You might need . . .
. . . Persuasion scripts and here's how to assess it. For each situation that applies to you, follow the link for a deeper analysis of the persuasion principle active in the example.
Think about the following situations and consider how often they occur in your contacts with clients and how important these situations are to your success.
1. Clients feel like their personal freedom of action or choice has been unfairly restricted by you or your policies. For example, a client may not like the method you use to exchange products or get a refund and want other options. In a nonprofit context, volunteers may believe that you are unfairly limiting how they can contribute either time or money.
2. Clients properly employ your product or service, but it leads to a negative consequences for them (America’s Funniest Home Videos, anyone?). For example, a properly used technology device records an embarassing action of the client that is then becomes publicly available.
3. Clients are at odds with you over who is responsible or accountable for some action. For example, you have a product that requires a particular behavior from the client as described in the purchase (a user’s manual or an instore explanation) yet many clients forget to perform this action, then complain to you about your lousy product.
4. Clients do not process your information in the style you want. For example, when you’ve got detailed factual information to deliver, clients won’t pay careful enough attention and miss key elements. Conversely, clients may understand all the facts and details, but they interpret them from the wrong perspective. In other words, you need to match their information processing style or mental state with the kind of information you want them to have.
5. You have a lot of details, evidence, facts, and reasoning that you need to communicate to sell you product or service. Furthermore, these details are crucial to your advantage against business competitors. Thus, your need to deliver complex information so that your product or service is both understood and also perceived as “better” than competitors.
6. You find that some clients appear to want your products or services for reasons that may not require a lot of facts or details, but rather they seem to desire your products or services because of status, reputation, attractiveness, etc. You want to determine how to produce these perceptions effectively.
7. With some of your products or services, you know from past experience that there are significant difficulties that clients will experience in the future and you need to explain, forewarn, and defend before the trouble arises. For example, a particular part in a complex product may fail before all others (simply because of the technology limitations and not any shortcuts you’re taking) and you will replace the part for free when it fails. You want to cushion the impact of this negative state before it occurs.
8. You can provide rewards to your clients before you complete a deal. For example, you can offer a wide variety of non-product or –service benefits (e.g. free annual inspections for purchasing a set of new tires).
You might find it useful to scan over the free, online Primer of Practical Persuasion to look at other possible persuasion principles that may be useful to you and candidates for persuasion scripts.
