Persuade Your Customers by Labeling Them

Salespeople are in the business of behavior change.

They want customers to see them and their products and services as the solution to their problems.

To help them shift from whatever they might be doing today and embrace a new path.

But how can you make your customer receptive to changing their behavior when they’re not motivated to, or even worse, resistant to change? The science of persuasion holds an answer!

The problem is, people don’t like being told what to do. In fact, the tendency to resist when we feel our freedom to choose is being restricted is a scientific principle known as reactance (a concept I discuss extensively in Sell The Way You Buy and in a previous post).

Unfortunately, many of the tactics salespeople have been taught over the years trigger it!

For example, trying to “close” a customer and have them sign an agreement by a deadline of your choosing. Or pushing buyers to decide on the spot when they say they have to “think about it”.

Luckily, the science of persuasion provides a powerful tactic for overcoming this form of resistance: labeling.

Labeling is defined as describing a person in terms of their behavior. For example, if someone breaks a serious law, we label them “a criminal”. Participants in an Olympic games are labeled “athletes”. And someone who writes a book is labeled an “author”. But labels are more than simply titles. For better or worse, labels come with a host of implied meanings, assumptions, and associated behaviors. For these reasons, when assigned to your customers with authentic empathy, labels can cut to the core of their identity and move them to act!

 

Labeling to Drive Behavior Change

In this bestselling book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear describes how we can use labels to create positive linkages to desired, long-lasting behaviors. For example, suppose you were trying to lose weight by incorporating healthy eating and regular exercise into your lifestyle. Rather than thinking of yourself as an ordinary person who practices healthy habits, labeling yourself as a “fit” person is more likely to bring about the desired identity and behavior change.

A runner (noun) is more likely to participate in a marathon than someone who runs (verb).

An author (noun) is more likely to pen a series of novels than someone who writes (verb).

In one study examining voter turnout, participants were asked a simple question with two different and randomized phrasings:

How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election? (noun-phrasing)

How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election? (verb-phrasing)

In both elections, labeling the individual as a voter (noun) versus simply as someone who votes (verb) was shown to result in increased voting behavior (17% and 14% increases, respectively)

 

Labeling as a Selling Tool

In a selling context, there are many ways the labeling approach can be used to align your product or service with the behaviors, beliefs, and values of your customers.

For example:

Use case: dealing with an objection that your solution is too robust or expensive for a small business customer.

“It’s true. We have a very robust solution and we’re not for every small business. But the reason customers like you choose us is because they’re big-thinkers. They know they’re not going to be small forever, and they’re looking for a single solution that will satisfy their needs now and in the future. The thought of changing and disrupting their operation midway through is too painful for them.”

 

Use case: helping a customer feel more comfortable with your post-sale support.

“One thing you’ll find about us is that we are completely customer-obsessed. We believe when it comes to your investment, the experience is the product, so we focus just as much on post-sale support as we do on our solutions.”

 

Use Case: Converting from free trial to paid enterprise plan.

“The analytics features you’ve been using most frequently are ones our data-driven clients leverage to transform their decision-making processes. Organizations that prioritize measurement like yours typically find our enterprise tier becomes essential once they see the potential impact on their operations.”

 

Use case:  positioning the configurability and low cost-of-ownership of your solution.

“Our solution is designed for tech-savvy organizations who want to be completely self-sufficient. Our customers are true solution owners and don’t want to call the vendor or a consultant every time they want to make a change.”

 

Use Case: Selling team training to a reluctant department head.

“What’s interesting is that learning-oriented teams like yours tend to implement these frameworks most effectively. The collaborative culture you’ve described suggests you’re exactly the environment where these skills become organizational capabilities rather than just individual competencies.”

 

Use case: setting a competitive landmine, knowing that your solution isn’t as slick and modern as your competition’s but excels when it comes to privacy and security.

“We’ve been working with a lot of security-minded organizations like yours lately who know that slick features and screens can be deceiving. Which is why they appreciate how important it is to evaluate the security of the platform itself before getting too caught up in user experience.”

 

Note: as with any sales tactic, tone and delivery are critical to your success with labeling! For example, labeling a customer as “a smart and educated buyer who doesn’t want to be the cause of the largest data breach in their company’s history” is never a good idea. Instead, it’s important for your label and delivery to be genuine, empathetic, and authentic in order for it to have the desired effect.

 

The use of labeling in the realm of persuasive science and behavior change can be very powerful when done correctly. But as a savvy seller who loves to practice new tactics until you get them just right, you probably already knew that 😉