As a teenager, I did door-to-door sales. 

I sucked at first. But then I learned a trick that exploded my conversion rate: 

The door opened. “Afternoon!” I said.

“Hello.”

“I’m Eddie… nice day, huh?”

“It is,” said The Prospect. 

“Oh lemme ask,” I said, “do you read magazines?”

“Sure.”

The dog barked.

“Got one in the house?”

“I do.”

“Did you, by chance, buy it off the shelf… individually?”

“I did, actually,” said The Prospect.

“Bet it cost about six bucks, right?”

“Yeh.”

“Well I can sell you 12 issues of that same magazine for less than twenty dollars,” I said. “That’s about 9 FREE issues.”

“Right,” said The Prospect.

“And if you sign now, I’ll throw in a free tote bag — so you can bring your new magazines to the beach.”

Then I’d smile.

Sure, lots of people still declined: “No thanks, kid.”

But lots of people also smiled back and took my pen: “Hey why not? I’ll just pay full price again if I don’t…”

This is called Harmonizing — and it works on paper, too.

Asking questions to tee up affirmative answers warms people up over the course of a short sales cycle. One “Yes” after another creates positive inertia, goodness, agreeableness.

Because in marketing as in life, agreement begets agreement.

LEARN TO PERSUADE

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Hey there, thanks for reading. :)

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Enjoy!

Eddie Shleyner 
VeryGoodCopy, founder

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