When someone asks me how to persuade people so they can influence them to buy more stuff…
I always give a simple answer.
Ready?
Here’s how to persuade people:
Transparency.
And hold on to your hat; that means “be you.”
Go figure.
How many times have you met or even saw someone on a stage or something that you know is trying too hard to “win you over”?
Have you ever met someone who, for some odd reason, claims to have made .00001 mistakes? They have an answer for everything. They want you to believe they have the Midas touch.
Are you influenced or irritated by this person?
If it’s the latter, it’s because you know they’re wearing a “mask.”
They are the opposite of transparent.
People using unethical ways to gain confidence are kinda like the old flim-flam men.
Wikipedia even has a definition for it:
“A confidence trick (synonyms include con, confidence game, confidence scheme, ripoff, scam and stratagem) is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, used in the classical sense of trust.”
You still with me?
I want to ensure you know the difference between how to persuade people ethically, and persuading people only to take their money.
So when anyone asks me “how to sell”, and how to persuade people, I tell them: “be honest, and be you.”
“If you need to become someone else, ALWAYS talk from a script, avoid or even worse LIE about your accomplishments/results, then all you’re doing is inviting complications and promising unrealistic expectations for your customers.
And when you can’t deliver on those false promises, your reputation goes to hell”
Related: How to sell online
The way I see it, persuasion and influence come in two forms.
The first, is trickery, manipulation, and false promises. (Read: the confidence trick)
I’m sure you can imagine someone right now who uses this method.
The second way to persuade and influence is to FULLY believe in you, your product or service.
But let me be clear.
I’m not talking about believing in your stuff because you can make money.
I am talking about believing in such a way that you feel bad if people do NOT buy from you.
Because you know in your soul you can transform someone’s life if they buy whatever you are selling.
And if they don’t buy, you know they are going back to the circle of problems that led them to you in the first place.
The money you make is secondary. It’s a “bonus” for actually helping someone else.
This is the reason transparency is critical to the “persuasion and influence” process.
Because when you are solution focused rather than money focused, you don’t push to “close a deal”. Especially when someone doesn’t “fit”.
We both know not EVERYONE benefits from what we sell.
So, we let them go. We don’t PUSH them to do something that isn’t right for them.
But that’s not the case for people using the first, unethical way of persuading.
In my opinion, using every trick and closing strategy in the book to “close the sale” is not persuasion-it’s manipulation.
If you want to have influence and persuade people to buy from you without resorting to the “flim-flam” method, be open, honest, and listen to them intently so you can decide if your product or service will help them.
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