Psychic Selling: How to Use Cold Reading in Your Sales Conversations

I love to borrow techniques from other disciplines. Recently, I looked into how psychics trick people into believing they have psychic powers by applying a method called cold reading. It includes techniques such as using social cues, making broad statements, and betting on probabilities.(Check out my other post on cold reading to find out more.)

I’m a technology marketer at heart, so I’ve been wondering whether cold reading techniques could be applied in sales conversations. Here are some cool techniques that make sense:

Don’t Ask Questions, Make Statements

When you are at a cocktail party, you usually make small talk by asking questions, even if you already have an inclination of what the other person is going to say. You may even already be using social cues to ask questions. For example, if someone is wearing a running watch, you may ask a question about what types of sports they enjoy.

One cold reading technique is to make statements instead of asking questions. Cold reading expert and author Ian Rowland (and a former sales person) believes that this greatly impacted how prospects regarded him: as a true expert in their industry and company.

How do you do this? You make educated guesses that are true for most industries or most companies in an industry, for example:

“I understand that your industry is undergoing a strong trend of digital transformation. Your company has been trying to keep up, but it’s been a real struggle.”

This statement is a lot more powerful than asking the question how a company is viewing the evolution of technology.

Use Corporate Rainbow Ruses

Rainbow ruses are statements that tell the listener that they’re one thing but also the opposite, and then make an educated guess towards one side. In a sales context, this could be:

“My understanding is that some of your plants are still stuck with their old processes, while others have hit the ground running and have a lean production line. You’d like to transform the business faster but it’s been tough to change people’s minds and existing processes.”

Make Educated, Probabilistic Guesses

If you know your market, you know what most people are using. Make strong probabilistic guesses, for example:

“This integrates nicely with your existing Concur expense system.”

You get two benefits from this statement: People are compelled to correct wrong information, so they’ll give you their real expense system. Also, nobody will be mad at you for getting it wrong because it was a reasonable assumption.

Weave it into your conversations

Good sales conversations happen when you do more listening than talking, so please use these techniques sparingly, for example to establish credibility and rapport. Still focus most of your sales engagement on asking questions and discovering needs in the account. Customers will feel that they had a good conversation if they do most of the talking, and you can get a better picture of the account and how to strategically sell into it.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, check out my three part series on how to apply social engineering techniques to sales.