How to Convince a Customer to Buy: 12 Strategies and Tips

The ultimate goal of any business is to get customers to buy your product or service. But before you can convince customers to choose you over your competitors, you must ensure that you understand their unique needs and preferences. Once you tackle that first hurdle of understanding customers, you can take advantage of other methods of how to convince someone to say yes as well.

In addition to the various strategies, tips, and tricks outlined below for how to convince a customer, it’s also a good idea to find tools that can help you reach your goals. Podium, for example, can help you get more leads via webchat and increase your reviews. It can also improve the customer experience and promote customer loyalty by offering seamless communications and intuitive payment methods that your customers prefer.

12 Sales Strategies That Will Convince Your Customers

From understanding your customer needs to offering incentives, the following are some of the best methods of how to convince someone to buy your product or service.

1. Understand Customer Needs and Pain Points

As mentioned, you must understand your customer needs and pain points before developing or promoting your products and services. This is because your marketing language and strategies will directly address those needs and pain points. Do your customers want a food product that is easy to pack in their lunch? Do they want accounting software that automates payment collection and reconciliation? Do they want a vacuum that excels at collecting dog fur?

As you think about your customers’ needs, be ready to narrow down your target audience and create several personas if necessary. Each persona represents a different type of buyer. A classic example would be a jewelry store having one persona for shoppers who buy for themselves and another for shoppers who buy jewelry as a gift. Creating these personas lets you get even more specific when defining your target audience and their needs.

2. Highlight Unique Selling Points (USPs)

Your product’s unique selling points (USPs) are another crucial factor in your marketing strategy and the process of how to convince someone to support your business. As the term implies, these refer to the features that your product has that competitors do not. Your USPs should involve the features that set you apart from the competition and offer a benefit to customers.

Importantly, the unique feature must be beneficial for customers. In many cases, you can frame your unique features to make your product more appealing. Examples of USPs can include your product being easier to use or clean than the competition, being available in more colors, or being more efficient.

When crafting persuasive marketing copy, remember that USPs should not be generic terms like “high-quality.” These should be specific features, such as one-touch operation that makes the product easier to use.

3. Use Storytelling to Create an Emotional Connection

You want to use multiple strategies to create an emotional connection with your customers, as this will improve customer loyalty and help you move them along the sales funnel. There are several ways to do this, including using storytelling.

With storytelling, you share past customers’ stories with leads to highlight how your product made an impact on their lives. These strategies may involve different types of content such as case studies, testimonials, or even just conversations with potential customers. Highlight a customer who was in a similar situation to the current customer and how the product made a difference.

4. Further the Emotional Connection by Using the Clients Name and Asking About Their Well-Being

Storytelling is just one of the methods of how to get people to buy your product by creating an emotional connection with them. How you interact in the conversation is a significant part of this emotional connection. Make it a point to use the client’s name in your conversation, as this shows personalized attention.

Start the conversation by asking about the customer’s well-being and even their pain points. When relevant, bring up past interactions the customer has had with your brand, such as previous questions they’ve asked or past purchases. This can be even easier with a customer experience management system like Podium that displays all interactions with a customer when you are crafting a message or calling them. That high level of attention will ensure your customer feels connected with your brand and that you understand them.

During phone calls and live chats with customers, encourage your sales team to be natural and avoid scripts. Scripts make it much harder to build that emotional connection with a customer.

It helps to train your agents on how to be more friendly or spontaneous in customer interactions. Providing only canned responses will make your potential customers feel like just another cog in the wheel instead of a valued client.

5. Provide Social Proof with Testimonials and Reviews

Social proof will give potential customers more confidence in your products and services, making it much easier to convince them to give your brand a try. Customer testimonials and reviews are the most common example of this type of social proof. Consider tools like Podium’s Reviews feature, which automates the process of requesting reviews and improves the response rate. This tool not only dramatically increases the number of reviews you get, but it also increases your five-star reviews.

You can also use social proof and build trust in the form of user-generated content and branded hashtags on social media platforms. Influencers also provide social proof, and small businesses will find that micro-influencers and local influencers are well within their budget.

6. Offer a Solution, Not Just a Product

As you describe your product to customers, you want to focus on its benefits and how the product acts as a solution. Avoid just describing the product and its features. The key to the process of getting people to buy your product is to show them that it will solve their problems. You are unlikely to achieve this if you just tell customers about the features of your products.

Instead, you want to focus on the specific ways that the product will make your customer’s life easier. Does it improve their productivity, so they don’t feel as rushed during the day? Does your software reduce human error? Does the pen you sell have a better grip that reduces hand fatigue while writing? Focus on these unique, real-life benefits such as these.

As you write sentences with convincing objectives, keep the pain points and needs of your customers in mind to get on the right track.

7. Offer a Guarantee or Trial Period

Social proof improves confidence in your product, but you can further improve that confidence by offering a trial period or a guarantee of some sort. This is easily one of the best methods of how to convince a customer because it shows them that you trust your product and its capabilities.

At the same time, a trial period or a guarantee gives customers peace of mind and a sense of security. After all, if the product doesn’t perform as they want it to, they can just cancel the trial or return it and take advantage of the guarantee.

Of course, at the end of a trial period, it’s wise to be prepared for customers to return products that work perfectly well. Take the returns process as an opportunity to gather feedback for improving your product.

8. Use Persuasive Language and Address Objections

It should come as no surprise that persuasive language is essential to convincing customers to buy your product. Persuasive language will highlight the benefits of your product over others, including its added value and the lack of risk due to your guarantee or free trial. This is true whether on a sales call, your website, social media, or other marketing materials.

Remember to address objections properly as well. Savvy business owners pay attention to negative reviews and feedback from customers in addition to positive feedback. This not only lets you turn a negative experience into a positive one, but it also potentially turns naysayers into loyal customers.

For example, maybe customers used to complain about your product’s quality, but you listened and improved it. You could highlight the changes you made and how your newer reviews are all positive.

But you also need to be ready to address individual objections, such as a client wondering if the product meets their specific needs. As a salesperson, prepare yourself to address these objections by thinking about the various audiences that your product can help and how it uniquely fits the needs of each.

9. Create a Sense of Urgency with Limited-Time Promotions

A sense of urgency or fear of missing out (FOMO) can be an excellent tool when it comes to dealing with the process of how to convince a customer. That’s why so many brands use language such as “available for a limited time only.” It is effective in nearly any situation.

By creating a sense of urgency, you want to highlight a customer’s fear of what they would be missing out on if they didn’t buy the product or service and highlight that they only have a short time to act and get those benefits. 

10. Offer Incentives or Bonuses to Add Value

A classic method of how to convince someone to say yes is to offer additional value. This can be in the form of incentives or bonuses, whether it is a direct discount or a free item. Customers who receive a bonus will feel as if they are highly appreciated, helping you build positive emotions associated with your brand.

Bonuses are also a great way to show customers that you offer a better value than your competition and, therefore, are a better purchase. Best of all, incentives and bonuses don’t even have to cost you much. While freebies and discounts are the most appealing, customers will appreciate smaller bonuses such as a handwritten thank-you note or creative packaging.

11. Use Visual Aids for Better Product Understanding

No matter what the sales channel, visual aids are an excellent way to improve understanding of your product and promote sales. This is especially important if your customers won’t be face-to-face with the product, whether they are buying online via your e-commerce channel or the product is enclosed in a box on store shelves.

At the very least, your visual aids should include imagery of the product, ideally while it is in use. It also helps to have videos demonstrating how to use the product or close-ups of key features.

These visual guides can be published on your website and social media channels. You can even include a QR code on marketing materials or product packaging that takes shoppers to the visual aids on your website.

12. Let Customers Choose What Happens Next

While it may seem counterintuitive, end your conversation by letting your customer decide what they want to do next instead of pushing the sale. This will make the customer feel as if they are in full control. It will also make you seem like a consultant instead of a salesperson. That is important because consultants have their clients’ best interests in mind while the goal of a salesperson is just to sell.

You can also frame this question by offering your customer several options. If you offer a service, highlight the different plans customers can choose from. If you offer physical products, highlight their differences.

Generate More Leads with Podium

Before you can convince new customers to buy your product, you need to gather their contact information. Podium helps you do just that as a lead generation tool that also offers other functionality.

Podium lets you turn your website visitors into leads via its Webchat functionality. You can use this to start conversations with visitors and then take the conversation to another channel. As a messaging platform, Podium puts all your communications in a single place, from email to Facebook Messenger to texting. This not only organizes customer communications, but it also lets you view past conversations with a given customer to get the relevant context.

Podium’s review management functions also help you gather leads and convert them. Podium helps you gather social proof, making your brand more visible and improving trust in it. That, in turn, encourages customers to try your product.

FAQs

Q: How do you convince customers to stay with you?

A: You can convince customers to stay with you by understanding their needs and pain points and then addressing them. Create an emotional connection with customers and provide social proof to give them confidence in your product. You can also consider offering incentives and guarantees and be sure to follow up with customers to ensure they are satisfied. Loyalty programs can also help with customer retention.

Q: How to be more persuasive?

A: You can be more persuasive by fully understanding your customers, so you can address their specific needs. Creating an emotional connection and personalizing conversations by mentioning past interactions will further improve your persuasiveness.

Q: What can you say to encourage a customer to buy?

A: Encourage a customer to buy by highlighting the benefits of your product and how it solves their pain points. You can also highlight your unique selling points, create a sense of urgency, and offer a guarantee.