Are You Leveraging the Power of Commitment In Your Sales?
by Jeff Shore
Human psychology is an infinitely interesting study. And I find the study of influence particularly enlightening.
Here’s an interesting story I recently came across:
In an effort to encourage people to keep their reservations, a restaurant changed the way they talked with their customers. Instead of saying, “Please call if you have to cancel,” they asked, “Will you please call if you need to cancel?”
This simple change produced a profound effect on their customers and decreased their no-show rate from 30% to 10%
Why? Because rather than listening to a generic instruction, customers made a personal commitment.
Asking customers to commit to a course of action infuses a sense of partnership into the reservations process. The restaurant commits to their customer. And then they ask their customer to do the same.
On a micro scale, the restaurant forms a partnership with every customer – a partnership built around the reservation. And these partnerships clearly produce better outcomes for the restaurant.
Influence expert Dr. Robert Cialdini would not find these results surprising at all. In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Cialdini discusses the binding concept of commitment and consistency.
Says Cialdini, “Commitment and consistency is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done. Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.”
In short, Cialdini suggests that when someone asks us to commit, we tend to follow through.
Similarly, the sales process creates a partnership between you, the sales person, and your customer. This means you must actively pursue the customer’s involvement throughout the sales process.
Salespeople often fail to constantly involve customers in sales conversion through active commitments. Too many salespeople go through the process assuming acceptance on the part of customers without actually asking for commitments from them.
The rationale for not asking commitment questions sounds something like this…
“I already know they love this product. Why would I need to ask about that?”
Actually, there is a very good reason to ask for a commitment. You see, you don’t ask closing questions for your own benefit. You ask them for your customer’s benefit.
Verbalizing their active acceptance cements a customer’s commitment to the sales process and to the sale itself.
So how can you elicit more active commitments from your customer? Take advantage of the opportunity and you will shorten the buying process and change someone’s world.
