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It's getting pricey out there, isn't it? I mean, all the way from the bottom to the top, grocery prices are up because gas prices are soaring because the gas companies need to make bigger profits as a result of war or scarcity or something. . . . really, it's all quite complicated and yet, what it boils down to, is that life is becoming really expensive.

And yet, we're not being asked to conserve or pull in the reigns on spending, tighten our belts so to speak. We're being told it's our patriotic duty to engage in this economy by buying more, more, more. And people are spending, true, but much more conservatively than in times of plenty. Price comparisons, coupons, internet deals, et cetera, are all culminating in sales professionals getting pinched. And as a former sales professional and trainer of sales professionals, I feel it. Most fortunately, for me and for the sales professionals I work with, our products and services are geared toward an affluent clientle and the affluent are not necessarily feeling the pinch like the non-affluent. Because of this, there is absolutely no need to gear our message toward the bargain shoppers.

Our message as we persuade and influence our affluent prospects and clients indeed must not be in the same universe as 'discount' or 'price comparisons'. It must be our intention to set the frame immediately that these concepts (no matter how thrifty our potential customers may be) are inferior, substandard, gauche, and bound to disappoint.

Instead, we frame our products and services as elite, luxurious, practical, and heck, we can even use the current administration's contention that spending is somehow patriotic and by doing so, we are stimulating the economy. Our products and services are of a higher level and therefore we must market the experience of luxury along with what they can do to meet the criteria and values of our clientle. Alternately, we can appeal to the notion that like causes like. If we operate within a framework of scarcity and fear, we're going to get more scarcity and fear. If we instead operate as if money is an energy, which I believe it absolutely is, then we are truly guiding them to maintain this flow.

Along those lines, instead of "slashing prices", we must maintain our premium prices. I implore you not to engage in the practice of undermining yourself. Maintain your individuality. As a persuaders, this will naturally come quite easy to you. We have the unique ability to know exactly what our clients and prospects want because we know the techniques necessary to trigger those hot buttons.

We must focus on developing a word of mouth and/or referral system in the marketing of our products and services. The experience of working with us is special and this necessarily leads to an emotional experience with our clientle. People crave this emotionality and we know exactly how to do this (i.e. storytelling, criteria elicitation). When we have stories at the ready that are pointedly geared toward what we do and how we do it and why we do it, we can give the emotional experiences to our clients. Keep this foremost in your mind: everyone, rich or poor or in between, everyone wants to feel special and understood.

So it is my fervent hope that you will begin to understand that you are worth what you charge and once you believe it, your affluent clients will have no choice but to also fall in line.

About: Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

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