Today, I’d like to show you a great way to make far more prospects hire you or buy from you.
Here’s what we know.
- Testimonials from former customers or clients have limited persuasive effect on a prospect. Everyone uses them. And they’re always positive.
- Samples of previous work we’ve done have limited persuasive effect on a prospect. Everyone uses them. And they’re always best-case examples.
- Even being recommended to the prospect by someone they trust has limited persuasive effect. Everyone’s been let down by something recommended by a friend.
What’s left is what I call the persuasion gap: It’s the gap between how persuaded the prospect is, and how persuaded the prospect needs to be, before they will hire you or buy from you.
So, how do you fill the persuasion gap?
We start by understanding a basic fact. When someone buys a product or service, they’re buying the future.
The future?
Yep!
It’s all about the future.
Think about it from the prospect’s perspective. Our product or service hasn’t been successfully delivered yet. It hasn’t worked as expected yet. It hasn’t provided the prospect with outstanding value yet. This is all future stuff. That’s what causes the persuasion gap. They simply don’t know if they’ll be delighted with buying from us in 12-weeks, 12-months or 12-years time.
To fill the persuasion gap, we need to convince them ahead of time. We need to convince them now, so they have a complete picture in their mind of a wonderful, future outcome. And to convince them, we need to confidently explain why we believe in the value of our product or service.
The more confidently we explain it, the better.
Why?
By confidently sharing the story of our product or service with prospects, and building their confidence in us, we help them fill their persuasion gap. That’s when they happily buy from us or hire us.
Photo by Cytonn Photography