The Psychology of Sales
by - Tyler Evertsen
“People tend to buy with emotion, and justify with logic.”
Barter vs Money
Before we start diving into all the secrets of sales and how to sell anything to anyone, we need to understand something first. “Why do people buy anything?” To answer, let’s take a step back in time. In the early days, bartering and trading was commonplace amongst civilization. This meant if I was a potato farmer and needed a mule to help with plowing the fields, I would need to find someone who was both wanting potatoes AND willing to part with their mule. Most folks were limited in their goods for barter, which narrowed their buying audience considerably. Instead of walking into a setting with a fixed price, you had to negotiate what was agreed upon as fair, shake hands, and part ways.
Fast forward to today. Because money is simple to exchange and convert, we have accepted it as valuable to our society. Now instead of transacting with potatoes and mules, we transact with money. This enables you and I to sell a product/service to a worldwide audience, creating higher demand. This is why people buy things nowadays. We have moved past a world where we traded for what we simply needed, and now purchase our needs along with many luxuries and discretionary items.
Related Article: The History of the Trade and Barter System
The Buyers Mindset
With people buying products and services, the question is: “How do I get them to buy from me?” The answer is: Through understanding the buyers mindset and why they make buying decisions. While we as humans have common needs, there are limitless brands, venues, stores, and sales reps who are trying to earn that money. For instance, I have an Airbnb in Austin, TX. There are thousands of people who are looking for a nightly stay in the Austin area. However, just because my house is available, does not mean it will be booked. Renting factors such as reviews, pricing, dates available, restrictions, ranking in the Airbnb listing order, bedroom count, amenities, and location are just a few of the key metrics used when someone considers a stay with us.
While each piece of the buying process can feel overwhelming, individually they are simply a metric used to make a decision. We can break down the psychology of sales even deeper. This is the key point of this article. You need to understand that people use different metrics in their buying decision, thus making it terribly difficult to know which ones you should prioritize. In the end one principle remains true for all people: PEOPLE BUY WITH EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH LOGIC. That right there is the psychology of sales. When you look at a potential prospect, realize that they aren’t interested in all the metrics and features, but rather how it appeals to their emotions.
In the Airbnb example from earlier, because I understand that people make decisions based on emotion, I prioirtized 1 metric above all others. That was Photos! I am lucky and my wife is a professional photographer so we had EXCELLENT photos taken with a DSLR camera. We uploaded 46 photos! This is because we want our potential guests to see our home and be able to visualize themselves there. We made sure to make it as beautiful and inviting as possible so when someone was comparing our home to any other with similar metrics, they would book with us. That’s because people will tend to buy with their emotions, not their wallet.
Applying the Psychology of Sales
How can you make the most of the psychology of sales work for you? Whatever your industry, you need to identify what your ideal customer looks like. As they say, birds of a feather flock together. This means once you have narrowed down your audience to a specific group of people, you can assume their emotional appeal is going to be relatively the same. You are then able to move on to the next step of identifying what metrics will help bring out these customer desires.
For example, in door to door sales my pitch adjusts according to the type of neighborhood I’m in. When knocking super wealthy areas, I don’t even mention pricing discounts because that’s irrelevant for them. Instead, I immediately emphasize the importance of using a premium service which is specialized in bigger and nicer homes like there’s. I help them understand that the reason they should use me is because we are a tailored fit for their home and will provide high-end service to ensure their complete satisfaction. I’m appealing to their emotions by pitching them as a high-end service provider. Regardless the location, market, or ideal customer, to sell your potential customer, you need to do one more thing in order to sell them on emotion; that is you need to learn to ask good questions.
Related Video: The Psychology of Selling
Asking Good Questions
The easiest way to appeal to someone’s emotions is through learning about them through smart questions. A good sales question will help a sales rep understand what exactly is the pain points the customer is dealing with. These confessions are gold. You must get good at asking the right questions that help you gather info about your customer so that when you explain the features and metrics of your service/product you can focus it on how it is going to solve the issues mentioned earlier. This is how you sell them on their emotions. The very best sales reps oftentimes don’t appear as if they are even selling. Sometimes it comes off as if they are just a curious, friendly individual who happened to bump into them and have a solution to a problem they are dealing with. That’s when you know you have sold someone on their emotions.
To summarize. Humans have evolved in their abilities to exchange goods. Before when only royalty enjoyed the luxurious of life, nowadays billions of transactions occur daily, many of which are discretionary in nature. With our new spending habits, it provides an opportunity for you to sell something so long as you understand that there are limitless brands and options competing for that same customer. So in order for you to stand out, you must understand that the buyer in modern society will buy with emotion, and justify with logic. Knowing this you can ask good questions and learn what the key metrics for your ideal customer are so you can sell them on the benefits that best fit them. Apply the psychology of sales to your industry and you will be successful, I know it!
If you are interested in selling with me, contact me through my website and I’ll be happy to schedule a time to chat with you about opportunities with my company.
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