7 Lessons From “Pre-Suasion” That You Can Use To Immediately Boost Sales

I Just Finished Reading Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion – Here’s What I Learned… 

I’m sick of reading books written by consultants.

Every chapter is basically:

1. Make a really vague point about something that could help a complete beginner;
2. Tell a story about when you learned the lesson;
3. Give an example of how a client of yours used the technique to get awesome results;
4. Tie it all back to how much better my business would be if I forked over $10,000 for a couple hours of your time.

And when you’re a guy like me who lives on the edge of breakthroughs and spends countless hours looking for the next big technique to bring his game up to a new level…

These books are a waste of time.

(I’m looking at you, Donald Miller)

Unfortunately, lots of beginner entrepreneurs and intermediate marketers get so caught up in these #1 Best-Sellers that they miss out on the real gems – like Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion.

Within minutes of cracking open the first chapter, I was hooked.

And by the end, Cialdini had revealed information even I’ve never considered.

Here are his top 7 lessons that you can apply in your business to immediately boost sales… 

1 – Aesthetics Matter

One of the first points that Cialdini makes in Pre-Suasion is that the right visual and auditory stimuli can put a prospect in a state where they’re receptive to buying.

An example he gives is playing French music in a wine store to sell more French wines – essentially pre-framing a customer’s attention by manipulating their focus.

You can do the same with photos on your website, sales page, and the soundtrack in your video sales letter or testimonial video.

2 – Sex & Greed (Don’t) Sell

If you want to sell more stuff, appeal to Lust and to Greed, right?

Wrong!

Trying to connect your product to basic emotions like that will hinder your prospect’s experience because:

1. Your product often doesn’t relate to either Lust or Greed very well, and…
2. Your prospect isn’t thinking about Lust & Greed, they’re thinking about 2nd and 3rd order consequences of their purchase.

Let me explain…

A 2nd order consequence is a benefit that will come as a result of the main benefit. The 3rd order consequence is one level deeper than that.

So if I’m providing business coaching to an entrepreneur, I can claim that he’ll make more money. Most marketers would stop there, believing that’s enough to get someone to buy. However, that’s the exact same thing every one of your competitors is saying…

The 2nd order consequence is that my client will be able to spend less time at work and walk away with the same amount of money at the end of the quarter. I’m no longer appealing to Greed, but I’m starting to appeal to the underlying emotional reasons why this Greed exists.

Beyond that, in the 3rd order consequences, I can claim that my client will finally be able to take his time in the morning getting ready for work. He’ll finally be able to drop his kids off at school and go to their extra-curriculars. He’ll have a chance to catch up on long-forgotten romance with his husband, who’s been missing the man he fell in love with (saving his relationship in the process).

Dig as deep as you can and find the real reason why your audience wants the outcomes that they’re looking for.

3 – A Great Way To Pitch Indirectly

In the financial copywriting niche, one of the most powerful types of sales letters is the “Secret Lead” letter.

With a Secret Lead, your goal is to tease a way for your reader to achieve the outcome your solution can provide while holding off on the big reveal until they’re completely bought into the idea. When you write this way (and if you do it well) you tap into a natural sense of human curiosity and practically force your reader to make her way down the page – and you don’t have to pitch her until she’s already eager to buy!

Cialdini gives a great framework for writing this type of lead – which he calls “mystery-based-stories.”

1 - Pose The Mystery

“Why are students in Finland so much more successful in academia than students in America?”

2 - Deepen The Mystery

“Evidence has shown us that these kids score higher than ours in science, math, and reading – and the country has a 0% dropout rate.”

3 - Offer Evidence Against Alternative

“They don’t spend tons of extra time in class every day, nor do they get socialism-sponsored home tutoring – actually, more Americans have tutors than Fins!”

4 - Provide A Clue To The Proper Explanation

“After nearly 2 decades of the government putting a huge focus on research in educational sciences, bringing some of the best minds in the world together to crack the code, they determined that there are 3 factors that are critical to academic success…”

5 - Resolve The Mystery

“Those 3 factors are small class sizes, personalized curriculums, and teachers who have an education equivalent to that of an American M.D.”

4 – A Powerful Productivity Trick

This one’s not so much of a “here’s how to market yourself better” but more of a “here’s how to engrain new habits and work smarter."

You may have noticed when you last tried to get into health & fitness that it’s tough to make a commitment and to consciously stick to it.

(I mean, UCLA even says that “Dieting Doesn’t Work” – which I think would be more accurately stated as “Most People Are Lazy,” but alas…)

Anyway, the issue most of us run into is that we make a weak commitment to our new behavioral pattern but fail to create a trigger mechanism strong enough to overcome our natural urges. That’s where the “if/when-then” trick comes in.

Decide on the behavior you’re trying to engrain – say, hopping on Facebook Live every day to promote your new launch – and create a rule or trigger for that behavior. It could be as simple as “When I finish journaling in the morning, then I’ll pull out my phone and share my reflections with my audience.”

5 – Tribalism Is Intrinsic

You can fight me all you want on this but our psychology is wired for us to love the people who are like us and to hate the people who are different.

And in case you haven’t heard, your prospects are going to buy from the guy they like the most – regardless of if his stuff is worse than yours and more expensive.

Fortunately, Cialdini outlines three ways that we can show our prospects how similar we are to them that transcends race, religion, and political affiliation.

1 - Place

If you’re from the same neighborhood, district, or country as your prospect, they’ll assume that you have the same types of values. For example, because I’m from South-East Quebec I can easily create a connection with other Quebequois since we share a language and a heritage. I can also connect with other Canadians based on shared socialist-democratic views like rights for abortion, environmental consciousness, and universal health care. Beyond that, I’m usually able to hold my own with people from rural areas in the States because I understand their traditional thinking and desire to stay away from the organized chaos of the Big City.

2 - Body Language & Colloquialisms

Next up, you can make people like you more if you act the same way that they do. Face-to-face, this could be as simple as matching and mirroring – so if you’re recording videos, try to emulate the same type of body language that your client-base has. If you’re writing, this could translate to using colloquialisms and sounding more conversation, with phrases like “y’all” or “this side of the Mississippi” or using “pop” instead of “soda.”

3 - Shared History

Having a shared history is, in my opinion, the most powerful. It’s why cliques exist – and why I can tell anyone who wears plaid and has tattoos that “pop-punk died after 2008” and they’ll agree. We vibe with the people who get it – and those shared emotional experiences and niche knowledge means we get it.

Each of these three factors relies on the idea of common experiences. These experiences demonstrate to us that our conversational partner shares our values and our beliefs – so spend more time telling your story and you’ll win new clients who think you’re just like them.

6 – Damaging Admissions

Regardless of your industry, your product, and your client-base, you’ll always have to deal with objections.

It’s an undeniable truth that there will be holes in what you’re offering – and that your client will see them.

You absolutely could ignore the problem and hope that your prospects do too (because that’s totally how people think, right?) or you could get out in front of the problem, address it openly, and gain your audience’s trust for your future claims.

Cialdini gives a great example of this in Pre-Suasion when he tells the story of a letter stock-holders received from Warren Buffet at the 50th anniversary of Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffet knew that as he grew older, his investors would begin to question his company’s ability to perform without its leader at the helm. He would have to retire at some point…

So in true copywriter fashion, Buffet came out and directly stated the objection, told the reader why he was justified in his belief, then turned it around, reassuring them that the next leader had been preparing to take over the company for years and that he and Charlie Munger trusted him completely.

What effect did that have on the reader?

Well, Berkshire’s stock prices continue to soar and don’t seem like they’re going to slow down any time soon, so you tell me… 

7 – Increasing Backend Sales (Especially In eCommerce)

This final tip is going to be most relevant to eCommerce entrepreneurs but brick-and-mortar folks can draw value from it, too.

Consider that every business has two primary sales functions: front-end offers and backend offers.

A front-end offer is an introductory and often low-priced offer that exists primarily to grow a business’ client database. If you’ve ever been on Facebook and Instagram and seen “Free + Shipping” or $7 book offers, those are classic examples of front-ends. The business isn’t looking to make a profit from them – sometimes they’ll even sell them at a loss – because what follows is so valuable…

The minute a client enters the business’ ecosystem, that client becomes a member of their audience. Once you’re a member of their audience (usually based around a subscription to an email newsletter) you’ll begin to receive back-end offers. Think of these as offers that the company only makes to people who have already bought from them.

Now, this is a very old-school approach to sales funnels – and it still works perfectly well – but Cialdini makes a really great argument for how you can boost your conversions on back-end offers.

Instead of simply making offers to your email list, ask your audience for advice and let them shape your next product launch. You’ll find that by doing it this way you get access to valuable data that you can use to construct your sales copy – and your prospects will feel more inclined to buy because they had a hand in creating your new program, product, or service.

By the way, if you’re gearing up for a launch or a relaunch of an old product and you’d like to get plug-and-play templates that incorporate this very powerful strategy for increasing backend sales, head over to emaillaunchsecrets.com.

You’ll find:

• Why most entrepreneurs miss out on 50% of their sales. And what you have to do to make sure you don't fall victim to this trap! (That’s on page 6)
• The single most powerful bonus strategy I've ever seen for personal development, business opportunity, and health & fitness offers. (Check that out on page 56)
• The 11 simple questions that you can answer to have your emails practically write themselves – starting on page 11
• Highly-charged subject line formulas that use the same strategies I've applied to get anywhere from 45% - 59% open rates on my own email sequences
• Plus – The 6-step framework to make your sales pitch without your prospect even realizing they're being sold to 

And much much more… 

Doesn’t that sound awesome?

These are the exact same strategies I use with my private clients, and for that reason, I can’t just give them out to everyone. So once we hit a certain sales limit, I’ll be taking this offer down for good.

If you want to grab your copy now while you still have a chance, just head over to emaillaunchsecrets.com.