Arm yourself with compelling reasons for your customers to believe.

Take RICHARD PETRIE'S test of your powers of persuasion. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to answer the three simple questions below. If you dare.

Ready?

If I were to ask you: “What makes your product better than the rest?” what would your answer be?
Can you answer that question quickly, clearly and compellingly? You can. Okay, let’s go a level deeper and see how you fare. What if I were to ask your newest salesperson: “What makes your product better?” What would their answer be? If you are still two from two here is the real test. What if I asked your most recent client: “What made their product better than all of the competition?” What would their answer be? How deep could you go before your advantages got lost in translation?

Unless all three answers are the same, confusion reigns supreme as to why someone would choose your fine products and services. Because confusion and lack of clarity in communicating your advantages means potential sales slipping down the bath plughole while you are pouring financial resources through the taps.

Here is another question. What ultimately happens if your client cannot quickly understand why they would choose you over your raft of competitors? Answer: You end up being a commodity, competing on price and relying on the relationship building skills of your salespeople (who will often leave you, taking your client list with them, for a few thousand dollars more than you pay, to work for your competitor down the road).
Having your UCA (unique client advantage) not just clearly communicated by all staff but heard, understood and revered by your clients is the most important job in business.

Want to know how to insert beliefs in people? Thought you might! First, let me tell you how beliefs get formed. You need to realise that a belief is nothing more than a feeling of certainty. They are not the truth or anything so strong.

How are beliefs built? Just like a table. Imagine you have a table top standing waist height in front of you. What is holding the table top up? Legs of course. What happens if you take the legs away – the table top collapses. Well, beliefs are just the same because we use reasons (subjective proof) to support our beliefs. What happens if enough of the evidence we use gets snapped in half like a weak leg on a table… the belief collapses faster than a Helen Clark limousine.

Here is the secret of top persuaders – to collapse a belief you do not attack the belief but the reasons or proof or legs holding the belief table up. “David Bain is guilty because reasons 1-2-3-4-5.” Then Joe Karam comes along and breaks each leg one by one until the case against David Bain collapses (or at least is wobbly enough to fall).

How does this apply in selling? With enough reasons (proof) you can sell belief in your product – the hardest game in town for the marketers and sales people.

Let me give you some examples. The soft drink market is very hard to break into because the drinkers are incredibly loyal. When Slice soft drink launched they claimed the taste was superior because it contains 10 per cent fruit juice. Just a little reason in the headline – the 10 per cent fruit juice – to justify why it tastes better than the average drink.

In a category that’s known for a frightening failure rate among new entrants, Slice grabbed 7 per cent of a $30 billion-a-year soft drink market. Nowadays that same market is probably worth more than $50 billion per year. That means that right out from that start, Slice created $2 billion a year in sales on the back of this one little proof element, 10 per cent fruit juice. Test it and see what difference it makes. Try taking the reason away, and what do you have? “Slice, a better-tasting soft drink.” Nothing there but a bland claim.
With the 10 per cent fruit juice, if you’re a soft drink aficionado, you think, maybe I’ll try it. There’s a good reason to.

Here are some more examples:
“25% Off Sale!” We’ve all seen 25 per cent off sales and, by and large, they slide off your mind like a slippery eel. But give it a reason why and look what happens. Imagine if you say instead: “25% Off Beds Due To Leaking From The Roof.” This ad was run and they sold beds so fast they had to go off and drip more water on beds so they could continue to claim more water damaged beds were available.

See what a difference that makes? If I’m going to buy a bed, I don’t care if the base had a minor wet patch on it last week. The reason why – the leaky roof – gives me a rationale to buy into it, a believable explanation of why I might really get 25 per cent off, rather than just another common-variety, totally unbelievable and unmotivating “Easter price sale.”

“Kleenex towels absorb 50 per cent morebecause they’re two layers thick.” “Well okay, I understand that,” you say to yourself. You are persuaded by the claim because it gives you its proof element, its reason why, right in the headline.

If your selling is underperforming, ask if you have armed yourself with the reasons why in each of these three areas:

• Compelling reason(s) why your product is superior to other solutions your prospects might choose, including doing nothing.
• Compelling reason(s) to believe that what you say is true.
• Compelling reason(s) to seize the opportunity today.