Mastering Core Marketing Principles: Persuasion

To master marketing we need to understand the core marketing principles, which leads us to understanding our overall strategy. In the first issue we began the 'Mastering Core Marketing Principles' series by discussing Positioning, then Packaging and Promotion. If you missed these articles or want to read it again... click here.

The fourth cab off the rank is Persuasion.

The job of persuasion is to turn prospects that have responded to your marketing into paying clients. And here’s where sales or persuasion strategies and skills are essential. If you can master the art of converting a large percentage of those who call into paying clients, you’ll have a very successful business.

Persuasion is all about listening and focusing.

Persuasion is not so much about convincing people how great your services are; that’s more the job of packaging and promotion. Persuasion starts when people call you in response to your marketing. Persuasion is mastering the art of listening and focusing on the needs and objectives of your clients. Then it’s finding creative ways to meet those needs and objectives in a way that’s agreeable to both parties.

To persuade clients to buy from you is about finding out what the needs of your prospect are.

Below are key questions that will help you decipher how persuasive you are:

• Do you have an infomercial? When someone asks, ‘What do you do?’ do you have a concise and powerful solution statement that expresses what you do in a nutshell,
• Do you spend the majority of your time in a sales situation, on the phone or in person, finding out about the needs of your prospect? Do you have a series of well-thought-out questions that help you learn about their situation, their problems and the implications of not taking action?
• Do you ask future questions of your prospects like not just what problems they want solved, but what they want things to be like once you’ve help them?
• Can you present what it is you do in a benefit-oriented presentation? Once you know the situation, problems and objectives of your clients, can you outline a course of action that will solve those problems and meet those objectives?
• Do you wait for people to take action or do you move the action forward? Are you comfortable about recommending a course of action?
• By understanding the basic principles will help you to become a better marketing-led business.

Posted by Deborah Jackson on September 7, 2009