Selling On Multiple Levels
The biggest mistake salespeople make is selling people “with a compromise.”
By selling with a compromise, I mean they’ll unknowingly self-sabotage. Maybe they don’t believe in the product, but it’s mostly a case of not believing in their own ability to sell the product.
They don’t want to say, “This product is 100% AWESOME” because that might be misleading, so instead they’ll say, “This product is pretty good.”
Or, “This product is a NECESSITY” becomes “Well you could do without our product but it sure is nice!”
If you believe in your product, and believe in yourself, then you shouldn’t sell be “selling with a compromise.”
In this article, I’m going to talk about the reason why this approach will never work, and give you a framework, checklist and process for avoiding this trap.
It all starts with thinking about the levels at which a sale occurs.
Selling On Multiple Levels
The reason you can’t sell with compromise is because selling exists at multiple levels. I’m afraid I’m going to have to revert to dork-speak a little here, because I haven’t worked out in advance how I can put this in human terms.
First Level: Sell The Product
On the first level and the level us sneaky salesmen try to avoid at all costs, we have the scary thought of actually selling the product.
We try to avoid selling the product at all costs.
The reason for this is simple; most products are boring. Even interesting products lose their sheen pretty quickly.
Once you’ve bought the brand new vacuum cleaner you’ve been eyeing for months, it’s a boring tool for cleaning your house.
You buy that online course that promises you the secrets of making a million dollars a day, and it turns out it’s some dude speaking into his iPhone about how to make the next big affiliate marketing scam.
Maybe you get a new car and it’s a Lamborghini. That’s awesome right? Sure, but once you sit in it, it’s a car and it’s one that’ll swallow petrol quick enough to unload your bank balance faster than the car itself did.
So we don’t sell the products. Products are real tangible things. Real and tangible is boring when you compare it to level two.
Level Two: Sell The Benefits
If you want to actually sell stuff, then you quickly learn to sell the benefits of the product as opposed to the product itself.
This keeps your customer in imaginary land where everything is sunshine, rainbows and unicorns. It’s a great place to be.
For instance, the vacuum cleaner we mentioned above isn’t a vacuum cleaner; it’s a magic wand to give you a clean home. Wouldn’t it be great to come home from a hard day at work to a clean house and a carpet you can sink your tired feet into?
Of course it would.
That course about making a million dollars isn’t just a 3.5 hour video series about building a website. It’s your passport to a life where you can travel around the world, working four hours a week and probably sleeping with beautiful exotic girls who totally aren’t hookers and definitely exist. All of this is occurring while that guy who beat you up at school is a janitor or something.
And that Lamborghini? Well, it’s not a car, is it?
That Lamborghini is a beast of a machine that cuts through traffic like a sharp knife through butter, drawing eyes and silencing conversations wherever it goes. Guys will hate you, girls will want you and your neighbours will be so in awe, they won’t even mind that the super-powerful engine makes all the china in their house shake when you pull up outside.
Now, this is all great, and selling the benefits is the bread and butter of any campaign.
It can be faked though, just like those examples above. The topic of this article is about not doing that though, which is why we need to talk about the somewhat more elusive third level that you sell at.
Third Level: Authenticity Of The Message
You can’t sell with a compromise and the reason is this hidden third level of selling.
It’s hard to pinpoint in everyday life because when you do it right, it’s invisible.
The guy selling burgers from his van on a Friday night is absolutely invisible until you want a burger.
People will say things like, “I don’t believe in sales it’s sneaky!” and yet when you say,
“But when you bought your phone, who served you at the store?”
They’ll reply, “That’s not a salesman it’s just an assistant at the Apple Store!”
People have a disconnect with sales because when sales is done correctly, they don’t see it. To that hypothetical person, the guy selling the iPhone isn’t a salesman because he’s where he’s supposed to be doing what he’s supposed to do.
However, we all recognise when we’re sold an inauthentic message. Whether it’s the used car salesman who tells you that the beat-up old Toyota runs just as well as when it was brand new or the guy whose money making method “makes six figures a year” yet relies on $5 ebook sales, you can smell an inauthentic message.
Here’s the problem with selling off the back foot and selling with compromises:
You’re creating an inauthentic message.
The crazy thing with this problem is that most people think, “I’ll go soft on the selling and give people a way out so they think I’m not a sleaze ball!”
In reality, they do the opposite. If you try and sell someone by saying, “Um, yes, my product is ok but you don’t really need it but if you buy it then it’ll probably work and make your life better!”
…they’re just going to think, “This is a terrible product and this guy doesn’t even believe it.”
If, on the other hand, you say, “My product is the best and you definitely need it” then you’ll get better results and your customer will feel more confident in their purchase.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t anything revelatory and shouldn’t make you say, “Oh my god I’d better change everything I’ve ever done!”
It’s just a case of knowing and operating under the knowledge that there are three levels to any sales material, and the third level is key because you can mess up the other two levels by ignoring it.
Create from this a three-point checklist:
- Do I mention the products features enough?(you can’t have a sales letter without mentioning the product)
- Do I spend most of the time talking about the benefits of the product?
- Am I selling with 100% conviction in the product?
If you do these things, then your sales letters will be more effective. The third part is essentially a simple editing process where you remove the “maybes,” “ifs” and “buts” from your copy.