Has there ever been a time you persuaded someone to do something or buy something? Then the person came back to you a couple hours, days, or weeks later and changed their mind? This is a very common occurrence, let me explain. When people are influenced to make decisions by some type of sales person, they almost always have some type of buyer’s remorse. This happens usually because people tend to buy on their emotion, rather than logic. This is usually because the salesman was able to do such an amazing job with getting that client excited about buying. However, excitement eventually runs out, and the sales person isn’t always there to re-sell them on whatever it was they sold them on to begin with. So how do you keep a person committed to the sale without actually having to be there?

How to keep people committed

There is a brilliant technique called Future Pacing that allows you to almost magically persuade someone to keep their commitment when objections come up after the sale has been completed. The idea, like most of the concepts I teach, is simple. What you’re doing is creating a scenario(s) in a person’s mind that may happen in the future. So after you close the deal, you’ll need to rehearse a practical scenario(s) that may occur to this person.

For example:

Let’s say that you are convincing a client to purchase a car. They are a bit hesitant to sign the contract because their wife might get upset. Right away, we know that even if your client decides to say yes, his wife might change his mind later. So what you’ll need to do is future pace the objection(s) the wife my bring up and teach your client how to handle them. That way, your client is working as your salesman, selling his wife on why he moved forward with the deal.

8 Steps to Future Pace Someone

• Acknowledge their commitment to you
• Reinforce the reasons they decided to say yes to you
  • Ask them ‘why’ questions. Why did you say yes? What made you agree with me?
• Reiterate their response and intertwine them with benefits as to why they made the decision.
• Add a couple more motives about why they made the right decision
• Create a mental scenario of an event that might happen in the future
  • i.e. “If you talk to your wife and she isn’t as excited as you with the car, what reasons will you instantly remember and explain to her allowing her to understand why you said yes to me today?”
• Reiterate and detail out their response. Use their response to create another compelling statement for their decision to say yes today.
• Ask, “Can you think of any other reasons to use to influence your wife that you’ve made the right decision?”
• If done correctly, your client is securely closed along with being rehearsed to handle the objection they might get from their wife who may object later.

Is this practical?

Yes, this is 100% practically and easy to integrate. In fact, here are some of the many scenarios you can use it in:

• Buyer’s remorse – People regret what they bought most of the time. Sometimes they just forget about it, other times they decide to return it.
• Significant other – When haven’t you seen a case of someone coming back to you saying that their husband/wife were unhappy with their purchase.
• Family – Family can easily persuade you in and out of choices you’ve made
• Friends – Like family, friends also have a big influence on what you buy. Their opinions determine whether keep or not.
• Events – Sometimes evens conflict with each other and one event must be sacrificed.
• Competitors – Competitors are almost guaranteed to try and sell your customer their products that are the same or similar for cheaper.
• Writers/Bloggers- They sell products online and offer 100% money back guarantees. What is to say that you’re customer won’t come back and actually ask for it.

Also, when you future pace someone, you need to make sure you have some leverage with their motivation. Use pain and pleasure when discussing their motivation, so you know which direction you need to take them.

Future pacing is a very valuable technique that can help you retain more customers faster. The more customers who keep your product/service, the more likely they are to recommend to their friends and family. After a person has made the decision, and an outside influence can’t persuade them otherwise, they will automatically begin to convince themselves that they’ve made the right decision. This all begins with your ability to future pace them.