This method works best in face to face personal selling and its sole aim is to get the sale right now! You can adopt it to other longer sales cycle situations but in that case you would need to take each step at a time and use this method per step.

If you sell at carboot sales then you can impulse your customers to buy and pay and that’s it. If you sell something more corporate that needs a couple of appointments then you can do this at each step by selling the first appointment, then the second and when you sit with the CEO you use it again to push that final signature for the contract.

So what’s the method? Well I’m glad you asked! It’s GIFTS.

Psychologists and scientists figured out a long time ago that we humans are motivated into buying action (and other actions for that matter) by only a handful of things and these are:

Greed
Indifference
Fear of Loss
Tone of voice
Sheep Factor or mob psychology

Hence the term GIFTS. So what does this mean? I’m glad you asked again!

Let’s go back to the carboot sale above. You are amongst a few tens of other stalls and you want to sell and beat everybody else and you want that sale right now.

Your customers will be impulsed by greed, try offering 2 for 1s and see what happens. They all want a great bargain which is why they are here to begin with. We see this everywhere. eBay is so successful because everybody goes there looking for a bargain and dont let me mention a night out. You just got into a bar and and bought a pint of something wonderful and you meet a long lost friend who offers you another pint. Instead of calmly saying your first one is full what do you do? That’s right! You accept and down the first one at record speeds! That is greed my friends and it can help you make tons of sales.

So you have attracted your prospect to your stall and now want to sell your item. If you get pushy you may find they will back out very quickly before you can say “hard sell”. But try stepping back a little (even physically stepping back) and look indifferent like you dont particularly need that sale as you have already sold thousands just that last hour. A few dynamics will shift here. They will think you are selling because the product is perfect and if you already sold so many then there is social proof that this is a good product and you are a good business person. They will want to buy as well.

Fear of loss. You ever saw your favourite suit in a shop window on sale at say 90% off and thought you would buy it on pay day? Well what if two days before your payday the window had a big sign saying “hey you this is the last suit in your size buy it before your love rival buys it first”? Forget how they knew it was your size or your love interests but you would probably do everything in your power to get it then wouldn’t you? That is called fear of loss. At the carboot sale you may want to only display five of anything at a time and make it a limited range even when you have thousands under the table. In fact that is why certain manufacturers make limited ranges of some of their products to get that stampede of people buying right away.

T is for tone of voice. This one is very interesting. I dont mean to be sexist here but growing up as kids we would get into trouble and my mother would yell all day to deaf ears then my father would say a word or two in a lion roar sort of voice tone and all order would be restored immediately! I am sure you can relate to this one. That is tone of voice. It can be used to excite, to influence, to give subtle instructions and so forth. I am not saying yell at your prospects and roar like Simba the Lion King but at the very least do not be monotone. Use your tonality to get your sales process in the direction you want.

S if for sheep factor or the old keeping up with the Jones’es. People do not want to be weird. They want to be normal. By default people will tend to do what everyone else is doing without even thinking about it That is the sheep factor. So when you are selling try to tell your prospects what everyone else is doing. If your prospect knocks your iPod imitation at the car boot sale do not respond in a personal attack. Instead say something like “everybody thought the same to begin with but the reason they all bought is [insert main selling point here]”. Even before anyone starts knocking your products your loud voice should be inviting them to your stand by asking them to see why everyone else is visiting your stand and see what happens. Take this back to a night out on a popular strip, how many times have you seen one club with queues round the block when the next one has only staff members milling about cluelessly? That is sheep factor my friend, use it in your sales.

Now before you run out to try this method out you need to be selling something that people want in the first place. The above only quickens the decision process so they buy it right now instead of when everyone they know approves it for them.

Source by Michael Phiri-Smith