This is a blog called What NOT to do! Don’t force people to agree with your idea! the idea is to help you avoid being seen as ‘pushy’ in your attempt to sell, influence, or persuade. Enjoy!
We’ve all been the subject of a pushy salesperson. Someone who seemingly forced us to buy something that we didn’t want or need, and then we regretted it the minute they were gone.
At the time you probably felt strong buyer’s remorse and wished you were not so stupid. Or perhaps you felt angry towards the salesperson for being so pushy and tried to return the goods.
In situations like this we as the customer often complain to many people around us about the terrible customer experience we had. And the bad reputation of the salesperson and their company spreads like wildfire. No one likes a pushy salesperson!
If you are in sales here’s a word or warning: especially at the moment in the ‘virtual world’ (where it’s just so much more difficult to sell your products or services), it’s really important when engaging in ethical persuasion that your stakeholder never feels coerced, forced or manipulated into doing something that they don’t want to do.
They must feel a measure of freedom in the decision-making process. That’s the definition of persuasion, it’s where the stakeholder has ‘a measure of freedom in their decision-making process’.
In other words, it’s your job as the persuader, to communicate your solution so that your stakeholder can see that what you’re offering is just what they need.
When they can sense that what you’ve got is exactly what they need, they will be quick to agree or snap it up!
So the real skill here is the listen to your stakeholders’ needs and work out how to help them rather than how to sell to them.
Your stakeholder must always feel that they made their own decision to take the action, buy the product or endorse your idea. This type of selling is associated with the win/win. They win, you win. No one feels forced or pushed into doing anything they didn’t want to do.
In short, understand what it is that your stakeholder wants and give that to them rather than pitching what YOU want to sell them!
Happy Presenting & Persuading!
Why not book Michelle to speak at your next conference on the subject of persuasion?
Michelle will create a comprehensive conference experience for you:
Phase 1 – compete the Persuasion Smart Profile® online to assess your current persuasive strengths and weaknesses at work & receive your very own comprehensive, personalised, 9-page report.
Phase 2 – Michelle’s generous, energetic & entertaining presentations offer your delegates a chance to learn, practice & remember a heap of practical tips to ensure you are all more instantly persuasive TODAY!
Phase 3 – gift your delegates a copy of Michelle’s best-selling book, How to Persuade: the skills you need to get what you want (Wiley)
©2024 MICHELLE BOWDEN is an authority on persuasive presenting in business. She’s run her Persuasive Presentation Skills Masterclass over 1000 times for more than 13,000 people over the past 25 years and her name is a synonym for ‘presentation skills’ in Australia.
Michelle is a multi-million-dollar pitch coach to her client list that reads like a who’s who of international business: banking and finance, IT, pharmaceutical, retail, telecommunications plus many more. Michelle is the creator of the Persuasion Smart Profile®, a world-first psychological assessment tool that reports on your persuasive strengths and weaknesses at work, the best-selling internationally published author of How to Present: the ultimate guide to presenting live and online (Wiley) and How to Persuade: the skills you need to get what you want (Wiley).