10MINMC.Ep11.V1
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[00:00:00] Persuasion isn't about pushing people, it's about pulling people in. And today we're gonna talk about the three techniques of persuasion that pull like none other.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass, your weekly Mic Drop for Business Breakthrough. I'm your host and lead MC Trey Sheneman, and each week on 10 Minute Masterclass, my goal, our goal, the team's goal here is to help you understand timeless business principles that can apply to today's business problems. Now, the way we walk through those principles and those problems is through a system that we call the core four drivers of growth.
No matter when I [00:01:00] was leading growth inside of some well-known organizations or taking my own startups to market like I'm doing right now with our company, Herald Growth for me always got connected down to our ability to solve problems in four core areas of the business, marketing, sales, operations, and leadership.
In today's episode, we're gonna drill down into that sales bucket and we're gonna talk about the art of persuasion. Now, on the last sales episode, we talked about the five emotions that I believe make everything more compelling, make people act faster, make people. Believe better about themselves and their future and their pro and the products that you're trying to sell them.
And we talked a lot about the right side of the brain versus the left side of the brain. We're gonna kind of double click in and go a little step further on this week's episode as we talk through the three pillars of persuasion that. I see work in selling. No, no matter where you are now, I've had a, you know, the, uh, the great opportunity to work for some incredible sales-based leaders [00:02:00] in my career.
And I would say the one that's at the top of the list is Dave Ramsey. And in the time the, about a little, almost four years that I gotta spend working over there, I got to see. The way that that organization approached sales, and it was really refreshing. Um, there was a lot around, um, serving as selling and not really selling as selling.
And that's what I wanna talk about today. I wanna talk about having the heart of a servant and when you're communicating from a sales standpoint and not thinking about, uh, your, the, the, the client as a number or a quota or anything of that nature. Uh, that nature, but thinking about them as a human being that has a legitimate problem or pain in their life that they're trying to solve.
And it's our job as those that are the communicating the sales side, whether that's e-commerce based selling, which is a lot of what we do at Harald, or if it's phone based selling, which, um, you know, we have, we do some of that at Harald. Too. Many of our clients have phone-based sales teams or Zoom based selling, which is a huge way in today's world.
I really wanna talk to [00:03:00] you about the human psychology side of persuading. Someone from a place of wanting to serve them well, rather than just trying to overwhelm them and sell 'em. And so we gotta keep in mind that when we're doing this correctly, people ultimately, um, are gonna justify their purchase with logic.
But most of the time they're really gonna buy based off of the emotional connection that they feel to the product or service. And so really, really good salespeople, salespeople that are focused on serving. Aren't necessarily doing what they're doing to convince people they're doing what they're doing to help people conclude it on their own.
And that's super nuanced, but that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So we do need our offers and our positioning, and our frames and our posture and our communication tactics. Like we need all these things to be persuasive. Um. Because if it's not persuasive though, if we just have a great product, but we can't communicate that value of that product really well with how we talk about it, it's just gonna be a really good product that sits on, its on its shelf though, so, so it's a ba [00:04:00] it's a bit of a balancing act between.
The way that we sell and what it is that we're selling. So the three things that I focus on when I'm selling, so that I, I come off as someone who's trying, who really is genuinely trying to serve his customers, are these three things, authority, contrast, and commitment. So let's walk through 'em. So with authority.
The first thing that we want to do in order to be serving people is we don't just want to be an expert on our product. We want to be an authority. And I think the difference between experts and authority is, is authorities teach from a place of wanting people to have the value that they've experienced around the thing.
Transfer to them. Experts just talk. So experts talk, authorities teach. It's like this. It's like if you had the chance to trust somebody's opinion between some random YouTuber or Warren Buffett. On what to do with the market. I think we would all say if Warren Buffett's gonna talk to me about what to do with the market, I'm probably gonna gonna take his word for it.
'cause Warren b Buffett is more than an expert. He's an authority. Uh, he, his, his [00:05:00] figurehead is like undoubted in the, in the place. And so. I think as salespeople, we need to become viewed as authorities on the industry with which our product is being sold in. And so how do we do that? How, how do we, how do we take our brand, our our sales team?
How do we make them become not just experts, but authorities, but number one. We should really focus on social proof. We should have social proof all over our landing pages, all on our sales collateral. A lot of that, don't take my word for it, take their word for it, and really beefing up case studies, testimonials, endorsements, things of that nature.
We also should focus even as salespeople on creating content in and around the problems that our product solves from a place of wanting to teach and to educate and to serve. First of in, of putting that value out into the world. And if we do this in the right way, what's naturally gonna happen in the minds of our prospects is we are gonna become the natural logical choice.
Uh, it's, it's just an, it's a byproduct of when you have created enough value and become big enough authority, or there [00:06:00] really isn't. A ton of competition for you anymore. So authority to me is the biggest lever in the path to better persuasion in your sales. After authority, we have contrast. So contrast is where we actually make the decision a bit more obvious for our clients in the way that we build the comparisons out to value.
Um, many brands will do good, better, best pricing where they're creating contrast in their own offers so that people kind of funnel to the middle. That's normally why you would do a good, better and best pricing is you really wanna funnel people. To the better. Um. People tend to choose that. A lot of your subscription companies will do kind of stacked pricing like that.
Um, even Netflix in the last couple of years has evolved their pricing around contrast. If you think about it now, it's how many screens do you want to be able to have your subscription on? Do you want it on one screen, three screens, five screens? And so price goes up. We've got a, we've got a membership, um, brand that we advise right now in the travel space and theirs is, do you wanna rent a two bedroom house, a four bedroom house, [00:07:00] or a five bedroom house?
It's contrast. So contrast is another way to be persuasive because it, what, what I find is when people only give people two options, which those two options are either you buy my product or you don't. Our conversion rates are just gonna be really low. They're gonna be much lower than they need to be. But if we give them a contrasting set of options, do you wanna buy this product or that product or that product?
Or not. A lot of the time when we give people the, the, uh, propensity of choice, they're gonna take us up on it. So being able to use contrast in that manner is a huge way to driving your, your a uh, your authority up to driving your conversion rate up. So whether that's before and after as a contrast, or the comparison charts that I talked about earlier are using price anchor, price anchoring with, um, you know, good, better, best kind of pricing, whatever you're gonna do.
Add some contrast into the positioning around what you're selling. And then lastly, commitment. What are the small incremental steps we could get somebody to take to have them buy before they buy? Um, you know, I [00:08:00] worked on a product for a while called Every Dollar, which was a budgeting software, and we ran a free trial model, but we were constantly tinkering with.
Was it a seven day trial? Was it a 14 day trial? Was it a 28 day trial? When you came into the trial, was it full access? Was it partial access? Um, so a lot of people will do trials as a way to do this. Another way to think about this, um, is to use assessments or quizzes where you get people to share a fair amount of the information about themselves.
Be because before people are gonna give us their money, the first sets of currency that they're gonna give us are their attention. And their trust, then they're gonna give us their money. And so if we're thinking about those micro commitments that we want somebody to make along the way, an assessment or a quiz is a great way to get somebody leaning in our direction as a brand to almost pre-sell them before they actually bite off the, the, the final purchase.
So what are those low frick or low friction micro commitments you can get a brand to make that's gonna actually have them, um. You have that [00:09:00] customer kind of stepping your direction. It's sort of a form of progressive engagement, is the way that I would say it. So again, let's recap. If you wanna be more persuasive, there are three pillars to being more persuasive authority.
You wanna make sure that you're not just being an expert, that you're being an becoming an authority. Do that. By sharing a lot of social proof, uh, contrast, how are you actually going to give people a range of choice inside of your offer, inside of your sales process, and then micro commitments. So how can you get a customer to start to do some progressive engagement in your direction and to give you their attention and their trust before they give you their money?
If you can focus on working those things into your sales techniques, I think you're gonna find your conversion rates are gonna go up. And if that's an area of your business that you'd love somebody to be a second set of eyes to take a look at how you're actually scripting. How your, your, your landers that are, your sales pages are, are framed, you know, what your, uh, your cadences are with your sales team.
Something we'd love to do at Herald. So give us a call. We'd be happy to jump in and take a look. Alright. So [00:10:00] again. We wanna make sure that if you're gonna focus on the core four drivers of growth, you gotta have an answer in all four buckets. Today's episode was about having another answer in the sales bucket.
I really hope you'll apply some of these things to your business this week. If you get stuck on anything, feel free to shoot me a DM on LinkedIn. You could email me at [email protected]. I'd be happy to jump in and take a look with you. We're always so grateful you spend time with us on each and every week of 10 Minute Masterclass, and until next time.
We'll see you on the flip side.
