Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
September 21, 2012 at 07:59 AM
Selling involves influencing and motivating prospects and clients to implement the things you want them to do. Two advanced persuasion techniques you can use are mental pivots and mental removers. Last month, we discussed mental pivots, which connect an agreed-upon statement with the persuasive direction you want the client to take. An example of a Mental Pivot is to first make an undeniable statement and then pivot it to what you are trying to convince the client to do.
This month, we’ll explore mental removers.
Mental removers
A mental remover is a technique that successful salespeople use to diminish a concept or get a client to accept a notion immediately. In other words, it removes any mental barriers a client may have to your viewpoint. For example, they might use the words, clearly, visibly, right, would, obviously and ago. Another example is, “Certainly, working with higher net-worth clients will dramatically increase your income.” So in these cases you can tell that using the “ly” word will defuse any preconceived attitude that a client might possess.
One of my coaching clients is a Philadelphia attorney who often tells me, “Obviously, anybody in their right mind would accept this.” Hearing that would cause you to be fairly accepting of his statement.
You might even say it is a no-brainer to let someone know a concept is not even debatable. You have probably seen advertisements using the same words. Retailer WalMart uses the slogan “Always lower prices.” The first thing you should think is “lower than who?”, yet you accept the statement.
My first job was selling computer systems for Honeywell. IBM was the king of hardware and software at the time. I actually had clients tell me that they would never make a mistake by buying IBM. One client actually said, “Obviously, IBM has more dependable hardware. So we will seriously look at buying IBM first.” That was so persuasive even to me that I even thought about changing companies from Honeywell to IBM.
