The 5 Secrets

The 5 Secrets to Uniquely Influence Your Customer

WIIFM

I was attempting to influence my eldest son Lewis recently, to cut the lawn. His first reaction was “what do I get Dad?” He was after some cash for the job and fair play he asked me straight.

My favourite radio station broadcasting from West Indies Island. WIIFM. Not really it stands for “What’s in it for me?” This should be engraved on your palm as a salesperson and whenever we meet a potential customer or someone we want to influence, we need to imagine they’re asking this question continuously. Only then can we make sure we meet their needs with our proposal or solution.

And apparently the going rate for lawn cutting is £10. That’s what my son told me anyway.

1st, 2nd, 3rd Position

I’ve never travelled on a rollercoaster. Honest, I know it sounds remarkable, but I’ve never had the courage to climb in the small cab and ride the heart wrenching and stomach churning experience.

Until one afternoon over Christmas when my daughter dared me to get on the ride at Poulton’s Park. Now if you ever want to motivate me to do something, you only need to dare me. I think it’s hard wired into most men.

I watched Bethan first and thought I’d use the 1st, 2nd, 3rd position that we use all the time when selling. Now this clever little technique helps you see, feel and fully understand what it’s like for someone else and in sales, is a really useful way of exploring the customer’s point of view.

1st position is where you look at things through your own eyes and as I stared at Bethan on the rollercoaster all I could think of was fear, trepidation, how foolish, help!
2nd position is where you step out of your shoes and move into the customer’s shoes and look at things through this person’s eyes, in other words see and feel their point of view. So I tried this and moved into Bethan’s shoes. Initially I could still feel my fear and trepidation, but I kept at it and began to see how she saw the ride. She was smiling and cheering, so loud I could hear her from where I was standing. As she approached the top of the loop just before she was to plunge downwards at breath-taking speed, her look was of apprehension but total excitement. She was enjoying the thrill of the ride and I started to feel what this was like for her.

3rd position is where you stand back, disassociate yourself from both viewpoints and look objectively at the situation. With customers, we get to see their views and yours in tandem. On the rollercoaster I could see Bethan’s viewpoint, mine and the other passengers on the coaster. I guess I realised that everyone seemed to be having fun and that this miserable 45 year old father was seeing the rollercoaster in a very blinkered way.

And did I enjoy it? Yes I did, and I had to go on it again and again. In fact since it wasn’t too busy I went on the same ride 3 times and Bethan now thinks her Dad is real cool. So next time you really want to appreciate your customer’s point of view, go from 1st position, to 2nd and then finally to 3rd position.

Values and Criteria

Everyone has heard of values and beliefs – we all have them. But did you know how engrained they are in people.

A little analogy for you. Imagine a harbour, a natural harbour with buoys scattered to direct boat movements showing the deep water areas and shallows. Now focus on the buoy and see how it floats and moves with the tide and wind. Look below the surface of the water and you’ll notice that it’s tied to the harbour floor with an anchor but the rope does allow for some movement to cope with the tides.

Here comes the analogy. The anchor on the harbour floor won’t move and provides the stability for the buoy. The anchor represent’s your customer’s values, beliefs in other words the global descriptions that determine how they behave in their world. A need to trust people, a belief in being true and having integrity. Its doesn’t matter what they are, everyone has them. However their behaviour may vary and this is represented by the buoy which floats and moves but is kept fairly stable by the anchor and rope.
Now in sales we need to find out about our customer’s values and how these relate to the product or service that we’re selling. We need to find our customer’s criteria.
Criteria is specific to the customer and the product or service and it’s how they relate their values and beliefs to the things they buy.

So how can we find these?

“What is important to you regarding a life office consultant?”
“What are you looking for personally, in a relationship with my life office?”
Listen carefully to the answer and you’ll gain an insight into their personal preferences and how we can really tailor our proposition.

The 5 ultimate persuasion techniques

In his latest book “Buying Traces”, Dr Joe Vitale talks about the 5 keys ultimate persuasion techniques. These are really powerful and have been used by Cult Leaders, political dictators and many ruthless individuals to ensure the following of thousands of people.

In a B2B selling situation, it’s unlikely you’ll use any of these, but I thought I’d show you anyway. Just in case.

People will do anything for you if you:

1. Allay their fears
2. Help them throw rocks at their enemies
3. Confirm their suspicions
4. Encourage their dreams
5. Justify their failures

But hold on, don’t we all have common enemies that both we and our customers have a moan about – the weather, the taxman, the FSA. And don’t we help customers to achieve their goals and growth objectives and I guess we encourage their dreams. And if they’re wary of using our service or product, do we not overcome their concerns to help them become more comfortable?

Perhaps we’re cut out to be a cult leader after all.

The 2 Influencing Keys

I’m going to give you 2 keys that you can assess with all your customers and once you’ve established them, you can use the keys to open your customer up to really understand them and be able to present your products or services to totally match their requirements…and in the language and style that’s really motivating for them.

Towards and Away From

Do you move towards an objective, or away from problems to be solved or prevented?
Several years ago now I injured my back bathing my small children. Good grief it was painful and the doctor recommended I started an exercise routine. A few years’ later I was in the changing room of the gym I belonged to chatting to some fellas about what makes them go to the gym. The chap next to me felt his wife didn’t fancy him anymore as he’d put on weight dramatically and so he was motivated away from losing his wife. The other chap wanted to look good on the beach that summer and was looking towards a goal. I didn’t want that excruciating pain ever again to happen to me. I am an away from person.

You see people are either motivated to go towards things or away from. Towards their goals or away from pain. In a B2B environment it’s essential we find our customer’s preference as this will help us to influence them subtly. Then ensure your compelling proposal is worded in a way that it matches their preference.

Big chunk/small chunk

Are you a big chunk person or a small chunk individual? Before you seek me out to punch me on the nose, read on.

I vividly remember attending a team building course a few years ago. I was put into a team of four people and we were given a large bag of children’s play dough, some washable paint, straws, twigs, a plastic mat and many other Blue Peter style items. There were about ten other similar sized teams in a very large hall.

Our job, for a few hours, was to build a model island on the floor and decide on the overall strategy for this new community.

Typically with these team games, it took about twenty minutes to begin to ‘gel’ with the other members. We slapped the play dough on the mat and began to mould our island, painting forests and creating ports for supplies, helicopter landing pads, defence areas with anti aircraft guns (we were all boys!) etc.

Two of the guys in the group lost interest in this creative side of constructing the island and began to talk about our role in the sea of islands in the big room. What were we going to do to be able to trade, what goods could we export, how would we be ruled, what is the island’s purpose? Meanwhile myself and the other chap had great fun filling in the detail of our island, creating housing complexes, deep water reservoirs for fresh water, road systems etc.

We’d slipped into our natural roles of big and small picture people and got the job done.
The big chunk person likes to look at the big picture in order to get a clear impression before making a decision. A small chunk person will want all the details and scrutinise the figures with a fine toothcomb.

The higher up the company’s hierarchy you go, people get bigger in their chunk size but this isn’t always the case. Be careful with detail people that you give them the information they need to make decisions and beware you don’t over do the points with big chunk people. Top line, summaries, executive summaries are ideal here.

So there we have 5 secrets to help you uniquely influence your customers – WIIFM, the west coast radio station broadcasting out of LA; 1st, 2nd, 3rd position and my rollercoaster ride; values and criteria anchored to the ocean floor; Joe Vitale’s ultimate secrets where all I can see now is a rock hurtling towards a bad guy and finally the 2 influencing keys where a rather large boulder is heading towards the same bad guy.

Paul is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK.

He specialises in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small.

Sign up to my weekly Sales and Coaching tips and get a free report on getting the best out of 2009 plus a free hypnotic relaxation MP3 to download.

www.archertraining.co.uk

01452 730276

paul@paularcher.com

Blog – www.paularcher.com

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