Selling, when done the wrong way, can feel manipulative, like you’re preying on someone’s emotions, needs and desires. How can one be more authentic? And most of all, how can you get your audience to care about you? The answer to that is empathy. Empathy makes you more relatable. Empathy makes you a winner.
1. Persuade your audience by being more relatable because empathy wins their trust
There are a lot of examples where you might be trying to get your audience to care. It could be because you’re trying to launch a product in your business, or you’ve written a blog post and are releasing it out on the web. You encounter resistance from your audience, who have caught onto all the marketing tricks and are more perceptive than you think.
But these days, people aren’t just indifferent, they’re apathetic.
2. Apathy versus indifference
What’s the difference?
It’s subtle, and you might say that it’s just semantics, but when people are indifferent, they don’t care about whether the result of an event goes one way or another. Like choosing a flavour of ice cream, they could just as easily choose chocolate or vanilla if both are available. When they’re apathetic, they don’t care because it takes too much effort to make a conscious choice between two different things. So using the ice cream example, they choose to have nothing at all because they’re fine with being without it.
3. It takes even more effort to make people care
There are reasons why people are apathetic. They have to survive with what little resources that they have, and that means looking after themselves before they look out for other people. It’s not that they don’t have any empathy, it’s because they don’t have a lot of time to spend serving the needs of people who are outside of their immediate circle of acquaintances such as their family members, friends, and co-workers.
4. Have a unique and compelling message that is relatable
That’s why you have to work hard at changing their minds, to make them see the world as you do. People can be stubborn. There’s too much noise and your voice can get lost easily in the racket. The challenge of being heard can be conquered if you have a voice that is unique and if your message is compelling.
This is where the power of persuasion enters the picture. You have to convince people to part with their hard earned money, their precious and rare nuggets of free time, to pay attention to you and what you have to say when there are a million different things they would rather be doing.
5. Empathy is the key to winning your audience’s attention
Truly understand what you are saying, or the message that you are trying to get across to your audience. Does it have emotional, physical, or monetary benefits? Are you phrasing your message so that it resonates with their emotional centres?
Know your audience inside out. What annoys them? What excites them, makes them angry? What motivates them? How can you inspire them to achieve their goals?
6. Sell by not selling
Don’t sell your audience anything. First, offer them those nuggets of useful information at no charge. Be friendly and giving. Let them know that your priority is to help them, not sell them something; the selling should be second in terms of priority. There are lots of media that can be given for free, such as blog posts or videos.
Second, your audience wants to know that there is a real person behind the product that you’re trying to sell.
7. Tell your audience the truth and have your words be relatable
Don’t dress it up or embellish it. The audience is smart enough to see through a gimmick.
Third, be relatable. Unless your selling point is exclusivity or a luxury that no one can afford (in which case you’ll have to think of another strategy), your audience is much more likely to be convinced that you’re worth their time if they can understand your experience and have gone through the same thing. Build upon your why, your purpose, the reason why they should listen to you.
Asking for something in return then becomes much easier. There should be an exchange of information. The conversation can be centred around how you can help your audience, but also ask for feedback on how you can help each other and how to improve on your product.
8. Understand their pain and empathize with it
It doesn’t take a lot of empathy to understand why people worry, are troubled, or anxious about something. You’re human too, so there must be a point of commonality with your audience, and it’s better if you share this commonality than ignore it.
So why does your audience still not care? They don’t care because they can’t understand you. Ever heard someone speak in a language you don’t understand? You start to tune out and wonder if there’s something better you can do with your time. They don’t get why they should buy your product or why they should listen to you. You might as well be speaking gibberish.
9. Use emotions that anyone can relate to
Your life may be very different from everyone else’s, but the marvelous thing about the human experience is that there are, without a doubt, commonalities and themes that are repeated everyday in your life and your audience’s. Everyone feels emotions such as happiness, anger, and excitement. That’s why emotions are such a deep, endless well to draw from when crafting your message.
Sure, you want your audience to aspire to have the product you are selling, but there has to be a balance between desirability (the hope to attain something they don’t have) and being relatable just enough (they already have something in common with you).
Instantly you’ve given them something they can relate to, which leads them to empathize with you, and better understand why you are selling what you are selling.