It’s tricky to sell to people when you offer them something that is pricey. But with a couple tricks and by employing the psychology of selling, you may just get them to take that offer. Learn the psychology behind why people are moved to action and why some are not as Ken shows how urgency is much more valuable than the value. When you give people more than the value of what you’re asking and interject some form of scarcity, urgency kicks in. Sooner or later, you’ll have people lining up for you. Understand and learn more as Ken explains how to basically sell urgency.
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Sell Urgency
I was on a great call with Erica Castner. Erica is one of the best productivity experts I’ve ever bumped into. She’s launching something called The 25th Hour. She can almost, as if magic, pull out an extra hour of every person’s day. If you think you’re busy and you think you have no idea how you’re going to get through the day, I’m sure there are a lot of people reading this blog who are super busy and have no idea how you are going to gain some extra time, Erica has an unbelievable ability to yank out of your schedule and free you up almost as if you have a magical 25th hour of extra freedom in your life to be more productive, to get more done.
She’s amazing. Erica has even spoken on our stage. That tells you how good she is. She has spoken at Digital Footprint and Campfire. She’s awesome. We’re having a conversation and just in the middle of the conversation as she was talking about launching The 25th Hour is she was talking about selling her product or service, monthly memberships. She does one-on-one coaching. She does live in-person twenty people events. Somehow, I started poking at her on how does she wrap up a piece of business. How does she register someone into coaching?
Phenomenal coaches even have sales coaches. Click To TweetWe went back and forth for a good half an hour. I spotted something and I shared it with her. She was like, “That’s awesome. I’m missing that. I’ve heard of that before, but I have never used it. I certainly haven’t implemented it to any degree.” I’d like to walk you through what nugget of info I passed on to Erica and see if it helps you. To give you a frame of reference of where this is coming from, in the ’90s, we became known as phenomenal teachers of sales techniques, phenomenal coaches of even sales coaches. Some of you that have heard my older episode know that I got the infamous call from MCI WorldCom saying, “Mr. Courtright, I heard you have an incredible knack for reinventing a sales office.”
We ended up in 91 days taking that office from last place in 33rd place out of 33, 91 days later, they were the number one sales office in the country. That was the fastest growing stock on NASDAQ at the time, a multibillion-dollar company. We do have some great sales and nuggets in our arsenal of coaching 3,100 companies. I’d like to drop one of the greatest sales and nuggets into this podcast. Urgency is much more valuable than value. Urgency is far more valuable than value when trying to wrap up a piece of business. If you’re closing a piece of business, if you’re trying to physically take someone who’s highly motivated, they know they need your product. They unequivocally have the cash. It’s not a question of money. It may be a question of time do I have time?
I’ll use Erica as an example. This woman’s a machine. She’ll take you and get you another hour of productivity and you will make more money. There is no question that she will. Her website is called TheQueenofResults.com, EricaCastner.com and at some point, she’s got them or something. Bottom line, if Erica gets you in a room or gets you on the phone, you’re going to be more productive. You are going to make more money. Erica’s challenge is, “Ken, I’ll be in a room of twenty people and I can tell ten to fifteen of these people after hearing me for twenty minutes, they need what I have. They are physically saying, ‘How do I access this? Do you have videos? Do you have this? Do you have that?”’
They’re asking for digital materials from Erica because they don’t have the time. They don’t think they have the time for the one-on-one coaching. I said to Erica, “Let me share something with you. When you’re selling when you’re doing these seminars, webinars, and you got twenty people in the room, your goal is to find the one to two people that you could serve and help in a one-on-one setting. You’re not talking to everybody. You’re talking to the 10% that have the time, energy, and money to work with you. You’ve got to find a way to motivate them to action right now.” She was like, “That’s exactly what I need.” I said, “Here’s the deal. Let me give you the psychology behind a purchase. The psychology behind why people are moved to action and why some are not.”
Think about if you can implement this in your business with your salespeople or even on your website. The psychology behind the purchase is value equals two times the price. If you want to get someone to move to action, they need to believe the value of your product is at least two times more than you’re asking. Let’s use a quick example. These are not Erica’s numbers. I’m making this up on the fly. Let’s say Erica has something she sells for $1,000. It could be one month, it could be one hour, it could be a one-year digital course. If you want to get people to buy something for $1,000, you do a twenty-minute presentation. Ten minutes into the presentation, you pull up a slide. You show that this costs $2,000 and you literally take a screenshot from your website that shows that this coaching package is, let’s say $2,000. Once you have validated the price, you’ve shown it on your website, click the shopping cart.
You’ve shown them how to purchase. Psychologically, according to Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, you have got to set the $2,000 price on a shelf for at least ten, if not even fifteen to twenty minutes. As you’re showing the price, people immediately for 30 seconds get discombobulated. They go, “She’s selling me. It’s $2,000. Do I have $2,000? Is this worth $2,000? They’re not even hearing you speak for the next 30 seconds because they’re now processing $2,000 in relationship to what it is you’re talking about. After 30 seconds, they rebound. They’re thinking and processing on and off, on and off, but they’re back to listening to what you’re saying. All you do for the next ten minutes, as you continue to talk, you continue to add value, you continue to pick out people from the audience, use them as an example and show people how you carved out an extra fifteen minutes for this person. Then ten to fifteen, if not twenty minutes later, you find a way to say to the audience, “Here’s the deal.”
“Monica just invited me in to speak here. As you know, this was not on my agenda. Monica asked if I would do something special for her audience here of twenty people.” I said, ‘I definitely could. If I can get a couple of people to work with me instead of moving this for $2,000 like people come to my website and buy on a regular basis, I would be happy for anybody that wants to meet me in the back of the room and talk about this. I’d be more than willing to offer some type of a discount. I was thinking coming in here, if I can get a couple people registered before I go on vacation, I’d be happy to do this for say $1,200.”
Watch the magic of what I said. Number one, I would bet that there’s at least one person in the room that’s already ready to rock and roll at $2,000, one out of twenty for sure, if not two out of twenty. Once you’ve mentioned that you’ve been thinking about even offering a discount if multiple people will play ball, you have the attention of everybody in the room, especially the people that were on the fence about dropping $2,000. When you almost virtually cut it in half, note that right before I said $1,200, I said the magic word. I said, “If I could talk to a couple people in the back of the room before I go on vacation,” that brings in what’s called scarcity.
Scarcity says, “Once I leave this room, I’m going on vacation, then I’m going on a speaking tour. I’m writing my book.” Most of the time when I’m speaking, I’m not selling my own stuff. I’m usually there to edify whoever’s putting on the event, but I tell people, “Once I walk out of this room, it takes three weeks for my wife to set an appointment with me and I’m not being facetious, legitimately, we’re busy. We’re both busy. If you can sincerely say what’s going on in the next couple of weeks and give people a logical but very emotional reason why there is no value at two times the price, it was $2,000, now it’s $1,200, then also interject some form of scarcity. Once I walk out of this room, I’m sure you understand, I’m not going to be able to offer this again at $1,200.”
People will unequivocally buy into that because they don’t care what your reason is for the discount. The proof of this is how many people reading this blog believe that jewelry at any major jewelry store is truly, legitimately 60% to 75% off at all times? It’s ridiculous, but it is the psychology of selling. A jewelry store knows that when you finally are thinking of popping the question, you are going to go online, you’re going to drive by storefronts and you’re going to look for the deepest discount for a certified diamond. Those are the facts of life.
You’re then going to be pulled in like a magnet to the 75% or the 50% discount, whatever it is. Why is it always over 50%? It’s because value equals two times the price. When it’s 50% off, people are moved to action. I explained this to Erica, “What would happen if you were doing your presentation and halfway through the presentation, you pulled up a slide of your website showing the price. At the end, where you normally would want to get $2,000, what would happen if you offered some urgency and you lowered the price for a very specific reason that whoever invited you to speak, whoever set up this event was willing to put quality people in the room that you didn’t have to pay to market to? You didn’t have to get butt and sits.” To honor that, you’ll be happy to discount your product. She was like, “I’ve done that before. I would be willing to do that.”
If you want to get someone to move to action, they need to believe the value of your product is at least two times more than you're asking. Click To TweetI’ll say it this way because I don’t want to name this person. There was a very well-known public figure at a 400-person event. He was selling an event, a three-day camp. I was selling a three-day camp. This is going back years ago with the same audience. I followed him after he had extracted a lot of thousands of dollars of people in the audience to go to his event. There was another speaker and then, there was me. I did 25% better than this very well-known person. The only difference in our presentation was that our events which were upwards of thousands of dollars at the time for our internet minefield boot camps our price was exactly the same as his price. However, I price dropped mine and I lowered the price at the last minute.
He didn’t. He held to his price. Volume-wise, even though I had to move twice as many people, I moved three times more people. I filled the room way bigger than his room and I was the number one producer at that event. I’ll never forget, I walked away going, “I outsold that person who’s considered one of the greatest people from stage.” It was an amazing event. Here’s what I’m here to say. I don’t care if you sell jewelry. I don’t care if you sell sports coats. I don’t care what you sell. Value is value and urgency is urgency. Urgency when it comes to getting someone to click shopping cart or a pull out a credit card, urgency is much more valuable during those ten minutes, than value. I hope this helps. Take care.
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