What if the real reason your customers buy has almost nothing to do with the reason they give you? What if the survey you sent out, the testimonial you loved, and the answer you got on your sales call were all honest, but still missed the real reason the person said yes?
That sounds crazy, but some fascinating psychology experiments suggest exactly that. People often make a decision first and then build a story to explain it.
They think they know why they chose something, but their brain may have been influenced by something they never noticed.
For anyone selling a coaching program, course, membership, or service, this changes everything. Because if you build your entire sales page around the reasons customers think they bought, you could be fixing the wrong problem.
The real forces driving the sale may be hiding underneath the surface.
And some of these forces are surprisingly simple.
If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.
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Kennedy: So, the darkest psychology that causes people to buy is the type of psychology that even once it's done its job, you don't even know that it happened. You think that you know the reason you bought, but it's a false reason that your brain and your audience's brain has made up to justify it.
Kennedy: But more of that in a minute because I want to share with you some crazy experiments that psychologists have performed over the past few years. And some of this explains why you take all those survey responses and those testimonials and you rework your entire sales page around them and then they flop.
Kennedy: There's a reason for that. It's not because your customers are lying to you. It's just that they don't have the conscious knowledge of the actual real reason that they bought.
Kennedy: I'm also going to show you something that you're almost certainly doing that's doing something in your client's minds that's getting them worse results. We're going to get into that cuz today I'm going to share with you the psychological techniques that your favorite gurus are using on you and everyone else to make considerably more sales.
Kennedy: You're going to see one thing that you can change on your sales calls and in your marketing material that jacks up conversions better than any script or any closing technique. It's got nothing to do with what you say. It's literally the one thing when clients change this. I've seen them go from 11% closing rate to a 60% closing rate when they've gone through this and I've coached them.
Kennedy: You also see the thing that most people are doing that is hurting the sales and the results that clients are getting and it's been proven in laboratory test conditions. And I'm going to show you a simple technique to make anything urgent without using the usual urgent countdowns and stuff that's 100% more persuasive and it's easier.
Kennedy: And you're also going to understand the one way of shutting down skepticism so that even the most jaded people want to buy from you. But first, if you want to see more of these, make sure you hit the subscribe button. That first of all means that more of my stuff and more of these videos are going to show up in your feed, which is awesome for you.
Kennedy: And also, if you hit the like button, it's going to let me know that you like this kind of stuff, and I'll keep making more content just like this for you for free. Awesome. So, let's get into it.
Kennedy::Kennedy: Now, I know you're expecting a little bit of B-roll at that point of me wearing some lovely stockings. You're not getting it. It's not happening. Okay? right there is.
Kennedy: And what they do is they pull out this table. They've got the four pairs of stockings on the table. And they asked the shoppers who were passing by a really simple question. They said, "Which of these sets of stockings is the best quality? Have a good feel." And they did.
Kennedy: But here's the twist. Cuz there's always a twist with these psychologists, right? The twist was that all four pairs were identical. They were the same from the same pack, exactly the same stockings. The only difference was where they were placed on the table.
Kennedy: And every single shopper who was asked to come and choose picked up a pair and said, "These are the ones that are the best quality." And most of them said the pair on the far right. In fact, the stats were four to one on how many people chose that, even though the pairs of stockings were identical.
Kennedy: And when the researchers asked them why that was, these people talked about the knit, about the weave, about the all these different things. Across the whole study, they give eight different ration as to why they chose the winning stockings.
Kennedy: Not one of these people mentioned, well, it's because they were in the fourth position. And even then, when they were told the reason, they denied it. Isn't that crazy?
Kennedy: And here's what everyone's got backwards. We're all taught that if you give people better reasons, then they're going to buy. But the reason is not the thing that came first. The decision comes first. And this is what's called postjustification.
kings in a shopping center in:Kennedy: In fact, another pair of wonderful researchers, they have to do it in two. It's a bit like women go to the bathroom. Johansson and Hall, another pair of old old gizers. They sit people down. They show them two photographs of faces. They ask them, "Which one of the faces do you find more attractive?"
Kennedy: The person points. The researcher hands them back the photo they chose and says, "Lovely. Tell me why. Accept." The twist. There's always a twist.
Kennedy: Sometimes using some slight of hand, the researcher hands them back the other one, the one they just rejected. And only 13% of people even noticed they did it. 13.
Kennedy: The other 87% of people took the photo they just turned down and started explaining in great detail why they preferred it. Some of them in a lot to a lot of length. Some of them getting really passionate about it.
Kennedy: And they ran it again with jam in a supermarket and again with political opinions before an election. And it holds. People will defend a position they told you 5 seconds ago that they disagreed with.
Kennedy: In a supermarket wine, they decided on some days to play accordion music that sounded a bit French. On some other days, they played that oompa band music that sounds a bit more German.
Kennedy: Nobody was told anything different, but on the French music days, the French wine outsold the German 5 to 1. And on the German music days, it flipped and the German wine outsold the French 2 to 1.
Kennedy: And when they asked the shoppers at the till whether the music had affected their choice, they said, "No, I just really wanted this wine."
Kennedy: So, it's not just that people can't tell you the cause. That's not what causes them to deny it. It's that they don't know.
Kennedy: And that's why in working with more than 9,000 paying clients so far and doing hundreds of interviews with clients, sometimes the reasons that they give you for buying something doesn't convert. People post justify. and the strongest reason they actually bought isn't something they consciously noticed.
Kennedy: So, what are these things that go under the radar? Well, we're going to get into them. Now, we know it's not often they think they said they were.
Kennedy: The first principle is the principle of demand. When a TV shopping channel says that our team are standing by to answer your call, the mental image that is conjured up in your mind is there's a ton of people sitting around a room waiting for the telephone to ring.
Kennedy: Whereas when they switched the language to please be patient if the lines are busy, the sales went up. Why? Because the perception of just those few words changing went from no one's buying this to this thing is in high demand.
Kennedy: One of my things is a designer aftershave. I love designer aftershave. I have a whole cupboard of designer aftershaves.
Kennedy: And I was in a store recently looking at some different designer after shaves and I said, "That's good. That's good. Which one which what else do you have?" And the lovely lady who was serving me said, "Uh, we've got this one, but we've only got one bottle of this one left."
Kennedy: And so, I had to buy it. I bought it right there and then. Now, I've postified it like we talked about earlier about saying, "I love the scent. It's very strong. It's very different to everything I've got. It goes really well in the spring." All of these cool things.
Kennedy: But the real thing is it was because it had already been proven to be popular. Now, of course, the truth is she said there's only one bottle left. They may have only ever had the one bottle and they might not be able to ever sell it.
Kennedy: But I grabbed it and I do love the after shape. I think it's called Bakarat Rouge and it's beautiful. But that's the reason I bought it.
Kennedy: So what we want to do is create the feeling that the thing you're offering is already in high demand, like tickets that sell out early.
Kennedy: And when you do sell them out, I want you to make a fuss about it. I want you to email and post on your socials every time that you fill it up because people remember this and they'll think that they bought because they wanted the outcome, but actually the emotional reason that got them to pay attention and actually come over the line is because they wanted to be part of something that was popular.
Kennedy: The second principle that we can use which goes completely under the radar is the principle of certainty. The reason people love Uber is not because the car comes any faster or it's a nicer car or any of those things.
Kennedy: It's because there is a perception, and the word perception is really important, a perception of certainty. You feel like you know where the car is rather than having to call the cab company and say, "Where is it?" And they're like, "It's just turning your corner now." Which was always a lie.
Kennedy: This is huge if you're doing webinars or sales calls or when you're writing your next sales page. People want you or someone to lead them through the uncertain terrain that lies ahead of them on the way to their destination.
Kennedy: Imagine the very first time you go to Disney World, right? You want to you land there, you're at the entrance, you want to go to the Pirates of the Caribbean and you're at the entrance and there's like five different directions you can go in.
Kennedy: Who do you ask for help? Do you ask the other tourist who doesn't know which way up the map goes or do you turn to the member of staff who has a little uh he's got the shirt on that says guide? Well, why do you go with a guide? Because you want certainty.
Kennedy: So, there's three different ways to create certainty. The first is to have a framework or a system.
Kennedy: When you have a framework or a system that gives people confidence that there is a map to follow and the destination is navigable navig. possible to actually get there. There are steps to get there. It's a destination. Or else there would not be a map. So have a framework or a system.
Kennedy: The second is to share past success. This could be your own success. It could be other clients success. The feeling is that look, if I follow the same map that they followed, then I too can be successful in this outcome.
Kennedy: The third, and this one's extremely powerful and goes right under the radar, is to use exclusions. We live in a skeptical world and no one wants to feel like all you do is sell to anyone and everyone who gets put in front of you and just grabs their money. They want to feel like it's actually right for them.
Kennedy: And the very best way to do that is by telling them who it is not for. Oh, by the way, that ride goes upside down. So, if you don't like that, oh, I love a ride that goes upside down. Awesome. Then I'm in. Okay. So, we want to show them the exclusions.
Kennedy: The third principle is the principle of present pain versus now price. When you combine these two techniques, it's absolute gold.
Kennedy: So the first part of the formula is people who are in pain right now, they really don't need to be sold to. If someone's got their leg hanging off and it's blurting blood all over the place, you don't need to do much selling to say, "Hey, do you want me to stitch that up?" Right? They just need your offer that's going to help them and they're going to buy.
Kennedy: So what your job is is to find people who are already in the pain that you solve and stop selling to people who that you need to convince. Cuz none of us like convincing people, right?
Kennedy: So if you if you've got a toothache cure and you're going to go and hang out at the dentist office. If you help people with weight loss, pay your local takeaway, your Chinese takeaway or your your pizza takeaway, pay them to put a flyer into every delivery. find people who are so close to the pain already and serve them.
Kennedy: And then to make your conversions go particularly crazy, we're going to combine that with something called the now price.
Kennedy: So if I say to you, it's $100,000, you might think that's a bargain for a brand new house on the water in Miami. But if I said, and it's only $1,000 today, you'd be reaching for your credit card.
Kennedy: When someone's considering your offer, they are holding on to a lot of stressors in that moment. They're thinking about what's included in the offer. They're thinking about what's my partner going to think or will it be any good and can I can I make it along to the calls and what about the price? The price is part of that.
Kennedy: So, if you can flatten the price today, all the better. That's why $7 trials into memberships work so damn well. It takes the price off the table and it's no longer part of the weight of that consideration.
Kennedy: Technique number four is that postjustification. Right? People have a resistance. One of the resistance that people have is how are they going to justify this investment later? How am I going to justify it to myself and how am I going to justify it to other people?
Kennedy: So, here's a psychological technique that you can use, which is to literally hand them the justification.
Kennedy: Ask yourself, what can this buyer say to themselves when they wake up at 3:00 a.m. thinking, "Did I make the right decision?" or to their partner tomorrow when they say, "Why have you bought this?"
Kennedy: It won't be the actual reason they bought. Remember, this is postjustification. The reason they bought will be all of the emotional things that cause any of us to buy.
Kennedy: They'll have bought because of a sense of belonging, because of a sense of status, to overcome an expensive problem like time or leaking money or to make more money. They'll have bought for certainty. They'll have bought to remove some guilt.
Kennedy: But they can't say that. That's a really difficult for someone to communicate with themselves at 3:00 in the morning and certainly with a partner or a friend.
Kennedy: So, we're going to hand them some justifications they can use themselves. We're actually going to give them those words.
Kennedy: We're going to say things like, "It's going to keep me accountable to get into the best shape I've ever been in." or they're going to fill my calendar with sales calls or one new client covers the whole thing or I'm paying $9,000 to not spend another year guessing at this.
Kennedy: And you're going to feed that into your sales presentation or sales page. Not because what that's what's going to make the sale, because it helps people to justify it afterwards.
Kennedy: Now, we have to talk about discounts. We have to talk about discounts because these things are hurting your business.
Kennedy: Not just in sales because they get people to stop buying now and wait until the future for a discount on the thing, but actually, as you'll see from the the test that I'm about to share with you, they actually hurt the results that your clients are getting.
Kennedy: So, back in:Kennedy: One of the groups of these people paid full price for the energy drink. And one group paid a discounted price. Same drink, identical, same batch, same can design, same absolutely everything.
Kennedy: The discounted group solved fewer puzzles. Think about that. They didn't think it was worse. They didn't rate it any worse. They didn't judge the flavor. They literally didn't perform as well. their actual measured output dropped.
Kennedy: Why? Their expectation dropped. So their when your expectation dropped, their result dropped. That was it. The discount didn't just change what they thought of the drink, it changed what the drink actually did.
Kennedy: So what you do instead is you reduce the pain of today without impacting the signal of the quality and the outcome.
Kennedy: How do you do that? We use payment plans like we mentioned earlier. You might say, "I'll take a deposit today." You might split it over three payments. You might add in something extra rather than taking money off it. So, you're adding in a bonus. Or you might extend the guarantee, which moves the risk into the future rather than reducing the price.
Kennedy: Every one of those makes the pain less today of the payment, but without telling your buyer's subconscious mind that the thing is worth any less.
Kennedy: The discount lowers the price, which means you feel better in justifying it, but it also lowers the value and the results.
Kennedy: So, the next thing we're going to want to do is implement this type of psychology to make a whole bunch of sales.
Kennedy: So, I want you to go and use my three no pitch emails that make sales with no pressure. You're going to find the whole thing, the whole system right here in this next video. I'll see you there.