Do you consider yourself a helpful person? Yes? Ok, great. How about helping me move a couch next Saturday?
This is such a great tactic! You can use this in life and in sales. People love to reaffirm what they say or believe about themselves to be true.
If you first ask someone if they are helpful, then ask them to help you move, you are drastically more likely to get a yes than if you just asked them to help you move.
I learned this from the people who stand outside my Chicago office with clipboards trying to get people to sign something or donate. If they first ask you, “Hey, do you love cats and or dogs?” and you say yes, then they are much more likely to get a yes when they ask you to donate to the humane society.
We like to affirm what we say our values are. There was a study done with a palm reader. The palm reader went around a party at the beginning of the night and read fortunes. He would tell a woman she was patient, then pause. During this pause the woman’s brain rushed to find examples where she was patient. The woman would think of examples, think “hey, I am patient” and confirm the palm reader to be correct. Whatever the palm reader suggested, people found examples to confirm it to be true. What was most fascinating was at the end of the night – mind you, it was after a few drinks – the reader would go back to the same people and tell them the opposite fortune! He would tell the woman she was impatient! It still worked. Her mind found examples where she was impatient and she confirmed that the palm reader was correct.
This is a tool you can use in jewelry sales. Lets say the customer asks for a 1ct GIA G VS1. Ask them, “do you consider yourself an open minded person?” They will say yes. Then you can say, “well then, do you mind just looking at a D SI2?” Or whatever you want to talk them into.
The point is if you first ask them if they are open minded, they are much more open to looking at whatever you want to present to them. If you try to sell people something they didn’t ask for, they can get defensive. But if you pad it with a question they can affirm first, for example, “Are you a person who loves a great value?” Then it will be easier for you to close the sale on what you wanted to sell them.
One more example: Let’s say you sell Canadian diamonds. You should first ask, “Do you care about ethical sourcing and where gems come from?” If you first ask if they “care about ethics”, they are more likely to act in an ethical way. People want to affirm what they said are their values and you can use that to close more sales.
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