Owning a business is tough. But making a business deal is even tougher. Sometimes even though you have customers, you fail to convince them that your product is worth buying. It’s very common and totally okay. But if you want to keep your business running and pay those employees of yours, you have to make sure that people consider your business worth their money.

Some business owners spend their money in advertising, some in networking, some in giving free products. All these are just ways of promoting your business to grow sales. Before we learn about these tactics, you have to make sure that your product is worth the customer’s time and money. Because if it’s not, they won’t return to you. You want to maintain this relationship between the customer and yourself. You should give your customer the best experience so that they won’t even think about going to someone else.

These business tactics are used globally. These are used from a small retail shop around the corner to a high end car showroom. Though, sales people of car showroom have an in-depth knowledge on how to influence customer purchasing decisions. But here we are going to discuss what’s easy,most commonly used and most effective.

1. Expensive= Good

Many people believe that if a product is expensive, it has to be great. Even if they can find a similar kind of product at a lower price, they’ll be more inclined towards quality of the expensive branded one. Not all people have that belief, but many still do.

Tactics like these are used mostly by big brands who have established their names in the industry. They lived up to their expectations first, but now they are just misusing the name and charging anything in the name of the brand. They have it instilled in the customer’s brain that since they are charging more, they would give them a better customer experience and definitely a better product.

Related: 5 unethical business practices we all fall for

2. Hiking the price and then lowering them

This is a classic sales technique. They first raise the price of the product and then lower them making the customer feel they lowered it just for them. And that they are giving a high quality product at a cheaper rate for customer’s happiness. Though, in reality the original price would be much lower than the discounted price. But the customer doesn’t know that. Customer is impressed by the humble and cooperative nature of the company.

3. Using trigger words

They make use of certain trigger words in their advertisements. Some of which are ‘discount’, ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ etc. They are called trigger words because they tend to trigger the reaction of the person towards the product. Now the person or soon to be customer, who wasn’t even interested in buying the product, suddenly seem to develop an interest. The person feels they might not get such a good discount/deal in future and ends up buying it even though they don’t need it.

Also Read: Incredible business strategy game played by ‘Rich people’ you probably want to know

4. Always show the expensive product first

You might have noticed, sales people always show the expensive product first. This way when they show the less expensive one, that product’s price seem to look like of normal range. But in reality, the cheaper product would be of much cheaper price. The product priced at a lower range starts looking like a nice bargain in front of the expensive product.

5. Reciprocity and perpetual contrast

As complicated as the words might sound, they have a simpler meaning. It’s like barter system used in the ancient times. Whenever someone does you a favor, you in a way, become obliged to that person. Now you feel you owe him/her something.

The company might use it like offering you a beverage or some sort of snack. This puts you in a position to reciprocate the gesture and if not a big sale, they mostly end up making a sale. They put you in their debt so that now you have to buy something from them to get out of it.

These tactics aren’t totally ethical but mostly used worldwide. They are just mindwashing consumers to grow their sales. Growing your business isn’t wrong as long as you aren’t harming anyone in the process.