Posted on 7th May 2007 by Jade Handy in Persuasion |Selling Language
Here’s something interesting. This has come across my attention several times recently, so I thought I’d blog about it. In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell writes about how he meets someone at a restaurant (p.46) and the person recommends a change of seating to another table.
Then I remember reading about a womanizer whose main strategy is to get the women to change locations. This could mean moving to a different area of the place where they have just met, this could mean having the lady meet up with him at a subsequent club in the same evening, etc.
I’ve read and tested what I’ve read in sales literature that in a retail environment one of the toughest things to overcome is the fact that the prospect has just met you and therefore doesn’t feel that they know you. I’ve found that an effective technique to get a person to experience the subtle emotion of familiarity is to find a reason to leave the prospect a couple of times and and rejoin them. Any reason will do. Checking stock, giving them a moment to talk amongst themselves, helping another showroom visitor, etc.
I have found positive results from this. The first two examples, the restaurant and the womanizer seem to revolve more around controlling the actions of the other and the retail example is a more focused example.
Posted on 1st May 2007 by Jade Handy in Let's Talk About Language |Persuasion |Selling Language
Eating lunch today with highly successful sales person. We’ll call the person Will. Will was casually talking about how he approaches new prospects.
“I like to walk in, build relationships”
“Hey, you know, you don’t have time today, that’s fine. ‘Cause I have an appointment down the street. I just wanted to introduce myself, leave you my card, and see if I could come back [pause]this week.”
The next unscheduled visit. ”I do business with so and so and so and so and so and so and I was in the neighborhood and I’d just like to introduce myself and find out why we don’t have yours.”
Sounds innocent enough, and it is. He’s just “out building relationships.” But, his statement about not having time and inferring that he’s on a tight schedule is key to a persuasion strategy, all be it unconscious for this person, called time constraint.
It’s very similar to approaching a woman in a social environment and instead of giving signs that you’ll be lingering around all night until she gives up and gives you her number. If you were to say to her, “you know, I’m here with some friends so I don’t have time to talk, really, but I’d really like to talk to you a little bet more another time…” and then walk away, you’d likely get her curiousity as to why you aren’t pawning all over her.
OK, back to the sales example, this is also an important strategy if you want to build rapport with someone who you know is going to have the old excuse that they are busy and don’t have time to talk. Using this strategy paces how they are already thinking and puts their mind at ease about you.
Other examples of this are, “Hello, I have a 2:00 appointment next door, so I just stopped in to drop a card off and see if you’re available next Tuesday at 3:00 for a quick conversation about…,” or, “Hi, I don’t have a lot of time right now to tell you about how I can increase your cash on hand, so let me just give you my card and I’ll follow up this Friday,” or “Mr. Bill, Hi, I know you must be very busy so I’ll make this short. I just wanted to introduce myself briefly and follow up with you another time.”
