It’s one thing for you to tell me that your product is the world’s greatest—or at least a great choice—and quite another for other people to tell me. There’s just no way for your prospects to shake their “I’m talking to a salesperson who makes money when I buy” mindset and the resulting defensive behavior.
There’s also no way for you to shake your “if I get this deal, I put money in my pocket” frame of mind. Sure, you might be a great believer in your product. You might also have the most humanitarian, Mother Teresa–like caring attitude toward your fellow human beings. Your entire life’s mission could be to help others. But let’s face it: you’re in sales, and the number one reason you’re in sales is to put cash in your pocket so that you and your family can live more comfortably. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
However, the result is heightened defensiveness on the part of your prospect, a natural human reaction. It’s survival. When I’m in this situation, I automatically ask myself, perhaps unconsciously, “What should I do to protect myself? How do I avoid getting burned, taken, scammed, ripped off?”
Buying on trust is the way to pay double.
Anonymous
It’s a similar reaction—although with a less climactic endgame—to walking in a jungle filled with saliva-dripping tigers. In the jungle, your brain energizes you for flight or fight. In a sales situation, your prospect’s brain is energized with the thought “Don’t get dominated, don’t get ripped off.”
Instead of fleeing or fighting, Frank, your prospect, will question everything you say, if only silently in his own head. He’ll distrust many of your words. He’ll flip most of your comments around 180 degrees. If you say it’s high quality, he’ll think, “Bet it’s not so great.” If you say, “It’s really fast,” he’ll think, “There’s probably something faster.” If you say, “It’ll last for 20 years,” he’ll think, “Yeah, you’ll be long gone when it conks out in just five.”
Inside every prospect is a contradiction machine: a finely tuned, well-lubricated engine designed to negate what you say and to believe only a fraction of what it sees and hears. To Frank, you’re more concerned with making a buck than with making him happy by selling something that does exactly what you say it will do.
Faced with these overwhelming odds, you need to do more than chip away at a hard facade that’s blocking your best, most persuasive pitch. You need to bring in new sources of credibility that Frank respects more than he respects you. These are sources that have been thoroughly vetted and recognized as trusted companies and institutions, such as Good Housekeeping, Underwriters Laboratories, and Consumer Reports, or they could be individuals whose opinions carry great weight because of their expertise in the subject at hand.
The bottom line is that to your prospect, you have limited credibility, especially if you’re a total stranger. To close more deals more easily, you need to borrow the credibility that your prospects aren’t sensing in you. You need to tap into what’s essentially a second (or third or fourth) voice that can quell your prospects’ fear of what they consider your one-sided interest. Tough talk, I know, but this is absolutely true.
Let’s get practical here. Suppose I knock on your door, shake your hand, and begin my pitch about what an incredible landscaper I am and how I’m here today to cause you to fire your present gardener.
I can go on and on about my great experience and equipment. I can tell you how many neighbors’ homes in your development I’m currently servicing. I can tell you how reliable I am and how neatly I work and show you in black and white how much money I can save you over your current landscaper.
In other words, I can tell you everything you want to hear, pile on the features and benefits of my service, and thrill you with great numbers reflecting how much cash you’ll keep in your pocket. Heck, I can even show you actual photographs of the work I’ve done in your neighbors’ yards.
“Look at these photos of my ‘artistic’ work! Look how every mow row is beautifully straight. And look how the sidewalk and driveway are beautifully neat and clean—not a twig, stone, or blade of grass in sight. And those shrubs, trimmed like a da Vinci with a hedge clipper. It looks like I used a protractor to get the sides so straight, doesn’t it? And hey, those flower beds! Not a weed in sight! Am I good or what?”
I did a pretty job tooting my own horn, didn’t I? Absolutely. But contained in the last sentence is the key reason my prospect isn’t buying my pitch. I said that I did good job tooting my own horn.
Question: Who would be the most likely person to color my claims about the quality of the work I do? Me, of course, and therein lies the problem. It’s simply expected that I will be the one wielding those coloring-the-facts brushes.
Until you understand that every time your prospect is across from you, he or she is poised like an Olympic discus thrower to hurl your claims into the cerebral zone marked “sounds good, but is it true?” you’ll always be confounded about why more people aren’t buying from you.
Internalize the Golden Rule of sales that says:
“All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer
business to, those people they know, like, and trust.”
Bob Burg
Enter the consumer psychology strategy called transfer. To use it effectively, you present images, ideas, or symbols that are commonly associated with authoritative and respected people, groups, or institutions to connote that your product or service is somehow approved, endorsed, or sanctioned by those entities.
Studies performed by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), which operated in the United States from 1937 to 1942, revealed that the image of a man or woman wearing a white lab coat taps into the public’s acceptance of physicians and can influence consumer behavior either for or against a product. Is it any wonder that so many ads for health products feature authoritarian-looking men and women in white lab jackets? It gives them instant credibility. These advertisers know that you’ll probably transfer your feelings about physicians to their products. It’s a predictable one-two punch that works almost every time. Interestingly, the IPA listed transfer as one of “seven common propaganda devices”; the others being name-calling (abusive language), card stacking (telling only one side of the story: media bias), glittering generalities (emotionally appealing phrases that go unquestioned), plain folks (presenting oneself as a common Joe to better appeal to the masses), bandwagon, and testimonials (the last two are discussed in this book).
The transfer technique incorporates the idea of peripheral route processing that we’ll cover in depth when we discuss the elaboration likelihood model later in this chapter. For now, just be aware that subtle cues such as images and symbols, as opposed to facts and figures, are readily accepted and acted on by most consumers, especially those involving goods and services with low to moderate price tags.
Let’s see how this works. Let’s say you approach the owner of the newly opened California-based children’s store HappyBirdies. Your product is BubbleBaby, an all-natural baby and toddler head-to-toe wash in beautifully-designed 32-ounce pump bottles. It is safe, pure, and organic, made from 100 percent natural ingredients.
Your market niche revealed itself one day two years ago when you, on a whim, decided to try your child’s baby wash on your own hair. You got a little of the “baby-gentle” formula in your eyes and “Ahhh! Oww! Arghh!”—searing, sizzling, fiery pain in your eyeballs. In an endless instant of ocular torture, you quickly decided that what the Phantom of the Opera endured in Universal Studios’ 1943 movie adaptation of the novel—his face splashed with etching acid—was merciful by contrast. In its place—after the optical agony subsided and the crimson cleared from your once-caustic corneas—you eventually developed a product to save young eyeballs from the same torturous fate.
Fact is, many products on the market that claim to be safe and natural are neither truly safe nor 100 percent natural and are about as gentle to the eyes as lighter fluid. Or, as you also discovered, they contain dangerous chemicals that are known to cause cancer.
Your real competition—the few products that are qualitatively similar to your wash—are outrageously expensive and beyond the financial reach of millions of new parents who are being slammed with mountains of expenses for formula, diapers, wipes, toys, and clothes.
After shaking hands with Mrs. Birdy, the proprietor, you briefly describe BubbleBaby and then launch into your sales argument, detailing why your product is better than what she currently stocks. Mrs. Birdy, caught up in the day-to-day task of running a business and keeping her shelves stocked with literally thousands of items (perhaps much like your prospects), has no idea about the ins and outs of baby wash. All she knows is that babies need occasional washing. (She knows this because she vaguely recalls washing her own babies years ago.)
So what’s your strategy for using transfer to convince Mrs. Birdy of the potentially dangerous nature of the baby wash she’s now selling? Do you simply say, “Mrs. Birdy, the products you’re now carrying are dangerous; they contain cancer-causing chemicals. BubbleBaby is made from 100 percent naturally derived ingredients and is specially formulated so that it doesn’t sting young eyes. Plus, the profit margin is an average of 15 percent greater than the baby washes you’re currently carrying, which puts more money in your pocket, and it’s selling like hotcakes in other stores around town. Why don’t you try just one dozen, and I’ll be back in a week. Whatever doesn’t sell I’ll gladly take back”?
You could use that pedestrian approach. and in a weak moment, if your bottle label and rack display and Mrs. Birdy’s profit margins were attractive enough, and you offered to leave a few bottles on consignment, and she liked you, and she was in a good mood, and she thought you were a good dresser and looked reasonably successful and sincere, and your cologne didn’t offend her, she might agree to display a few bottles on her counter. Maybe.
“But why wouldn’t she, Drew? I mean, didn’t I tell Mrs. Birdy all that she needed to know? Didn’t I express the facts? I told her: (1) It doesn’t burn eyes. (2) It doesn’t contain dangerous chemicals. (3) The profit margin is better. (4) It’s already proved to be a strong seller in other local stores. (5) I’ll refund her money for any bottles that don’t sell. What else could Mrs. Birdy possibly want?”
Did you forget who’s making the claims? You. The manufacturer. The salesperson. The one who has everything to gain by getting Mrs. Birdy to take on your product. You … the person who’d be the last one on planet earth to say anything to cause Birdy to not “take the bait.” After all, it’s your product!
Remember what we said before. Mrs. Birdy is a contradiction machine. She’ll silently contradict—to a varying extent—almost every claim you make. She’ll process your sales pitch though her cerebral filter, the density of which corresponds to the number of times she’s been duped before. Had by other salespeople. Had by friends and family members who said one thing and did another. Had by the boyfriend in high school who promised his lifelong devotion. Had by her back-stabbing former boss who told her, “Sure thing, Birdy! You want to take off this Thanksgiving to spend time with your family … of course! Feel free … enjoy!” and then a month later threatened to fire her if she didn’t work that day.”
Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world—it is thin.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Contrary to what you might think, the reasons for not buying have more to do with your prospects’ mindset than with what’s inherent in your product or service.
Don’t you see? Their yes and no responses come from inside their heads, driven by their brains, programmed by their personal historical events, and shaped by their moods, and are affected like a sailboat on the water, moved primarily by the currents underneath but still influenced by your words and body language. After being processed and filtered through this labyrinthine obstacle course, their decision whether to say “yes,” “no,” or “I’m not sure yet” plops out of their mouths in front of you—splat. (And you thought their responses were shaped only by your product.)
The good news is that despite the nearly automatic mental wrangling our prospects experience when faced with a buying decision, we can add strength to the wind that fills those metaphorical persuasive sails and help guide them to buying from us.
Let’s see how you, the proud purveyor of BubbleBaby, can use the strategy of transfer to cause our proprietor friend Mrs. Birdy to take a case or two of your baby wash. We join the conversation after the initial niceties have been exchanged.
“Mrs. Birdy, the reason I’m here today is because of these two reports that have recently been issued by the National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. [shock opening followed by high-credibility statements] These reports say that two chemicals used in major brands of baby wash, ones that you might now carry, are known to cause cancer in humans. [Remove bottles from briefcase; the names of the offending chemicals are circled in red ink.] The two chemicals are quaternium-15 and dioxane. Quaternium-15 is an ammonium salt used as a preservative in many industrial substances. [You show a serious-looking Lewis structure scientific drawing that details the bonding between the chemical’s atoms and electrons.]
“Quaternium-15 is an extremely harsh chemical that kills bacteria by actually releasing formaldehyde on the baby’s skin. Hard to believe, but that’s actually how it works. Formaldehyde, as you probably know, is a strong-smelling, flammable chemical that’s used as a disinfectant and embalming fluid. It was declared a known human carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. [The words are highlighted in yellow on the report.] It was also declared a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Studies suggest an association between formaldehyde exposure and cancer, including nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia. So not only is it a skin, eye, and respiratory irritant, this toxic chemical can also cause sufficient gene mutation to eventually kill children who are exposed to it, probably not while they’re toddlers but years later. The second chemical, dioxane, is another potential killer, and it’s also in these baby washes. [You show competitors’ bottles with dioxane circled in red on the ingredient list.]
“Dioxane is irritating to the eyes and respiratory tract. And according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it can damage the central nervous system, liver, and kidneys. [You pull out a hard copy of the International Chemical Safety Card for dioxane and run your pen down the column labeled “acute hazards/symptoms.”] Says here that inhalation can cause ‘cough, sore throat, nausea, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, vomiting, unconsciousness and abdominal pain.’ Dioxane can be absorbed through the skin and causes redness, pain, and watering of the eyes. It’s classified as highly flammable. The vapor and air mixture is explosive. It gives off irritating or toxic fumes, and it’s classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a Group 2B carcinogen. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wash my children in a toxic chemical soup like these other washes.
“BubbleBaby was developed two years ago and contains 100 percent naturally derived ingredients rated at 1 or below on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep product-safety-ratings database. [You show that group’s bookmarked home page on your laptop, then click on your product’s ingredient list.] Their staff scientists compare the ingredients on personal care product labels and websites to information in nearly 60 toxicity and regulatory databases. By contrast, the two baby washes you currently carry are rated at 6 and 8. Besides cancer, other concerns about the chemicals they contain are endocrine disruption; contamination; irritation to the skin, eyes, and lungs; biochemical or cellular-level changes; organ system toxicity; and enhanced skin absorption.
“So not only is BubbleBaby dramatically safer than these two other products that contain toxic poisons, but because we don’t have to buy industrial chemicals to make it, it actually costs less per bottle, which means you actually make about 15 percent more profit on every sale. And right now, your two biggest competitors are moving a total of eight dozen bottles every week because we’re advertising aggressively in the local media, warning consumers to read the labels on their baby wash.”
Do you see a difference between this and the first presentation? I’m not taking about the length of the presentations. Longer doesn’t mean better. Better means better, and in this case better means more data and the incorporation of the transfer strategy: the inclusion of data infused with the psychologically persuasive power of both name- and logo-dropping.
Mrs. Birdy has been exposed not only to the highly credible-sounding names of the research organizations—National Toxicology Program and International Agency for Research on Cancer—but also to the organizations’ data reports, graphs, scientific drawings, bar charts, and other serious-looking elements.
Even if you only plunked these items down on the counter and didn’t take the time to review them page by page, they’d still have a substantial persuasive effect because of the mere existence of these items. Your pitch without these support materials would be little more than “some salesperson spouting off, trying to make me buy.”
Don’t you see? To most of your prospects, you’re probably an unknown. Most likely they’ve never seen you before in their entire lives. They have no history with you. You’ve built no credibility. Why do you think banks won’t lend a penny to anyone without first checking a credit report? Because trust isn’t a business strategy.
“Oh, she’s carrying a nice briefcase. I’m sure we can trust her to repay the loan.”
“Oh, he’s got good energy. I’m sure we can lend him a few thousand dollars with no worries.”
“Hey, what a pleasant guy. And a firm handshake, too. He’s so sincere.” Heck … let’s give him that mortgage … no need to check his FICO scores.”
Sure. And then you woke up.
The reason the banks aren’t grabbing their checkbooks is that they’ve institutionalized the practice of disbelief and installed the strategy of don’t trust and always verify.
That’s exactly what’s going on in your prospects’ skulls no matter what you sell. I don’t care if you’re a pharmaceutical rep with the latest sleep aid or a sales agent for the nation’s number one industrial adhesives manufacturer, your prospects’ brains all work pretty much the same way. Sure, some will be more trusting, but for the most part you’ll be battling their molasses-thick fear of getting taken. By transferring the credibility of trusted people, organizations, and symbols to your products and services, you’ll pave a far smoother (and easier) road to a successful close.
To start using the principle of credibility transfer, first determine which people, groups, and organizations are likely to be respected by your target prospect in accordance with your sales objective. Incorporate as many elements of these credibility sources as possible into your printed sales collateral because this principle relies heavily on visual confirmation, which is interpreted as more concrete evidence than that which is simply spoken. The inclusion of these elements alone will cause your prospect to move from a mental position of, “I don’t know or trust you,” to one of, “I do trust these organizations, and I’m comfortable regarding you as an emissary of their message.”
The script is simple and works to assure prospects that your interest is simply in helping them make the right decision:
“It’s one thing for me to tell you that this product/service is great and another for [respected people, organization names] to say it themselves. Fact is, when I say [benefit 1 of your product], [cred source] agrees and says_____. When I say [fact 2 about your product], [cred source] agrees and says _____. What’s important isn’t so much to believe me. I’m just a company rep trying to earn a living by helping [business owners, investors, home buyers, etc.] make smart choices when it comes to spending on [product/service]. In fact, I consider myself as much an educator as a salesperson. I’ve studied what today’s most respected [financial consultants, physicians, researchers] are advising [business owners, investors, home buyers, etc.]. My job is to present what I’ve learned and help you make an informed decision. Fact is, I’m happy to help you no matter who you ultimately buy from.”