Last week, I wrote an email about misdirection, and asked for examples. A bunch of people wrote in with good pop culture illustrations.
I also got to work, reading up on the theory of misdirection. Step one was Derren Brown’s book Tricks of Mind.
You might know Brown. He is a stage mentalist and TV illusionist. He’s done a TED talk where he reads the minds of people in the audience, and he’s got shows on Channel 4 in the UK where he demonstrates and debunks the acts of psychics, faith healers, etc.
After a rough start to Brown’s book, about Brown’s conversion from gullible Christian to enlightened atheist, the book picks up and talks psychological principles, just like I was looking for.
Today, I want to share one very cool such principle with you. It’s not about misdirection. Instead, it’s the idea that a lot of the “magic” of a magic trick happens after the trick is over.
Brown describes different techniques to do this.
For example, you can repeat a trick multiple times, so tiny (and different) details from different runs bleed together after the fact, gaslighting the viewer.
Or you can give subtle verbal suggestions. For example, you can instruct an audience member to shuffle a deck of cards “again” — when it’s really the first time, and when multiple shuffles make the magic trick more impressive.
The point, as Brown claims, is that people both love magic because they like being astonished and surprised… but they also resist it, because they don’t like being fooled.
And that’s why, once the trick is over, viewers keep going over the act in their heads.
And if the magician does his job right, then viewers will exaggerate cool things that happened… forget details that could make them seem gullible or dumb… and invent new memories that support the idea that this was really an incredible and unexplainable act of possibly real magic.
All of which, if you ask me, applies to sales also.
Making a sale is an emotional manipulation.
And much of the sale is made after the credit card details have been exchanged and the transaction is over.
Sure, a part of that is having a solid product and good customer service.
But, like Brown says, it’s only one part, and might be a minor part.
A bigger part might be the rationalizations, selective forgetting, and false memories that pop up in your former prospect’s, now customer’s mind, after the sale is over.
I believe, like in a magic show, that there are different tricks you can use to make this happen in your customer’s head, even once he’s on his own, late at night, driving home from your sales stage show, with your digital information product sitting in his virtual lap.
What tricks exactly?
Well, I’ve got a few ideas.
But I’d like to hear yours also. Specifically:
How can you write copy, or organize your marketing, to get people to keep selling themselves on your offer after the sale is over?
Get on my email newsletter, then write in and let me know your ideas. No judgment — anything that comes to your mind is valid, and I want to hear it. In exchange, I will tell you a few ideas I’ve had on this question myself.