Emotion Vs Logic – The 80/20 Sales Rule
One of the biggest challenges I face when training sales professionals is getting them to understand how important and how much effort it takes to build a long-term emotional relationship with other people.
In sales, it has been proven for many years that building an emotional relationship with a potential customer is the most crucial element in achieving long-term orders from that person or company. Most professional sales psychologists and trainers often argue that all purchases are made with: 80% emotion and alone 20% in logic or facts of that deal. Many of us know this all too well, but how many of us find ourselves talking about features and benefits and not about the challenge our customers have that we can solve?
One of the key factors that drives most marketers is the desire for near-instant results; They want to get in touch with the potential customer and walk out with the order in hand. They are often under pressure from their sales managers or directors to get very quick results, causing them to focus more and more on the logical aspect of any deal, the part that represents only 20% of the decision-making process.
What prevents people from doing what they have been taught to do is both management pressure for instant results and the failure of the person to recognize the full impact emotions will have on their behavior and the ability to find out. how to change these behaviors. This becomes even more true when the work situation becomes more stressful than normal, as in these cases the salesperson will often go back to doing everything they can to deliver results, forgetting to build relationships and finding that their conversion rate drops.
As markets have become more competitive and customer requirements have become more complex, sales professionals have come to realize the growing number of decision makers within a company and the need to achieve buy-in. of everyone involved in signing the check.
This increased complexity of the sales process has caused the emotional aspects to expand at an ever-increasing rate, often resulting in longer lead times. What can make fast-paced sales professionals frustrated, lost, and out of control?
Learning to build an effective emotional strategy to apply to a sales process will require time, patience and perseverance, none of this will happen overnight or without great understanding and application.
To build long-term emotional relationships with the type of clients you love to work with, the sales professional must look at the bigger picture of what they currently see when negotiating a deal. They need to pick up the pointers in a conversation about the client’s pain points and make sure they have the cure that they can’t refuse.
Many of the areas that are incorporated into emotional decision making often do not appear to be directly related to the decision making process.
Some of the key areas to consider when considering major decisions are as follows;
1. Past customer experience in this area. Past experiences can seriously affect the mindset, beliefs and fears a customer may have towards a product or service and it is vital that a sales professional inquires about these in order to address any associated issues that may arise. Discovering these experiences is often not very easy and may take a number of different interrogation techniques and time to really discover.
2. What have you heard? Often times, the feedback you have heard from a trusted friend can have a great influence on how you approach the purchase decision. Again, this is not an obvious line of questions, but one that will need research.
3. Main concerns or fears within the decision-making process. Another area that can have a serious impact on the mindset of decision makers, but again it is a difficult area to find out the facts.
Four. What will this decision solve for the customer? Often times, the decision to buy something could be to solve a problem in another area of the business. How the product or service is delivered could be more crucial than the product or service itself, so you need to find out.
As you will see, many of the above points are going to require a high level of questioning skills, time, patience, and most of all, great listening skills.
If you are a sales professional looking only for very quick results, building strong emotional relationships will take time and effort.
