When you have something for someone – a product or service, or a plan, or a great idea, or a different viewpoint you’d like them to try – you know why it’s a good thing or a good idea for them.
You have reasons – and you know that they are valid – to know that they’ll be happy with the purchase, it’ll solve their problem.
They’ll enjoy the restaurant you have in mind.
Your kids will grow up healthy and strong, if they eat their veggies.
Folks will enjoy the movie or the book you have in mind for them.
Your coaching client will totally triumph, if they do that thing you’re recommending.
In short: your reasons for wanting them to want what you have; see; or think, are usually solid and correct.
Except there’s one problem:
People don’t buy (or buy in) because of your reasons, no matter how valid those reasons may be.
No, when people buy something or enroll in something, they do it for their reasons. Not yours.
And that’s where so much communication (and indeed: sales) break down.
We try to persuade, convince, influence… we try to reason with the other person.
“See my reasons! Hear me out, because you should XYZ because of… /reasons!”
But people need their own reasons…
Once they find those, they enroll themselves – they buy in willingly and voluntarily, into whatever good idea you have for them.
And no matter how much you try to reason with them:
In doing so, you’re only making it harder for them to discover their own reasons, and thus you slow down the sale.
So instead of trying to reason with the other person, appeal to their desire for change.
Give them space to figure out if they want the thing or idea you have, and most importantly:
Why they would want it.
It’s not your reasons that make people buy or buy in: it’s their reasons.
Help the other person discover those, for themselves.
