Persuading people

The moment you try to persuade your customer you essentially admit that …

i) either you don’t fully understand what really matters to them or
ii) you don’t trust your product to deliver on what matters to your customer.

(Or both, obviously.)

If you fully understand your customers’ needs and desires and if you also trust in your product to deliver on that, then you won’t need to persuade. You only need to make them see by telling a true story about your product.

Because once they see it, it becomes totally obvious: This is the product that serves my needs. They’d be fools not to buy it, right?

That’s why it’s so much easier to start with that story in mind and build your product so it delivers on that story – rather than the other way around.

When you first build the product and then go looking for a story, you might end up discovering that it’s, well, not that great a fit after all. Hence, the need for persuasion techniques.

But when you do it the other way around, then all it takes is to speak with clarity.