Emotional Sales
Here’s a bold statement, but one I’m willing to stand behind: forget about appealing to your prospect or client logically. In sales, appealing to logic comes a (way) distant second to appealing to their emotions. To illustrate this, I’m going to tell you a story about some college kids who learned this and put it to the test.
Before class the students all got together and agreed that if the professor moved to the right of the classroom, to the student’s right as they were facing the classroom, the students would sit up and pay close attention. They would be attentive, quiet, smile, and nod approvingly at the professor. But if the professor moved to the left of the classroom, the farther left he went, the students would cut up, act out, throw things, look away from the professor and act disinterested.
When class began they followed through with their plan. It didn’t take but half an hour before the professor was pegged into the right side of the room, standing there for the rest of the class with the students absolutely gobbling up everything he said, excitedly listening, nodding, smiling and showing their approval of all that he was doing.
The next day, they decided that they would do the exact same thing but just reverse it. So class began and what they did is as the professor would move to the right, which he started right off towards the right of the room, they immediately would cut up and act up and act disinterested and as the professor would go to the left of the room, they would act interested and they would do what they should. It took not too long and the professor was pegged over into the left of the room.
The professor was totally in the dark throughout the experiment. And he was massively affected by what they did.
How did this shake out? We are very approval oriented. We love to be smiled at and encouraged and loved. We really like knowing that we are having a good impact on people. We like it when people are interested in what we’re saying. These are all emotional responses.
How would you like to be able to affect people in that same way and get them doing things and responding to you in ways that up to now has been happenstance?
Here’s something to remember: first and foremost, people are led to the decisions they make based on their emotions. Emotions bring people to decisions and logic cements or breaks the decision. In the scheme of things, logic plays a very minor part. Of course, every person is different, but generally, 80-85 percent of decision making is based on emotion and only 15-20 percent is based on logic.
If you are making your living persuading but aren’t using emotions well, you will most likely never make much money, at least the cards are stacked strongly against you. A person who can make strong logical arguments but is not adept at utilizing emotion has the cards strongly stacked against them.
So how do we do this? Well, stay tuned for an upcoming article for more information about getting to your prospect’s and client’s emotions.
Filed under: Business