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How to Convince Someone to Buy From You
The science behind sales techniques is becoming more and more versatile, which means that we’re long past that time when you could sum up your methods for how to convince someone to buy from you to a single anecdotal line. This, of course, has its disadvantages, the main one being the fact that working in sales requires lifelong education. However, it could be said that the benefits of such a development outweigh the annoyances that come with it.
In this article, we’re going to focus on two of the many existing theories that can serve as a basis for improvement of one’s sales techniques – neuro-linguistic programming and face negotiation theory. But first we’re going to tackle something that’s much more basic, namely, the process of making a decision. We’re going to do that because this process is the one to which both of our theories are closely related, as well as because it’s the most important cognitive process when it comes to sales techniques.
How we make our decisions
In most cases, selling something involves changing someone’s mind in regards to a certain product or service. This, in turn, presupposes an ability to affect the way people make decisions. The process of making a decision, however, is determined by countless different factors, none of which need to be known to the salesperson.
Because decision making is such a complex process, it can be tough knowing how to convince someone to buy something from you. Fortunately, knowledge about the factors that affect that process can make a world of difference. Some of the most important ones include age, gender and financial status. But those are the ones you’ll hardly forget to take into consideration when communicating with a client.
The real power of persuasion manifests itself when you’re able to determine the factors that are of a psychological nature. This is something that cognitive psychology has been struggling with for quite some time. And although each decision is unique when it comes to reasons that underlie it, there are still factors that each and every one of them has in common. Fortunately for those who want to learn how to be persuasive, they are not that difficult to remember.
The role of psychology in decision making
There are countless psychological factors that underlie each decision making process. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since we’ve all been in situations where we didn’t know which road to take, and we’re familiar with the feeling of being overwhelmed with desires and fears. In such situations, it’s usually difficult to determine the best course of action and to separate the psychological factors from the logical reasoning.
This, however, is what psychologists have been studying for years, and they’ve come up with a set of factors that all such processes have in common. Some of the most important ones include not only past experiences and individual biases, but also belief in one’s relevance, as well as something called escalation of commitment.
Past experiences and biases are the starting points of each decision making process. It’s only logical that when a positive outcome ensues from a particular decision, we’ll be more likely to make similar decisions in the future. It’s also to be expected that an already formed opinion on something will influence the way we make decisions that are related to it.
The next most important factor is belief in one’s personal relevance, that is, how we feel about ourselves is closely related to how we’re going to feel about choosing a particular course of action. Last but not least, the level of commitment to a certain idea can be what decides our actions. This is why escalation of commitment is among the most important factors when it comes to decision making.
As you can see, psychology plays an important role in every decision making process. This is why, when talking about how to convince someone to buy something from you, we need to give it the attention it deserves. Fortunately, most theories that serve as a basis for sales techniques already do that. In the following paragraphs we’re going to tackle neuro-linguistic programming, one of the most successful examples of such theories.
Neuro-linguistic programming
The theory was developed during the 1970’s by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. In short, neuro-linguistic programming is a term defined as the approach that connects neurological processes, use of language and programming of behavioral patterns with the purpose of improving one’s communication skills and abilities to achieve personal development. Although the definition might sound difficult to understand, and although years of heavy scientific research are what’s behind it, the concept is actually quite simple.
Neurological processes are the “neuro” in neuro-linguistic programming. They’re arguably the most important factor when it comes to decision making. Apart from playing a significant role in the way our bodies function, they also determine our way of thinking and, consequently, our way of acting. This is why it’s so important to be familiar with such processes when talking about the power of persuasion.
The way we use language is another important factor we need to get familiar with, regardless of whether we want to get to know ourselves or learn how to convince someone into something we want them to believe. It is, after all, through language that we make most of our connections with the outside world, and why there’s “linguistic” mentioned in neuro-linguistic programming.
Last but not least, we need to explain why this neuro-linguistic theory has been defined as programming. Our behavior is influenced by the above-mentioned factors – neurological processes and use of language. During time we develop certain behavioral patterns that can be both good and bad for our decision making abilities. By programming ourselves to break those patterns or to create new ones, we can alter the way we function and, consequently, make significant improvements in our lives.
Neuro-linguistic programming is a technique that can be used for a wide range of purposes. Among other things, they include treating psychological issues, such as depression, phobias, habit disorders and psychosomatic illnesses. However, the idea that neurological processes, use of language and programming of behavioral patterns are in the core of each and every decision making process is what makes NLP so relevant when it comes to discussing sales techniques.
How NLP can make you a better salesperson
Although neuro-linguistic programming is backed by hard scientific data, not all sales professionals were convinced of its efficacy from the very beginning. Most of them thought it somewhat ridiculous that a technique directed primarily towards personal improvement could help in regards to the art of negotiation. Despite the fact that it’s now a widely accepted tool, it remains misunderstood.
When applying NLP to sales, you’re mostly focusing on what it has to say about the way we use language. Language and neurological processes are deeply intertwined, which is something the theory points out and makes use of in negotiation training. It basically proposes the use of specific language to evoke desirable emotional responses, as well as encourage an individual to start thinking in a certain way.
Language training that NLP provides can prove to be invaluable to a salesperson. This is especially true when you take into consideration the fact that nowadays most people are immune to many other sales techniques. As Gary Vaynerchuck, a successful entrepreneur puts it:
“You cannot underestimate people’s ability to spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away. It’s a big reason why so many companies that have dipped a toe in social media waters have failed miserably.”
NLP selling techniques
How to convince someone to buy something from you, that is the question. And it is a question people have been asking since the dawn of civilization. Now that we have so many theories that help us determine exactly what makes people choose a particular course of action, it’s much easier to answer it. During the past couple of decades, NLP was one of the main contributors to this area of interest, which is why the following paragraphs will focus on the various techniques it can offer to teach you how to be persuasive.
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Anchoring
Anchoring is a term used to describe the technique of getting your client into a desired mental state, which can then be used to influence their way of thinking. The very idea of doing this didn’t, of course, originate in neuro-linguistic programming, but is one of the main strategies used in sales in general.
The process of anchoring, however, is specific to NLP. It involves several steps, all of which are equally important. The first is accessing some kind of a powerful mental state, which in this case would be called buying state. It can be done by asking questions that invoke memories of similar situations, like asking whether the person has ever found themselves wanting to have something at all costs.
The second step is recognizing when it’s best to set the anchor. This means keeping track of your client’s reactions to your conversation, especially the movement of their eyes and the overall body language. When you see your client become either relaxed or positively excited, you’ve found the perfect moment to place the bait.
The third step is the step in which anchoring itself takes place. This involves making a connection between a specific mental state and the anchor, which is actually a term that describes anything that can make it possible for you to re-access the state in question. The anchor can be anything from a simple touch to a carefully selected word said in a particular tone of voice. To make it work the way you want it to, you will need to make the anchor as specific as possible.
The last step is also the point you’re trying to reach whenever you’re communicating with a client – the part where you actually sell your product or service. It involves firing the anchor in order to seal the deal. This should ideally be done the first time you mention the thing you’re selling, or the moment it’s time for signing the contract.
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Identifying your client’s needs
One of the most important parts of a successful sales pitch is identifying the needs of the person or people it’s directed towards. After all, you can’t expect to sell something if you’re clueless about the reasons why somebody would buy it in the first place. Unfortunately, there are countless reasons that might play a significant role in any decision making process. This is why you need to be able to narrow your search.
Instead of asking yourself how to convince someone to buy your product or service, NLP proposes a completely different strategy – asking the clients themselves. Every sales pitch has an introductory part which you can use to your own advantage. Instead of skipping right to your rehearsed speeches, consider taking time to get to know your clients, their needs and preferences.
When coming up with questions that would benefit you, there are two things you’ll need to keep in mind. First, all such questions should be open-ended. They shouldn’t be yes or no questions, but don’t go overboard and turn them into essay questions either. Try to make them easy for your clients to answer, and still complex enough to allow you to get to the information you need for improving your strategy.
Second, make the questions as psychologically subtle as possible. In order to do that, avoid direct questions and making unnecessary connections with your product or service. For example, if you want to know what your client wants from a product like yours, ask whether they’re satisfied with the one they’re already using. This way you get the answer to your question without making your intentions so obvious. At the same time, you’re working on making the person you’re communicating with more relaxed by making seemingly unimportant chitchat.
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Adjusting the strategy to your client’s needs
Successful sales pitch can’t be prepared in advance. It’s because communication with others is not something we can easily predict. This is why the art of negotiation involves being able to improvise and changing the strategy as we go.
NLP focuses on the use of language in determining and adjusting to clients’ needs. This means that a successful salesperson needs to be constantly aware of what the people they’re talking to are communicating about their product or strategy. Watch out for how your client is approaching the subject matter. If they’re talking about the disadvantages of whatever you’re trying to sell, don’t try to change the subject – talk about what they want to know in order to ease their minds. If they’re focusing on advantages instead, think of that as a good sign and follow their lead.
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Interrupting your client’s patterns of thinking
How to convince someone to buy your product or service when they’re strongly against the idea from the start? Regardless of whether the obstacle you need to overcome is price, design or purpose, this is also something NLP can help you with. The trick is in interrupting your client’s patterns of thinking. That sounds like an impossible mission, especially for a salesperson who’s not trained in psychology, but it’s actually pretty straightforward.
The use of NLP in sales is not about changing the clients’ behavioral patterns; all you need to do is make them start thinking in a different way and for the time being. If you notice them worrying about the price of your product or service, try to shift their focus onto something more positive, but without actually changing the subject. This can be done by asking about the benefits they expect from the amount of money in question.
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Use of quotes for sealing the deal
The art of negotiation involves many different skills, not all of which are closely related to sales. One of the most important ones, however, is knowing your way around words. It’s only logical that a salesperson that’s not eloquent won’t go far in this line of work.
Fortunately, you don’t always have to be 100% original when trying to sell something. Apart from choosing your own words wisely, NLP proposes using other people’s as well. A well-chosen quote, after all, is something you can never go wrong with, and it could easily become one of your signature moves.
Being creative is a huge part of any successful sales technique. As Pat Flynn once said:
“What do you need to bring to the lot in order to give oxygen and life back to your audience, which may be tired of the same old stuff or looking for that missing puzzle piece?”
As you can see, neuro-linguistic programming can prove to be of great help to you in your professional development, regardless of the business you’re in. It can give you the answer to that nagging question of how to be persuasive, and provide you with excellent negotiation training. But NLP is not the only theory you can use as a basis for the improvement of your selling techniques. There’s also the face negotiation theory that we’ve already mentioned, and which we’re going to discuss at length in the paragraphs to follow.
Face negotiation theory
Face negotiation theory is considered by some to be one of the key theories when discussing the art of negotiation. It was first introduced into the scientific community by Stella Ting- Toomey in the mid 1980s, and was proposed as a method of understanding in what manner various cultures respond to conflict. This theory places the “face”, or self-image, into the position of a worldwide phenomenon that isn’t bound to any specific culture, but is present in different forms cross-culturally. When a conflict arises, a person can consider their face to be threatened, and will act to restore or save it. This theory proposes these acts as a set of behaviors in communication, which it dubs facework, and it proposes that this facework varies across cultures, as the members of various cultures see what the “face” is differently, and along with it, have a different facework. The face negotiation theory also poses a framework to inspect facework negotiation which would be culturally general.
One of the important factors in determining a communication style is whether a culture is individualistic or collectivistic, and the theory revolves around the difference between these two types of communication styles. To be more specific, the things that differentiate the two types are the manners in which the members of a culture see the self, goals and duty. While people belonging to collectivistic cultures see themselves as a part of a larger group, individualistic cultures’ members see themselves as independent. It is important to note this difference, since more than half of the population is born into a collectivistic society (Brazil, China, Japan, India, etc.)
What the face restoration theory means in practice is that it is possible to use this knowledge and the fact that, no matter the culture, everyone wants to save face to resolve, avoid or exacerbate conflicts, threaten a person or save their image, etc. Of course, it is also possible to use this knowledge for sales.
How face negotiation theory can make you a better salesperson
The successful entrepreneur and businessman Eli Broad once said: “The best move you can make in negotiation is to think of an incentive the other person hasn’t even thought of – and then meet it.” Although he might not have had any negotiation training, this quote uses one of the face negotiation theory methods that will be later described.
When you have a relationship of any kind, even a business one, conflict is bound to arise. When it comes to sales, it is very convenient to have a working knowledge of this insightful theory because when you deal in sales, the better you can convince and negotiate with a person, the more successful you will be. Although there are people that use these methods of conflict resolutions (which we will discuss in detail next) innately, perfecting and knowing them in-depth will help any salesperson or entrepreneur have more clients and get better deals. The face negotiation theory and what it proposes is not something people do consciously, so it is easy to take advantage of that and steer the other person into your direction without them fully realizing what you’re doing.
Read on to find out the most important things to know about each of the five styles of conflict management which most Western writers have identified.
Types of conflict styles
The type of face maintenance a given person has vastly determines the conflict style of the person. The five basic conflict styles are Domination, Avoiding, Obliging, Compromising and Integrating. To give a better definition of a conflict style, according to the face negotiation theory, a conflict style refers to broad tendencies or modes of behavior in response to conflict which is present in a person and which emerges in any given antagonistic interactive situation. These five styles, and the three additional ones (passive aggressive, emotionally expressive and third party help) which we will explain later in detail, are closely connected with either the self face-concern or other face-concern. Various people have different types of face-concern or face-maintenance, and subsequently employ differently styles of conflict resolution.
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Avoiding and obliging
The conflict style of avoiding is defined in its very name. It refers to the style where a person responds to conflict by simply withdrawing themselves from any open discussion. On the other hand, the obliging conflict style is characterized by a higher concern for the interests of others than for one’s own interests.
In other words, this style basically means satisfying the other party’s wishes or interests at the expense of one’s own. This is the style rated highest on Toomey’s scale of other face-concern. Avoiding is also rated high on this scale, since like obliging, it is likely to result in the other party being satisfied. I might seem strange that avoiding would fall in the same place on the scale as obliging, but we must take into account that, while in individualistic societies it is thought of as inconsiderate when someone simply withdraws from a conversation, collectivistic societies do not share this view. Both of these styles also rank low on the self face-concern scale.
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Compromising
The style that falls into the mid-point of both the other and self face-concern scales is compromising. This is very logical when we thing about what compromising actually brings to the table. In most cases, the end result will be that both parties are moderately satisfied with the outcome. Neither yourself nor the other party is the clear winner or loser, and each side moderately saves face. The compromising conflict resolution style is also sometimes called the “give-and-take” style, meaning that both parties give and take something in order for a mutually acceptable agreement to be reached.
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Integrating
This next tactic is rated high on both the self and the other face-concern scales – integrating. With integrating, the result is often a win-win situation, which is why it is often the preferred method of conflict resolution. This style places an emphasis on integrating the wishes and needs of both parties into an end goal that will fulfill the wants of both parties to the fullest possible extent. For this style to become plausible, it is imperative that both parties work together on finding out the maximally beneficial solution that will please both.
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Domination
The last conflict resolution style is domination. This is the lowest regarded style. It is very damaging since it displays a lot of competitiveness and exhibits a narrow view which only has regard for one side of the issue. Of course, this means that it places extremely low on the other face-concern scale, while at the same time placing extremely high on the self face-concern scale. In fact, it exhibits the highest ranking on the self face-concern scale of all the styles. Domination involves using forceful strategies for fulfilling self-wants. Common tactics include threats, insults, put-downs, a high focus on winning and defeating the opponent, with no regard for any position other than one’s own.
Along with these five basic styles, Toomey identified three others which had previously been missed, and these are passive-aggression, emotional expression and third party help.
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Passive-aggression, emotional expression and third party help
As the name states, passive-aggression is a style that uses procrastination, showing disdain, indirectness, etc. to destroy another’s conflict resolution style. It is a bit higher on both self and other face-concern scales. Emotional expression could be simply dubbed “showing feelings”. It is low on the other, and high on the self face-concern scale. Third party help is a style that uses a well-respected third party as an aide in the conflict resolution between parties. It is really common in collectivistic societies, and it is important to have a third party which both parties honor and respect.
Experiments done to test these styles have determined that high self-face concern is easily linked with domination and styles which express emotions, while other face-concern is linked with integration, obliging and compromising.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve seen that the decision making process is the most important process when it comes to sales techniques. The art of negotiation couldn’t even exist without us asking questions related to the way people choose particular courses of actions over others. We’ve also seen that psychology plays a key role in that process, which is why sales professionals can benefit from theories devised by cognitive psychologists.
We’ve discussed two of such theories at length – neuro-linguistic programming and face negotiation theory. We’ve seen that NLP can provide us with some very useful answers to the question of how to convince someone to buy our products or services, as well as that face negotiation theory can help us adjust to almost any professional setting.
Apart from all this, we’ve seen that a successful sales career consists of many attempts and almost as many failures. That, however, is something that should never discourage us, or as Neil Patel puts it:
“Winning provides happiness. Losing provides wisdom.”
About the Author Andy Murphy
Andy`s true passion is to use the most cutting edge psychological tools blended with his own 21st century version of eastern philosophy to help global clients excel to their full potential. This passion is what drives him every day.