How to Destroy People’s Concerns about Going Ahead With Your Proposals - Before They Even Happen!

If you are taking a holiday to an exotic and tropical location the common wisdom is to visit your doctor to get inoculated against various illnesses and diseases. You don’t wait to catch yellow fever or typhoid, you get inoculated against them.

In the same way, you can inoculate some concerns both before you make your proposal and during it. Most of us can anticipate the concerns that people are likely to express. If specific concerns are raised fairly frequently in response to your proposal it can be effective to nail these either before or whilst you are making your proposal – rather than passively waiting for them to emerge. Get on the front foot!

There are two ways to do this:

Don’t make the same mistake…

People don’t like to make mistakes and they don’t like to look stupid. The fear of making mistakes and looking stupid can be one of the reasons that customers don’t want to proceed with purchasing. We can use this same concern to kill off specific concerns both before and during the presentation or discussion of your proposal.

Let us assume that you predict that people may express a concern that your new book or information product is quite technical and therefore may be perceived to be complicated. You can inoculate against this by saying:

“Mr Smith, some people make the mistake of thinking that as my book / product is so cutting edge that it may be complicated and difficult to understand. What they find is that in fact the straightforward step by step structure makes it simple to understand and use.”

No-one wants to make a mistake do they? So our customer, who does not want to make a mistake, will immediately decide that your product is simple to understand and use!

Another variation upon this is, “Mrs Smith, some of my most satisfied readers initially made the mistake of thinking that our new cutting edge information product must be complicated. What they have found is that in fact it’s clever and carefully planned structure makes it simple to understand and use.”

Don’t be a whiner!

There is something about a whinging and whining voice that people really dislike. Remember the last time you heard a small child (or even a fully grown adult) use a whining tone of voice. Its effect is similar to fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. Cuts right through you, doesn’t it?

You can use this to great effect to inoculate against concerns. Using the same example as previously, here is how this technique works:

“Mr Smith, when people first hear that our new information product is cutting edge they say (Now use your very best whiny voice for the next sentence), ‘It’s so complicated to understand!’“

The vast majority of people have such a dislike of a whining tone of voice that they will instantly move away from ever having had such a concern about your information product themselves. They don’t want to be associated with that horrible, whiny voice!

Inoculating against concerns is a very powerful way of making sure that commonly expressed concerns are killed off deader than a Dodo before and during your proposal presentation.

Take some of the concerns that people may bring up in response to your proposal and devise some ways to inoculate against these. Remember that you can use them before you make your presentation and during it when discussing particular elements of your proposal.