Traditional sales training has been broken for quite some time.

Buyers today want something more than slick talkers and hackneyed

closing lines. They don’t want to be put through a process that

is designed to fit everyone, in fact, they are willing to vote

with their dollars and long term business if that is what you

offer.

What customers really want is access to relevant information from

knowledgeable professionals who move them.

Persuasion when done correctly creates change at a physiological,

psychological and biological level in the person you are

persuading. It allows them to check their internal map of what it

true or not against a story that you’ve carefully crafted for

them after eliciting their buying criteria, not a list of

features, but a list of emotional criteria that allows them to

say yes with total confidence.

How To Persuade

1. Open With A Powerful Persona

2. Elicit Information

3. Tell A Powerful Story To Lead Them To Their Own Most Logical

Conclusion

In order to persuade effectively, you start with your persona.

Much of a decision about whether or not to buy from you comes

within seconds of meeting you and long before you have a chance

to open your mouth and say your first words.

In order to create a powerful persona you need to check several

areas. First, take a look at your clothes, go beyond the basics

like freshly shined shoes and pressed clothes. Ask yourself if

your hairstyle is current (note, if it is over 3 years old, it is

probably out of date whether you are a man or a woman). If you’ve

gained or lost more than 10 pounds in the past year and haven’t

had your clothing altered or updated they will not give you a

powerful first impression. Are you dressed at the right level?

You should dress at least as well as the CEO of the company you

are selling to or one step better. But dressing is just the first

step, there are at least a dozen other areas that you must

consider.

Simply by making those small changes to your current presentation

will increase your persuasive quotient instantly. If people are

going to judge you by what they see, be sure that they see your

very best package first. In my book Persuasion: The Art of

Getting What You Want, you’ll find a complete persona checklist

that includes clothing, your voice and communication skills and

the presentation of your total package, your compete persona.

In order to craft a powerful story that will draw people in and

resonate with them in a way that makes them want to draw your

conclusion, you must ask better questions. The questions you want

to ask elicit not only product or service requirements, but

emotional requirements which will be the true criteria by which

your offer is judged.

To elicit emotional buying criteria you have to ask very detailed

and penetrating questions. Here are a few examples of questions

that will begin getting to emotional buying criteria:

• What specifically will successful implementation of this

product or service mean to you personally?

• How will you define success in relation to this product or

service?

• What was the final straw that made you decide to purchase

this product or service or to replace your existing product

or service?

• Other than you, who will be evaluating the success of this?

• If you could wave a magic wand and get exactly what you want,

what would it look like? Why specifically would you want it

to look like that.

When you begin to stop asking open ended questions and start

drilling down, you’ll find the pain and the requirements to

successfully position your solution.

Stories lead people to draw their most logical conclusion,

the one that the moral relates to. We are deeply persuaded

by powerful stories because they are the oldest form of

communication we know. Rather than rattling off a list of

features and benefits, if you tell a story about how someone else

used the products specific features and benefits or used the

service to get a similar set of results and demonstrate it deeply

by using metaphor, the person listening can draw only one

conclusion, the one you want them to, but they’ll defend it as

their own forever.

Persuasion is both an art and a science, but one that everyone

must master. Your ability to earn is in direct proportion to your

ability to persuade. Persuasion truly is the art of getting what

you want.