The Power of Persuasion

“Influence is a compass, persuasion is a map” – Jospeh Wong.

How would it be if your customer stops buying from you and you do not even know the reason why?

Every customer yearns to feel important and this is where S & M’s importance is highlighted again. Persuasion is the key.

This article is one of the series article on S&M. You can find the main article here

We are now discussing a very interesting technique that S & M person should master to have exceptional results. The technique seems complicated and more often we have seen S & M people lose their cool a little too early, to have used this technique effectively.

I have listed 5 steps by which S & M person can use the power of persuasion to nail the deal.

1. Be Precise:

It’s out mostly important that you are very specific of what you are conveying and how the same relates to the customer. You have to actually emphasize on his need.

You have to drive home the point that your product is the ultimate solution for his problem. Give him a Demo, make him to visit your works / setup, show him your expertise and take your seniors to him – in short: build the confidence.

Make him feel important, feel cared about. Show him you and your organization is serious about customers and their opinions.

Once you sense a comfort level in his behavior and communication with you, you can be assured that you are in his priority list.

Now you have to just climb the ladder to top.

Remember the TV sales man in the electronics shop, they will follow you until you do not tell them on what specs you plan to buy.

2. Accentuate:

We have heard the idiom plenty of times – “Out of sight is out of mind”. This holds pretty true for all the walks of life. If the S & M person is not a frequent at the customer end it’s unlikely that he will be a preferred choice. This is off course dependent on business profile.

Customer tend to take you and your services for granted, it is a good idea to push forth the value that you create for them during informal chats regularly. Emphasize on: how your organization is working to make its products more user-friendly? How this new product launch will propel the company in big league? Tangible / intangible benefits of your last visit to customer plant and the suggestions you gave?

To new customers keep the emails going, even when you receive no response. Keep on the frequency and information flow constant, without making it monotonous / irritating.

Keep on being in front of the customers you wish to persuade for retaining you / considering you as their primary option.

Familiarity drives the acceptance. The more he is familiar with you, more he will accept you as supplier.

Do we not fall to a strong persuasion from a Credit Card sales person and buy the credit card – which is not actually your need. Does it not happen that we go to buy a specific quantity of material and the sales man persuades us to buy more, may be buy 1 Get 1 Free / 20% discount if you buy 2 against 5% if you buy only one. 

3. Befriend:

This is a really essential step in this technique; the S & M person should have a strong inter-personal relation with key stake holders at the customer end. You should have such stronghold that, any news has to come to you first.

To achieve this, office atmosphere and decorum are a hindrance, but this could be easily achieved on a dinner or lunch meet. At such meets the customer is all yours, no office work to bother him, no nagging juniors or seniors.

Know him personally, understand him professionally. Understand his psyche. Build a bond of trust. Customer should feel the warmth and confidence to trust you. Imbibe that you are working for mutual benefits and will not dump him midway.

Understand his behavior, his fears, his motivations, his ideologies. Once there is a bond of trust and confidence, things will fall in place. You will understand customer apprehensions and can work on reducing the same.

4. Persuade:

If it takes 100 blows to break a stone, does not mean it was 100^th blow that broke the stone. Every single blow has helped the breaking of stone, a bit. Similarly keep on making the pin pointers of how your organization is better, how the product is good, emphasize on the value you create, and then keep repeating these.

It’s very important to use your discretion. This entire thing should not look like blowing your trumpet; in a subtle way drive home the point that you are the best.

Work towards reducing the apprehensions and building the confidence and trust.

Once the apprehensions drop, what remains is confusion driven by competition information, his peers and the answer is only persuasion.

Remember Amazon, Flipkart or Firstcry following you on every website, suggesting, buying that jeans you checked out, some time back. That’s the Power of Persuasion.

5. Bad Mouthing:

Customers are smart and they do their homework, never try fooling them or you have lost them forever.

It is really easy to have your command on the customers buying behavior, if you have really spend a good time analyzing the customer and his process. Your passion for your business and customer understanding is the key factor for S & M success.

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