Persuasion

Why Selling Is So Hard?

by
No Trespassing. No Selling Allowed

Most people won’t say this in public, but behind closed doors and in their innermost thoughts, you hear it with staggering frequency:

“Why won’t these dummies buy my product?? They know they need it! I’ve clearly shown them how much better their lives will be when they start using it.

Selling is HARD! Argg!!

Yes, selling is hard. The reason is simple: it is impossible to change someone’s mind. Literally impossible.

But you still have to get people to say yes or click a button for your business or career to survive. How do you do it? Why is there a small percentage of people who make selling look so easy? How do I become one of the ones who make it look easy?

Your prospects have “No Trespassing” signs posted at every one of the entrances to the mind. The guards are very selective about who they allow inside the gates.

If you try to punch a hole through their mental defenses, you’ll soon find out how ineffective (and exhausting) that can be. Using hype and high-pressure tactics is a foolish approach — no matter how cool the Wolf of Wall Street makes it look.

Here’s what it boils down to:

There are things that your would-be customers really want to do, but for numerous reasons they can’t bring themselves to take action.

They want to start investing so they can retire comfortably. They want six-pack abs. They want to meet their soulmate.

Your job is to give your customers the psychological, emotional and volitional strength to get out of their own way.

To empower them to grab hold of their better future.

That’s what we’re going to talk about during Monday’s Irresistible Offers teleseminar.

We’re going to tackle the topic of persuasive selling based on how the brain works…how human emotion works…how language works.

There is one psychological reality that puts all the pieces of the persuasion puzzle into a single, cohesive concept.

Instead of long lists of complicated techniques and formulas (which all talk about different things), you’ll discover a simple but incredibly enlightening illustration of the how the mind works and what makes persuasion work.

You’ll learn why people say ‘yes’ and you’ll learn what it takes to get more yeses from your sales and marketing.

Everyone who makes selling look easy leverages this reality, consciously or unconsciously.

This session is going to be a real eye-opener, with research gathered from

  • the U.S. Army
  • the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
  • the latest psychological and neuroscientific studies
  • social movements
  • millions of dollars of direct marketing testing
  • and Hollywood, possibly the greatest influencer of culture on the planet.

If you’re an entrepreneur, salesperson, marketer, copywriter or anyone who needs to be more persuasive, you don’t want to miss this call. The insights you’ll gain could change everything for you.

Understanding what makes people tick and learning to make offers they can’t resist — now that’s a good investment.

My promise to you:

The teleseminar starts from 8:00pm Eastern on Monday, August 11th. The cost is $58.

I’ve condensed the best insights I have on selling in person, print or pixel into an hour-long. I’m not holding anything back. I’ve only spoken publicly about some of this information once in the past 2 year (at my paid workshop in June). Parts of it I’ve never shared before, which is why the teleseminar is more expensive than the workshop.

At $58, it’s a freakin’ steal. I guarantee you’ll get 99 times more value than what you spend or I’ll happily give you a full refund — before I go to bed Monday night.

I can’t stand sitting in on presentations and listening to the “same old, same old.” Don’t you hate that? I’m not going to put you through that torture. If you don’t learn something brand new, I’ll give happily your money back.

Let me help you get past your customers’ “No Trespassing” signs. Sign up for the Irresistible Offers teleseminar here.

This Is Probably the Main Thing Holding You Back

by

Gary Halbert, one of the smartest marketers in history, said he believed most people would choke to death in a restaurant before they’d allow someone to perform the Heimlich maneuver on them.

I don’t think he was far off the mark.

Why would Gary make a statement like that?

I wasn’t there when he said it, but I think I understand his reasoning. He was trying to shed some light on the biggest force that stops most people from making the kind of progress they’re capable of making.

I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Your Real Job as an Entrepreneur, Salesperson, Marketer or Other Kind of Influencer

As a business owner, copywriter or marketer, you have a two-fold duty:
1. Create value for your clients/customers.
2. Get them to take action.

(Sometimes your ability to induce action is itself the value you create.)

I’ve often said it this way: A salesperson/marketer/copywriter’s job is to empower people do the things they already want to do.

They want a more comfortable temperature in house during summer, so you help them get the right air conditioner, etc.

A big part of that process is education. Education is in powerful tool for persuasion, but if it’s not helping the would-be customer take action to improve his life, it’s lacking. Consider this: a teacher gets paid to “do the work,” preparing lessons, presenting to the class, grading homework. As entrepreneurs and marketers, we don’t make money by simply doing the work. We have to impel customers to act.

What Holds People Back?

What keeps people from buying even when they’re in the market for a specific product, they can see the benefits and can afford to make the purchase?

The main reason is fear. The fear of making the wrong choice, looking stupid or getting burned. The fear of having to explain the purchase to a spouse or business partner.

Here’s a big one — the one Gary Halbert was referring to in the statement above: People are very protective of their comfort zones. Halbert said that people will “struggle harder to stay in their comfort zones than they will to save their own lives.”

When you ask someone to change their habits, their preferred brands or their way of looking at things — you’re asking a lot — even if it will get them closer to the future they want.

This applies to YOU as an entrepreneur or marketer.

We often cling to our way of doing things, even when we know there’s a more efficient way.

Or…

We spend hour after hour educating ourselves, only to keep doing the same things, the same way.

I’m guilty, too. Over the years, I’ve only implemented a fraction of the ideas I’ve spent hundreds of hours consuming.

Herein lies the rub: nothing is going to change if you don’t change it. You can either take responsibility for your own results or you can make excuses. One of those options empowers you; the other gives your power away.

If there’s something your business needs but doesn’t have…
If there’s something you need to do, but you’re not sure how to make the next step (or the first one)…
If there’s an urgent problem you have no idea how to solve…

…Own it! Then take action to get what you need.

Quoting Gary Halbert again, MOTION is the biggest difference between winners and losers. He said “You don’t have a choice of being afraid or not afraid in life; you’re going to be afraid. You’re either going to be afraid and frozen or scared and moving.”

Isn’t it time to get in motion?

 

P.S. Need help skillfully persuading your prospects and clients to take action? Come to my Irresistible Offers teleseminar August 11th.

Workshop: How to Create Irresistible Offers

by
Persuasion

Who is the most persuasive person in the world?

I bet it’s not who you think it is. In fact, it may be the last person you’d consider.

And I’ll be happy to tell you…if you attend Blue Top Marketing‘s workshop tomorrow (Saturday, June 7th) in South Holland, IL.

We’ll be talking about how to create irresistible offers. This will be my most in-depth treatment of this topic to date. We’ll talk about persuasive techniques as ancient as the human race, cutting-edge discoveries in neuroscience and the secrets behind blockbuster Hollywood movies.

Get the details on Blue Top Marketing’s registration page.

Here are a few of the specific topics we’ll cover in this 2-hour long session:

  • a method proven to “transform insignificant objects into significant ones,” so much so that people happily pay as much as 132.5 TIMES their original value. Your “significant” products and services can skyrocket in perceived value in exactly the same way.
  • why the truth isn’t good enough and how you can fix that — without the slightest bit of deception
  • what kind of marketing messages are magnetically repulsive
  • how one sentence changed the entire TV home shopping industry, breaking sales records left and right — and how you come up with a similar sentence to revolutionize your customers’ perception of your business
  • 3 biological reasons the human mind rejects most perceived attempts at persuasion and
  • how to flip the mind’s resistance using its own force.

I’ll take a look at your marketing materials and make suggestions on how to make your offers irresistible. You’ll leave the presentation with specific advice you can put into practice the same day.

Not sold yet? Let’s sweeten the deal a little bit.

All attendees will get

  • a DVD of all 3 of the Marketing Strategy Implementation sessions courtesy of Boss Lady at Blue Top, Stephanie Walters,
  • a free copy of my book Stealth Selling: Non-Pushy Persuasion for Professionals
  • a second round of sales copy critiques any time in the next 90 days. I normally charge $200 for critiques, but attendees will get a freebie.

When an offer is strong, saying “yes” is easier than walking away. During this workshop, we’ll help make that a reality in your business. Register now

P.S. Sorry for the last minute reminder.

Steve Lahey Picks My Brain About Stealth Selling and Copywriting

by
Small Business Talent Podcast with Stephen Lahey

Over the years, it seems like I’ve sold almost everything: Swiss watches, cell phones, warranties, coffee grinders and even plain old advice. You’ll never hear me say I’m a natural salesman. I wasn’t even always good at sales.

In 2012, I wrote Stealth Selling: Non-Pushy Persuasion for Professionals, an ebook revealing my personal selling philosophy along with insights and advice I’ve picked up along the way.

This week, I had the privilege of appearing on Steve Lahey’s Small Business Talent podcast. He asked me about stealth selling, ethical persuasion and life as an entrepreneur.

I even performed a live dissection (guess that would make it a vivisection) on his new service page sales copy.

It was fun and I’ve received a lot of great feedback. If you have about half an hour, I’d be thrilled if you listened to the interview here.

By the way, the Steve’s podcast is always excellent. If I were you, I’d check it out every week.

I’m also working on making a second edition of Stealth Selling. Up until the time I release it (hopefully by the beginning the end of April), you can pick up the original for $5, which the lowest price I’ve ever offered (a large percentage of buyers paid $19 for it). I’ll also send you the updated version as soon as it’s ready, free of cost.

If you’re interested, click here.

One more thing: if you listen to my interview with Steve Lahey, leave a comment and send a screenshot of the comment to db at donnie-bryant dot com, I’ll give you the book for free. Why? Because maybe what Steve said on Twitter is true:

Writing Copy to Sell Your “Crazy” Offer

by

Yesterday we talked about turning your prospects into paying customers by making crazy offers. Did this concept haunt you the way it’s been haunting me? I hope you spent a good deal of time coming up with an almost too-good-to-be-true offer you can use to move potential clients from interest into action.

Ideally, you will come up with an offer so crazy, so compelling that you don’t need much sales copy (or pitching if you’re selling in person or over the phone). Start with a winning product or service and create a very valuable offer and you’re already most of the way there. Now the copy has an easy job. (Confidentially, this is one of the big reasons copywriters are picky about which projects they work on.)

But no matter how strong your offer is, you should still…

…Sell the Heck Out of It Anyway

Even though making the right offer to the right prospect is 80% of the battle, persuasively-written sales copy can improve response by 10, 100 or 1000%.

Here are 4 qualities that will add extra oomph to your copy:

Identification

Your message should aim for the heart of who your target customer is and how he sees himself.

Nike could talk about comfort, but their customers are athletes concerned with performance, so that’s what their marketing highlights. Lexus could talk about performance, but Lexus buyers are thinking about status. That’s what they showcase in their ads.

What causes one person’s heart to race may not excite the next person at all. Know your customers. Write copy that appeals to their sense of who they are and who they want to be.

Clarity/Specificity

Don’t be the least bit vague about what you’re offering. Tell them exactly what they’ll get, how long it’s available for, how they’ll benefit from their purchase, what to expect next, etc. Clarity creates vision; without vision there is no action. On the other hand, confused people generally don’t buy.

Bold Claims

The idea of under-promising and over-delivering seems to make sense, but it can be suicidal when it comes to marketing. These days, with so many sales messages begging for our attention, you can’t afford to be shy.

Don’t be afraid to make big claims, as long as you can back them up.

People are searching for the best answers to their questions, the best solutions to their problems. Imagine a dentist who marketed his services as getting your teeth “pretty clean.” How long will he be in business? Even if he’s the best dentist in town, marketing like that will ruin him.

Sincerity

Skepticism is at an all-time high. So is the volume of hype-filled sales pitches we see and hear every day. People are looking for providers they can trust. Any hint of dishonesty or shadiness will send most potential buyers running.

Sincerity is like a breath of fresh air. Almost no one is using it.

The less you seem to hype up what you’re doing, the more believable you are. You come across as honest and helpful instead of desperate and opportunistic.

Your Action Steps

1) If you haven’t come up with it yet, keep working on your crazy offer.

2) Write the first draft of your sales copy ASAP.

3) Test out your offer. Don’t be scared.

If I’ve ever shared anything on this blog that I think you should act on right away, this is it. Don’t let another day go by without considering the immediate and long-term effects this “crazy offer” concept can have on your business.

And get moving!

4 Steps to No-Brainer Status

by

If your target market had to make an instant decision, without thinking, would they would still pick you?

The mind is always doing something, always focusing on something. We even dream while we’re sleeping. Your brain never really stops working.

My fellow Chicagoan James Ford taught me a very interesting lesson (inadvertently, through the radio). He pointed out that we often look for distractions to give our minds a break. We call that amusement. A-muse-ment is, literally, the act or state of not-thinking.

While I generally discourage the use of funny marketing messages, you should consider being appropriately amusing.

With that in mind, here are some amusing marketing ideas:

1) Make your offer a “no-brainer.” If your offer is just right, the prospect literally doesn’t have to think about it.

It’s not good enough to have the best product on the market or to be the most logical choice as a service provider.

Plenty of outstanding businesses struggle while waiting for the world to beat a path to their door to buy their better “mousetrap.” Marketing is still critically important, and the message it conveys must still engage the motivational drives and desires of the target audience.

There are several factors involved here. No matter how much a prospect wants what you sell, there are obstacles to overcome:

a) You have to be trustworthy. No doubt you’ve heard a lot of talk about getting potential clients to “know, like and trust” you. This is not only because we like to do business with people we like, but because we have a hard time doing business with people we don’t trust.

  • This is part of the reason marketers are enamored with social media, and it’s definitely the driving force behind Facebook Sponsored Stories and Google’s social search. You trust your friends, so when they “like” something, that something inherits some of that trust.

b) Your offer itself has to be credible. I imagine if you got a letter in the mail offering “Buy 1 Mercedes, Get 2 FREE.” It might grab your attention, but you’d dismiss the idea pretty quickly. We instinctively believe “if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

By all means, make the strongest offer possible, but make sure it’s believable.

c) Eliminate as much risk as possible. The plumbing in my house is not great. At one point, we had to call a plumber every few weeks. When we finally found a guy we liked, one of the biggest reasons he got repeat business from us was because his 90-day guarantee. If the toilets clogged up in that time frame, he’d come out and fix it for free.

How strong is your guarantee? Do you provide excellent customer service after the sale? Do you share additional information or resources to ensure customers enjoy every possible benefit from their purchase?

  • Make testimonials prominent. This form of social proof can be effective at communicating the fact that lots of people just like the prospect has had a wonderful experience doing business with you. What more is there to think about?

2) Get to know your audience so well that you can describe their needs better than they can, using words they’d use themselves. When people feel like you know them, trust comes naturally. Add to that a comprehensive understanding of the challenges they’re facing and the dreams they have, there’s no need for them to look to anyone else when they’re ready to buy. Choosing you is a “no-brainer” decision.

3) Find a way to make buying from you habitual, or attach your offering to the habits of your target audience. That which people do habitually, they do unthinkingly. Here are two terrific articles explaining the power of habits and how they apply to marketing and buying decisions:

The Power of Habit
How Companies Learn Your Secrets

4) Your offer must be obviously valuable. The more clearly you describe what the customer will get after he buys, how wonderful his experience will be, the less he has to justify the purchase to himself. The less internal negotiations have to take place.
The longer he argues, the less likely he is to buy. He’s also more likely he is to either ask for a refund or suffer from buyer’s remorse – a serious problem for repeat business and referrals.

Your Action Steps

1) Get to know what you really sell. Homebuilders don’t sell structures; they provide safety, security, a feeling of family, the American dream, etc. Authors don’t sell ink on paper, but wild adventures and escapes from reality in packages that fit in the palm of your hand.

2) Get to know your prospects better than ever. Always remember, marketing is not about you – it’s about your would-be customers.

3) Speak to the soul. Go beyond having rebuttals for objections and answers for questions.

4) Work on ways to clearly communicate that the solution to your prospects innermost drives and desires is within their grasp – if they enter the door you show them. Help them see it.

5) Find effective ways to deliver that message.

This will take some work, but it will pay off in big ways.

How Do I Get People to Want What I Sell? Part 3

by

In Parts 1 and 2 of this short course, we’ve been talking about intensifying your potential customers’ built-in desires and directing them towards the thing that you’re selling. There’s a common thread tying together each of the points we’ve covered. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

You use your words to paint vivid, evocative images in the minds of your prospects…their response will correspond directly with their desires, motivations and priorities…

You base your marketing messages or sales pitch on the quest they’re on, the vision they have for their lives and the way they see their place in the world…

You do your best to be convincing…but those who become your customers are those who convince themselves that you can deliver the results they want.

Do you see it? Conversion is essentially a self-initiated change. All persuasion is self-persuasion.

Persuasion’s Passive-Aggressive Nature

“No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves.” ~ Mignon McLaughlin

If you’re honest, you know deep down that this quote speaks to real experience.

As irresistible as your message may seem to you, what really matters is how it matches up with what the hearer thinks about himself (his quest)… about the problem you’re addressing or promise you’re making… about you.

For example, if he believes he was born to be an entrepreneur and that reading a book can speed up the process and increase his chances of success, he’ll actively search for those kinds of books.

If he believes that “I could never succeed in business” and that starting a business a risk reserved for richer, more educated people, “be your own boss” products won’t appeal to him.

Vision Is the Delivery Mechanism

In order to get someone to buy from you, you need him to convince himself that your product or service will give him what he wants. To do that, you have to give him the materials he needs to convince himself. That brings us back to the concept of building vision.

When you’re helping your prospect imagine all the wonderful tomorrows that are sure to come after he buys your product… when he can see himself enjoying a brighter future because of you, he’s really selling himself on your proposition. Of course you’re doing your part: feeding him the raw materials he needs to see that mental image. This is where copywriting, storytelling, demonstration and testimonials come into play.

You want him to come to a predetermined conclusion: that your product is his best option to achieve the transformation he’s looking for. Rather than stating that too explicitly (which will probably be a turn-off for most potential clients), you want to help him draw that conclusion on his own. As Blaise Pascal said, “People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.”

When he decides that you’re the best choice based on his own “reasoning,” you’ve won a firmly-convinced convert.

How Do I Get People to Want What I Sell? Part 2

by
Vision USP

Don’t forget to read Part 1.

The Main Qualifier

Whether they’re aware of it or not, every single person on this planet is on a quest. This quest is defined by the person’s vision of his life, both how he interprets his past and imagines his future. It’s the lens through which he sees himself and his place in the world.

This quest can take all kinds of shapes. To be a millionaire living on a tropical island by the age of 35. A mother of two beautiful children. To be respected by his golf buddies. To “just fit in,” or to stand out from the crowd. To rock and roll all night and party every day.

Please understand, persuasion isn’t about building a vision for its own sake. The images you create with your sales and marketing messages have to complement the hearer/reader/viewer’s vision for his own life. They have to fit that vision and expand upon it. Clarify it. They have to move the hearer further along his life-quest.

For example, painting vivid mental pictures of arthroscopic knee surgery won’t convince anyone to undergo the procedure. (That would probably have the opposite effect, wouldn’t you say?) Rather, images of pain-free movement, the ability to participate in activities you’ve missed out on for years, the enjoyment of an energetic, uninhibited life – that’s what sells.

“That’s Not How I See My Life”

A number of years ago, my wife and I had a disagreement over observing a particular tradition. I wanted to abstain from observing it. She plainly informed me that she would not be married to someone who wouldn’t keep this custom.

“That’s not how I see my life,” she explained.

My bride had a vision for what her life would look like. She had a strong drive to make the vision a reality.

I was driven by the way I saw the future, too. I envisioned myself as a happily married man, and I was just as motivated to make my vision reality. Needless to say, the aforementioned tradition hasn’t been interrupted since that conversation.

That’s the importance of the quest.

Our quest dictates our priorities (in large part); our priorities determine our decisions, including what we buy.

Knowing and Playing Your Role

The kind of heroes people want are the ones who assist them in making their dreams come true. We want heroes who help us become the heroes we envisions ourselves as becoming on our life mission.

Remember: your customer is the protagonist of his own story. You’re a role player helping him overcome the conflict and reach ultimate victory. It’s your job to talk/write your way into the plot of his story.

The question is, how do you do that?

1. Get the attention of people whose story you can transform in a unique way: Your business won’t fit into everyone’s story. That’s cool because you don’t want to get involved in everyone’s story. You need to have a) a clear understanding of the value you can create for your customers, b) who those customers are, and c) how to gain their attention.

2. Paint a picture of the problem: If you talk about the “good life,” people who don’t have it will feel the sting. Alternatively, you could talk about the problem itself. Your message will resonate with those who are struggling through the challenges now, or those who have already given up in despair. If you can use language they’d use to describe their experience, you’ll really strike a chord. They see that you understand them and their difficulties. It’s much easier to trust the advice of someone who knows what you’re going through.

You can inspire those individuals that there’s still hope, and you’ve found it. You’re also the best person to lead them to the source of that hope.

3. Paint a picture of progress: When you build vision in your prospect’s mind of the progress he’s looking for but doesn’t yet have (or doesn’t know how to get), his desire intensifies. It takes on a definite shape, like liquid poured into a bottle which you design. He’ll probably feel it in his gut. He wants that progress, and if you do it right, he’ll see your solution as the best way to get it.

Last week I shared a quote from Gene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising. Let me share another excerpt as an poignant example. It’s a bit lengthy, but compelling. From the Preface to the Boardroom Edition:

This book was first published in 1966…it only sold a few thousand copies. But since it was published I have had people coming to me regularly to tell me that they directly credit reading this book with their making millions of dollars.

… Here is a book that is called Breakthrough Advertising…and yet was used by men who were not in the business of advertising at all, to make more money than most of us ever dream of accumulating.

How did this happen? Why was a publisher, a financier, a manufacturer of novelties, able to make so very much money with a book that is about putting sentences together? (The financier told me that, within one year of obtaining the book, he had raised his net worth from $100,000 to $10 million). Are the sentences contained in the pages that follow actually that powerful? Can they change the fortunes of men so radically? Are they far more universally adaptable than I had first thought…so they are no longer about advertising products, but literally about opening whole new markets for them?

There is a way to develop an entirely new market for a new or an old product. That way involves a certain number of clearly-defined step. And in this book I show you every single one of those steps…

We are, in a phrase, “Market Makers”…

So, this book is not about building better mousetraps. It is, however, about building larger mice, and then building terrifying fear of them in your customers. In other words, it is about helping to shape the largest and strongest market possible, and then intensifying that market’s reaction to its basic need or problem, and the “exclusive” solution you have to offer it.

Ask Rodale Press–for whom I sold over twenty million dollars of a single book…

Creates some nice images, right? After reading the preface, it’s hard for an entrepreneur or marketer not to be excited about reading the rest of the book.

As you can see, better words paint sharper pictures. Vivid images are the holy grail of desire intensification. Don’t slack off in this area.

In Part 3 we’ll wrap up this short course on desire intensification. Until then, think about the pictures you paint. Think about how what you’re learning about your customers’ desires can make bolder, brighter and clearer visions in their minds. Then work on improving the words and sentences you use to win your customers over.

Cialdini Agrees with My Persuasion Theory

by

Conversion is always an internal change. To borrow the words of Jeff Sexton, “all persuasion is self-persuasion.”

You use your words to paint vivid, evocative images in the minds of your prospects…their response will correspond directly with their desires, motivations and priorities…

You base your marketing messages or sales pitch on the quest they’re on, the vision they have for their lives and the way they see their place in the world…

You do your best to be convincing…but those who become your customers are those who convince themselves that you can deliver the results they want.”

Other than Jeff Sexton, I haven’t heard any other expert say that persuasion is always ultimately self-persuasion. But I tell you, it’s the truth.

And whether he knows it or not, Robert Cialdini agrees with this assertion. If you analyze the 6 principles from his book Influence, you’ll see what I mean. Check it out.

Reciprocity – When someone does something for you or gives you something, you feel indebted to them. You want to pay them back, because you don’t like to feel like you own anyone anything. Reciprocity is the desire to rid yourself of that feeling.

No one makes you feel the need to reciprocate, but when they take the first step by giving you something, they start the process.

The outcome is pretty predictable.

Consistency – We all want to stay true to the statements we make. We have an inner desire to maintain consistency to things we say or write. We convince ourselves that it’s important to do what we say we’ll do. We have an even bigger problem deviating from what we proclaim ourselves to be. If I say I’m an art collector, I better start acquiring some nice pieces!

Our desire to be consistent with the positive things other people think about us (or what we want them to think about us) can be even more compelling.

Social Proof – Everyone wants to be seen as an individual. But at the same time, we have a deep-seated desire fit in somewhere. There’s safety in numbers, right?

A lot of times, we really want to do something and all we need to gain the confidence to pull the trigger is the knowledge that other people (just like us) have done the same thing safely and with satisfactory results.

Liking – I like you. It gives me pleasure to buy from you. I enjoy the feeling of supporting you or your cause, feeling like I’m helping you succeed, etc.

So, naturally, I can persuade myself that doing business with you is a good idea. Even if I don’t really need what you’re selling. Or, if I have to choose between two vendors, I’ll often pick the person I like better instead of the cheaper choice or even the one with higher quality.

How many times have you done that?

Authority – We’re designed to trust people in positions of authority. It starts when we’re kids obeying our parents and believing everything they tell us. Even as we get older and gain autonomy, we never fully get rid of this disposition.

We protect ourselves from making bad choices by defer to people who know better than we do. Self-preservation is a powerful desire.

Scarcity – Missing out on something you could have had is a horrible feeling. We don’t want to feel that. We’ll jump through all kinds of hoops to avoid that feeling. That’s why scarcity or urgency works in marketing.

Sometimes we make a choice more to protect ourselves from this feeling of missing out on an opportunity than from the desire for the object itself.

The evidence is plain. Persuasion is always, at its root, self-persuasion. And although he’s never said it, Robert Cialdini agrees with me (and Jeff Sexton, of course).

Strategic Subtlety: A Quick Copywriting Tip

by

Blatancy does not command respect.

Over-statement, in reaction, creates commensurate resistance.

   – Lord & Thomas Creed #1

While I’m a big fan of big claims and bold promises, strategic subtlety can be very persuasive, in a stealthy kind of way.

Take a look at an recent example I got in the mail. Here’s an excerpt from Imagine, a quarterly “magazine” from the University of Chicago Medicine.

U of Chicago

Notice how the writer implies that the University has a noteworthy history of “contributions to science and healing” without coming out and saying it. The sentence gently forces you to draw assumptions, subtly prompting your imagination to fill in the blanks.

This is more effective, not to mention easier to consume, than sharing a list of achievements that most readers will probably find boring.

One of the great secrets to persuasion is that people almost never doubt their own conclusions. A simple statement like the example above convinces us that the University of Chicago Medicine has a remarkable past of medical advancements, which makes a promising future seem almost inevitable.

All of that with no apparent effort to “sell” the idea to the reader.

Consider this: if the writer had tried to convince you of all the wonderful things that have been accomplished in the past, how would you have reacted. The mere attempt to convince is a turn-off. As Lord & Thomas Creed #1 says, “Too much effort makes men think that your selling task is hard.”

Strategic subtlety makes the quality of your product, service or brand seem to stand on its own. It’s so good that you don’t even need to explain it.

Where can you use subtlety in your sales copy to improve its persuasive power?