Jim Cockrum

One often overlooked element of the psychology of selling is "social proof." If you get this right the task of "selling" begins to feel more like managing a flood of hungry customers instead of trying to convince one customer at a time to buy from you.

It's the way business is supposed to be.

How does "social proof" work?

• It could be past customer testimonials.

• It could be an undeniable public display of the value of your product or service.

• It's as perfect as possible of a demonstration of the fact that there is no competition for what you have to offer.

• It's anything that makes your customer feel like they are connected to others that love your product.

Here is a demonstration of social proof at work with many good lessons woven in - My $36,000 experiment on eBay worked:

Bidding started at $1 on this historic auction.

What was for sale? A one page website. (Perhaps 2-3 pages to be honest, but you get the idea.)

The auction spent the last several days as THE MOST WATCHED AUCTION on eBay among tens of millions of other listings.

Twitter lit up with posts and curiosity about the whole event.

Skeptics threw doubt at the process, while fans sent letters and emails of encouragement and support (and bids.)

Ten days, nearly 8,000 viewers and 75 bids later the auction came to a close with the winning bidder topping out at over $36,000.

And then the bump in the road...the winning bidder backed out.

How does the story end? What happens next?

For the skeptics in the crowd you'll always need MORE PROOF than what you've already been offered so I've got a little something else for you...

I recorded the phone call I made to the winner without him knowing it! You decide if this sounds legit or not! This call happened when I called him in Ireland from the United States.

Listen to the phone call to the second place bidder.

(TIP: I made the call from my computer to his home phone for a few pennies using the call services of skype.com and recorded the call easily with powergramo.com software.)