One can imagine what might happen when experts in any given field get together. One expectation might be some very powerful ideas and possibly some dynamic new ideas!

 

Guess what, several experts and competitors did get together and put their ideas on paper.

 

Today we’ll take some of that material and give it to you in this article.

 

If you wish to persuade others, sell more effectively and lead others, read on…..

 

So we have Kevin Hogan, Dave Lakhani and Gary May publishing a new book on Selling and Persuasion.

 

What would be one concept or idea you could use today from their material? Here is one.

 

The concept of visualizing or imaging has been known for years, perhaps hundreds of years. Our question is how are we using it?

 

One key that all three experts utilize is establishing a vision or image in the customers mind as soon as possible. That is, get them seeing the situation and possibly the results of a good choice as soon as you can.

 

Take this test yourself. When you start a conversation, sales call or persuasion process, do you start with talking about you, your company, your product or idea or all three?

 

What we find is that many salespeople, managers and leaders approach their persuasion this way. What do our experts suggest?

 

1. Once you have the initial pleasantries out of the way, and possibly even before, one needs to engage the other party in creating a picture of what might be possible.

 

What does this mean?

 

Gary May is in the phone system business in the UK. The growth and market share his group has captured in the past couple of years would make any entrepreneur go WOW!

 

Gary had hooked up with Kevin Hogan as his mentor. From that experience Gary trained his sales team to ask the type of questions that have their potential buyers thinking about the future and the end results they would like to see.

 

One of Gary’s salespeople would ask questions like:

What would it be like to have the perfect phone system for your organization?

If you could design the best communications system for your team and customers, how would it work?

No holds barred, how would you want your system to be working in the future?

If you could imagine your future with the perfect communications system, how would your organization be different a year from now?

 

Now note, the focus of these questions are not on your product, company or idea. They are focused on getting the customer to think about what they would like to see and gets them visualizing those results.

 

This is at the beginning of the persuasion process, not the middle or end!

 

With some short follow-up and clarification questions they get more detail and help the customer get an even clearer vision of their future.

 

Before we have even started to persuade, the customer has described what they want in detail, is visually seeing it and emotionally involved!

 

2. With some additional questions the persuader can then help the customer detail the criteria they would have to have met in order to make a choice. Of course this criteria needs to be clarified through some additional questioning. Also the persuader is taking notes!

 

            (Dr. Jonas trained his top people to do this and increased their sales some 20%)

 

3. Now the persuader asks an important question.

If there were a system that would accomplish this while meeting all your criteria how would the decision be made to take advantage of it? Or variations of this.

 

(In our book The Selling Gap we call this the “Conceptual Close”.)

 

Now the persuader has the customer agreeing to go ahead and the terms and process that will be needed to do so.

 

Note, you have also clarified the decision process!

Note, no product or sales pressure to buy, yet the customer is already taking ownership!

 

4. Now the persuader again applies the visualization or image tool in describing how their proposal will meet all the criteria while repainting the customers vision, only using the new solution.

 

There are plenty of pictures, color, sounds and other sensual triggers in the image. The customer is the hero and feels the positive emotional aspects of the new choice. 

 

5. Closing is simply asking if they want the picture to come true!

 

How many are going to say no or balk?

 

You have just eliminated most of the resistance and objections! If some objections do come up, you have the customers own visualization to help overcome them.

 

Now this is a very quick overview of a fairly complicated process that requires mastery of several skills. Reading body language, listening, questioning and story telling are a few of the skill sets.

 

Should you want more of this type of advanced persuasion and selling concepts? Get a copy of the new book. Selling, Powerful New Strategies for Sales Success.

 

The book includes several chapters provided by 6 different contributing experts. All of these experts are from the front line and the concepts have been tried and proven!

 

Want to persuade a group, there is a full chapter just on group dynamics and how to persuade.

 

To repeat the key concept from previous articles:

“It’s not about you, It’s about them!”

 

We’ll provide more concepts from this material in future articles, but for now, get your own copy for your library.

 

By the way, how would getting information from some 40 experts on business, sales and persuasion help you and your goal achievement? There is a short window of opportunity to get some great bonuses along with the book!

 

Give the idea above a try; you may just astound yourself at its power!

 

Till next week; keep pushing your boundaries, that’s where success is!

 

Harlan Goerger, National Director of Training

 

© Harlan Goerger 11-07
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