How can persuasive words help me in my sales you may be asking ?
As salespeople we operate predominantly with language.
Have you ever seriously studied language ?
I didn't until the latter part of my sales career and it offered some valuable lessons.
After all, I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said,
"Give me twenty-six faithful soldiers and I will conquer the world"
Using words that sell is the secret to making many more sales than you've made in the past.
Did you know that .."BECAUSE"..is a very persuasive word ?
An experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer proved the point.
A well-known principle of human behaviour says that when we ask someone to do us a favour we will be more successful if we provide a reason.
People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favour of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine:
"Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush ?"
The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total:
94 percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.
Compare this success rate to the results when she made the following request ?
"Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine ?"
Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied.
At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words "because I'm in a rush."
But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case.
It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one,"because," that made the difference.
Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer's third type of request used the persuasion word "because" and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious:
"Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?"
The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance.
This above experiment comes from the book "Influence" by Robert Cialdini.
Now why would BECAUSE prove to be such persuasive word ?
Well, do you remember when you were a child and like most children at some stage you would have become obsessed with the question "Why ? ",
" but why mummy ?"
and repeated the question endlessly.
Now mum probably answered for a while, until her patience ran out, at which point she probably said
" OH ! Just BECAUSE ...."
Turn negative persuasive words into positive ones ?
" yes .. but "
..............for most of my life in sales I was told
"Don't use "yes..but"!"
But works against you if you are trying to be persuasive with your customer.
You see, " but " negates everything that has been said before it.
It works like a mental eraser.
Imagine saying to your spouse,
" You look beautiful in that but …"
( look out !! Be very careful what your next words are !! )
"You have done a great job on that proposal but …"
How would you feel if your boss came up to you and said that, ?
Perhaps, like the next words would be,
" ... I want you to do it all again " .
So, if I can't use "yes ...but" what do I use ?
Well, I was taught to use the "AND Sequence".
If you don't know what the "AND Sequence" is just contact me via the coaching page on this site with "AND Sequence"in the title and I'll send you a report describing what it is and how to use it.
OK, we're going to be the good guys and not use "yes ...but", but what do I do when my customer says "yes... but" to me ?
You can turn "but" around when it's used on you.
Remember "but" rubs out all that's come before it in an utterance.
Here's a good example in a home situation.
" Darling, would you like to go out to dinner ?"
" I'd love to go out for dinner but I'm very tired ",
( assuming you want to go out, you say )
" Oh, you're very tired but you'd love to go out to dinner "
( and say the "love to go out for dinner" with feeling )
Turning the phrase around like this leaves your spouse with going out as the last thing in their head. And the "but" erases the thought of being tired.
This gives you a much better chance of getting out to dinner.
The idea would be to try out some of these persuasive words and see how effective they are for you. There are many more persuasive words that sell apart from the two I've covered in this article.
You'll find some of them covered in other articles on this site.
The more artfully you use your language with persuasive words that sell the more sales you'll generate.
If you want some words that will help you be more persuasive grab a copy of my report below and start having more influence right now.