Bertha's Blog: The Simple Tricks to Make Your Customers Say Yes

Want to lure your customer towards purchasing your product without acting like a typical salesperson? Here are some of the tricks to help you make your customer accept your request, naturally.

For every second in their 8 to 12 hour per day job, sales people are selling something. It’s their job to make their customer say “yes”, but the point is no matter how much customers would love product, they never like being sold to. What if you make them accept your request in a natural, un-salesy way?

Robert B. Cialdini, a renowned psychologist and marketing specialist, in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion has presented six principles of persuasion. These tips are very effective for the marketers and here in this post, I am going to elaborate all the principles individually.

1. Reciprocity

This entails the desire of people to reciprocate when something good is done to them. They feel indebted to the doers until they return the favor. All that sales people have to do is to take the first step. Give them anything valuable: information, free samples, gifts, or simply a positive experience> They’ll return your favor by following the desired action.

Cialdini says, “When customers come into a candy store if they’re given a chocolate at the beginning, they are 42% more likely to buy in that store because they feel obligated to give back to someone who has given to them”

People, when receiving a surprise gift, are more prone to listen to your sales pitch, services, tip more money to a waiter, or donate to a cause. You do not need to empty your wallet for the gift. Favors and information can be great.

2. Liking

Have you ever bought an item just because your favorite celeb endorsed it? Many people have. Some credit Nike’s fame and fan following to celebrity endorsements in its advertisements. The usage of company’s slogan “Improve your game with Nikefootball. Are you ready for the elite?” accompanied by the collage of 50 famous football players from various International teams on every box took its liking to the next level.

The main idea is that people are more inclined to buy from people they like; it’s one of the reasons why celebrities are brand ambassadors of famous brands.

Besides liking, acquaintance can be useful too. In 2005, Randy Garner sent surveys to people he didn’t know, requesting that recipients return them. The results reported that the recipients with a similar-sounding name were twice more likely to fill out the survey versus those with different sounding names.

Now, how would you make your prospect like you?

One of the things you can do, according to Cialdini, is to find the common ground with your customer. Discover valued characteristics about your customer and express your respect towards them. This will help you get your customers’ attention and you’ll soon find your customers echoing them back to you.

Takeaway: Try to be positive with your customers. Don’t defame your competitors, when promoting your services or highlight anything bad that has been occurred within the industry.

“There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news. The simple association with it is enough to stimulate our dislike.”

― Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

3. Authority:

People want to buy from actual experts. Your customer would be more prone to say yes when you justify what you’re selling with evidence of your integrity, credentials, and competency. Prove that your product is worth buying, and that it has been serving your present customers well.

How would you look authoritative? A prolonged client-base wouldn’t do it alone. You should have a professional appearance and percept as well. Impressive business names and professional attire are effective in making you look more credible and increase the probabilities for your customers to accept the requests.

4. Social proof:

how to help your customers say yes

People like what others like. Have you ever thought why retailers like Amazon, eBay, or Home Depot highlight their bestselling products on the website? It’s because showing the products that are sold the most creates an emotional response with many website visitors. It even lures some of the confused visitors to convert. That is what we call social proof.

Why does this work? When people are confused as to whether they should act in a certain way or not, they observe what others are doing in the same situation.

I worked as an online chat agent and sales correspondent for two years in a design agency. My job demanded me to deal with many different clients every day. Jane was one of my sweetest clients. A few months after the completion of her project, out of nowhere, she requested a refund for the logo design I sold to her (because her new business partner felt that the design is not appealing). A negative social review.

Since her project had been successfully completed, I knew she wouldn’t get a refund from the company. I didn’t want to break this news to her, so I tried to solve the problem on my own and told her that her design is so amazing (that it actually was). I further added that I used her logo as recent work to impress many of my clients and achieved my sales target, eventually.

P.S. It was not a malicious attempt; her logo was actually a masterpiece.

Result: Jane started to find her logo appealing once again just because it was being socially admired and I retain my friendly association with her.

5. Scarcity:

Make your product a limited edition, or soon-to-be scarce. The less there is of your product, the more valuable it will be considered. The reason why you get so many emails from companies promoting their “limited time offers” is that people want to get things that wouldn’t be available anymore to others in future. The strategy works even if companies keep on presenting the same offer month after month after month!

Phrases like “Don’t miss this opportunity…”, “our offer is ending soon”, “Here’s something you’ll miss out soon…” can be helpful. You can also apply restraints over the supply, like free or X% Off on memberships for the first 100 applicants.

If your product is different from others that are already ruling the market, try to emphasize its unique traits to increase the impression of its scarcity.

6. Commitment and consistency:

Customers say yes when they observe commitment and consistency in your words, attitudes, and actions. You should act in line with what you have already done or said publicly.

If you make a commitment and stay consistently great in fulfilling those commitments, you made customers trust you. The commitments can be about anything like delivering quality services, meeting expectations, sticking to deadlines, just to name a few.

The reason why upselling to a previous, satisfied customer is easy because they believe that their experience with your company will be as good as the previous one. Similarly, unsatisfied clients won’t buy from you. That is the power of consistency.

Go for the little commitments at first and then earn your customer’s trust by keeping up the consistency. For instance, if you run a shop that houses different types of furniture, ask your prospects to complete a simple questionnaire to gauge their interest. Maybe they prefer comfort over price or the other way round. You can use the findings to adjust your commitments to them. For the comfort advocates, you can promise highly comfortable and cushiony sofas. Similarly, for those looking for affordability, you can guarantee the best-priced chairs and cabinets. Once you have made the commitment, you can fortify it to make large-scale offers.

To sum up

We are living in a world full of sales people using baffling sales pitches. It’s time to be simple now. Sales is all about storytelling but make sure your story is comprehensive, short, influential and, most importantly, true. It’s much to ask from a simple story to be all this, but you can take baby steps towards incorporating these tips, tricks, hacks, strategies or whatever you call them in your practices. If you know more tips that are effective in persuading your customers to say yes, do share them with us in the comments below.