Yes-Oriented Questions: An Easy Way To Increase Sales

No matter how good your sales page is, at the end of the day your readers will not click the “buy” button until you have made them comfortable enough to purchase from you.

That comfort comes from a combination of building “deep trust”, showing you understand where they’re coming from, and demonstrating how the benefits of your product or service match up with all the things they care about.

That can take time – and that’s why some sales pages are so long. There’s a lot of trust building, and connection, and educating the reader that has to occur.

One of the ways you can make that happen faster and more easily is to ask “yes-oriented questions” – simple questions that your readers can easily say “yes” to.

Want to know how to do it?

Here's how it works:

Every time a reader peruses your copy and agrees with something you said, or nods their head silently, or agrees to do something small, they’re connecting with the copy. They're getting immersed in the flow. They’re engaging with it in ways they don't even consciously realize.

You want your readers highly engaged, and enjoying the act of paying attention to what you're saying. And one of the easiest ways to get that engagement is by asking them questions.

But not just any questions – ones that can only be answered in a single word: YES.

Yes means “this seller understands me”. Yes means “this is looking like a good fit for me”. Yes means “it's like they know what I need”.

To land on those questions, you have to pick ones that they're likely to say yes to based on what you know about their particular interests, desires and goals.

(Note: If you don’t know much about your customers yet, you can use the Simplified Customer Avatar worksheet in Easy-Peasy Sales Pages to find out everything you need to know quickly.)

Now, what questions should we ask them?

You can work questions like this into your sales page copy:

Shall we continue?
Do you want to know why?
Want to see what’s inside?
Wouldn’t you like an easier way?
Wouldn’t it feel good to start making progress now?
Are you tired of not having (thing they want)?
Are you ready to open a new chapter in your life?
Would you like to give it a try, risk-free?

These are all questions that are practically guaranteed to get a “yes” from your target customer, based on what you know about the outcomes and experiences they care about.

And every time they say yes, they get a little more comfortable with you. They start feeling like you “get” them. Like you're a kindred spirit, or one of their tribe.

Now, if they read your questions and happen to think “actually, no”, then they are either a) not your target customer, or b) they weren’t ready to make a decision at this time anyway. Because of that, you don’t lose anything meaningful by asking for a “yes”.

Double-check your questions for “no” potential.

You want to be mindful with the questions you ask, however. Don’t ask questions that might conflict with the values of your customers based on assumptions you have about them.

For example, on the sales page for Easy-Peasy Sales Pages, if I’d asked, “Don’t you want to make as many people as possible buy your product?”, that would have been a poor choice, even though it seems like a reasonable enough question. More is better, right?

Not right. Many of the target customers I surveyed before releasing the product specifically said to me, “I don’t want people who are the wrong fit for my product to buy it – because then they’ll ask for refunds or give me bad reviews.”

So that’s why we don’t want to make assumptions. Every “no” answer is an opportunity for a reader to think “They don’t ‘get’ me.” Buyer comfort drops down with every “no”.

To stack the odds in your favor, ask simple questions that a reasonably interested target buyer would feel safe to say “yes” to in casual conversation.

This gets easier as you collect more information about your target customer. And it's even more effective when you ask these questions using “client language” – the words they use to describe their own wants, needs, fears and concerns.

Sprinkle these questions throughout your page. Ask as many “yes” questions as you can manage before it starts looking like too much.

Another way to get readers saying “yes”:

You can also get a “yes”-like response by asking them to take tiny actions throughout the page.

Ask them to think about something, like a goal they have.

Or to imagine what it would be like to be experiencing one of the benefits that ultimately comes from your product.

Or to think of the person they admire most.

These are tiny requests. Saying “yes” to your request requires no commitment on their part, and the act of saying yes preps people for taking action when you ask them to do the next thing.

This way, when they get to the “buy” button at the end of your page, they’ll have responded to your tiny “asks” along the way. They've increased their comfort with saying yes to you.

And considering that the “buy” button is the biggest ask of them all, it’s a good idea to warm them up a little first. :)

Here’s how to get some practice with this:

Go to a sales page you’ve written (or a blog post) and work in one tiny question that your readers could easily answer “yes” to.

Go to a sales page you’ve written (or a blog post) and work in one tiny “ask” that doesn’t require much commitment on your reader’s part.

In the next email you send to your list, include both one “yes” question, and one tiny “ask”. (Easy asks for emails are to reply, or to save the email for reference, or to answer a survey. This is especially handy to do prior to launching a product, because it warms them up to clicking and taking action ahead of launch day.)

Find 3 sales pages and read them over, making a note of each “yes” question, and each tiny “ask”. You’ll learn a lot by example.

Do you want to learn more tips like these?

This post an an excerpt from the Crash Course In Copywriting, a bonus that’s included with Easy-Peasy Sales Pages. If you’d like to get more copywriting tips like this one, you can find them in there. :)

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