“All these elements of influence work throughout the ages, across platforms across categories, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing.”
In episode 71 of the Customers Who Click podcast, I had a great chat with Shaahin Cheyene about influence and how to convince people to buy from you online.
The language needed to influence someone at the end of the sales funnel, where the Amazon customer is ready to buy, is not the same as the language needed to influence someone to click onto the product page from Google. Every market has a different “language” and you have to be able to speak that language to give your customers the confidence to buy from you.
Some people maintain an unhealthy attitude towards money that doesn’t produce any extra wealth. They view online sales as a game that they can enter, kill some time with, and leave once they get bored.
To help his clients transcend this, Shaahin created a course called the Amazon Mastery FBA Seller course to help individuals & owners transform average sales into extraordinary income using his predictable sales system.
Shaahin Cheyene is an Iranian award-winning entrepreneur, writer, and filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles, California. He is the CEO and Chairman of Accelerated Intelligence, an Amazon Marketing & Advertising Agency, where he manages his product sales and helps other brand owners to scale their online sales on Amazon and other marketplaces like eBay, Shopify, and Walmart.
You can email Shaahin (do mention “Customers Who Click” sent you!), check out his course (use code “CWC” to get this $200 course for free!), listen to the Hack and Grow Rich podcast, or head over to shaahincheyene.com to learn more about him and his work.
Key Highlights:
06:00 – 14:47 – Key differences between selling on Amazon and on your own website – Understand Robert Cialdini’s 6 (now 7) principles of persuasion before you try to sell anything. Tap into authority and social proof because people don’t trust strangers on the internet trying to sell them something. Extras/“nice little surprises” motivate customers to leave reviews after buying/using the product.
14:48 – 17:59 – The Power of Reciprocity – Reciprocity is a keystone persuasion principle that has the power to skyrocket your sales. Shaahin implemented this principle while trying to sell vape pens at a cannabis trade show. Because buyers were only interested in weed, he started selling free stuff like t-shirts and pre-loaded DVDs to generate live demand in the show. This led to them selling out their vape pens at the show. They got pre-orders too.
18:00 – 20:22 – The Attitude of Successful Marketers – Understand that marketing is not a betting game; you won’t just try a few times and quit once you get bored or stop making money. Shaahin explains the idea of trial and error with a beautiful metaphor of a toddler learning to walk, who keeps trying relentlessly until it learns to walk on its own two feet. Those who succeed with marketing their product have an attitude built on perseverance and understand that online business is a long-term game.
20:23 – 28:22 – The Importance of Having a Financial Cushion – Having a large amount of cash in the bank to experiment with is crucial because it gives you the freedom to try new things. It gives you the ability to get back up after you fall down repeatedly. If you don’t have the money to buy your favorite things that don’t generate any income, you can either wait to buy it after you’ve saved up or you can make that extra cash in a short amount of time by selling something.
28:23 – 31:40 – Incentivizing for Amazon Reviews – You can use giveaway sites to sell your product for a very low price and tell them to leave you a review on your Amazon product page instead. Use solid SEO-optimized copy to create a landing page and serve it with PPC ads to kickstart the review collection process.
31:41 – 37:31 – Common Mistakes in Online Selling – Thinking backward is the biggest mistake many online sellers make. Think forward – think of how the market and distribution of your product works, analyse your competition’s weaknesses and give them what they need.
