By Stacy Zemon, Publisher & Chief Scribe
Sales can be a daunting task for anyone, including DJ entertainers. No doubt you’ve spilled your heart and soul into your business but to make it successful, you need bookings – and lots of them!
I’ve had the opportunity to do business consulting with a number of mobile entertainment companies. When increasing sales is a goal (and it almost always is), I start by explaining the psychology behind it. Why? Because most people think a sale is about manipulating or pushing people into making a decision, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here are the most important things to know about the psychology of sales:
People don’t buy products or services.
They buy emotions.
By “emotions,” I mean: A desired feeling. Excitement. Fun. Superiority. Security. Or sometimes, the opposite – fear.
Always position your DJ service’s offerings around someone’s emotional hot buttons; however, you have to know what emotion your prospects are concerned with. If you don’t, you won’t understand how to sell to them.
The best way to determine this is to ask a potential client what’s important to them and what they need. Once you know this, you can position your solution around their needs and then sell your benefits – NOT your features.
People don’t pay for uplighting or photobooths. They pay for beautiful ambience and happy memories of a special occasion.
And it gets better…
When people pay for something, it gives them a sense of accomplishment, pride, and ownership, meaning they’ll value the goods or services more and complain less.
Who doesn’t want satisfied clients who don’t complain?
Tonality and body language are the most
important parts of communication.
This is a very old truth, but it’s still surprising to most people. If your lips are saying “book!” but your body and voice are not communicating enthusiasm and confidence, your closing rate won’t be very high.
I suggest that you listen to your phone calls and videotape yourself conducting sales presentations. Make note of your posture, tone and words, then ask yourself, “Would I buy from this person?”
If the answer is “no,” then you have some adjustments to make. Being conscious of these things can make a monumental difference in getting to a “yes,” no matter how talented you are as DJ!
Perception is Reality
Prospects usually equate your rates with the quality of your entertainment services even though one may or may not have to do with the other. Allow me to illustrate what I mean by this.
I was doing my grocery shopping yesterday when I stumbled upon a discount that I assumed was a clerical mistake: some fancy olive oil had been reduced from $23 to $9. Needless to say, I immediately put a bottle in my cart, even though I didn’t need another bottle of olive oil.
But then, just a few minutes later, I began to wonder: why was the olive oil so drastically reduced in price? Is something wrong with it? What isn’t Shoprite telling me? That nagging suspicion – and I’m sure it was completely unfounded – was enough for me to put the bottle back on the shelf. It was too good a deal.
My perverse behavior illustrates something interesting about consumers. In general, people assume that more expensive things are of higher quality. As a result, we automatically suspect low-cost products or services of being faulty or inferior.
And, (pay attention to this part) because our expectations profoundly influence our experience, an olive oil that we expect to be lower in quality will actually taste lower in quality. The same goes with a mobile DJ service.
