How to sell anything to anybody
This is part two of my China Workshops, see here for part one!
Open or closed?
Many people have no idea how to sell their products, their ideas or themselves. So today I got each person in turn to try and sell me the easiest possible item: chocolate cake!They nearly all failed in the first sentence. They let me say “no”.
As we are bombarded with sales people all the time we’re naturally conditioned to say “no” whenever we are given the chance. So the first person asked “Do you like chocolate cake?” “No, thank you, goodbye”. It took several people before they got why this wasn’t working. Any closed question i.e. one that can be answered with yes or no will always receive a “no”. Try it and see!
Although one girl did try hard by asking “With this chocolate cake you can get any hot girl. Do you want a hot girlfriend?” sadly we’ve all been conditioned to say “no” even though many of us would probably realise later we should have said yes!
So if you do ask any questions.they have to be open questions, i.e. where it’s impossible to say “no” because the language part of our brain won’t let us! What sort of chocolate do you like the best? Which of our gorgeous cakes would you like? How many lessons shall we book today?
Then one girl started down the “it’s very cheap, we have a promotion” track. This never works. The instant reaction is “oh, this mustn’t be good if it’s discounted. I don’t want chocolate cake that no one else wants”. Social proof, if it’s cheap other people mustn’t like it. Therefore I don’t like it.
Cost nor product matter at all!
The first thing is to realise that it doesn’t really matter what the cake is about nor how much it costs. All selling is is the transfer of emotion. Your job as a seller, especially online, is to get the image of the feeling that the product will bring firmly into the buyer’s mind. They have to see it, experience it, feel what it’s like to have this gorgeous, delicious, moist chocolate cake gently crumbling as you move the fork, passing the soft, fresh cream and the exotic wild strawberry jam layers. They have to imagine the luxurious taste as the first delicate chips of dark, fragrant chocolate caress your tongue. If your mouth is watering now, you want it. You don’t care what the cake is made of or what it costs, you want that feeling now!
It’s the same with anything you buy. You don’t buy a car because you want a car. What you buy is the feeling of freedom. Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee, they sell the energy and the feeling the ambience creates.
As a salesperson, and that’s what you are, you have to figure out what you are actually selling. What feeling you are selling. Then using words, images, videos you put the clear emotional image of this feeling in the customer’s head and you’ve made the sale. Every time.
Click here here for part one.