People Buy For Their Reasons, Not Yours (Money Monday)

people act on emotion and they justify with logic. From complex to completely transactional

impulse purchases, emotions drive buying decisions. And the examples are Legion and science is

stacking up one study after another that demonstrate how emotion influences the choices that we make.

Daniel Pink says that to sell is human and likewise in my opinion to buy is human.

It was humans. We are certain that we're making choices based on rational logic,

our best interest or organized facts. Science says that often we don't.

Emotion is why well-educated executives make multimillion dollar decisions with massive

implications for their companies because they feel that one sales team cares about them more than

another at a wine tasting party where researchers placed the price of wine on the wine bottles.

People said that the wine with the higher price tag tasted better even though every bottle was

filled with the same low-cost wine. In another study, German beer hall music wilted from liquor store

speakers on Tuesdays and French music on Wednesdays. And correspondingly, German beer sales went

up on Tuesdays with French wine sales increasing on Wednesdays. On the sidewalk outside the store,

researchers peered into brown bags and interviewed the patrons to learn why they purchased the beer

of the wine. Most of the shoppers gave logical reasons for the purchase. They saw it in a magazine,

it was recommended by a friend that were cooking steaks tonight or they liked the taste of premium beer.

As humans, it's important that our self-image correlate with our decisions, so we

fall on logic to justify subconscious emotional buying behavior. And thus avoid the pain of

something called cognitive dissonance, which is painful mental stress calls when we try to hold

two values at the same time. Despite all the tools, information, and data at their fingertips in our

internet-connected world, buyers continue to make irrational decisions. Now, am I saying that

product features, quality specs, delivery options, speed service, technology locations, price,

and other tangible attributes of your offering don't matter. Of course not. These things absolutely

matter and all are tickets to the game. However, the sales profession, inclusive of salespeople,

sales trainer, sales leaders, and the marketing teams that support them are and have been under

the collective delusion that buyers make logical decisions that are in their own or their

company's best interest, that they weigh decisions rationally and choose options that make the most

logical sense. What the thing is, evidence upon evidence and data stacked upon data refute this

assumption. And frankly, you don't need to look far for proof. I have no doubt that you've been

frustrated with a prospect into which you poured hard and soul. You built the case why they should

do business with you. You analyze their current situation and you showed them how you could save

the money, time, stress, and offer better service. The case you made, the proof, it was irrefutable

and your references were impeccable. And there was even a compelling trigger event to drive their

urgency. Yet instead of signing your agreement, they gave your competitor who'd taken them for

granted, provided shoddy service, pissed them off, and overbuilt them for the headache a second chance.

I know it because I've been there and it's maddening. Now, if we were to ask your buyer, why he

chose to remain with a vendor that was not working in his best interest, he would lead off with a

number of what he thought were logical rational reasons. But refuting and arguing the facts would

get you nowhere. The buyer would just dig in and become unmovable. What he would be unable to explain

or unwilling to admit is his fear of making mistake. Or that there was just something about you

that at the subconscious level he didn't trust. Or that because he avoids conflict,

buying his current vendor would put him in an uncomfortable position.

Layers of emotions, both conscious and subconscious, driving his irrational choice. And yet he explains

his decision in completely rational terms. As a sales professional, understanding how emotions

dominate and drive buying decisions is critical to supercharging your income and advancing your

career. With all things being equal and in today's marketplace, there are rarely huge gaps or

differences between competitors, at least from the prospects viewpoint. Your ability to both

influence the emotions of your prospects while regulating your own disruptive emotions as you

move deals to the sales pipe gives you a distinct competitive advantage. Now, emotions are

difficult to wrap our arms around and sometimes hard to face. It's so much easier to pitch the

features of a widget than to turn on empathy and tune into the emotions of your prospect.

But the brutal inconvenient truth is that you can pitch, challenge, teach, and offer insight

until your heart's content. But it will not matter because people buy for their reasons not yours.

You see, sales and buying are woven into the imperfect fabric of human emotions. No matter

what you sell, your sales process or the complexity of the sales and buying process,

emotions play a crucial role in the outcomes of your sales conversations, your interactions with

prospects and your deals. You see, the problem is that most sales people begin the sales process

from a position of logic and over the course of the sales process shift towards emotion.

On the other hand, buyers tend to begin the buying process at the emotional level and over time

shift towards logic. At the beginning of the sales process, the buyer is asking a basic question

of the salesperson, do I like you? And in the same moment, the seller is delivering a pitch on

product features that they believe will generate interest from the buyer. But few things make a seller

more unlikable to a buyer than pitching. And at the end of the sales process, when the buyer is

asking rational questions, putting objections on the table and negotiating, the seller is reacting

emotionally to perceived rejection and desperate not to lose the deal. At the emotional level,

the parties, the buyer and the seller are perpetually out of sync. I've already shared with you one

of the most cogent truths in sales. People buy for their reasons not yours. Therefore, it follows that

to be an effective sales professional, you must approach people the way they buy rather than the way you sell.

I need a pack of new snaps, a handful of fitting wipes and rubber bands on my green bags. Look

down, don't be playing with my paper, I need every reasscent. That's why I brought my little scraper.