A Simple But Powerful Persuasion Technique To Get You More Sales In Your Business

My dad told me a story about his friend John(not his real name)he escorted to an electronics shop to buy a TV.

John wanted a huge flatscreen TV but when they got to the shop my dad was familiar with, the shopkeeper recommended that John take a small sony cathode-ray TV instead.

He wouldn’t explain why. He only told the buyers that they should trust him that he knew what he was talking about.

John got mad and went to the next shop because he felt that he hadn’t been given what he wanted. The shopkeeper at the next shop got both TVs and started listing their pros and cons.

Eventually, John bought the cathode ray TV from the second shopkeeper who had explained everything to him.

This story is a combination and application of;

1. The concept of damaging admission.
2. Driving attention with the power of “BUT”
3. The concept of damaging admission.

Damaging admission is the acknowledgment of the potential risks and/or drawbacks that a certain product or offer may have.

At first, it may seem that making a damaging admission is bad for business. You can see it with all the push-button systems and get-rich-quick schemes where the sellers downplay the risks and work that are involved in their offers.

In truth, making a damaging admission can actually increase your prospect’s trust in your offer because it allows you to be more honest than you otherwise would be.

Driving attention with the power of “BUT”

Using “but” to link the positives and negatives helps you control where your prospect’s attention is going because you will always direct your prospects’ attention to whatever follows the “but” statement.

Let’s look at examples and explanations of two statements containing a damaging admission and a reward.

If you sign up to work with me, you are going to make a tonne of money BUT it’s gonna be a lot of work, so many sleepless nights, you’ll have to sit through hundreds of hours of videos and you will need 4 hours a day that you are going to spend executing each of the things I have taught you.

If you sign up to work with me, your gonna go through hundreds of hours of video, your gonna work 5 hours a day executing on the stuff that I teach and you will also spend sleepless nights troubleshooting problems BUT your gonna make more money than you’ve ever made in your life.

Both statements are offering the same thing from the same person. The attention is however different.

• Statement 1: It was a positive statement followed by a negative statement.
• Statement 2: It was a negative statement followed by a positive statement.

Statement 2 will be a very effective statement because as much as we are building trust and being honest about our product or offer, we also want to keep the customer’s attention focused on the reward.

You do not want your prospects to ask you questions like “what’s the catch”. Nor do you want them to think that your product or offer is too good to be true.

Those prospects understand that you are not perfect and they also realize that if they take up the offer, there must be some level of work involved. Confirming that makes them trust you more and may influence them in making a purchase even if they were not initially willing to.

But you also need to keep their attention as this will prevent them from getting overwhelmed with all the risks there are to your product.

It not only protects your integrity but also builds trust and generates more sales for you in the process.