You have a great product to sell or a service to offer but no-one seems to be interested. Your investment in goods or time could be lost and you might give up trying to sell eventually. Fortunately there are alternatives. Read this article and learn how to use three simple steps to persuade customers to take action!

Seduce more customers by adding emotion to the problem.

In one of my favourite dutch podcasts Thijs Lindhout and Aartjan van Erkel talk about how to make your website irresistible to customers. Aartjan shares great insights about what sets you apart from the crowd. For example, one common error is to use clichés and use words like solutions, tips and newsletters. Everybody does that!

Aartjan values being a specialist over being an all-rounder. Make sure you have a solution that no-one other then you can offer. Another valuable lesson is not to be afraid to share your knowledge for free! Never let people tell you that you should not give away information.

But the real eye-opener to me are the three steps to selling a product. Most businesses or websites try to sell products by using the following two steps:

  1. Specify the problem (make them scared)
  2. Show your solution

But this still does not show the customer you understand what they are experiencing because we are not reaching them at an emotional level. In order to do that, we need to name the consequences.

How can you make sure customers immediately want to take action?

We can learn a lot from action movies where they start with the big bang and go to the unconscious to create emotion. Don’t be afraid to show you understand the problem. A customer won’t think:

“O, I don’t like that they talk about my problem.”

Instead they will think:

“Finally someone recognizes my problem!”

So we add an extra step to the process: Add emotion to it

  1. Specify the problem
  2. Add emotion by talking about the consequences. Show that you understand what they go through.
  3. Indicate that there are alternatives. Then show your solution.

Does it work?

Read the intro of this article again. I applied the three steps in the first paragraph. Ask yourself…did it make you want to read further?

Source

I learned this valuable lesson in this podcast (skip to 42 minutes):

INTENS 20: Aartjan van Erkel is de casanova van het internet. Hoe versier je je klanten met woorden?

There are some great examples how to implement the three steps in the podcast and if you read dutch and want to learn more, I recommend reading Aartjans book Maak ze gek

Written by Loek van den Ouweland on 2017-10-31.
Questions regarding this artice? You can send them to the address below.