Sales psychology: tips and tricks

Social Media Specialist
Updated 16 January, 2024
Lauren Taylor
Social Media Specialist
Producing a high-quality product is only a part of business nowadays. Selling it to potential customers gets more tricky every year, which makes business a very complex and challenging process. Fortunately, most of the difficulties are easy to overcome or even avoid. Sales psychology tips come in handy here, and we will share them with you.
Reading time — 9 minutes

What is sales psychology?

There are patterns of customers' behavior that determine whether they buy your product or skip the offer. By understanding the patterns, you can lead them through the way to purchasing, and thus, you can increase your sales. 

Sales psychology tells you about the patterns and explains them. It gives you an understanding of what a customer wants and what they are afraid of, and even explains why they act and think in a particular way.

Sales psychology is practical. Along with the explanations, it gives tips and tricks to make them buy. Which is actually widely used in marketing.  

Some sales psychology tips remain the same through the times, but there are also those that change. That's because customer psychology is different at different times.

For example, modern people have got almost too much accustomed to the availability of buying anything anytime. And the immense variety of the offer has made us selective and demanding, almost finicky. The intention to choose the best of the countless options leads to the fear of making a wrong choice and delaying purchases. That's why a lot of options are not always good.

However, this is only an example and there is much more to sales psychology. Below you can find tricks and tips to attract and retain clients, and encourage them to buy and recommend your product to their friends.

How is psychology used in sales?

Understanding and dealing with your prospects' needs and expectations is the key to turning leads into loyal customers. No wonder sales psychology techniques play an important role in any marketing campaign.

When you know a customer well, you know what to offer and how to present it so that to close a deal. Sales psychology gives sellers some tips and tricks on this to get even better results. 

Have you ever noticed how different selling one and the same product might be? Some customers call and immediately order, getting impatient if the seller explains details. Others are doubtful, they ask many questions and need to know everything before they buy.

According to sales psychology, when you listen to your prospects carefully and consider their needs, the chances to sell your product are higher. Here are more specific tips. Don't exhaust those who are ready to buy right now by telling them all the details, and be patient to give full answers to your curious customers.

Customers feel special, important, and welcomed when you give them exactly what they ask for and when you do it the way they like it. This ensures they choose you and come back later for some more purchases.

In the next section, we share sales psychology tips. Not all of these techniques are obvious, you will definitely find something you haven't heard even if you are an experienced marketer or businessman. At the same time, these tricks can be easily used by everyone, even those who do not have a lot of practice in sales.

The best sales psychology tips and tricks

Selling a product is never simple, whether you offer your goods and services online on Instagram or your brand website, or in a local offline shop. The prospects` requests are often implicit or vague. Here are sales psychology tricks that help to deal with the requests and convert prospects into customers.

1. Respond quickly

The first psychology tip for more sales is showing you care. Responding quickly is the easiest way to do this. 

Sure, nobody likes to wait. You don't need to be a sales psychology genius to know that. But you can hardly find someone more impatient than a client who has just placed an order. According to surveys, most people expect to get a response in a few minutes.

The more time passed, the less excited people feel about the purchase. If you let a prospect wait too long, they might lose interest in buying your product. 

Moreover, a buyer who has to wait for you to condescend to reply feels ignored. It makes a bad first impression and raises doubts about whether it's reasonable to continue the relationship.

This is the first psychology tip for boosting your sales: respond quickly to your prospects. You better call or text back within five minutes. Show you do care! It's not that difficult, for example, you can set up auto replies for your account on Instagram

2. Be consistent but sensible

The next sales psychology tip is about the way you process the orders and leads. After you receive one, you need to contact the client. Do your best to reach through to your prospects.

Don't give up even if you didn't succeed to get through to them several times in a row. Not everyone answers the phone immediately. And this does not necessarily mean your client does not want your product anymore. The person might be busy at the moment. Some people do not answer calling strangers, so, you can try another way to contact them.

At the same time, make sure you do not act too annoying. Keep reasonable time intervals between the calls and messages.

Another good sales tip is to contact your prospects in the daytime. The psychology here is obvious, your prospects are definitely not in a buying mood if your call wakes them up or distracts them from work. Besides, most people are much easier to reach through after lunch and in the evening.

3. Encourage reciprocity

The reciprocity principle is one of the most popular and proven sales psychology tricks. The technique includes giving your clients free samples, gifts, surprises, special discounts, or organizing prize competitions.

Working on reciprocity may inspire the prospects to purchase or tell about you to all their friends. There are two reasons why this sales psychology trick works. First, this lets people test your product and make sure it is good for them. Second, when prospects get something for free, most of them feel obliged to do something in return.

4. Let them like you

Sales psychology claims that people buy from the brands they like more often. And this is not only about the product and service quality. It's also about the image, reputation, and emotional connection.

Give your audience a reason to like and support you. Here are some psychology tricks that can be used in sales. Tell your brand's story, create a unique style, join discussions, go ahead and comment on the issues of the day.

Another way to draw some attention is to collaborate with celebrities and influencers. Their fans can't resist testing your product. Maybe, they will even become your brand fans one day. 

5. Make use of FOMO and scarcity

Most prospects hardly ever bother to buy something seeing the offer page that never changes. It's different when you add a "special" offer and take advantage of the common nowadays FOMO (fear of missing out). 

When a prospect sees the product is running out soon, they feel the urge to buy at the same moment. This sales psychology tip works even if the buyer didn't need your product. The fear to lose a chance does the trick here.

6. Offer less to sell more

It may seem that the more options you give to a prospect, the more likely they will buy. The logic is clear, they have enough products to pick something because there is certainly something that suits them among the variety. But the logic is wrong, it works differently in sales psychology. 

The truth is, the more options people have, the less likely they are to make a decision. Sales psychology tells that, paradoxically, offering lots of options is bad for both you and the prospects.

They may be excited to face a wide choice at the first minute, but this is where the good part ends. Then, most people get stuck unable to make up their minds. As a result, they leave your shop without buying anything.

The psychological tip is to give a couple of products for sales that are obviously different instead of a zillion of similar ones. If you sell many products, you may want to categorize them. A comparison table is also a good option to organize the information, which will make it easier for people to make a choice. 

7. Make purchases simple and easy

People don't want to spend hours looking for a buy button. If it's difficult to place an order and pay, they won't do this. Use a landing page to make purchases simple and easy. Link to it in yoru ads, posts, and bio. Then, sales psychology will for work for you and you increase your revenue.

Firstly, landing page makes purchases on social media convenient for your clients. The psychology behind sales Prospects can easily find what they need because such pages are much easier to navigate than your profile page.

Even if you already have a website, you should link to a landing page in your social profiles. The page loads faster. Users always get to the page instantly. Remember the sales psychology tip about quick responses? Your clients never wait, not a second.

Use templates to create a page quickly. Below are examples. follow the links to get the templates after a quick sign-up:

Tell about your page in your Instagram bio, don't forget to add the link to it. You can also tell about the page in Stories, mention it in post captions, and use it as a landing page for your ad campaigns. And of course, you can use it on any other social network where you sell to make the process easy.

These pages are created in link in bio tools. Taplink has proved to be the most cost-effective tool, here are its advantageous. It allows you to add various elements on the page like buttons, text, pictures, videos, timers, price lists, and many more. Even better, you can link a payment processor so that users will buy your product right away. In a word, you can try any marketing psychology trick to increase sales!

Your link in bio page will contribute to a good buying experience. You will get more customers, and they will come again and again. Read our guide on creating a selling page for your account on Instagram and other social networks. 

The sky is the limit

We shared the main psychology tips, you should use them to boost your sales. All of them follow the principle of figuring out what a prospect wants and giving it to them. Thus, you both will achieve your goals.

Here is a short list of sales psychology tips:

  • Be quick to answer, show you care.
  • Be consistent in reaching through to the prospects.
  • Initiate reciprocity.
  • Work on your reputation.
  • Run limited offers.
  • Categorize the assortment.
  • Make purchases easy. 

Of course, there are more sales tricks because human psychology is like a deep ocean one can explore until the end of time, going further into the unknown areas. You can share your own tricks in the comments, we'll be happy to read them.