Selling With Emotion

Here's a wild suggestion: I think rationality is overrated. Yup. It's true. I realize it's important to have a good foundation with your feet planted solidly on the ground, but rationality has taken over the realm of business (though it has not yet taken over the world of romantic relationships. . .) and we've lost an integral part of ourselves that makes us appealing: emotionality. We have moved from mom and pop businesses into the age of faceless corporations and in doing so, things have become so sterile.

Our viability as people who sell, is intrinsically linked to our client's and prospect's emotions and their other-than-conscious minds. In past posts/articles, I've gotten very detailed about 'how' to access these emotions (i.e. eliciting their criteria, creating rapport), and I'd like to discuss here more the 'why' of the process.

Our core emotions drive us to take action. The same things that ruled our ancestors, rule us--our need for food, shelter, sex, fight or flight. There wasn't an overabundance of products and services to choose from at that point, there were just the basics. With no thought to the concepts of choice, luxury or affluence, decisions were simple. And yet, we are still hardwired to think about these core needs first and foremost.

This is what we need to hold foremost in our thoughts when we interact with a prospect. It's all about appealing to their core. Our gut instincts and impressions are far more powerful than the rational thought processes. The balance, and what we should seek to attain, is the balance between the rational and the core emotions.

Gut reactions happen instantly. In his book 'Blink', Malcolm Gladwell discusses rapid cognition, that which happens in the blink of an eye. He writes about thinking without thinking. Our emotional processes take only 1/5th of the time our rational brain takes to assimilate.

Think of this through the frame of how sales used to be and how they are now. At our core we are like cavemen, and on the surface we are incredibly sophisticated. In the last thirty to sixty years, we've seen the 'features and benefits' style of sales and the Dale Carnegie method of sales, both of which were passable for their time. As competition has increased and the marketplace has grown, so has our ability to detect B.S.

It feels good to be understood and at ease, and we want these responses from our clients. With the right training, we can duplicate these responses over and over. When we access our prospect's and client's values and criteria, combine them with sincerity, honesty and integrity, add in our products and/or services, it creates an emotional alchemy that is easy to feel good about.

In our advanced state of civilization (depending on your perspective) we have an amazing array of choices. There are opportunities available to us that even a generation ago, wouldn't have been dreamed up. In this ever expanding atmosphere it seems likely that those of us who know how to access the core and our prospect's emotions are going to be the ones capable of rising to the top in our given fields. By elevating emotions and partially bypassing rationality, we find ourselves with incredible persuasion power.

Article Source: Main Articles

Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of wealthy clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

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