Harness the power of "seduction" to immediately improve your sales
My psychoanalysis of the Chinese pearl industry and its highly effective sales methods
“What is a gift? Aren’t all gifts free?”
– Anonymous
From the hotel room of: Raymond Fong; Beijing, China.
Sellucation – it works 🙂
While traveling in Beijing, my girlfriend and I were chauffeured into a huge pearl shop and greeted at the front door by several very well-dressed ladies, one of whom ushered us inside. She then proceeded to guide us to a booth with a good sized aquarium above it.
Inside the aquarium there were a lot of oysters the size of my hands. He handed the net to my girlfriend and made her catch one. (So ​​yes… oyster fishing is really a sport in China, more or less…) All this time, the lady was giving us a lesson on oysters and pearls: the different colors, different types , different locations to get them, etc
The educational part of seduction begins
It was nothing less than an education in oysters and pearls.
How fascinating. I never thought I’d care so much about oysters (most of the time I was worried about what sauce I wanted to pour over them before devouring them whole).
Once we got an oyster, the lady put it on the table, took out a knife and sliced ​​up that poor oyster (never got a chance) while asking us to guess how many pearls we could find. inside.
Ended the whole educational lesson which, if it had a shocking headline, would go something like this:
“Who else wants to know the #1 way to tell if that pearl jewelry is fake and avoid spending hundreds of dollars?”
She showed us exactly how to tell if a pearl is real or not and showed us that test in action. We, on site, use the test on a fake and a real pearl. And lo and behold, the test works.
And before finally escorting us to his pearl store, he gave us a gift: the FRESH pearl from the oyster we just pulled.
The result?
And in the warehouse…? She happily swiped our credit cards and took our orders. We felt GREAT making our purchase as we made sure the pearls we were buying were REAL (just like that lady taught us).
Now that I’ve had time to dissect what happened, I realize it was a great sales/marketing system that harnessed the incredible power of sales. Let me explain.
The lighting
Selling is the process of selling through education.
It’s not so much about the sale as it is about educating your prospect in such a way that they want to BUY from you.
You see, people hate being sold to, but they LOVE to SHOP. Sellucation provides them with so much useful information that it’s natural for them to perceive you as the expert and their advocate and want to buy from you.
Let’s examine the process of selling pearls in more detail.
breaking it…
First, he taught us about oysters and pearls, thus encouraging us to invest some kind of interest in the subject at hand: oysters and pearls.
He then had us actively search for one inside the tank; we now have a sense of emotional attachment to that oyster and the treasures it contains. After all, it became OUR oyster since it arose through the fruits of our effort (no matter how small our efforts were, that is beside the point; the point is that we invested effort and developed a sense of attachment).
He opened the oyster and showed us the treasures it contained, while asking us an involving question of “How many pearls do you think are inside this (your) oyster?“
So besides the fact that it was”wear“Oyster she was cutting, which meant that the pearls inside were “ours” by default, we further inverted our emotions because we now subconsciously hoped that our assumption was correct.
In fact, we were looking forward to the actual solution and thus completing that mystery/train of thought in our head.
By now, he definitely had us interested and also invested in this whole oyster and pearl market, a market that I have never in my life expressed an interest in.
The challenge is… how do you transition this interest from JUST oysters and pearls to YOUR oysters and pearls?
The “sell” part of Sellucation
Easy. Sending the message that they are a legitimate company selling REAL pearls and earning our trust.
Remember the part where we were taught how to spot fake pearls?
Well, by showing us how to spot fakes, they’re basically saying, “Look, would we try to sell you fakes right after showing you how to SPOT fakes? Of course not and that’s why you should trust and buy from us!”
And of course, the gift, who can forget the free gift? Surely it’s just the nice gesture of the lady right? He must have thought we were the cutest couple in the world and wanted to reward us for being so handsome.
NO! (I mean, we make a cute couple, but that’s not the reason for the gift.)
See, our human minds work in a way that we’re inclined to reciprocate. When someone does something nice for us, we tend to want to do something nice in return, not all the time and certainly not all of us, but a fair amount.
That gift unconsciously makes us feel somewhat indebted, that we should return that nice gesture. And what better way to do that than by spending a lot of money buying lots of pearls that that lady is sure to take a cut of?
Do you see it now?
In the end
This was all a game of charades for us to buy.
But don’t get me wrong, we are happy with our purchases and would do it again. We, as consumers, felt that we were treated properly, felt safe, and felt that we were not being cheated with fake pearls. We were happy to buy with that peace of mind that was offered to us.
THIS, my friend, is the power to sell, to sell by educating.
This is a lesson to keep in mind when writing newsletters, reports, boot camp, articles, sales pages, etc. This is the same method we teach in our Attraction Marketing Formula course: How to establish yourself as not only the expert, but also someone the reader trusts, advocates, relies on, and connects with.
By doing so you will rise to the top and add a lot of $$$ to your bank account.
To affinity and beyond,
Raymond Fong