I’ve have a few relatives who like to talk about their miserable health. The latest injury, the side effects of last year’s whatsectomy, their inflammations and parasites, all the foods they can’t eat anymore.
Somewhere in my thirties I realized they’re doing this to make me feel better. Compared to them, my age-related ailments are nothing.
This is the best kind of pain relief. You start with gory, graphic, visceral images. Exploding bodies. Dwarves riddled with parasites. Followed by the immediate relief that none of it will happen to you.
But the pain doesn’t have to be physical pain. Most people have a gut-level reaction to things like audits and foreclosures.
There’s the pain of mold and termites eating the studs in your house. Your mainframe crashing for three hours on an important day. The pain of divorce, rejection, growing old without utilizing your best talents to improve the world.
What Business Are You In? Pain Relief
The good news: You’re probably in the business of relieving one or more of these gut-wrenching pains. Better yet, you relieve the fear of these plagues before they ever become a reality.
For example, Chellie Campbell, a onetime financial planner, changed her destiny forever when she started to describe her service as “Financial Stress Reduction.”
Keep your message both visceral and simple. And that means curing yourself of a crippling illness: TMI.
Too much information. Believe me, I battle with this too. But today’s about you, not me.
You see, you might be suffering TMI if your website is full of things your prospects don’t want or need to know. But there’s a cure. All you have to do is focus on their fears and pain, and your cure for their pain.
Robert Cialdini touches upon this in a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. It’s one of the books I’m studying intensively this year.
Cialdini talks about the Law of Contrast. If someone is afraid they’ll have to pay $1,000 to fix their garage door, they’ll be thrilled when someone offers to do it for $600, even if they could have gotten it done for $300.
Likewise, if you go to the emergency room with severe pain in your chest, the doctor who informs you that it’s acid reflux is going to seem like a hero.
What is the worst thing that can happen to your prospect if they don’t do business with you? Paint them a vivid picture of the consequences. Let the fear worm its way into their guts. Drive their adrenaline and cortisol to levels usually reserved for bungee jumpers about to take the plunge.
Then show them exactly how you’ll protect their data or their home. Tell them about all the wonderful things you can do to keep their life or their business from falling apart. Take away their pain and their fear.
What business are you in? Don’t answer that with too much information. Tell me about the pain you relieve.
In fact, tell me in the comments below.
