Make The Sale With These Tips On Being Insanely Persuasive

Have you ever pitched a prospect on a product or service that you knew would be great for their business, but got nowhere? If you’re like me, when you have these challenges, what’s the first thing you do?

Try to figure out what went wrong, right?

That’s what I did. Early on in my career, I’d spend hours trying to figure out what I did wrong so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. I still continue to push myself to better understand the dynamics of prospect relationships and the trends that lead to a dead end. Over time, this analysis has allowed me to figure out how to be much more persuasive and ultimately be a better communicator.

Before you can start closing deals and offering great value to your prospects, you need to understand the importance of persuasion. Persuasion is a natural form of communication that allows one person to influence the perceptions and thoughts of another. You also need to recognize that persuasion and manipulation are not the same thing. Here are three tips that will help you in becoming more persuasive when making a sale:

Listen More Than You Speak

Insanely persuasive people are constantly listening more than they are talking. They focus on every word you’re saying and look to find key messages within your dialogue that can help them better tell their story and communicate effectively. Sure, these folks are able to articulate their vision and value in a convincing way, but they recognize that what comes out of their mouth is only one piece of the puzzle.

Focus On A Establishing Rapport

It’s easy to make the mistake of believing that people make decisions based on reason and logic. It’s something that we’d like to believe we do, but a number of research studies show that people make decisions based on emotion and rapport. In other words, focus on establishing a sense of commonality between you and the prospect while also building an authentic relationship.

It’s easy to ignore someone who you don’t feel connected to. It’s even easier to ignore someone trying to persuade you when you have no emotional connection to their product or value their offering. People who are insanely persuasive recognize this truth and strive to establish rapport early on in the conversation to establish a sense of shared objectives and goals. If you can align your value proposition with a prospects wants and needs while building a personal connection, you’ll be 10x more likely to close a deal.

Sell An Experience Not The Features

If you have worked in sales long enough, you will have probably heard the idea of selling an experience. It basically states that if you want to sell something, your pitch should focus on the benefits and overall experience of your product to potential customers, and not on its features. Not everyone understands this concept so let me explain.

Instagram as a photo-sharing app isn’t cool. The ability to share some of your most memorable experiences in real-time with thousands of your connections across multiple channels is cool.

That’s the experience that Instagram offers people. Far too often do I hear marketers and sales professionals talking about their offering from the perspective of the features. Instead, they should be focusing on the value as it relates to the overarching experience and how those results will come to life.

Sales is like any other profession where the only way to get better is to practice and learn from experience. Take these tips and use them the next time you’re looking to close a deal. My hope is that this blog post will help you become insanely persuasive so you can achieve your goals and objectives for the upcoming year.

What do you think? Am I full of it? Any other tips?