I know, silly question. It would feel great.

Now what if there were 5 simple tweaks… each of which could have that same effect?

You’d stop reading this article right now and use each of ’em.

Right?

Right! Who doesn’t want more sales?

Question is what are those 5 simple tweaks? I call them the “psychological master keys.”

But First, The Key to Unlocking the Vault of Higher Conversion Rates

Smart entrepreneurs who want to use the web to increase their conversion rates must master the fields of human behavior and psychology.

I may be biased… after all, I run the #1 blog about online marketing and psychology, but that’s neither here nor there. Understanding that simple insight has worked for me and countless other Social Triggers readers.

And despite what the “experts” say on other bogus “social media marketing blogs,” when it comes to using the web to generate leads and sales for your business, the tools you use have nothing to do with it.

Because, as time progresses, the tools will always change. The people you’re talking to, on the other hand, will remain people. And people are people are people!

And that’s why each of the following 5 psychological master keys are so powerful.

Each tweak is based off of proven psychological principles that have been proven today and will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.

So, without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Psychology Master Key #1: How to Increase Sales by Giving Your Customers “LESS” Options

By now you know that if you give people too many options, they often choose none because they slip into “analysis paralysis.”

But what if you can’t eliminate options from your business? If you’re selling 50 products, you can’t simply eliminate 47 of them. That would kill your business.

So how can you give people fewer options while maintaining your current catalogue of products and services?

That’s where you can take advantage of the process known as “chunking.”

Instead of telling people “here’s all of my stuff,” you say, “here are 5 categories of stuff.” Pick which category is right for you, then pick the item in that category that’s right for you.

Look at it like a Supermarket. When you walk into the store, you know there’s a deli, a fruit/vegetables area, a meat area, a dairy area, and so on. In each little section, there’s thousands of products to choose from. But they make the decision easy on you by “chunking” them into similar categories.

Online the same thing applies.

When you’re designing your site, don’t simply share 1 million different categories of what you write about. Instead, focus on the “main” areas of your site by building insanely specific resource pages like “List Building” and “Increase Online Sales.”

To learn more about how people make choices, check out the Social Triggers Insider master class I held with Sheena Iyengar, the world’s leading researcher on how people make choices.

Action item: How can you use this tidbit to get more sales? Instead of showing your customers everything you’ve got, funnel people to the right places. Use resource pages, and call outs that send people to smart groupings of products and services. As a rule of thumb, I’d use no more than 7 different “choice buckets.”

Psychology Master Key #2: Newsflash…People Actually Like Paying For Stuff

As you know, I sell software and digital training products.

And I’ve been doing it long enough to know that there’s always some guy that complains about “Why would I buy that when I can get the same thing… or something similar… for free?”

Newsflash:

People don’t pay for information or software. They pay for results and convenience.

And it gets better…

When people pay for something, it gives those people a sense of accomplishment, pride, and ownership, meaning they’ll value the goods or services more and complain less.

Who doesn’t want satisfied customers who don’t complain?

Exactly.

Let’s take this back to the web.

If you sell software, information, or consulting, you may worry about your competitors… and whatever it is they sell… and however much they charge.

And while that matters, you shouldn’t sweat it.

You’re in the results and convenience business.

If you can generate more results or make it more convenient, it doesn’t matter what you charge. People will pay.

And they’ll happily pay because people like to pay for what they get.

To learn more about why people happily pay for things they can get for free, check out the Social Triggers Insider master class with Dan Ariely, NYT best-selling author, and one of the world’s leading researchers on behavior economics

Action item: Are you scared to sell what you’re already giving away for free? You shouldn’t be. Even if you give away your best information, chances are there are people who will happily pay you to implement that information for them. Remember, people pay for convenience AND results.

Psychology Master Key #3: Losses Loom Larger Than Gains

The sad truth about people is this:

People will fight harder to prevent losing a dollar than earning a dollar (this is known as loss aversion).

From a logical standpoint, it makes no sense.

A dollar is a dollar is a dollar.

But when it comes to human beings, we’re not that logical. We’re quite emotional, actually.

And when it comes to a dollar, a dollar that’s ours is more valuable than earning a dollar that isn’t ours.

That’s why when people sell their houses they often overvalue their house. After all, it’s THEIR house.

What’s this have to do with selling stuff online?

People respond better to telling them what they’re missing out on over telling them what benefits they stand to gain… because loss looms larger than gains.

So, not only do you need to tell people what they’ll get when they buy whatever it is you’re selling, you also need to reiterate what they’ll lose out on too… for maximum impact.

To learn more about how people make decisions, check out the master class I held with Jonah Lehrer, the #1 NYT Best-Selling Author of How We Decide. It’s linked here.

Action item: Just because losses loom larger than gains, doesn’t mean you should focus on loss. That’s a scarce mindset. However, you should intersperse both gains AND losses in your sales copy. Explain what people stand to gain… and what they stand to lose… for best results.

Psychology Master Key #4: The Secret to Growth is Earning Fans… And Enemies

Last week, while giving a presentation to a packed room, I made the snippy remark:

“I pin all my hatemail to my wall to remind myself to get more hatemail.” – Click to Tweet

Why?

When you’re running a website… a business… hate mail is evidence that you’re doing something right.

I’ll explain.

When you’re using the web to generate leads and sales, you have one main goal… and that’s to make your customers absolutely love you.

But that love comes with a price. When there are people who love what you do, there will be people that hate what you do, too. Even Apple has haters.

I know this sounds dramatic, but it’s true.

And that’s why I happily tell people to unsubscribe from Social Triggers if they don’t like what I have to say.

I know changing peoples minds is damn near impossible, so instead of wasting time trying to “change” someone, I go after the people who already like me… and focus on making them happy.

What does this have to do with getting more sales?

That part is easy.

If you nurture your best customers and readers, they’ll turn into evangelists. They’ll turn into your street team of people who tell everyone to read and buy your products.

I mean, just look at Social Triggers. Chances are you found me because someone recommended that you check my site out, right?

Why do you think they did that?

It’s because I catered to them directly.

To learn more about catering to the “Right” people, you should check out the Social Triggers Insider master class that I did with Ramit Sethi. In addition to finding the right customers, he goes into detail abouthow he charges 100x more than his competitors

Action item: Are you diluting your message to cater to everyone? Do you often “tone” down what you have to say… with hopes of pleasing everyone? That’s a mistake. You can’t please everyone. You can only please the right people. Instead of working to please everyone, cater to your evangelists.

Psychology Master Key #5: How “Mystery” Helps You Score More Sales

Back when I launched Social Triggers in 2011, Social Triggers grew from a brand-new website to one of the top marketing blogs… practically overnight.

At the time, I never told anyone how I did it… on purpose.

And what happened?

People started to write blog posts speculating about my growth. They’d try to reverse engineer how I did what I did because they wanted to know the answer.

This, in turn, sent more traffic and readers my way, helping me grow faster than ever before.

Why did people write those blog posts?

Because they were trying to solve “the mystery of Social Triggers growth.”

As another example, why are there loads of websites dedicated to speculating about Apple products, Apple features, and anything else that’s Apple?

It’s because Apple is one of the most secretive companies ever.

And their secrets create mystery… which in turn sparks speculation in the blogosphere… which leads to free exposure for apple… and later down the line, more sales.

Mystery = sales.