Increase Your Sales By Increasing Your Believability

People won't buy from you until they're
confident you will deliver exactly what they
expect to get. You can help them develop
that confidence by making certain every
claim you make about your product or
service is fully believable.

Here are 3 ways you can increase your
believability with prospects -- and generate
more sales. All 3 work for any business.
And you can use them with any marketing
method including the Internet.

USE TESTIMONIALS

Testimonials from satisfied customers are
powerful selling tools. They establish your
believability because they prove you
already delivered what you promised to
other customers.

The most effective testimonials describe a
specific result your customer enjoyed by
using your product or service. For example,
"In just 2 weeks I lost 9 pounds, felt years
younger and still enjoyed all my favorite
foods".

TIP: Get permission to use your customers'
names and addresses with their
testimonials. Personal testimonials from real
people are more believable than
anonymous testimonials.

PROVIDE SPECIFICS

You can also increase your believability by
converting general statements into specific
descriptions. "It's fast, easy and
inexpensive" may accurately describe your
product or service. But a specific
description of how fast, how easy and how
inexpensive is more believable.

Also, try to avoid using round numbers (10,
25, 40, etc.) in your claims. Instead, reduce
them to specific odd numbers with fractions
or decimals. Here's why...

Which of the following 2 statements sounds
more authentic to you?

-1. Our clients average 30 percent more
sales.

-2. Our clients average 27.7 percent more
sales.

Most people choose the second statement.
30 percent may be the accurate number. But
27.7 percent is more believable.

BONUS: Specific descriptions also create
impact and excitement. They motivate more
of your prospects to buy.

TONE DOWN YOUR CLAIMS

If the actual results you can produce for
your customers or clients sound too good
to be true, your prospective customers will
assume it's not true. It happened to me...

I once developed a direct mail postcard that
generated over 20 percent replies when I
sent it to names on a special mailing list.
Most of the businesses I approached with a
lead service using this postcard didn't
believe I could really get that high a
response rate for them.

The service was difficult to sell unless I
substantially understated the projected rate
of response. I eventually discovered that
projecting a 7 1/2 to 9 1/2 percent response
rate produced the largest number of sales.
That rate was still a substantial increase for
any company -- and it was more believable
than the actual rate of more than 20 percent.

SPECIAL ADVANTAGE: Understating
the results your customer can expect also
enhances your credibility. Imagine your
customer's reaction when your product
or service produces substantially better
results than you promised.

How believable are the claims and
promises you make to prospective
customers or clients? Do you use
testimonials and provide specifics? Are
there any claims you need to tone down
because they sound too good to be true?
Prospective customers won't buy from
you unless they fully believe every claim
and promise you make.

Bob Leduc retired from a 30 year career of
recruiting sales personnel and
developing sales leads. He is now a Sales

Consultant. Bob recently wrote a manual
for small business owners titled "How to
Build Your Small Business Fast With

Simple Postcards" and several other
publications to help small businesses
grow and prosper. For more
information...mailto:BobLeduc@aol.com?
subject=Postcards. Phone: (702) 658-1707
(After 10 AM Pacific time)

Or write: Bob Leduc, PO Box 33628, Las
Vegas, NV 89133