Rationalizing Decisions with Emotion

Humans are emotional. We have the tendency to react based off of how we are feeling at a particular moment. We’ve all felt the effects of the up and down path of the emotional roller coaster, but how can that be used to attract and keep customers?

“Keeping up with the Joneses” is an old saying comparing yourself and what you have to your neighbor (your “neighbor” could be anyone in the world). As we all know, customers are our best-selling and marketing tool, and so seeing someone else with what we want creates an emotional state; probably the biggest when it comes to purchasing decisions.

Let’s pretend that the newest iPhone was coming out and everyone was excited about its launch. How would you feel if you were one of the first to get one, and people kept coming up and talking to you and wanting to check it out? How would you feel if you really wanted one, but couldn’t afford it, yet everyone around you seemed to have one? How would you feel if you saw Bill Gates with the new iPhone (he didn’t look too happy when the paparazzi caught his kids with them)?

According to speaker and author Tom Hopkins:

No skill that you can acquire in sales will enhance your earning power more than learning how to arouse emotions in your buyers in ways that are positive to the sale. The exact words you use will depend on your offering, your personality, your buyers, and market conditions. Positive emotions trigger sales; negative emotions destroy sales. As you work at developing the skills to evoke emotions in your potential clients, always keep that concept in mind. You can destroy sales as rapidly as you can create them through the clumsy use of, or the lack of control over, the emotional setting. Also remember that your actions, manners, words (and how you say them), your grooming, and your clothes are all things that trigger emotions in your future clients — whether you want them to or not.

And what does Inc. Magazine have to say about this?

Buying decisions are always the result of a change in the customer's emotional state. While information may help change that emotional state, it's the emotion that's important, not the information.

All buying decisions stem from the interplay of the following six emotions:

1. Greed. "If I make a decision now, I will be rewarded."

2. Fear. "If I don't make a decision now, I'm toast."

3. Altruism. "If I make a decision now, I will help others."

4. Envy. "If I don't make a decision now, my competition will win."

5. Pride. "If I make a decision now, I will look smart."

6. Shame. "If I don't make a decision now, I will look stupid."

Every successful sales approach either creates or augments one or more of these emotional states. When enough of these emotions are present inside the buyer's emotional state, a buying decision becomes inevitable.

I would like you to answer these two questions (and please share with us):

How you are using emotional triggers in your selling techniques?

What was the last emotional purchase that you personally made?

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April Salsbury, MBA is a strategist, an analyst, an operational guru, a recognized leader and C-suite global healthcare executive with drive and focus for competitive markets. Co-host of The Business Forum Show and regular contributor to various business journals, she possess multi-functional and multi-national competencies with more than 15 years experience in business and healthcare. Her expertise is in invigorating revenue growth and infusing value of lean practices in growing companies through improvements to cash flow and operations management.

Fueling revenue, growth and profit, Salsbury & Co. is a consultancy firm focused on helping businesses and healthcare organizations achieve excellency. Our specialists have executive experience combined with deep functional expertise to provide our clients with services that drive real impact and results.

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