How to persuade customers to buy your speech or products

I attended the PSA (Professional Speaking Association) Meeting last weekend, and the theme of the day was getting booked.

In the afternoon the attendees were split into groups and were given the task of brainstorming persuasion techniques i.e. how we might persuade prospects to buy.  We didn’t get the opportunity to share the brilliant list of advice my group came up with so I will share it with you. 
 
Here is our list of what you can do to persuade customers to buy your speech or products:

• Paint a picture of what could happen if they work with you
• Listen, and keep listening long enough so that you prospect is understood
• Ask open questions
• Give the prospect the opportunity to buy
• Treat your conversation as research rather than treating it as a sales conversation
• Elevate your offering from a nice to have to a need to have, to do that you need to make it super relevant
• Let the other side go first (Chris Voss’s great advice from his book Never Split the Difference), let them speak first, find out where they are, what they need and what budget they have
• Have a range of offerings at different pricing levels so that you can serve different clients.  Gold, silver, and bronze pricing
• Plant the seed of more work (more than just a speech) as soon as possible
• Tell clients about the forgetting curve.  After your speech you want the audience to remember and your clients will want them to take action, so have a further product to help them remember; a book; a workshop; an online course
• Use Cialdini’s model of like; reciprocity; social proof; consistency & commitment and scarcity