Pre-Persuasion

One of the more common misconceptions about persuasion is that people are persuaded toward something in a single, perfect interaction, that it's about creating a moment of precise persuasion that no one can resist.  In this view a great persuader creates massive change in unsuspecting persuadees with nothing more than the magical powers at their fingertips.

It really doesn’t work that way.  In fact, most persuasion is not done in the moment of the actual persuasive interaction.  Most of it is done in the pre-persuasion period, where people slowly gather information and form opinions about services, products, and organizations. It's during this stage that people become either positive or negative toward you, your services/products, and your industry. Pre-persuasion goes on when people don't feel actively advertised to, it's more about being casually informed, reminded, and even entertained about a product, service, or company.

That’s why companies (ie, Geico insurance) spend so much on saturation advertising.  They have to get their name into the national consciousness, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, visualize it for people, give it an emotional tone, character it (gecko, pig, camels, puns) -- so that their persuasion actively carves out room inside people’s minds.

With good pre-sell, when someone needs something, much of the persuasive work -- where to look for this product/service, what to expect, how to feel about a specific company -- is already done for the salesperson.  The customer comes in already informed about, primed on, and positive about the company. The salesperson’s main job is literally to continue the same flow and feel of the pre-sell -- in other words, not to mess up the pre-work that’s already been done to make this person persuadable. Without good pre-sell you have to do a ton of work in the moment -- including things like gathering and giving out information, creating trust in the brand/product, adequately answering all resistances -- and the possibility of the sale going wrong dramatically increases (due to issues like conversation fatigue, information overload, a waning of your interpersonal connection, etc.).

Pre-sell is why a brand’s external messaging is so important, it pre-sets the landscape and takes some of the pressure off the actual sales interactions. Customers arriving pre-sold means they’re much easier to persuade, so you get far more conversions per interaction -- and the process is way more efficient -- than if customers come in under-informed, confused, or distrustful of your company or product.