What Makes People Buy?
As professional salesmen, sometimes we wish we all have the ability to read people’s mind like Professor X. We are often left confused and constantly asked ourselves these questions.
“Why they don’t buy from me? Did I do anything wrong in my sales pitch?”
“Why no one is visiting my website or my store?”
“Why I cannot close the sale?”
It is normal for us to expect rejections when we try to close a sale. However, for most cases, the reason for a sales rejection does not happen during the sale or when you do a sales pitch, it happens before the sale begins. And I will explain why below.
People buy something because they believe what it benefits them or improves their lifestyle, or how it makes them feel better.
You realized that in the end, people always care about their self-interest FIRST. It does not matter how much effort or time spent you put in to create the product if it does not benefit them, it is a bad product itself. Therefore, we must listen to what the market is trying to tell us, and provide the solution that solves that particular problem. As there is a lot of noise in the marketplace, ensure that you pick your right target market so that the right people take interest in your offered solution.
Understanding your Buyers/Consumers
To effectively understand your potential buyers or consumers, you must find out what are their beliefs and perceptions towards all things. Keep in mind that they are not always right all the time, you may find out some false beliefs from your target market. Fortunately, those false beliefs are the ones that YOU should be looking for since your solution should break as many false beliefs as possible.
Here’s a scenario that explains how your solution can tackle their false beliefs. Let’s say you are trying to sell a health product that can help people lose weight without exercising a lot. Your targeted customers will definitely have some of their own beliefs towards weight loss products in general. I will list down a few common examples of false beliefs your customers probably have on weight loss products.
- Weight loss products are expensive.
- Is this product safe? Does it work for me?
- I have tried a lot of weight loss products before and it did not work.
- I cannot obtain my desired results as mentioned in those products.
Note: The false beliefs above are just created as an example to explain why it is important to understand your customers. You have to conduct thorough research to find out exactly what false beliefs and problems they are facing right now.
How to win your customers over FAST and convince them to buy your products?
Now you know about the existence of false beliefs and objections that your customers may have or already have due to their past experiences. I will show you exactly how you can tackle them one by one.
First of all, you have to understand that your own product does not sell by itself, it is the sales message that you are delivering to your customers. Why the message instead of the product? It is because the message creates buying emotions in your customers, making them realize that they have a problem that needs to be solved and creates a desire to buy whatever solution you provide them later.
I supposed you will be asking, “How can I create a sales message that sells?”
A good sales message that sells contains 3 main parts.
- Hook
- Story
- Offer
1. Hook
With the advancement of technology, the average attention span of a person is not more than 6 seconds, and he/she is exposed to about 5000 ads or brands every day. This is shocking as compared to just merely 20 to 30 years ago, where people have an attention span of 20 minutes and are exposed to about 500 ads or brands every day. To let them notice your message, you need a good “hook” headline to grab their attention from what they are doing, whether it be scrolling through social media platforms, watching a video online or just browsing through Google. You need to spend some time developing a good hook because these hooks provide a valid reason for people to listen to stories and your offer.
What makes a good hook/headlines?
To create a good hook, you need to project enough curiosity to your customers to find out what your message is all about. All hooks must be open-ended so your customers will move forward to listen to your story and eventually purchase what you offer. Also, you must include their desires in your headlines to further encourage them to look at your offer.
A common mistake that beginner marketers always make is they answer the question in their own hooks, even though that answer may not be the actual thing they are doing. But if the headline makes the customer thinks they know what you are doing, that is enough for them to not discover your story and your offer in the first place.
Let’s take a look at this headline below.
“Discover how you can lose your belly fats quickly without spending a lot of time working out through ketosis.”
The above headline already kills the customer’s curiosity on what you are about to offer, which is “ketosis”. Your offer may be different from what they thought, but the fact that they think they know is enough to convince themselves to not look into your story and your offer.
2. Story
Once your hooks or headlines grabs their attention, your stories will become the next thing that determines how valuable your offer is and break down any possible objections they might have before viewing what you are about to offer.
You might have doubts about why stories can be so powerful. Let’s think in terms of what we did in our normal lives. Since a long time ago in human history, storytelling is one of the most powerful skills to explain a certain topic for others to understand, moreover grabs the attention of those who are interested in the topic. It is one of the best tools for people to relate what you are trying to say to them and indirectly let them be the protagonist of the story.
For example, you may be talking about the highlights of your recent vacation trip in Hawaii to your peers that have never been there before. They only know how it looks like based on your story. However, as you tell your story, they will indirectly visualize themselves in your story as well, based on their own perceptions and backgrounds, although you did not tell them in exact detail how the scenario should look like.
Can you see how powerful stories are? You must make your stories interesting so your customers can relate what you said with their own perceptions on why you are who you are now. With stories, the customer’s buying emotions and desires can be manifested, which leads them to find out what you offer that satisfies their own desires to be like you.
Here are some guidelines that you can use to write stories that explain to others why they should listen to you. Add in as many emotional elements as possible since it makes your customers connect with you easily.
- Why am I selling this product/service?
- How I got into what I’m doing now?
There are a few criteria to pull off a successful story for your sales message. You need to make sure that the customers must come out to the same epiphany as you do when you make that buying decision last time. Also, they must experience why that buying decision is logical so they can explain to their loved ones why they made that decision.
3. Offer
Now that your customers have finished your story and come to your offer. Assuming you have a very good story, by now they should have a desire to purchase the solution that you are offering that takes their pain away.
Your main offer, which is the core product you want to sell must be able to solve their problems on its own, with a price that you want and appeared reasonable to your customers. With the right storytelling, they should perceive your offer as something priceless to them. However, in most cases, although your main offer is good, your customers will still not be motivated enough to get it now to solve their problems. Some possible reasons they may have could be the follow-up problems they will experience after purchasing your product or question the value for money or concerned about the product guarantee. These reasons are highly dependent on what you are selling to them.
This is where you need to add-on a few bonuses to support your main offer and solve their potential follow-up problems. By adding more bonuses, your offer will stand out from your competitors who sell similar products to you. This is important especially in network marketing or MLM because everyone sells the same products.
Here’s an example of how to create a good offer stack (Your main offer + bonuses).
Main Product: Kitchen Table
Bonus #1: Tablecloth (To decorate the table)
Bonus #2: Table cleaning kit → Detergent, Cleaning cloth
Bonus #3: Chairs
Bonus #4: Decoration ideas, Guidelines on how to maintain table cleanliness.
When this offer stack is presented to your customers, your customer will see your product differently compared to the others due to the bonuses you provide. The total perceived value of your offer will increase and if you add further benefits such as money-back guarantee, testimonials and create one-time offer prices within a limited time, your customers will be so encouraged to buy from you since the offer is too good for them.
The key point to create a good offer is to always focus on the benefits you are providing to your customers. The more benefits you provide your customers with, the more likely they will buy from you.
I hope you have learnt something new in creating your sales message for your target customers. That’s all for today and I wish you all the best in your business. Before you go, please do not forget to check out my other publications at
Facebook -> https://www.facebook.com/MarketSolversIsAwesome/
YouTube -> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgd41HgCVaMaLdvTSfRvwDA?sub_confirmation=1
Spotify -> https://open.spotify.com/show/2hLPUkmed4fMBVsrsJ3Fhe
More awesome tools -> https://www.themarketsolvers.com/softwaretools
I also will be releasing a free training video series, especially for network marketers/MLM to show how to build and recruit your own elite marketing team and sell your products without bugging your friends and family. If you want to be the first to get my video series, please leave a message below this blog or you can email me at support@marketsolvers.zohodesk.com.
Till then, take care!
Update: The free training video series has been released! Be the FIRST to get yours now at https://lnkw.co/mlmtutes.
