Why do people buy?

Every entrepreneur has asked the million dollar question, “Why Do People Buy?”  And every entrepreneur must be able to answer this million dollar question.

Of course there’s more than one reason. But I’m about to reveal one of the big ones that makes people buy.

Now, before I tell you what it is, let’s talk about a stone cold fact we sometimes forget, especially when we eagerly set up our marketing messages and crank out our campaigns:

There are several rules every entrepreneur should follow.  The first rule and one that you to keep in mind when talking to a new prospect:

Rule 1: People do NOT want to be sold!

As a general rule, people don’t want any body trying to sell them anything.

No one likes a pushy salesman pressuring them to part with their money.

The moment we hear a sales pitch, we raise our defenses.  Why? Because we feel like we have no control over the situation; like we’re being manipulated.

That’s why most folks despise dealing with salespeople.

Think about when you walk into a store and a salesperson comes up to you and says, “Hi, can I help you?”

For most the immediate response is, “No thanks, I’m just looking!”

That’s an automatic knee-jerk reaction; they don’t have to think about it, even if they are interested in something.

Real example:  Just yesterday I receive a phone call from a person trying to sell me life insurance.  I told him, that I reviewed my insurance with my agent last month and we upgraded to a new policy.  To that he responded, “I will be in your area Tuesday.  Will 2:00 PM work for you?

My response, “No I just upgraded my insurance, thanks for calling.”  He continued, “I can show you updates to insurance.  I’ll put you down for 2:00 PM!”

There was a lot more dialog.  I finally had enough and said, “Your not listening.  I have and agent and we went over my life insurance last month and upgraded to a new policy.  I don’t need to waste your time.  We are very please with agent”.  To that response he said, “If Tuesday doesn’t work, I have Wednesday available.”  I rudely hung up.

He pushed me to the point of me becoming irritated and rude…not my character.

On the flip side, we all like to buy.

We look at a product. Get excited about it and decide to buy it, and we feel like we’re in control of the situation.

So how can YOU get people excited about buying?

How do you give them control of the situation, and make them feel like they’re NOT being sold?

Here’s the secret…

People want to do business with those who are REAL, and not with someone who’s insincere or inauthentic.

Especially online, where there’s so much hype.

Nowadays people are turned off by anything that looks or smells fake.

Even if they want your product, service or business opportunity, many will be skeptical from the get-go.

Why?

Because they’ve been burned before and they don’t want to be burned again.

We’ve all been burned at some point, so we all have that inner skeptic within us.

That’s why building TRUST with your prospects must be one of your main goals.

Bottom line:

Rule 2: Your prospects must like and trust you

People will NEVER buy from you or join your business opportunity if they don’t like and trust you.

It’s that simple.

Which is why you need to create unshakable trust and build rapport with your prospects as quickly as humanly possible.

It’s not going to happen in an instant.

It’s not going to happen with a magic phrase, a good headline, or even with compelling copy.

Sure you can do certain things in your marketing message to build that trust, but it’s not going to happen immediately.

Trust takes time.

Think about the people in your life that you like and trust.

Your relationship took time to develop; it didn’t happen instantaneously.

I’ll give you an example.

Back when I was selling face to face in direct sales, it was a lot easier. I would walk into the house or apartment and have a one-on-one conversation.

You can create trust much faster when you meet them face to face, answer their questions, read their body language and develop some common ground.

But when you do it online, it takes some time.

What is the best way to build trust with your prospects?

In my opinion, it’s with…

Email marketing.

Emails allow you to consistently communicate with your prospects. Build a relationship and start developing trust.

However, just because you’re sending emails, doesn’t mean people are going to read them.

And just because they read some doesn’t mean they’re going to take action, or that you’re going to build any kind of relationship with them.

My inbox is full of emails. Most of them are completely ignored. I’m sure your inbox is the same.

So here’s another key…

Rule 3: You have to write your emails in a way that gets people interested and excited about reading them.

This is a massive topic worth studying. And I’ll give you 4 critical guidelines to help you do that.

Starting with…

The first thing you want to understand about writing emails is that you are writing to ONE person.

Even though your email is going to a list of dozens, hundreds, thousands, or even tens-of-thousands of people, you’re still writing to one person, and they need to feel like that—

They need to feel like you’re talking to them personally.

And, think about this too: only one person is reading your email at a time, sitting at their desk or holding their phone, so don’t make things sound weird and too formal by addressing a crowd in this “one-on-one” conversation.

And speaking of conversations, that’s brings us to point number two…

Your email is basically a casual conversation you’re having with that one person.

To help you write an email in that tone, picture yourself sitting across a table or a living room from your prospect. And imagine you’re having a conversation with them.

This is very, very important.

If you write like you’re composing an essay your high school English teacher, nobody will be interested in reading that. Because it’ll sound forced and fake.

You’re not writing a novel, you’re not writing a book, and you’re definitely not writing an essay. You’re having a conversation.

If you read any of my emails, they break all the rules of writing, and have quite a few grammatical errors in them.

That’s on purpose; I do it because it makes it sound real.

It makes it sound like I’m a real human being, because that’s how people talk.

Write like you talk and always remember to…

The third point is this: you can’t just be pitching in your emails.

Look at your inbox. Almost every email in there does nothing but pitch and try to sell you something.

Now, there is nothing wrong with selling—we have a business—but if all you do in your email is sell, people will get turned off and quickly start tuning you out.

If you do it once or twice, or if you do it now and then, it’s okay.

But if you just “hard sell” in every email… would you look forward to opening an email every single day that only pitches something and adds zero value to your life?

Probably not.

If you know it’s always going to be another sale, or some other “hyped up” email about a system that makes money, would you keep reading or click unsubscribe?

If every email is a pitch, you will lose your readership very, very quickly.

Your emails cannot be just all sales and pitches.

I don’t know what the percentage is, but I would say at least 80%, maybe even 85% of the emails I write don’t sound like a sales presentation.

However, if you look at every single one of them, they always have a link that either leads to a product offer, or to a blog post, and within that blog post, there is an offer.

We’re in a business!  Any business must make a sales or it will be lost.  A good business model is always selling something. But if you want to stand out and have people read your emails you have to approach it in a different way.

Which leads me to my fourth point…

I believe the best way to engage your audience is to wrap your message with “infotainment“—

Which is entertainment coupled with information or “infotainment.”

Why?

Because we LOVE to be entertained!

This is why we watch movies and TV. We watch shows, follow sports and go to concerts. And spend big bucks on it.

We crave entertainment.

It’s a desire, a need we all have.

This is why people who say they are “busy” will get on Facebook.

They see a video or some picture and click on it. Next thing you know they’re surfing through it for 15 or 20 minutes, wasting their time, because the desire to be entertained is deeply hardwired.

So when you send out something that’s entertaining, you’re almost guaranteed readership.

If people are just clicking out of curiosity, that’s not the point; you want your emails to actually provoke their curiosity.

You want to put something out there that grabs their interest, that intrigues them.

Couple that entertainment and information, and you’ll have a great email.

Curiosity + Intrigue + Entertainment + Information = Great Email!

And the easiest way to do that is with stories.

Most of the emails I write contain some kind of story.

When I say stories, I’m not talking about writing a book or a script for a movie.

We’re not talking about long-winded stories.

If your stories are too long, work on chopping them down, because nobody is going to sit there and read painfully long emails unless they’re extremely engaged. Some people will be, but for the most part they won’t, so tell short stories.

Use your life as inspiration!

The reason stories work so well is because we’re hardwired to pay attention to stories.

Here’s an example of an email I wrote a few years ago; the subject line was…

“A Dog, A Stove, A Prime Rib Steak, A Thief.”

It was a quick story about my dog going to the stove in which I was preparing dinner.  I put the prime rib on the oven door and went to get seasoning.  Upon returning, one steak was gone and the other on the floor.  The dog was nowhere to be found.

It was an entertaining story, but the point of it was that dogs will do what dogs do.

It’s the dog’s nature that if they sees food, they’re going to go after it.

This ties into human nature, because just like a dog is going to be a dog, people are going to be people.

Thus…

Rule 4: If you want to sell to people, you’d better understand human nature

I then transitioned into a marketing product which helps you do that.

Notice I didn’t start with selling any products. Instead I kicked off the email with an engaging, entertaining, and fun story about my dog getting to the oven.  Most people can relate or completely understand.

What can your stories be about?

You can talk about your family, kids, pets, neighbors, relatives; just everyday stuff.

Literally, the things that happens to you every day – find ways to write that into your emails.

It is a skill that’s going to take some time to develop.

You’re not just going to sit down in the beginning and immediately write a blockbuster email that’s going to engage everybody. Most people don’t.

But if you do it every single day, and if you practice, just like you practice anything else in life, you will get good at it, and you will start seeing results.

Now, here’s what I want you to do…

Take the challenge!

I want to challenge you to start writing for the next 30 days.

If you want to take up this challenge for the next 30 days, write an email every single day to your list.

I don’t care how big your list is, or how small your list is. Heck even if you don’t have a list, just write it and save it on your computer. You can use them later once you start building your list.

Write one every single day.

Take 30 minutes, or maybe it will take you an hour. Initially it will be longer, but it will get to a point where you can do it very quickly.

Write one every single day for the next 30 days, and watch as your skill of writing emails improves. And with it so will your results!