5 Effective Old-School Sales Techniques

5 Effective Old-School Sales Techniques

“My adventure has all been in my mind. The great adventure has been thinking. I love to think about things. I think that the lack of drama in my life has produced a platform for me to be fundamentally adventurous in my thinking.

– Milton Glaser

The best way to implement sales techniques is to use traditional values that have passed the test of time, so you get an upper hand in this incredibly competitive market. But how does someone manage to do so without failing miserably? Well, the trick is to stop worrying and think a little bit – think about your clients as the actual human beings they are.

It will do wonders for your sales. Under-promise and over-deliver – it will make it look like you care more about your client. Let’s scroll down and see what 5 effective old-school sales techniques you can use, and how you can use them!

1. Foot In The Door Technique

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It’s a really old-school technique, it dates back to the time when door to door salesmen used to put their foot in the door to make a compelling, last minute hard to refuse deal, after slowly building it up. Foot in the door, or short FITD is a “compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request. The foot-in-the-door technique succeeds owing to a basic human reality that social scientists call “successive approximations”.

Essentially, the more a subject goes along with small requests or commitments, the more likely that subject is to continue in a desired direction of attitude or behavioral change and feel obligated to go along with larger requests. FITD works by first getting a small ‘yes’ and then getting an even bigger ‘yes.’ The principle involved is that a small agreement creates a bond between the requester and the requester.

Even though the requester may only have agreed to a trivial request out of politeness, this forms a bond which – when the requester attempts to justify the decision to themselves – may be mistaken for a genuine affinity with the requester, or an interest in the subject of the request. When a future request is made, the requester will feel obliged to act consistently with the earlier one.”

You can use this technique to make your way slowly in online marketing.

 2. Door In The Face Technique

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The face in the door technique relies on the sales person to offer absurd deals that the client will surely refuse, but later on to get the real deal, that he was planning all along. It’s a great way to get your way in a complicated transaction.

“An important topic in DITF research involves whether the DITF technique is useful because of reciprocal concessions or social responsibility. The reciprocal concessions explanation is more common and involves reciprocity, or the need for a respondent to comply with the smaller second request because the persuader is compromising from the initial request. The social responsibility explanation involves internal standards of the importance of helping others that make the respondent feel they must comply with the second smaller request. Other examples of the DITF effect include maintaining a positive self-presentation and reducing guilt.”

 3. The Scarcity Technique

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“You’ll never see a deal like this ever again!”, or “The greatest deal that will never be available again!” are just some lines used for the scarcity technique. An article from the website Entrepeneurs-Journey.com sums it up pretty well – “Scarcity refers to any limitation placed on a product or service with the goal of increasing sales through pressure put on the consumer. The fear of missing out causes people to make the decision to buy.”

 4. BadMouth The Competition

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More like discrediting your competition. Back in the day everyone was discrediting everyone, in the competitive business, of course. Simply tell what you do better than your competition, including only what they lack in the business may seem like a cheap shot, and your reputation will suffer.

Just be careful to not go to extreme ways – “Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false. Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions.

A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout). Another technique, of concealing facts or censorship, is also used if the group can affect such control. When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with many easily disproved false claims.”

 5. Under-Promise And Over-Deliver

sales techniques

It’s a great technique to make your clients love you more. It will seem that you care about them, and the services you provide. Tom Peters posted a great article on his website that sums it up perfectly – “With competition heating up in every market, firms are forced to promise the moon to get an order, especially that first order. Right? Wrong. With an explosion of competitors, many of them new and without track records, reliability, rather than overly aggressive promises, is the most valuable strategic edge, especially for the mid- to long- haul.

While getting faster at responding to customers is imperative, living up to commitments has never been worth more. A survey of banks supports this point. Banks with lower customer ratings tend to respond, for instance, to an early morning customer query with, “We’ll be back to you by noon,” or “We’ll be back to you.” Then they get back to the customer at, say, 3 p.m. The top rated banks, such as Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York, reply, “We’ll be back to you by close of business today” — and they do — at 4 p.m., for example. The paradox: The poor performers, in the customers’ eyes, frequently “outperformed” the better performers — that is, they got the job done first.

Yet customers rate low the banks that fail to keep promises (3 p.m. instead of noon) or that are vague (“We’ll get back to you”); customers unfailingly prefer slightly less aggressive promises — that are honored.”

This was our short list of 5 effective old-school sales techniques. Hopefully after reading this article and acquiring this impressive knowledge, your sales will be tremendously boosted. If you have anything to add, you can do so by posting in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you!

About

Elena Simionescu handles PR for Pixel77 and Inky Deals. She takes marketing and social media pretty seriously and in her free time, she watches a lot of movies. Like a lot, a lot. Get in touch with her on Twitter and Google+.

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