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Leave It To The Future
Here's a bit of an advanced technique. It's called future pacing and it works to remind your prospect or client of all the reasons they made the decision to buy your product or service. It transfers all of these reasons to a future point in time and triggers your prospect to remember them when an anchor is fired off.
Here’s a bit of an advanced technique. It’s called future pacing and it works to remind your prospect or client of all the reasons they made the decision to buy your product or service. It transfers all of these reasons to a future point in time and triggers your prospect to remember them when an anchor is fired off.
I like to use this technique every time I sell. It’s powerful in helping your client or prospect feel good about their decision no matter what outside influences say. This includes overriding any second thoughts they may have themselves.
Since this is a fairly advanced strategy, I’ll be giving just an overview and example here. As a young man, I used this technique to sell health spa memberships.
I had an eighteen year old guy come in and he wanted to buy a membership so I sold it to him. I didn’t even really have to ‘sell’ it to him because he was so eager to sign up.
After he signed the contract, I went through some future pacing and said, ‘Imagine if someone tried to tell you that you that signing up with us was a bad decision and how stupid are you to pay for a membership, what would cause you to stay with the decision anyway?’
And he said, ‘I want this and no one’s going to talk me out of it. I do what I want.’
I said, ‘Okay. Supposing you begin to doubt the decision yourself, what would cause you to stay with this decision?’
He explained, ‘I absolutely know what I want and I want this membership. I make my own decisions and that’s it.’
A few hours later I got a phone call from the young man’s mother. She said, ‘Hey, you sold my son a gym membership earlier today.’
I said, ‘He came in and bought a membership, I didn’t have to sell it to him.’
And she said, ‘Okay, he bought a membership. I’d like you to cancel it and send me notice that it’s been done.’
I said, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t do that. Your son is over the age of eighteen. I wouldn’t have been able to sell it to him otherwise. He’ll need to come in with the paper work within the 72 hour cancellation period and as the agreement says, we’ll cancel it.’
’Okay, we’ll be there tomorrow,’ she said.
The next day the young man and his mother came in. He was pretty unhappy about what he was there to do, it was obvious. He said, ‘I need to cancel my membership, but I was wondering if I could work out today and show my mom the guy. Is that possible?’
’Absolutely,’ I said.
So he went and worked out. Well apparently they drove separate cars if I remember the correctly and the kid ducked out and left his mom there.
She approached me and said, ‘We need to cancel this membership now.’
I said, ‘Sure. I’ll be happy to take care of that for you. I’ll need the contract.’
She said, ‘I don’t have it. He has it.’
’Well, as per the terms of our agreement, I need that contract to cancel it. And like I said, he’s got 72 hours, so he can come back later or tomorrow and take care of it then.’
The next day the kid comes in, brings the agreement and says, ‘I’m supposed to give this to you, but before I do, can I just work out?’
‘Absolutely.’
Again, he worked out, and again, he left without seeing me.
The third day came. His mother dragged him in and said, ‘Give the man the goddamn contract.’ He handed it to me.
’Cancel this contract,’ she said.
I asked the guy, ‘Do you want this contract canceled?’
’No,’ he said. And an argument ensued. He was nearly ready to sever his relationship with his mother over the gym membership.
At this point, I took the membership and canceled it. I realized what had happened. I hadn’t given it a second thought until I saw this kid unable to hand back the agreement because he had made a decision and I had future paced it.
When you future pace something, you lock it into the mind of the person and I’m telling you right now that with the power of the strength of their own mind, you will have virtually locked them in.