“The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.” –Charlie Chaplin

I’m not sure that’s the saddest thing I can imagine. I get the premise behind the thought but ultimately, there are so many things sadder. I’m a huge fan of luxury myself. Yet as a pragmatist and a realist, I can see the pitfalls that may lure the average person into believing they have a luxurious, rich life because of the outrageously priced goods they’ve racked up on their credit cards.

In a article on MSN, “Uncommon Sense: Luxuries you can live without — and should”, (moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P107710.asp) author MP Dunleavey points out the new frames that certain items which were once considered ordinary and mundane purchases, things that we need for daily life but which shouldn’t set us back too far, have now become commodities.

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If you’re a business, you know that at the end of the year, you have a significant number of things you need to get done. You start thinking about organizing documents for taxes, wrapping up your books, enrolling employees in any benefits programs they might qualify for, selling specific investments, and establishing a budget for next year.

If you list is pretty long or one item in particular seems daunting, it might be that you procrastinate, which is unpleasant. One of the most daunting tasks business owners face in the tasks they have to do is establishing their budgets. In fact, so many are determined to put it off that they’ve done just about everything to avoid it.

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Future pacing is a bit of an advanced strategy in persuasion. It’s not difficult to understand, but it is challenging to learn to do. It involves reminding your prospect or client about all the reasons they decided to buy your product or service and places reminders in the future, at which point triggers, which you’ve installed, can be fired off.

This is a technique I use every time I sell something. It is potent in helping your client or prospect feel secure in their decision to purchase regardless of what outside influences (including their own second thoughts) might try to say.

With that said, I’m not going to get into the technique too deeply, but I’d like to tell you a story about how I used this when I was a young man selling health spa memberships.

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