Increase Your Sales By Increasing Your Believability

by Bob Leduc

People won't buy from you until they're confident you will deliver exactly what they expect to get. You can help them develop that confidence by making certain every claim you make about your product or service is fully believable.

Here are 3 ways you can increase your believability with prospects -- and generate more sales. All 3 work for any business. And you can use them with any marketing method including the Internet.

Use Testimonials
Testimonials from satisfied customers are powerful selling tools. They establish your believability because they prove you already delivered what you promised to other customers.

The most effective testimonials describe a specific result your customer enjoyed by using your product or service. For example, "In just 2 weeks I lost 9 pounds, felt years younger and still enjoyed all my favorite foods".

Tip: Get permission to use your customers' names and addresses with their testimonials. Personal testimonials from real people are more believable than anonymous testimonials.

Provide Specifics
You can also increase your believability by converting general statements into specific descriptions. "It's fast, easy and inexpensive" may accurately describe your product or service. But a specific description of how fast, how easy and how inexpensive is more believable.

Also, try to avoid using round numbers (10, 25, 40, etc.) in your claims. Instead, reduce them to specific odd numbers with fractions or decimals. Here's why...

Which of the following 2 statements sounds more authentic to you?

1. Our clients average 30 percent more sales.

2. Our clients average 27.7 percent more sales.

Most people choose the second statement. 30 percent may be the accurate number. But 27.7 percent is more believable.

Bonus: Specific descriptions also create impact and excitement. They motivate more of your prospects to buy.

Tone Down Your Claims
If the actual results you can produce for your customers or clients sound too good to be true, your prospective customers will assume it's not true. It happened to me...

I once developed a direct mail postcard that generated over 20 percent replies when I sent it to names on a special mailing list. Most of the businesses I approached with a lead service using this postcard didn't believe I could really get that high a response rate for them.

The service was difficult to sell unless I substantially understated the projected rate of response. I eventually discovered that projecting a 7 1/2 to 9 1/2 percent response rate produced the largest number of sales. That rate was still a substantial increase for any company -- and it was more believable than the actual rate of more than 20 percent.

Special Advantage: Understating the results your customer can expect also enhances your credibility. Imagine your customer's reaction when your product or service produces substantially better results than you promised.

How believable are the claims and promises you make to prospective customers or clients? Do you use testimonials and provide specifics? Are there any claims you need to tone down because they sound too good to be true? Prospective customers won't buy from you unless they fully believe every claim and promise you make.