When it comes to reviewing a sales opportunity that either ends in a win or a loss you assess what happened. Why did you lose or why did you win? But what really matters is, “did you connect with the prospect”, and what does that mean? When you connect with your customer, it means that you understand their perspective. Further you convey your message in a manner that lands – they see the value of your solution. When you establish a comfort level with them, they can rest assured that they will be successful partnering with you. That is the psychology of selling.

People don’t buy just for the logical facts about your solution. Why do you buy a car? For the 30 miles per gallon, it’s rating in the consumer report or the safety record? While these are all important, the real decision relates more to the look and feel of the car. It’s what is going on in the emotional part of your brain. There are 3 facts about the psychology of selling. But before we get into these facts we need to define what selling really is. Selling is the transfer of emotions from one person to another. It’s not selling logic or rationale; it’s engaging the customer’s emotions. Now let’s look at the 3 facts.

Fact number one: consider a little brain science. Customers react to a pain 3 times more often than a gain. Why? Because dealing with pain is emotional. Your emotions reside in your limbic brain. Logic resides in the neocortex. Your limbic brain is stimulated 3000 faster than your neocortex. People respond to pain by finding a cure as soon as possible. As a sales professional, your goal is to find the pain and heighten the impact of what that pain can do. That’s why impact questions used after uncovering a problem are so successful when engaging the customer. Think about having an illness and what goes through your mind before seeing the doctor. Is it just a cold or is it more serious than you think? When you don’t have a solution to pain, you worry which only increases your sense of urgency.

Fact number two: in order to impact the customer emotions, you need to take them into the future. If you don’t alleviate the problem now, or you wait six months, what happens? Again, when you go into the future you have the opportunity to create what you see. Will it be bad by not taking action, or will it be resolved by fixing the issue now? It’s human nature to take things to the extreme especially when you look into the future. You can either paint the ugliest of pictures or the brightest of opportunities. Depending on the situation at the moment, you have the opportunity to steer the customer in the direction that favors your solution.

Fact number three: when customers are engaged emotionally with us, you will build stronger relationships. Think about the relationships you have with friends. Are they built on logic or emotion? You connect emotionally 100% of the time. Emotions have the upper hand over logic every time because our brain is hardwired that way. That’s why customers buy emotionally and back it with logic. Your first reaction to anything is emotional. Just think about how you connect with a movie. It’s not the words or the actions, but the music in the background that connects us emotionally to the scene. Emotions are a right brain activity and relationships are formed in the right brain. To engage the customer’s right side of the brain you need to establish a conversation that takes them to what’s most important to them personally. This is when they will take action.

When you understand that selling is really all about psychology, you’ll
– Focus on the pain
– Take them into the future
– Engage your customer emotionally to build the relationship

Only then will you earn the right to handle their business for the long term.