Use Pressure To Prevent Procrastination

My wife and I are shop­ping for a new home. We’re quite excited as one house has caught our eye, and we’re mak­ing an offer on it as I type this.

With the excite­ment comes a bit of trep­i­da­tion, how­ever, since we know we’ll have to start pack­ing, mak­ing mov­ing prepa­ra­tions and, of course, go fur­ni­ture shop­ping in order to fill some of the “extra space.” (Our new home is dou­ble the size of our cur­rent one.)

This reminds of the last time I went shop­ping for fur­ni­ture when I bought my pre­vi­ous house. Why? Because some­thing strange occurred that reminded me of the power of apply­ing pres­sure in copywriting.

Sev­eral years ago, I bought a house that was being built, and the com­ple­tion date was still way off in the future. (We’re talk­ing about six months down the road.)

Since I was shop­ping for fur­ni­ture sev­eral months in advance, one of the things I was look­ing for was an extended lay­away plan. A lay­away plan would help me tem­porar­ily store the fur­ni­ture until I move into the new house.

After shop­ping around a few stores, I came across a big chain depart­ment store that car­ried what I was look­ing for — a bed, a couch, a din­ner table and chairs, all at rea­son­able prices.

(In fact, they were all on spe­cial, which was nice.)

I walked in, spoke to a sales­per­son and asked if they had an extended lay­away plan. After I asked him, he used what seemed to be the “good cop, bad cop” rou­tine on me, which is a com­mon sales tac­tic I’m all too famil­iar with.

“Let me check with my man­ager,” he said. He left, spoke with some­one in the neigh­bor­ing elec­tron­ics depart­ment who obvi­ously didn’t look like a “man­ager.” (In fact, the per­son seemed like a nor­mal sales rep from the elec­tron­ics department.)

Five min­utes later, he returned, and said, “Sure, but my man­ager said only if you buy today.”

Huh? Ya, right.

Now, I may be naive at times. But I used to be a sales­per­son, too. I even use urgency tac­tics in my copy all the time. But I hate using pres­sure tac­tics when they are glar­ingly obvi­ous. (And I cer­tainly hate it when they’re applied on me.)

What was impor­tant was the lay­away plan. The avail­abil­ity of the fur­ni­ture was also impor­tant, yet the sales­per­son thought the pric­ing was the issue and focused on the lay­away request as a way to apply pressure.

He didn’t ask why I needed those pieces of fur­ni­ture. And he cer­tainly didn’t ask why I needed the lay­away plan. He sim­ply assumed that all I wanted was a lay­away plan to take advan­tage of the spe­cial pricing.

So, real­iz­ing the salesperson’s tac­tics, I looked at my watch, nod­ded, and decided to leave in order to “think about it.”

That wasn’t the end of it. The sales­per­son made a valiant effort to get my money that day. He threw sev­eral offers at me — again, with­out ask­ing any fur­ther ques­tions. He never even both­ered explain­ing why he needed the money today if I wanted a lay­away plan.

(The spe­cial was on for a whole week, for that matter.)

But know­ing he was deceit­ful, the pres­sure he used only pushed me away even more. Need­less to say, I never asked to see “Gerry” again.

But I did want that par­tic­u­lar set of fur­ni­ture. My heart was set on it. So I took another chance, made another trip to the store and on what seemed to be the last-​​ditch attempt to get the fur­ni­ture I really wanted, I met “Jim.”

Jim was truly the epit­ome of great cus­tomer ser­vice. And clearly the oppo­site of “Gerry.”

The dif­fer­ence?

He truly empathized with me.

After learn­ing about my pre­vi­ous, unsuc­cess­ful trip to the store, Jim was apolo­getic, and never once men­tioned any­thing about him­self, his store or his prod­uct (the con­ver­sa­tion was entirely focused on me and my needs).

He asked a lot of ques­tions to fully under­stand the rea­sons why I needed the lengthy lay­away plan. He even asked me to pull out the floor plans so we can cor­rectly mea­sure the space and appro­pri­ate lay­out for the furniture.

He then extended the lay­away with­out any so-​​called “manager’s” approval, and as a good faith ges­ture gave me free fur­ni­ture sham­poo, free pol­ish, free instal­la­tion and free delivery.

“Mr. Fortin, look at it as our way of say­ing ‘thank you’ for giv­ing us a sec­ond chance,” Jim added. “Other peo­ple would have never returned like you did. I’ll extend your lay­away with­out ques­tion since you’re kind enough to give us that chance.”

Thank you indeed.

The les­son?

This sit­u­a­tion says a lot about how to write good copy. Being empa­thetic, being con­cerned and, above all, being inter­ested in the prospect before apply­ing any “pres­sure tac­tic” is cru­cial to instill trust and cred­i­bil­ity in the mind of the reader.

I’m not con­demn­ing the use of scarcity and urgency in copy. As Jim Rohn once said, “With­out a sense of urgency, desire loses it value.”

But never use under­handed tac­tics, never make it so bla­tantly obvi­ous, and always add a log­i­cal, com­mensen­si­cal “rea­son why” to jus­tify the pres­sure in the first place.

(For instance, how many times have you come across a saleslet­ter where the offer had a dead­line, which seemed to “mag­i­cally” bump ahead each time you vis­ited the web­site? That’s what I mean. Peo­ple are not stupid!)

But the great­est les­son that I pulled from this, is this:

Never pres­sure peo­ple to PUSH them into pur­chas­ing. Instead, use pres­sure to PREVENT them from procrastinating.

There is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between the two.

Prospects who take the time to visit a store — or in this case, read a saleslet­ter in depth — is cer­tainly inter­ested and qual­i­fied in the offer. (That is, if you did a good job to qual­ify the reader in your copy.)

Money means secu­rity to most peo­ple, and they don’t want to part with their secu­rity. So prospects don’t need pres­sure to buy. They need pres­sure to pre­vent them from pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, which is a typ­i­cal, “knee-​​jerk” reac­tion to any offer.

When you use pres­sure and scarcity tac­tics, such as mak­ing your offer quantity-​​bound or time-​​limited, be truth­ful. That goes with­out say­ing. But more impor­tant, always — and I do mean always! — back it up with a real, gen­uine and log­i­cal rea­son.

Using obvi­ous and deceit­ful tac­tics, such as a script that mod­i­fies the date, or a quan­tity that seems to remain the same for ages, is going to work against you.

Each time you use pres­sure in your copy, always back it up with a log­i­cal expla­na­tion as to why you’re doing so. Tell your reader why you are lim­it­ing the offer. And be not only gen­uine but also unique.

For exam­ple, say you add a bonus from a third party. You can explain that the bonus comes from another source and you only secured per­mis­sion for a cer­tain quantity.

Or put a limit or a dead­line on your offer, but explain why. Don’t just say “it’s for a mar­ket­ing test.” (Yawn!) Be spe­cific. Explain the exact rea­son why you’re lim­it­ing the offer.

If you don’t have a rea­son, man­u­fac­ture one. And by “man­u­fac­ture” I don’t mean lying. I mean com­ing up with a real rea­son why the offer is lim­ited, even if you have to make one. (And I did say “make one,” not “make one up.”)

Often­times, the eas­i­est way is to either limit the par­tic­u­lar set of pre­mi­ums that come with the offer, or state that you can only guar­an­tee that par­tic­u­lar offer until a cer­tain date or quan­tity. (Even if you don’t change it at the exact moment that limit has been reached, although you should.)

The lat­ter if pretty use­ful par­tic­u­larly with dig­i­tal goods like down­loads, ebooks and soft­ware, since they are obvi­ously unlimited.

If you include copy that specif­i­cally explains why the offer is or can be lim­ited, you not only instill urgency but also cred­i­bil­ity and believability.

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the biggest killer of sales — par­tic­u­larly online where the chances of a prospect stay­ing or return­ing to a web­site (in order to think about buy­ing), in today’s click-​​happy world, are scarce. (Yes, pun intended.)

Take­away sell­ing is in fact based on the con­cept of sup­ply and demand.

As the say­ing goes, “Peo­ple don’t know how much they want some­thing until it’s about to be taken away from them.” Look at it this way: if you give a chance for your prospects to pro­cras­ti­nate, they will.

So, add a dead­line or some kind of con­straint, since such lim­i­ta­tions implore at some uncon­scious level, “You bet­ter read this and take action now!”

But always make sure to back up your lim­i­ta­tion with an log­i­cal rea­son in order not to appear mis­lead­ing or disin­gen­u­ous. That’s the key. (In fact, what will push them will not be the lim­i­ta­tion in itself but its justification.)

Adding a dead­line or a cap on the num­ber of new clients, or even mak­ing the offer some­thing that’s secre­tive, exclu­sive or oth­er­wise unavail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic, can arouse stronger motives in the psy­che of your readers.

But give your added sense of urgency some level of cred­i­bil­ity. For example:

• “We were over­shipped on these cas­sette tapes and, in order to clear out inven­tory, we are dis­count­ing them by [X] dol­lars. How­ever, we only have 541 left in stock, so please act soon.“
   
• “One of the bonuses includes [X] hours of indi­vid­u­al­ized coach­ing worth $[X]. But there are only so many hours in the day. So I must limit the num­ber of coach­ing stu­dents to 50. So, I urge you to act now.“
   
• Or, “Dur­ing our recent move we slightly dam­aged 178 pieces of our stock — while the dam­age is hid­den and insignif­i­cant, I can’t sell them as new and must let them go at a one-​​of-​​a-​​kind discount.”

It’s all about cus­tomer ser­vice. Because, if you use pres­sure to pre­vent prospects from pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, they will thank you for it. You reduce buyer’s remorse, get less refunds and returns, and increase repeat sales.

Plus, they will believe more in you and your prod­uct, they will feel happy with their pur­chase and they will even use the log­i­cal expla­na­tions you gave them to jus­tify THEIR own deci­sions to buy.

(As you know, cus­tomers like to buy. They just don’t like to be sold.)

Remem­ber, peo­ple buy on emo­tion first and then jus­tify their deci­sions with logic. If you give them log­i­cal expla­na­tions, many will in fact use your sug­ges­tions as a way to back up their pur­chas­ing decisions.

They need not be con­vinced into buy­ing now. They need be con­vinced into not pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. As Brian Tracy once noted. “A man con­vinced against his will… is of the same opin­ion still.”

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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