When Selling, It’s Always Best To Do So From Their Perspective

I’ve read countless books on selling and persuasion over the years, and have made a career out of helping the companies I’ve worked for become more effective in this regard.  One of the real fundamentals of being successful in convincing people to take your advice or to persuade them successfully is to start not from your own position, but from theirs.

For instance, with our poker reviews we are obviously looking for people to sign up at the poker rooms that we are reviewing, so we look to either give them information here, or better, to provide them reasons why they should do our bidding.  So we start with our need and then look to satisfy it.  That is the wrong perspective though.

Instead, our starting point always needs to be what our readers may want here.  So we have to start by putting ourselves in their shoes so to speak.  This doesn’t mean that we just give them what they want though.  A lot of poker room reviewers actually make this important step but they stop there, and what results looks much more like journalism than an attempt to persuade.  This is absolutely not what we want here.

So We Need To Start With Them, But Not Lose Sight Of What We Are Trying To Do

As a matter of fact, the above example only takes into account one of their needs, which is to obtain information on a poker site.  They want this information to be authoritative, and probably don’t want to have to surf many reviews to get the quality of advice they need.  So the information we provide needs to project the elements of authority, comprehensiveness, and validity.

This is of course aside from our task of selling them on the poker room themselves.  The first thing we need to be doing is to sell them on ourselves, which is the most important aspect of our starting with their perspective.

Imagine yourself looking for a top poker room.  What sort of reviewer would you want?  Well I’d want someone who is very experienced at this, has been around the business for years, has an intimate knowledge of not only this poker room but the alternatives as well, has successfully referred many players to this poker room who have been very happy with their choice, and so on.

So that’s the climate we need to look to create here.  Once again, I’ve done all of this, so I have that advantage, but you are allowed to embellish things if you have the need to do so.  You do need to make sure that you don’t go overboard here though, and keep things within reason.  However, if you can’t convince them that you are an expert, you won’t even approach your potential to convince them and thus convert them.

We Aren’t Reporters, We Are Spin Doctors

Depending on the makeup of your audience, it’s often beneficial to show a few warts as well as all the great things that a poker room offers, and I always look to do that, as it creates more of a climate of trustworthiness.  However, I always look to put a positive spin on even the worst features.

For instance, a poker room may have less traffic than some others, but it’s not just about quantity, and quality is even more important.  Perhaps this site has very thin traffic, and certainly not enough to make this your main site, but who says you can’t have accounts at several, and you don’t want to miss out on the great tables at this one when they pop up.  Perhaps the bonus offer here isn’t that great, but it’s not a matter of choosing between them, why not take this one in addition to others, as it’s even more money in your pocket.

So while we are looking to be honest and tell all, at the same time, our singular task is to convince them to sign up at the particular poker room we are reviewing, so we always need to look to portray it in as favorable a light as we can.

As far as comparing poker sites that you also have reviews on, what I always look to do is not put these offers in competition with each other, but instead look to position them as complimentary.  In other words, this is a great deal, AND so are the other ones that I recommend, you can’t go wrong with any of them, try this out and also check out the others.  You want to make this process as easy as you can for them and not look to involve them in any kind of deep thought beyond just clicking on our link right here and now.

They Want Information, So Make Sure You Give It To Them

If your readers are left wondering about anything, they will likely look to find out what they need to know elsewhere, meaning that someone else will get their business.  So it definitely pays to include a lot of information in your reviews.  It’s not just about the quantity here, and as is usually the case, quality matters more.

So for instance if I’m explaining about a certain beneficial aspect of the poker room that I’m reviewing, I will look to go into detail about it, to make the benefits more understandable and real, as well as personal.  I would say that I pay much more attention to this than any other reviewer that I’ve run into, but I feel that this is extremely important and effective.

So my reviews to tend to be quite a bit longer than the average, but this is by design.  A lot of affiliates worry about length, in terms of all of their readers needing to take the time to read it all, but we need to keep in mind that there will be a variety of levels of interest and attention spans and as long as you make the review easy to navigate, this shouldn’t be a concern at all.  They can just glean it if they prefer, and still get enough of the message to become convinced.  Those who need to read more certainly can, and it’s important to have what they need there for them.

To sum all of this up, don’t be afraid to be creative here, and if your reviews look like the rest of the stuff that’s out there, you are really missing out on some real opportunities.  As long as you realize that your task is to persuade, and that this is your sole task in fact, you are definitely on the right track.