Selling :The Best Strategy to Sell is NOT TO SELL

One of the most heinous selling tactic ever used before is the so-called “cold selling” that includes cold calls, cold emails, and cold begging to the customer so to buy what he never got a chance to know before. This cold approach is the tool of the fragile management that seeks rapid pervasion of the product or service.

Selling in the world of today did not get harder, rather it demands new skills as it encompasses newer dimensions and challenges that didn’t exist before. In a world where everyone never quit to sell and sell and sell, there is an incredible opportunity for those who never sell, to amazingly sell.

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Actually, there are two covert sources of influence that drag people more to the buying decision, the first is self-control, which is to grant the customer a full control of the decision he/she takes, by removing any kind of inducement that meant push him a step forward to buy.

A meta-analysis that included 42 studies that had been conducted with over 22,000 persons, and they all concluded that when someone requests something and ends his statement with words that manifest self-control like “But you’re free,”, so people were persuaded by almost 100% more. The need of freedom is one the most important human values for all human beings, and the majority of the world conflicts were due to the violation of the human and the communities’ freedom, like the freedom of thinking and innovation that the clerks in Europe suppressed in the medieval time.

Like the freedom from an armed occupation. Like the freedom from enslavement under the sovereignty of another human being. So, the collective memory of the masses of people has accumulated deep inside the love of the freedom, and it became a non-negotiable right. Whatever it costs, whatever sacrifices it demands, people will fight until death for their freedom and all the meanings it beholds.

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The second source is the effect of Do Nothing, which is to get the customer out of the binary choice of taking the deal or leaving it, by adding a small vent of doing neither, and adding a third option of doing nothing at all.

An experiment conducted in Wharton Business School in the United States to study the effect of the phrase, ― Do nothing, on the commitment of the people toward their appointed tasks. So, they brought volunteers to solve some word-search puzzles. They had to figure out names from the scattered letters, then to put them in three groups.

For the first group, they were offered two options: Whether to choose between word puzzles of capital cities or famous actors. The second group had to choose between capital cities, famous actors or ballet dancers, and, for the third group, they were to choose between capital cities, famous actors or ―Do Nothing, which was to give them the freedom to quit the experiment if they want.
The result was that the third group,

who received the option of ― Do Nothing, spent much longer on doing the task, almost 40% more than the first and second groups, and that showed an increasing of the commitment of the third group toward the appointed task because of the freedom option they received. The clear conclusion of this experiment was that adding an unusual option, which is to ― Do Nothing,

led the participants to commit more to what they chose, and that‘s because of the area of freedom granted by the issuer of the task.

That’s why in a famous scene in war movies, the commander of the special force team, who are about to go for an impossible mission behind the enemy lines, tends to ask them that if anyone decided to step back, he could do it now with no blame. No one steps back, rather they all insist on participating in the mission, shouting their enthusiasm. This is, of course, much better than asking a team to participate in certain task without leaving a room to step back. So, adding the option ― Do Nothing always gives power, commitment, and more compliance to the orders and requests.

One of the essential values a product should have is a kind of a dignity that makes such product more desirable to prospective customers, by focusing more to show off the product features and focusing less on selling it. But, what makes it a difficult strategy to follow that it needs quite long patience (although it pays off at the end) and people are naturally hasty creatures, they want to tell and sell to people from the first day, so such trials ends up devaluing their product.

While, following the strategy of manifesting the value, the robustness, and the uniqueness of the product without a direct sale would motivate people to come around and to generate in them bigger motifs to do the purchase.

One of the companies that follow this strategy is an English teaching institute in Egypt called English Capsules, its founder Abdullah Amr, a talented young man who commits to disciplined strategy that takes diversified approaches to promote his institute, i.e. meetings, lectures, webinars, free tips, weekly podcasts…etc. Yet, none of these approaches is about selling the core product in a direct mode. But finally, it sells very well.

In a market that resembles a red ocean where its bottom is stained with blood shedding of the many product owners who keep fighting so they sell and just sell. Yet, there will be a certain area of unique seller who show off his product rather than selling it, so he grants it the dignity and honor that will let it be sold progressively later on while maintaining the same pedigree of dignity and honor the product or service should always have so to dominate and float on the surface, fleeing from the barbaric conflict taking place at the bottom.

“Best way to sell something: don’t sell anything. Earn the respect, trust, awareness of those who might buy.”

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz

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