Satisfy their deep craving and
they’ll praise you and protect you:
Just rise and remain above your competition
In our last post, we discovered how to start in building your credibility:
- Start by giving away something valuable for free
- Consistently continue to do so. Yes, it means you need to find a consistent way to continuously deliver valuable free stuff
I hinted at the deeper reason why this works:
It has a lot to do with being consistent, and it’s like a light with magnetic qualities. It satisfies deep emotional cravings that all humans have: the need to be recognized and appreciated for who they are.
In today’s world, there’s a huge craving for reassurance, an acute need to believe, and a flight to faith. People need to believe — and that’s the essence of credibility.
The light that satisfies those deep cravings? Sincerity.
Why is sincerity so important? What needs does it satisfy in your buyers?
Let’s talk about two things today:
- why people are drawn to sincerity like moths to a light
- 3 views of competition
Then, in the next two posts, we’ll look at using sincerity to:
- put together better offers by treating your customers like executives, and
- the strategy of how to get around the important need for testimonials, showing buyers happily using your product, and other forms of “proof”
Sincerity: a light with magnetic qualities
It’s sad but true:
There’s been a continuous erosion of relationships as society becomes more commercialized. And that erosion does not support stable relationships. Instead of a genuine human being, everyone looks like a possible customer.
As a result, and especially because of the worst practitioners of manipulation for commercial exploit, people feel that they are the objects of manipulation, the targets for ingenious methods of control:
- through advertising that urges again and again, promises, and terrorizes
- through propaganda that suckers them into decisions which may not coincide with their best interests
- through subtle sales tactics which simulate values common to both seller and customer for private and self-interested motives
Instead of genuine values, we get the appearance of concern for others.
Instead of “How to win friends and win influence people,” we get “How to influence people by pretending we’re friends.”
And the result? Everyone will tend to look at every relationship through a profit-colored lenses. How much is that person worth to me in cold, hard cash?
The reaction to this “I’m just a potential revenue source” emptiness by everyone in society? A craving for reassurance, an acute need to believe, a flight to faith.
To satisfy that deep emotional craving, people start emphasizing sincerity, by judging sellers whether if “they really mean what they say.”
Why sincerity? Because of these factors:
- the wish to be considered as a person rather than a potential customer
- the reaction against feeling insecure about others manipulating them, luring them into false friendship and trust, only for commercial exploitation
- the response of people in a society which has lost many common values
Kate Smith excelled at satisfying their cravings by using sincerity, and exchanged that for $39 million of bonds.
The heavy emphasis in showing sincerity is on action: “actions speak louder than words” or what we called in fancy, schmancy terms the “propaganda of the deed.”
Actions means selling stuff. The way you sell your stuff influences how sincere you come across to your prospects.
Most of the time, you don’t have the total luxury of being the only one offering your product. Others are competing with you. How? Let’s look at 3 views of competition:
3 general views of competition
- Praise yourself: businesspeople compete with one another by trying to praise their own commodity more persuasively than their rivals
- Bash the competition: politicians compete by slandering the opposition. And so some businesses
And the third?
- 3. Don’t compete: rise and remain above the level of competition
One factor contributing to Kate Smith’s image of sincerity was that she herself did not call attention to her years of doing good. She did not praise her own commodity. And she did not slander the opposition.
Just as she took the high moral ground as her sales theme (“your purchase is a sacred act”), she took the high moral ground in her career by sustaining a track record of participating in numerous charitable events.
The outcome of doing these was sincerity. As a result of this sincerity, something much more powerful happened for Kate Smith and will happen for you:
Her fans and the media praised her and protected her from competitors who tried to bash her.
Next time, we talk about sincerity and putting together better offers. In our next post covering Mass Persuasion.
Related posts:
- Mass Persuasion (part 17): Sincerity: put together better offers
- Mass Persuasion (part 19): Sincerity: Build up trust and they’ll believe
- Mass Persuasion (part 18): Sincerity: getting around proving your product
- Mass Persuasion (part 15): how to build your credibility
- Mass Persuasion (part 22): Grave and important warning