On Tuesday, I told you how creating a positive vision of the future for your prospect, getting them to realize the gap between where they are now and that vision, will help you close more sales without pressure.

You can also create a negative vision of the future that is a possibility if they don’t work with you.

You need to be cautious about painting a darker vision for your prospect because it can be perceived as being blatantly manipulative.

Ineffective speakers selling on webinars or on stage hit their prospects over the head by fundamentally saying, “If you don’t take the advice I’m about to give you, your future will suck.”

We want to be more elegant than that.

One way to future pace the negative is by asking the audience questions that get them to see the darkness that is in front of them.

Another way is to tell cautionary tales of what happened to other people who didn’t take action. By presenting these “case studies,” your audience will draw their conclusions.

When painting a negative vision, don’t make it worse than it could be. If you do that, your audience will discount everything you say.

For example, while I firmly believe that everyone selling a professional service needs to add speaking online, in person, or both to their marketing arsenal so they can stand out from their competitor and attract the very best clients, I wouldn’t say in a presentation, “If you don’t do that, you’ll need to shudder your doors and your wife and kids will leave you.”

Instead, I might say, “In a down economy, only the business owners who will thrive are perceived as being THE expert authority to their target market and not just someone else who provides the same service. The also-ran business owners viewed as commodities are going to see sales decline, attract clients who only care about price, and will be laying awake at night wondering ‘what happened?’”

I’d then show that the best way to sell yourself and not just your service is through speaking.

Notice that everything I said is true and plausible.

All this week, I’ve told you how creating internal pressure in your prospect is key to closing the sale. Tomorrow, I’ll share with you the strategy, which is the opposite of pressure.

Kick butt, make mucho DEEnero!

Dave “The Dark Knight” Dee