be a lot easier with a receptive buyer when you grease the way with this powerful psychological trigger.
When people perceive certain general statements as puffery or typical advertising babble, those statements are at best discounted and accepted with some doubts. In contrast, statements with specific facts can generate strong believability. Of course, the specific facts must be honest and accurate.
Using specifics instead of generalities and facts instead of approximations will make a dramatic difference in the believability of your presentation. Be specific in your statements and your facts to build credibility and believability.
Focus groups only tell you what they think you want to hear and not how they would act themselves.
There’s a greater tendency to buy from somebody with whom you are familiar. As a salesperson, simply being aware of the psychological trigger of familiarity, to make a person comfortable with your product or service, is important when selling. So keep your name in front of your prospect. Realize the importance of a familiar brand name, a logo that appears many times and becomes well-known, a slogan that people instinctively know is yours, familiar phrases and words that your public can harmonize with. All of these create a bond of familiarity between you and your prospect.
The four brain parts discussed were those that control thought, intuition, sensation, and emotion. The theory suggests that advertising which pleasurably engages the senses, emotions, and thought process, as well as our innate intuition, will tend to be successful. Advertising that merely grabs the attention of the senses will tend to be only temporarily attractive.
So it is with selling in person. If you make your sales pitch too obvious, the prospect will feel either patronized or bored. Make the prospect think, in order to come to a conclusion, and you create a very stimulating mental effect.
When I wrote a JS&A ad, I would include many of the negative features of my products. I would point out the flaws up front. And of course, I would explain why the flaws really didn’t amount to much and why the consumer should still buy my product. Consumers were so impressed with this approach and had such trust in our message that they would eagerly buy what we offered. It seemed that the more truthful and frank my ads were, the more positively the consumer responded. I soon realized that truthfulness was one of the best advertising lessons I had ever learned.
In the personal selling process, it is important to be honest in everything you do and say. No white lies. No smoke and mirrors. Be careful not to exaggerate. Keeping a very clean and honest presentation will do more for your success than any other trigger presented in this book.
