What’s the difference in the sales process when selling a regular family car such as a Toyota or a Volkswagen, and selling a luxury car such as a Ferrari or a Rolls Royce? Apart from the vastly different price tags, all are cars with technical specifications, features and performance data. If you focus on the difference in these variables, you would be ‘feature selling’ and totally missing the point.
When someone buys a regular family car, they are buying something functional. Considerations such as fuel consumption, reliability and maintenance costs are important. When someone buys a luxury car, they are buying a dream, a status symbol, an image of self. The features while important, are only considered after the decision to purchase a luxury brand. For example, the buyer of a McLaren may compare the performance stats with those of a Lamborghini before deciding which car to buy, however the image of self is well developed around concepts such as speed, power and achievement.
While the family car/super car comparison is extreme and for the purpose of illustration, the underlying principle is appropriate. If we can position our product or service to address the emotional needs of our buyer, we have an increased chance of making the sale.
At a psychological level, most purchases have two separate processes: logical and emotional. The logical brain is driven by the pre-frontal cortex which amongst other things is responsible for reasoning and problem solving. The emotional brain, more accurately referred to as the limbic system, is driven by the amygdala which is the centre for emotional behaviour and motivation.
We have all bought something that we probably couldn’t really afford however, we ‘felt’ that we deserved it. This was the emotional brain pulling rank over the logical brain. Likewise, we have all made the decision not to purchase something despite being able to afford it. Our logical brain made a decision and the emotional brain agreed with it – there is always an emotional overlay in our decision making.
If we want to be effective in persuading people to agree with us, whether in sales or otherwise, we will therefore be most effective if we communicate with our target’s emotional brain. People are driven by more than purely price and if you can identify what is driving them, you will unlock the key to influencing them.
Recently, one of my clients, a senior insurance executive, was discussing a recent call with the new account manager at one of her existing clients. The new account manager was pushing aggressively for a price reduction. My client interpreted this as a need for recognition from peers and management since the account manager was new in the role. She therefore approached the discussion from a very different angle; rather than haggling around price, she focused on what the account manager needed in order to establish himself in the job. This naturally opened the door to discussions around locking in longer term agreements to better manage uncertainty and risk, thereby giving my client the leverage she needed to offer a better price but take more long term value. In doing this, she created a win-win situation by addressing the account managers need for peer recognition while closing a deal that locked her client in to her company for a longer period of time.
When we can tap into an emotional need, the sales and persuasion process becomes much easier. Resistance to logical brain variables such as price are high, but resistance to emotional brain variables such as wants and desires are much easier to overcome if you position your offer accordingly.
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