A couple of days ago I listened to a telephone Seminar by UK marketing and wealth expert Chris Cardell. Now Chris’s workshops are always good value not only for the content he shares but also for the way in which he uses them to sell his products and services.

Chris is a master at building a relationship with his prospective clients and creating in them a burning desire for his products. I have been a customer of his Ultimate Marketing series of seminars but I had not signed up for the next stage, his “Wealth Mastermind Group”. Out of the blue, or so it seemed I got an invitation to a free tele-seminar. As a listener this seminar had to clear purposes. One was to share some really useful tips about the way successful entrepreneurs think. The second was to create a hunger in the audience for his aforementioned Mastermind Group.

Chris uses several techniques to create this hunger, but the one I wanted to draw to your attention today was the scarcity principle. It is a powerful way to leverage people who are interested in your product or service, but not yet fully committed, to take action.

Chris did this in several steps.

  1. He told us that that membership is by application only and that he only opens up applications for a limited period of time. (Suggesting that not everybody can join – so this is a limited addition club and by implication those who do are special)
  2. He explained that due to the room capacity for the bi-annual one day face to face workshops which were only part of the programme, there were only 25 places available at this time (i.e. opportunities to join this group are scarce.))
  3. He reminded us that there were over a hundred people on the call , listening to this membership offer. (So potentially there were more than four people chasing every single place available – implication, if you really want a place on this exclusive group, you are going to have to act fast!)

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that, if you had been convinced that membership could offer real value to you, but that “you wanted to think it over” before committing, the above steps might well convince you to Act Now!

This is an excellent example of the scarcity principle in action. It can be seen in lots of other examples, limited time offers, limited edition car models, “sale must end tomorrow” signs etc, etc.

How could you employ this principle to create urgency with your clients. Feel free to comment or post a question and I’ll do my best to respond.

Posted in Influencing, Sales Techniques., Selling skills

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