Hard Sell Reduces Profits in the Long Term

I will assert right at the start here that I believe that hard sell techniques, in all their variations, do far more damage than good in the long-term. Hard sell is the action of a Viking. Some will argue otherwise, often stating that it is up to the individual to decide to purchase or not to purchase and that if you don't push past initial buyer resistance then you will never make a sale. The final argument for hard sell usually involves waving sales reports with lots of dollars in the air. These arguments are fine but I don't buy them. Let me explain why.

Argument 1 - Buyers can walk away

Yes they can and do but is that what you want? I know every process can create some "collateral damage" but should you be deliberately burning what you can't earn? I think this argument is entirely false and a form of misdirection.

If you are doing something to people to make them need to walk away then surely you are doing something wrong and you know it. To pass the buck to someone else doesn't look to me to be a noble answer at all. In sales, your job is to make as many people in your target audience as happy as possible. If your target audience is get-rich-quick-suckers then a slippery, hard sell is appropriate but if you want to sell something of real value over the long-term then surely doing something that you wouldn't like done to you is a really bad call.

At this point I will point out that I believe very strongly in business being about making money. I am not a mush-head, bleeding-heart, looter type who believes that business exists to serve the people in some perverted Marxist way. Businesses exist solely to make money for the owners. As a by-product, workers will be required and they will earn money too. Customers are needed to buy products. And the way to sell the most number of products over the long-term is to have happy customers who gain as much value as they spend. This is a symbiotic process that has to be win-win or it is bankrupt, if not today then very soon.

Argument 2 - Buyer resistance

Buyers all tend to be resistant. I have walked away from rare $1 records (vinyl) that I have always kicked myself for not buying. I found excuses not to buy at the time like, I'm too poor to spend $1, I'll get it later, or the guy started to offer me pirated Iron Maiden videos...

A sales person does need to overcome buyer resistance that is true. But is bullying a customer going to make them feel more comfortable or less comfortable? No one likes to be bullied. You could say this is untrue and point to women who stay with violent husbands and wimpy kids who have their lunch money stolen every day without finding a way to stop it. But let's stop and ask these people if they are really happy: N. O. No! There is no joy in being a victim even if you choose to stay one.

Buyer resistance is best overcome in every instance with reassurance; more information, more training, more support, more demonstrations, more time, more understanding, more of whatever it takes to get that type of person to feel happy to move forward. This will take some time and effort but note that the point the customer moves forward is when they are happy. Happy customers tend to refer other happy customers and that is cheap cost-of-sales acquisition for the long-term.

Argument 3 - Look at the money I made

This is the dangerous argument; the little light above the mouth of the scary deep sea fish, the Satan in a white suit argument...

Money talks volumes and if you aren't careful you will believe that the money you can earn makes all the natural laws you break not valid laws in the first place. Surfers who don't understand that they must work with the wave end up pretty battered. Waves do what they do, you can't beat them with a surf board. You can learn to harness them or get crushed. There have been many attempts to alter the course of human psychology but they have all failed, even after disappearing millions of non-believers.

There will always be short term gains to be made in trying to outwit nature but ultimately you must fail. Get rich people know this well, that is why they are called fly by night scams. The scammer has to get out after a set period of time as the victim will always wake up to the scam. Every time, it will happen just the same. Again, if you are selling get rich quick scams then ignore this article as it is not for you but if you are selling a genuine product or service that needs a long-term success in a limited location (like planet Earth or anywhere there is the internet) then you do not want to embark on a short-term gain strategy that carries a long-term opportunity cost, like customers hating you.

The money made on the reports hard-sell merchants show you is probably real. I won't deny that. Good on them for making it. But what of the opportunity costs that are mounting up from customers that have been turned-off? These lost customers will be very, very, very hard to get back because they have been hurt at a fundamental level by the bullying. People always remember the emotional peaks, the moments of ecstasy and the moments of despair. Being bullied is a moment of despair so don't expect people to remember you fondly.

To defeat this last argument decide if your business goal is a short term one or a long term one. Decide how important natural referrals are to you. Decide what cost you would have to pay to overcome the negative done by treating customers with disrespect. Take a deep breath and decide to build something that doesn't have a built-in use by date.

How to win without the hard sell

If the hard sell is so negative, why do so many companies attempt to sell using versions of these nasty bully tricks? Fear. Fear that their offering is not really good enough to get a place in the market. Rather than change their product to make it better they try to change the market. Bullying is always easier than rising to the challenge. To me, this perfectly fits my definition of Dumb. Nonetheless, rising to the challenge with a better product, service and presentation will work better at helping you stay in business.

Here are some of the hard sell tactics I see used on the web (and by customers in the real world) and some better solutions:

You must buy now or the offer will disappear

Problem: this is a classic pressure technique. If the offer really is timely maybe there is merit, but to engineer a false timeliness is just manipulation and lies.

Solution: if there is a real time constraint, let a customer know gently early in the conversation and let them decide what they will do. If time isn’t an issue then don’t introduce it. If someone isn’t buying, ask them what their opposition is and deal with that.

I’ll give you this report, valued at $29.95, for FREE if you give me your email address

Problem: a trick I’m seeing more than I like on the web. This report is clearly not free or valued at anything. If this report is free you would not be trying to lever contact details off people. I believe all variants of this are wrong.

Solution: if the report or paper is free, display it right there on your web site for all to read. If the info is genuinely worth $29.95 then present it nicely as a PDF e-book with a buy now button next to it and collect some cash for your wisdom. To get user contacts, ask people to join a mailing list where you send them articles like these that add value to their lives.

Automated sales emails (generally a follow up to the point above)

Problem: not all sales email are Spam but if you send one after another every day to try to coax people to do something and you are monitoring every move they make then you make them decidedly uncomfortable. If you did this in the old west a punch in the nose would be a comin’.

Solution: automated anything needs to be done with care. Make sure the automation adds value and the emails don’t look like they are serving you more than your user. There is a definite sweet spot in time for purchases and if you really need to maximise that then do so with sensitivity or you are annoying potential customers.

I’ll give you free tickets that other people have to pay for

Problem: the truth of the matter is that all the tickets are free and the event is really a boiler room (captured customer + pressure sales situation, perhaps with biscuits). I recently booked into a big name success trainer’s seminar which was sold in a ‘hurry as there are only a few free tickets or they’ll be $900′ patter that I soon realized was a big fib as all the tickets were free. This makes me not want to go at all. If C starts the relationship with an unnecessary lie then what else will he lie about? Even though this fellow appears to be a millionaire and I am not, his assumption that I am silly is an insult.

Solution: Just don’t do this. If the tickets are really free then say so. I know some salesmen will say, “But then no one will value them”. Fine but right now those tickets are worth negative value to C. Take the time to explain and filter your respondents with information that will diminish the lollygaggers. If the tickets are valuable then simply do the traditional thing and charge for them. If you choose to sell for silly amounts like $5 then people will be delighted with the value for money.

Call me to get information

Problem: to force someone to contact you get information, that should be basic and forthcoming, to enable you to start to “manage the relationship” says you are not interested in more than trying to extract money and your product is weak.

Solution: if you see your web site as a salesman, the equal of all the others on your team, then you shouldn’t need to do this. You would expect a salesman to answer this question on the spot so let your web site do that too. If your product is complex then explain as much as the web site can and then make it easy for users to be in contact. Taking time to explain the intricacies and how to get the best win win in the process can be of real benefit to nervous customers who have been burned or not done this before.

Real value is $179 but buy all this now for $29.95

Problem: there is a sucker born every day as they say but is it good practice to make it clear that you consider your purchaser a sucker? Also this is devaluing your own product.

Solution: the real value of this is $29.95 (so long as people are purchasing that is). The $179 is a fib. Get rid of it. If you think $29.95 is not great value then either reduce the price to what is a fair trade, or even better, increase the perceived value of the product with some extra information or support. Put your marketing hat on to find the customer’s hot buttons and massage them. You may well find that the market is prepared to pay $49 for your product.

Free mobile phone ringtone (or other goodie)

Problem: read the fine print and the moment you ask for your ringtone, you are automatically subscribing to a $10 per week “service” that offers nothing of appreciable value at all.

Solution: same answer as the free report above. If you need to add novelties then make sure they are of value. I remember several car companies giving away car racing video games on CD which were truly terrible. They would have tanked as freeware on the net! They behaved so badly they made the real cars look like rubbish. Find something that your customers will get a kick out of or use. I have a yellow smiley-face bookmark I was given by Berlex years ago stuck to my monitor (and you see I remember their name).

Long Letters: info, buy now, but wait there’s more, buy now, but wait there’s more…

Problem: ok so I admit a soft spot for this art, which also forms the core of ab-cruncher commercials on TV, but is using this blatant supposed “value building” tactic on a web page doing you more harm than good?

Solution: the long letter as a selling art form has probably had it’s day but there is a reason the formula can and does work so very well. Look at the theory (psychology) that causes it to work with people and then use that to underlie a many-paged web site that always asks for the business and always has more information to add value to tip the the nervous prospect over the edge into a happy buyer.

In case you wonder if I am alone in thinking this way then see this post from Seth Godin called Two Ways To Build Trust and The #1 Conversion Killer In Your Copy (And How To Beat It) by Sonia Simone. Both of these articles show how genuine trust builds genuine relationships and sales while tricks diminish trust and sales