Nobody likes people who take advantage of you. This is probably the reason why sellers are so badly regarded. Most businessmen I know don’t want “sellers” on their business cards (although strictly speaking they are). Everybody wants the customer to buy, but nobody wants to be a seller themselves. Or at least no one wants to be associated with the unpleasant aspects of selling. “They are only interested in their own goals” … “Sellers are manipulators who are not interested in the well-being of the customer” … We all know these sentences. In this article you will therefore learn how to develop your sales strategy in such a way that it works in the long term.
Most traditional sales and marketing strategies are very simply structured. In comparison, as if you would say “Sexual intercourse pleasing?” during a flirt in the second or third sentence. Even if the offer is preceded by a dialogue, it often comes too early and flat. The supplier is not really interested in getting to know his customer and understanding what he wants, but only in making his offer and completing it as quickly as possible.
First give, then give, later give more and only then take.
What happens when you really please me? How do I react if you give me special attention? It’s like you would react if someone congratulates you on your birthday whose birthday you’ve never thought about before.
Basically, there are two possibilities:
- You belong to the group of psychopaths. Then you don’t care if you are emotionally guilty.
- You feel a certain obligation to compensate for the previous attention. You want to restore balance.
This reflex is called “reciprocity”. The great majority of people want to balance their debts. If you think of me for my birthday and write me a card (a real card – no cat picture on Facebook), then I intend to give it back. Who gives, thereby quite often triggers the impulse with the beneficiary to return the favor. This is one of the reasons why donations to civil servants are illegal. It’s called bribery because someone who’s received a lot could give something in return, even though they should be neutral and uninfluenced.
The American psychologist Roberto Chialdini has studied the methods of manipulation and influencing several times and has written several books on them, one of which is “The Psychology of Persuasion”.
Helpfulness is legal bribery
This impulse is something you can take advantage of by first giving without expecting any direct consideration. If you obviously only give to be immediately rewarded, it becomes transparent and does not work. But if you give several times without expecting a direct return, you trigger a strong commitment. How can you legally offer knowledge, tips, hints and valuable information without consideration and thereby improve your business opportunities? How can you put the principle of “give, give, give and only then take” into practice?
We’ve discussed how important it is to have the right audience in mind, understand their problems, and provide effective solutions to them. Through this offer of solutions you will become known to your target group. As you deliver more and more valuable content, your target person starts to like it and finally, because the solutions offered are actually helpful and regularly get more of it, they start to trust you.
Who trusts strangers?
When I discuss this development from knowing to liking to trust for the first time with people who do not know the principle, they are initially sceptical. You can literally see that they think: “You can’t get around me that easily! I don’t trust anyone so quickly! But is that true? Please think of the news or another daily news broadcast on television or radio. Suppose you are a regular viewer of the Tagesschau. You are now familiar with the speakers. Although you have never met them, you develop a feeling of knowing them. Over time, you will get used to the voices and may even start to like the people on your TV screen. After a short time, you will develop confidence and accept as fact everything the speaker reads as a message.
I experienced a similar effect with my podcast. Since January 2014, I have regularly published a new episode of my podcast once a week. The podcast is aimed at people who sell to business customers on a professional basis. You can expect a new episode every Monday at 7am. More than 25,000 episodes are heard every month. Differently than radio the Podcast is not only Monday at 7 o’clock available. Every episode is available as long as I want it to be, and it can still be heard by my listeners later. This is how a lot of people became aware of my podcast.
They have become accustomed to hearing it on longer car rides or during sports. These listeners develop the feeling of knowing me. It often happens to me at trade fairs or at public appearances that people who are strangers approach me and behave as if we were good acquaintances. The explanation for it results then fast in the discussion, if these strange humans clear me up over the fact that they are faithful Podcast listeners and ?fans? of my free contributions and Tipps for the professional selling to business customers.