Fourteen Lectures on Consumer Psychology

Chapter 18: Suggestions in Sales (2)
The adverb "later" implies that there was a previous context, which might be: "You will use gold medal flour".This part is not very easy to understand, but it can be seen that this is a false implication.This cue can cause consumers to delay buying the product.It's like a salesman saying to a housewife: "I know you are using other brands of flour now, please keep using them, but if you try our flour, you will definitely change the brand of flour you use in the future." Finally , anyway (maybe 20 years later), you will come to buy the flour we produce.” In this passage, the salesman’s intention is not to make the housewife come back to buy the flour he is selling after a long time.But the first part of this passage carries a hint that the salesman himself is not aware of, and this hint virtually reinforces the housewife's idea of ​​continuing to use other brands of flour.

The rhetorical question in the second part of the slogan was criticized even more.Imagine a conversation between a consumer and a salesman. The salesman says with a hint, "I know you won't buy this product right now." The consumer replies, "No, I will buy it now." The salesman goes on to ask: "Then why are you buying it now?" What could be easier than a salesman asking "why" right now?

This ad has now been discontinued, so there are no serious consequences.One hint ended up doing nothing because it was missing some important elements - instead of mentioning what consumers should do, it suggested a lot of things consumers shouldn't do.Even so, it cannot be asserted that this advertisement will not have any impact on consumers due to the existence of flaws.In fact, despite those flaws, the ad has a lot to offer.For example, it is very short, easy to understand, and is very popular with the American public.In addition, the manufacturer spent a lot of money on this advertisement. After seeing and hearing it countless times, consumers are familiar with it.In fact, the slogan has almost become a well-known proverb.Therefore, when creating new advertising slogans in the future, it is best to directly use affirmative forms to directly stimulate consumers to generate purchasing behavior.

There is some difficulty in expressing all hints in affirmative form, especially when the salesman wants to emphasize some kind of prohibition or something to be aware of.However, Coca-Cola has set a good example for salesmen in this kind of advertisement that uses positive sentences to express negative meaning.As we all know, many people have the habit of walking into a beverage store and directly telling the salesperson: "Please give me a Coke."

The Coca-Cola Company doesn't like this situation, because the customer only asks for a Coke, so the salesperson may bring him something similar to Coca-Cola and also called a Coke.Moreover, just using the acronym "Coke" is easily reminiscent of the code word for drugs in American gangster movies.How to change the public's habit of using the acronym "Coke"?If the advertising slogan uses "Don't just say Coke", it gives consumers a negative hint, and the negative hint can easily produce the ambiguity mentioned in the previous paragraphs.In addition, the word "Coke" appears in this slogan, which will only make people who are used to referring to Coca-Cola more accustomed to it.Even worse, many people who didn't refer to Coca-Cola before would learn to use it.

Coca-Cola has adopted a new slogan that solves all of the above problems.This slogan is "Order a Coca-Cola with the full name of Coca-Cola".This slogan uses an affirmative sentence, implying a very clear expression, which is exactly what the salesman wants consumers to understand.If people use it, it achieves the advertising effect Coca-Cola hopes to achieve.This story shows that no matter how convenient it is to use negative sentences and how difficult it is to use affirmative sentences, as long as the salesman studies the situation clearly and thinks carefully for many times, he will definitely avoid using negative sentences and finally express himself in affirmative forms. slogan.

A rule can be found from the above discussions: the meaning of allusions has multiple layers.Especially indirect hints generally have two meanings.The first layer is the literal meaning on the surface, which is very clear and easy to understand.The second layer is the hidden meaning, which requires thinking and pondering.For example, indirectly implying the slogan "Ask the person who owns it" implies that consumers "If you want to know how comfortable this car is, just ask the person who bought it, and the owner of the car will tell you how comfortable the car is." very comfortable".It is very interesting for readers to analyze these suggestive slogans.By analyzing these suggestive slogans, the salesman can also get a lot of inspiration, so that he can use appropriate and powerful hints in his future work.

5. After realizing that indirect suggestion has two meanings, you need to learn the following rule.In general, indirect suggestion produces better results than direct suggestion.The definition of direct suggestion is: This is a method of suggestion in which you directly express what you mean.The definition of indirect suggestion is: you express one thing, but in fact you want to say another thing, what you express and what you imply are not necessarily opposite things.The difference between direct suggestion and indirect suggestion is that in indirect suggestion, the speaker only expresses part of his meaning, and then let the hearer complete it by himself.

The difference between these two kinds of suggestion can be illustrated by the following examples.Direct hint: "Please smoke Prince Albert cigarettes." Indirect hint: "Ty Cobb smokes Prince Albert cigarettes." It can be seen that the directly implied picture is complete, and there are basically no blanks on the picture that need to be filled by consumers, but there are many blanks on the indirectly implied picture that require consumers to do it themselves.The indirect hint only tells consumers that "Ty Cobb smokes Prince Albert cigarettes", the expression is very subtle, but in any case, the main idea is still included in the slogan.What seems to be behind the slogan is: "Ty Cobb smokes Prince Albert cigarettes, which he likes very much. Because he is a man of good judgment (in baseball), he He also has extraordinary judgment on cigarettes. So Prince Albert cigarettes are very good, and I want to smoke them.” Obviously, there are a lot of blanks left in the indirect suggestion for consumers to fill in all kinds of random thoughts.In this indirect implication, the salesman hopes that the logic of consumers is that famous baseball players not only have good judgment on baseball, but also on cigarettes-this conclusion is actually absurd when you look closely.

Indirect hints may also use some roundabout speech techniques.Many hints require twists and turns to convey the true meaning.For example, an ad for hair tonic features a woman with beautiful, thick, long hair.In this advertisement, the salesman does not need to use words to express the relationship between the hair tonic and the long-haired woman in the picture, consumers can understand what he means.Consumers will complete the ad for themselves: "This woman has beautiful long hair. Her hair grows so well because of Blanc's hair tonic. If I also use this shampoo , my hair must be as beautiful as hers, so I should buy a bottle of this shampoo."

hint of dishonesty
The great power, wide availability, and euphemisms of indirect suggestion often induce salesmen to make dishonest hints about products to consumers.Because of the nature of indirect suggestion, when using this sales method, there is no need to elaborate on the product situation, which leaves room for the salesman's dishonesty.Although many salesmen are still trying to maintain a minimum level of honesty, psychometric analysis of them finds that they are very far from absolute honesty.One of these dishonest acts is trademark misappropriation.Do a statistical analysis of trademark misappropriation and misappropriation of trade names. If the test results can be proved in court, many salesmen will be convicted of fraud.

direct hint vs indirect hint

I mentioned a point earlier. Generally speaking, indirect hints are more influential than direct hints. This point of view does not mean that direct hints are useless.In fact, direct hints are also very important.It works best on those who "don't know what they want."Undoubtedly, there will always be people in the world who want others to make up their minds for them, and such people subconsciously love direct cues from others.If it is an order, it is estimated that it will be better.Psychologists have studied the behavior of this type of people, but they have another observation. Even if these "don't know what they want" people like to be asked to make up their minds for them, they prefer others to use indirect suggestions. Motivate him to do something.For example, at the end of a sale, the salesman is packing the goods and indirectly hinting at the consumer in this way: "Do you want us to deliver something to your house today?" The bottom line of what consumers want.For consumers who don't know what they want, indirect cues can make them feel that they are still in charge of their lives.

counter-suggestion

There are many kinds of hints mentioned above, including abnormal hints and normal hints, positive hints and negative hints, direct hints and indirect hints.This is not the full range of hints, two hints will be studied below.The first is countersuggestion.In a situation where counter-suggestion is at work, the individual makes a cue that points to a certain behavior, but actually wants the object of his cue to behave in the opposite way.There is a kind of person who likes to "sing a different tune", and his favorite thing is to go against the hints given by others.There are some "crazy" husbands who are such that, when dealing with them, their wives deliberately give counter-cues to get them to work.Of course, a salesman may rarely encounter such a person, and if he does, he can also use counter-cues to sell successfully.

The last kind of suggestion is autosuggestion.As the name says, this is a hint imposed by oneself.The salesman can only use this suggestion on himself, not on the customer.However, salesmen also have a great need to inject themselves with some new ideas from time to time to overcome failure, frustration and weakness.

When a salesman wants to make a move, he needs to first visualize the action in his mind.Almost every successful salesman has used autosuggestion at some point in his life, and it has had an astonishing effect on them.To use this kind of suggestion, you must first avoid using negative expressions, because suggestions in the form of prohibiting what to do are easy to fail.For an important sales pitch, he would use affirmative self-suggestions like this: "I will succeed." A signal with positive upward force.Simply put, the biggest inspiration a salesman gets from this lecture is that hints can not only act on consumers, but also on himself.

(End of this chapter)