I bought a new notebook computer yesterday.
The old one has served me well for a long time, and I felt that it was time to change to a lighter, slimmer and more compact model.
The salesman tried to sell me on a particular brand of notebook by listing out all its impressive features, and how the other notebooks didn’t match up. He was pushing me to imagine myself as the owner of a spanking new notebook. That’s “pleasure”…
When he was selling the “extended warranty”, he told horror stories of repairs that cost a few thousand dollars, far more than the original cost of the notebook and how the measly cost of the warranty will cover it all. That’s “pain”…
Selling is a double edged sword, and each piece of salesmanship in print is to move the consumer away from pain and towards pleasure.
Pain and pleasure are intensified feelings.
They deepen our neural pathways by inducing our brains to secrete more hormones. Everyone can remember where they were or what they were doing on 9-11, simply because the experience was so strong.
Are you using the concept of pain and pleasure in your selling? Don’t just move them towards pleasure, but also away from pain as well.
It is pain that causes us to move towards our goals, become better and away from where we are now.
It is pain that constantly scares us, spurs us on so much so that we want to avoid it altogether.
If you have a product that helps eliminate consumer “pains”, you can be rest assured that it will definitely sell.
Yeo Feng is the author of Website Weapons (http://www.WebsiteWeapons.com), a guide which reveals 22 secrets for making any website sell like crazy.
He is also a highly sought after direct response copywriter and technology marketer.
