PERSUADE THEM AND YOU'RE ABOUT TO MAKE A SALE!

"Nothing has more strength than dire necessity." ~ Euripides

In sales and marketing, the most basic strategy is an ability to fulfill a need. How can we use this strategy to persuade affluent clients? After all, they seemingly have no needs? Wrong. Everybody needs something. Determining what that something is and if you're able to fulfill it is the process of criteria elicitation.

If you stop to think about what you are consciously thinking about right now it might be the words that you're reading. You're probably not thinking about peeling a banana, or you weren't until you just read 'peeling a banana'. If your doctor told you to eat a banana every day for potassium, you might think about bananas more than the average person, certainly less than a banana farmer, but more than average.

We do not, nor could we, think about bananas twenty-four hours a day. But necessity (i.e. a doctor's advice for your health) can bring them to the forefront more often than normal.

Consciousness is regulated by the part of the brain called the reticular activating system. This is considered to be central to motivation and arousal. It's involved in the central nervous system's activities and it helps us to pay attention to the most important things and store those we can reasonably disregard for a time.

Our conscious minds can hold seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. the rest is stored in our other-than-conscious minds for retrieval when needed.

When you're driving down the freeway, singing along to the radio, you're probably thinking about what you're going to do when you get to your destination, you aren't thinking of using the bathroom, unless you need to. You aren't thinking of getting some water, unless you're thirsty. You aren't thinking of stopping at a gas station for gas, unless you're running out. You aren't thinking of stopping for food, unless you're hungry.

It becomes a different story when you all of the sudden need one of them. Gas becomes so very important if you're on Empty. Water becomes important if you're dehydrated and your A/C isn't working. When food becomes a need, all of the sudden you start seeing fast food signs telling you what's available to eat, when before you may not have been paying more than a slight passing attention to them.

Why don't we have to contend with these needs all the time? Because they aren't relevant all the time. We can safely store them in our other-than-conscious until we require them, until they are again relevant.

This speaks a lot to criteria (the values, wants, and needs of a person). By eliciting a person's criteria we can bring to bear those subtle aspects in a person's reality that apply to their criteria. When you elicit the criteria of your affluent prospect, you speak to their values at even a higher level and essentially you are fine tuning their reticular activating system to your advantage (and to theirs).

Eliciting criteria is mandatory in pointing us in the direction of satisfying our prospect's needs. The persuasion comes quite naturally after that.


Source :
http://www.articlesnatch.com