{tumblr} Chad Rankin ~ Tokens Of Affection

Originally published on February 20, 2014, on Tumblr.

How to sell anything to anybody in seven easy steps. (Thank you, Wiki-How)

1. Pay attention to physical details about the buyer. Are they wearing high fashion clothing and jewelry? If you’re selling to them in their home, use your peripheral vision and notice pictures on the walls. Ask them questions about their families or places in their photos. This is a quick way to make them more comfortable.
2. Ask the buyer to tell you about the last really good experience they had when making a similar purchase.
3. Watch the customers eyes and note which direction the buyer gazes.
4. Listen to the buyers story. Note which kind of sense phrases the buyer uses (i.e. felt, saw, heard).
5. Validate the customers story by saying a certain phrase (i.e. “That’s a Great Story”). Stress the core of the phrase and “verbally punch” the words Great Story to make them stand out, slightly. Create your own phrase that works with your own presentation or use this one.
6. Present your product making sure to hold the product, brochure , etc. in such a way as to direct the customers eyes to the same position they were in while they were remembering the previous good experience (step 2).
7. When the customer gazes where the product or brochure is being held say to the buyer “I’ve got a Great Story to tell you about this [product or service you are selling]”. If the buyer used a phrase that included the word “feel” you might say “ I “feel” you’ll like this Great Story about this [product or service you are selling]. Try to re-use words that the buyer used when telling you about their good experience.

Chad’s picture got me thinking about tokens of affection as used in advertising, i.e., Campbell’s Soup (“M-mmm good, M-mmmm good, that’s what Campbell Soups are, M-mmm good!”) to convey a happy hearth and home via the easy way, canned soup. Then I started thinking about selling to children and how there must be a special place in Hell for those marketers. So I googled “How to sell anything,” for no particular reason, and found this list, thought it hilarious, down to using the same words as the “buyer,” noting where he or she gazes while recollecting something pleasant, putting the product or brochure in the same place, and creating the Great Story for him or her.

Chad’s whimsical picture implies a Great Story using archetypes, i.e., classical statuary, the soup can, the fly, and so on, in a Daliesque ddreamscape: a surrealistic tableau of light and dark and the little boy running off on the horizon.

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