Use a Little Reverse Psychology On Your Prospects
November 16, 2009 – 6:27 pmYou know all about the “reverse psychology” idea, no doubt.
The wikipedia definition seems to describe it well.
Reverse psychology is a persuasion technique involving the advocacy of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what is desired: the opposite of what is suggested.
Have you ever tried it on a prospective window cleaning client?
Lately, I have been playing with this a little bit, and have discovered some surprising (but not really, right?) results…it works.
Here’s what I’ve been doing:
When a prospect has agreed to have us provide a specific service to them, I simply add the following statement/question:
“Okay, great. And for this time around, you don’t want to add a __________ package, right?”, mentioning the exact same offer that I would normally try to up-sell them on.
Again, today, the reply I heard was:
“Actually, YES we would like to include that package this time around. Please add that.”
Weird, eh? I guess people really don’t like me telling them what to do.
Or…actually…given your familiarity with this whole reverse psychology thing, maybe not so weird after all.
The moral of the story: Try using some reverse psychology on the next prospect that requests an estimate from you. And try it during the up-sell/cross-sell stage.
(Hold on – I, umm…mean DON’T use reverse psychology!)
It works. And you’ll make more money, more quickly, as a result.
Kevin
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