Congratulations!
You created an excellent product–caters to the market and designed an aggressive sales plan and marketing strategy.
And yet you didn’t see a dramatic improvement in your sales. What went wrong?
Here’s what you missed: Customer’s Psychology of Buying
Besides creating a sales plan, businesses need to enter the brain of customers and map the key emotional and logical drivers.
These sales tactics are not sketchy. We don’t want you to fit the "used car salesman" image.
Psychological sales tricks are intelligent techniques to complement your sales pitch and cold calls.
Neither you need to be a pro to decode these psychological tricks, nor do you need to create an individual sales plan around it. All you need is to implement the available research and trends in the market.
If you are ready to rock-roll in your sales career, then go for these tried and tested psychological sales tricks.
Tap into your customer’s psychology using conversation intelligence.
1. Smaller amount words are better than higher
Interestingly, phrases with words related to the smaller amount work better than higher.
For example, a message catering to low maintenance, less cost, lower price, and reduced intervention will work like magic against higher productivity, increasing sales, etc.
A brilliant example of one such message is 👇
2. Create a sense of urgency
LIMITED PERIOD OFFERS- play with the mind differently.
As much as we deny it, our monkey brains run into a panic mode when we acknowledge scarcity in the environment. Our urge to "buy now" is an unwanted impulse to purchase.
People are more likely to buy if they believe they might miss out on a deal.
Exclusive deals enhance a brand's status in the eyes of American consumers. 89 percent of American consumers say they’d be happy to purchase to redeem an exclusive offer.
3. Focus on money rather than price
Price is a dynamic number and often not in the hands of the customer.
Whenever the price drops or turns competitive, they sense fishy intentions.
You can expect these comments from customers when the sales message addresses price:
“Must be a reduction in features.”
“Must have removed free customer support”
“ The quality of the product may be deteriorating.”
Addressing reduction in expenses or lowering of costs in sales message is a better sales technique than a message indicating a reduction in price.
4. Nostalgia makes you buy more
When we hear Elon Musk or Sundar Pichai narrating their childhood stories and aspirations we relate with their roots, see similarities, and more importantly, wish to live their aspirations too.
Emotional appeal sells far better than the product or service.
5. Product manufacturing story sells more than product
Research reveals, “Emotionally connected customers have a 306% higher lifetime value (LTV), stay with a brand for an average of 5.1 years vs. 3.4 years, and will recommend brands at a much higher rate (71% vs. 45%).”
By telling stories, we build emotional connections and make information more memorable.
In one of the Linkedin posts from 2017, Nadella described the immense pain and hardship his wife and he had to go through with their specially-abled son. He talks about empathy and the journey of people with disabilities.
Through this post, Nadella was successful in promoting various social projects, his book- Hit refresh, and Microsoft as a brand.
It’s normal to add as much product detail as possible. Sometimes, the product feature details are not enough. While it may seem exciting to add those details, real selling happens when a salesperson narrates the story behind the making of the product.
Related: Read Convin’s founder’s journey and the story behind Convin’s birth.
Another way to look at storytelling is that when you make the customer the hero of the brand story, not only do they connect with you but they also start visualizing the product benefit.
Now, we’ll dive into some number games that you can implement on your website, sales collaterals, and sales scripts.
6. Odd-numbered priced items are likely to sell better even-numbered
Psychological tricks suggest that prices ending with odd numbers tend to sell better than even.
For instance,
7. Choose a smaller first digit
The brain registers 3 smaller than 4, hence $3.9 attracts the brain and induces it to purchase the item immediately.
Sales plans must check twice for prices and put them in smaller first-digit categories.
8. Remove the comma separators at the price
Another surprising way the brain works is that when you read $1769 vs when you read $1,769, you register the number without comma separation as the lower number.
A little trick I learned from the amazing Winning By Design team - when talking about pricing (and this is a touchy subject with much more nuance), replace the word "discount" with "price adjustment". Discount implies "cheap", whereas "we can adjust the price X% for you" can really change the perspective of your deal. - Hanna Bezulha
9. Make the price look affordable
Out of the many ways you can make the price look affordable, here are a few interesting ideas:
- Instead of giving them a monthly price, give them a price per day or hour.
- Compare the price to the cost of a bar of chocolate or a cup of coffee.
- Make the 3rd option look expensive so the less expensive item looks desirable.
10. Maximize the perceived size of the discount
When there’s a bigger number on the discount offer, a customer is more likely to get drawn towards it. They may overlook the smaller amount, even though the calculation remains the same.
For instance:
$10 off vs 20% off are perceived differently.
20% discount is more likely to get sold than $10 off.
11. Don’t offer too many options
Isn’t that bothering all of us?
There’s too much information online and too many options. The information overload keeps us confused.
Globally, 64% of consumers feel there is too much choice online.
You can help your consumers by avoiding analysis paralysis by reducing the CTAs, product options, and recommendations.
12 . Bring up their bad experiences
Just like you and me, your prospect may have been the victim of a bad experience by a competitor or an organization's bad decision ruining a project.
Prospects are burned out by other vendors and that experience must come out in the open.
To do that, help them confide in you. Encourage them to talk to you about the distressing experience, and how it’s impacted the business outcomes.
Prospects gain trust in you as soon as they share a negative experience and pave the way to get a positive outcome in return.
Want to win over prospects with a positive experience?
13. Social proof works like magic
Our mind is accustomed to copying people we look up to or people who resemble our habits & behavior.
You’re inclined towards a service or product that your peers/competitors use.
Having said that, it’s important to remember, the prospect has researched about your company and the product before meeting you. What they are looking for is validation and proof that the product is a good fit. And what do you offer?
You offer reviews, testimonials, case studies, success stories, project status, etc.
Related: Read how Place improved deal size by 74% with Convin.
As part of the sales plan, discussing case studies and user experiences gains more value and recommendation than product discussion. Surprisingly, the conversion rates rise when a higher-priced product landing page includes testimonials.
Did you know, customer-contributed content such as testimonials convert at a 161% higher rate than people who don’t.
14. Influencers can sell your product better than you
As consumers become aware of marketing gimmicks, they start smelling dubious tactics and decision-influencing channels.
Distrust makes purchase decisions more complicated than they already are. And capturing user attention and trust adds to the list of challenges sellers need to fight.
With your sales plan and sales efforts, you’ll need an influencer to complement the efforts and convert higher.
Influencer marketing delivers higher ROI comparable to or better than other marketing channels, according to 89% of respondents.
15. Trade emails in exchange for free resources
In exchange for exclusive content, 30% of consumers would give their email addresses to a brand.
In the majority of sales plans, emails are not expected from users without exchanging valuable content in return. These reciprocal contents are referred to as lead magnets that make the consumer share their contact information.
A lead magnet can be a free eBook — given to customers in return for their contact information.
Any content exchanged against the email ID should be actionable and meaningful content that the user relates to.
16. Short visual and audio content grow faster
In your sales plan, shortlisting activities may or may not choose visuals and audio content sharing. However, visuals and audio content are fair well when it comes to selling an idea.
Here are two facts you should know about video content:
- A video introducing you, your business, and your products are the most engaging content type, according to 45% of consumers.
- Keep it short: 68% of viewers will watch a video to the end of its less than 60 seconds.
17. Draw strength from your drawbacks
While this may sound surprising, apart from your strengths your weaknesses too play a role in your sales plan.
"People are surprised when you mention a weakness, and that convinces them of your trustworthiness, Pointing out your shortcomings earns points,” says Cialdini.
Do it as soon as possible to leverage the opportunity.
Try to endorse messages such as: "Our support team doesn’t speak all global languages yet, but our product doesn’t know that. It processes more languages than you may expect."
18. Be Human first–always
While there are many tricks that work and don’t work.
One trick never disappoints you- being human, not a heartless bot(funny, even bots have hearts now).
In order to build relationships, sellers must show respect and transparency to their customers, something deceptive sales tricks cannot match.
Your customers will spread the word about your business, bringing in even more customers who appreciate authenticity.
Even though you implement smart sales tricks, always check your customer’s limitations and the extent to which customers can digest.
You may want to try and avoid turning into a manipulative salesperson who’s hard to trust and brings an unwarranted negative reputation to the organization.
If you are an aggressive salesperson or sales team, you’ll definitely find these tricks handy.
You and the team can move the needle faster by balancing the sales plans with sales methodologies and psychological tricks.
Be cautious, and use sales tricks sensitively!
Want to create a strong sales plan for your team? Book a demo today!
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