Prospecting & Recruiting with “Pre-Suasion”
Do you ever wonder why it is that some people seem to be so good at closing the sale and recruiting new team members while you struggle?
Do you wish you knew what the “magic words” were to convince people to join you in your network marketing business?
If you find selling difficult…
If it makes you really uncomfortable…
What you’re about to learn can change everything for you.
I’m talking about how to…
Sell More of Your Products or Services & Recruit More Team Members by Understanding the Art of “Pre-Suasion”.
Read on and watch the video below.
What is Pre-Suasion?
Pre-suasion is about how you influence your prospect to make a decision or take a desired action.
It’s about what happens BEFORE you ask for the sale or ask them to join your team.
Robert Cialdini, in his book Pre-Suasion, reveals A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade.
Cialdini has combed through hundreds of scientific studies to prove that the most important things that influence your prospect’s decision aren’t the words you use in the moment, but how you set the stage ahead of time.
How you frame your message from the start will determine your success.
Dr. Robert Cialdini is a Social Psychologist who is considered by many the world’s top expert on the psychology of influence.
He wrote the incredible book Influence in 1984, which is still one of the best books ever about marketing and social science.
In his book Pre-Suasion he about knowing how to take full advantage of “privileged moments for change”.
This framework provides incredibly valuable information for you in direct sales or multi-level marketing.
Keep the following Pre-Suasion Principles in mind when you’re…
- Talking to a prospect
- Creating social media posts
- Writing an email, article or blog
- Doing a video
Pre-Suasion Principle #1: Make your prospect receptive to your message BEFORE they hear it with Pre-suasion
Persuasion vs. Pre-suasion
We think of “persuasion” as getting someone to do what we want them to do or say YES.
Maybe you want someone to buy your product or sign up as a business builder in your Network Marketing team.
Cialdini defines pre-suasion as…
“—the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it.”
Cialdini has spent years studying high achieving salespeople, marketers, negotiators, and public relations experts.
And he discovered something they all had in common:
“The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request. (…) They didn’t rely on the legitimate merits of an offer to get it accepted; they recognized that the psychological frame in which an appeal is first placed can carry equal or even greater weight.”
Cialdini tells the story of a colleague of his who did expensive consulting work for large companies.
This consultant struggled with companies always trying to get him to lower his fees.
Price Anchoring
One day he accidentally discovered a “trick” that caused these companies to stop trying to negotiate lower prices.
“After his standard presentation and just before declaring his ($75000) fee, he joked, “As you can tell, I’m not going to be able to charge you a million dollars for this.”
He started using this every time he made a pitch and found out that it eliminated any complaints about pricing.
Why does price anchoring work?
Because if your prospect is thinking about $1,000,000 first, that makes $75,000 feel cheap by comparison.
You can also price anchor by telling your prospect about a more expensive product or service first, then recommend a less expensive option specifically for them.
This makes the less expensive option feel like a great value.
Price anchoring is one technique for setting up a psychological framework in your prospect’s mind.
By putting a high price in your prospect’s mind prior to asking for the sale, or “pre-suading” it subconsciously makes the low price feel like a bargain and reduces or eliminates price resistance.
Pre-Suasion Principle #2: Redirecting Attention
We can only focus on one thing at a time. And what we’re focused on at any given time is what we perceive to be important.
We usually try to talk our prospects into joining our company by convincing them with reasons we believe to be important such as
The special patented ingredient in your product
The award-winning scientists who formulated it
The recognition the Founder & CEO has received
How your company is trying to change the health and wellness of humanity, or create global prosperity
Or how amazing the comp plan is
But that’s actually the hardest way to change someone’s mind.
If you’ve ever had a discussion about politics with someone who has a different point of view, you’ve probably experienced that it’s virtually impossible to convince someone or talk someone into changing their political views.
It’s no different trying to talk someone into how wonderful your opportunity is.
It’s so much easier to change what your prospect is paying attention to.
If you can change what direction they are focusing in right now, then you can often change their decision in this moment.
This is critical because our attention is limited.
When something new grabs our attention, we don’t have a choice, we have to let go of thinking about anything else.
Cialdini explains this:
We are said to “pay” attention (…) when attention is paid to something, the price is attention lost to something else. Indeed, because the human mind appears able to hold only one thing in conscious awareness at a time, the toll is a momentary loss of focused attention to everything else.
Pre-Suasive Questions to Focus Your Prospect’s Attention
You can get your prospect to focus their attention exactly where you want it by asking specific questions to elicit desired answers that will influence their decisions.
A study done in 1993 took two groups of average Canadian college students and asked them similar questions.
The first group was asked if they were unhappy with their social lives; the second group was asked if they were happy with their social lives.
Students in the first group were 375% more likely to say they were unhappy than those in the second group.
Cialdini explains that by posing the question in these two ways you create different “attention tunnels.”
When the student is pre-sauded by the word “unhappy” in the question, this makes their mind scan for recent unhappy feelings, situations, and events. And because that’s what they’re searching for, that’s what they find!
But when students were pre-suaded by phrasing the question “are you happy with your social life?” their brains scan for recent happy feelings, situations and events, and that’s what they find.
This subtle change in how the question is worded, completely changes what people are thinking in the moment, and has a very significant impact on how they answer the question.
In another study, marketers tried to convince consumers to sample a new soft drink and provide their email address.
One group of consumers were asked if they viewed themselves as someone who is adventurous and likes to try new things. The other group of consumers were not asked this pre-suasive question.
No surprises… 75.7% of the consumers who were asked the question tried the drink and gave their email.
In the other group, only 33 percent tried the drink and gave their email.
EXPERT TIP: Prepare pre-suasive questions you can ask your prospect before you try to sell them your product or close them into your opportunity.
EXAMPLES: If you’re speaking with a prospect and want to pre-suade them to realize their need for a second stream of income you might ask…
How concerned are you about your current financial situation?
Or, how worried are you about your financial future?
Pre-Suasion Principle #3: Hold Your Prospect’s Attention with WIIFM
Great. You’ve got your prospect’s attention. Now let’s hold it.
All your prospect cares about is WIIFM – What’s In It For Me. So, make the conversation all about THEM.
If you don’t hold your prospect’s attention, then they will never be able to hear about your opportunity.
Let’s face facts. The most interesting thing in the world to most people… is themselves!
The secret to holding their attention is to get your prospect talking about themselves by asking them questions about THEIR goals, dreams, and challenges instead of talking about yourself, your products and your opportunity.
EXPERT TIP: Be specific and use the word “You” in conversations, social media posts, messages, emails and videos.
Don’t use general and impersonal words like “people” or “they”.
The word “You” makes your prospect, in person or online, will feel like you’re speaking directly to them.
Pre-Suasion Principle #4: Hold Your Prospect’s Attention with an Open Loop
Telling your prospect an unfinished story, creating a cliff-hanger, or a mystery is a powerful way to hold their attention.
Research has found that unfinished stories are remembered, while finished ones are quickly forgotten.
Your prospect has a strong desire for closure.
Our brains don’t like unfinished stories, unanswered questions and unresolved problems. When your brain doesn’t have closure it naturally works away at trying to get closure. It’s trying to finish something is left unfinished.
But…as soon as your brain DOES get closure about something, you can release it and you then tend to forget about it quickly and move on.
EXPERT TIP: If you want to HOLD your prospect’s attention, don’t give them closure too quickly! Leave them hanging.
This is commonly known in marketing as the “Open Loop”.
It’s especially effective in emails and videos.
You start by telling a story to get your prospect interested and intrigued. But before you tell what happened in the end, how the story finished, or the problem was resolved, you switch to talking about another related topic.
Your prospect will naturally want to hear the end of the story, so they keep reading or listening. Near the end of the email or video you go back and finish the story so your prospect can get closure.
The “Open Loop” keeps your prospect focused on the message you’re trying to deliver because they need closure. They want to know how the story ended, or the problem was resolved.
Pre-Suasion Principle #5: Create Unity
You can powerfully influence your prospect when you create unity with them.
When your prospect feels like you’re “one of them” you’ve created a bond, or a sense of unity.
When you use the same words as your prospect in a conversation, you’re creating a subconscious sense of unity.
As an example, if your prospect uses the word “supermarket”, you want to be certain you’re using the word “supermarket” even if you’d naturally say “grocery store”.
If your prospect talks about a “beach vacation”, you want to be sure you’re matching that and not saying “tropical vacation”.
If your prospect speaks quickly and more loudly, make their pace and volume.
The more you understand personality styles and are able to identify them quickly in a conversation and use language that your prospect can relate to the more you’ll be able to build the know-like-trust factor quickly.
Creating a know-like-trust factor is another form of pre-suasion and makes closing the sale infinitely easier.
Creating a sense of unity can also be about shared groups, experiences, identities, or even world views.
EXPERT TIP: Make your prospect feel like you’re part of the same team, group, family or tribe by matching and mirroring them.
For a deeper understanding of how to implement many of these concepts into your prospecting and recruiting…
Celebrating Your Success!
Gloria
