What’s The Secret Way to Hook Your Audience and Make a Sale?

It’s true! The fastest and easiest way to hook your audience is with a question.

Traditional sales approaches tell us to ask somebody a question so you can get a ‘yes’ answer.

This is a time-tested principle in sales: asking questions like, ‘Hey! Do you want more book sales?’ or ‘Hey! Do you want to sell more of your books?’

But there’s a problem with this approach: most people concentrate on getting a ‘yes.’

When you aim for the ‘yes’ with the hook question, people can recognize it and instantly start to feel manipulated. If that happens, you’ll get what’s called sales resistance. It’s similar to when someone goes to a car dealership and knows he is going to get sold to.

So what can you do if your audience has their defenses up? Hook them in with a ‘No’! They won’t expect that.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say we’re going after authors and we want to hook them the traditional way. We might ask: ‘Hey! Do you want to make more book sales?’ And, indeed, this is an excellent hook. The downside is that people expect this question that leads to ‘yes.’

But what if we asked something like, ‘Are you making all the book sales you’re capable of making right now?’ Well, the answer will be ‘No.’

To take this even further…

• Hey, are you making all the book sales you want at the moment?
  • No.
• Are you getting all the speaking gigs that you want?
  • No.
• Do you have the platform you want right now, or do you think you could do better?
  • Well, no, I don’t have the platform that I’m looking for right now.

So, when you use this kind of approach, and people answer with a ‘no,’ it changes the experience.

It blows away their expectation of getting manipulated into a ‘yes.’
Can you see that ‘no’ actually can lead to a ‘yes’?

And from my experience, this can make the difference between hooking one out of ten people or hooking eight out of ten.

Go ahead and test this formula:

Are you getting enough ___________? Or,  Are you getting all the _________ you deserve? Just that one little thing can help make a huge difference.

Sometimes getting someone with that first ‘no’ answer can hook them better than the ‘yes’ hook.

This is effective, especially when we’re talking about cold traffic. That is, when they’re in tune with their problems but not yet aware there’s a solution available.

So, here’s what to do next:

• Brainstorm a question that might get your audience’s interest.
• Form that question so it leads to a ‘no’ answer.
• Hook your audience with a ‘no’ and then lead them to a ‘yes.’

By the way, if you liked learning how to hook them with a ‘no’ and then lead them to ‘yes,’ check out TheJimEdwardsMethod.com. There are tons of useful tools, tips, and strategies that I use myself to create content, craft posts, design memes, and script Facebook lives videos.

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