Secrets of Hypnotic Influence and Persuasion Virtual Classroom Series

I have got a question for you today that I would like to start off, when your prospects are getting ready to turn into your clients, at the moment when they are getting ready to buy something, is that purchasing decision in their mind an emotional decision, a logical decision or some combination of both?

How would you answer that question?

When I am asking that in a live event, even when I am working with financial advisors, who are typically selling something that is a little bit more of an intellectual decision. Usually the answer I get back is, its either 50/50 half emotional, half logical. Or mostly emotional, 70, 80, 90%. In some cases people even say 100% emotional. Actually, some of the most recent cutting edge research actually backs that up. It says at the time that we are making the decision the part of our brain that is telling us to go for it, is a part of our brain called the Behavioral Activation System.

And it is 100% emotionally driven!

Now the BAS does work in concert with another part of our brain called the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), it has to work in balance but that is the brakes that keeps us from moving forward. So I will assume you agree with that premise, agree with some of the highest paid sales people on the planet. As well as some of the most cutting edge research. Then I want to ask you another question, if you do agree with that, that at the time we make the decision that it is all or mostly emotional.

What are you doing in your sales process to tap into your client’s specific emotional processes? This is one area in sales processes that I see that most persuaders, most sales people, have got an enormous amount of room for improvement. A gigantic opportunity to take a quantum leap forward because all too often in sales we are leaning on very logical tools, attempting to prove to the client that doing business with us is the right thing to do.

We are using outsider third party research or endorsements or studies that talk about why ours is the best investment that they can make. Or maybe we are using some sort of charting system to compare and contrast our offering versus the offering of the competition, or all too often we end up competing on price alone and try to tap into their greed as their emotion because we have got the very best price. But when we are competing on price alone we are competing from a position of great weakness.

So here is a homework assignment for you:

1. Notice the next couple of times you have a sales or persuasion type interaction. What are you doing to elicit from your client or prospect their emotions? The ones that are most important to them!
2. How are you intertwining those specific emotions back into your sales process to make your sales offering much more compelling?

And I want to introduce you to a concept that we will spend some more time on in a future classroom, but the concept is the Compelling Emotional Outcome. In the Secrets of Hypnotic Influence and Persuasion one of the things that we are looking to uncover is what is our clients compelling emotional outcome. That is what is it that they care about so much they would just about walk across broken glass in their bare feet in order to be able to achieve.

So here is the second part of the homework assignment that you could go back. Go back and look at your last half dozen, or 10 or 12, if you are really ambitious 2 dozen sales that you have made and see if you can identify what was it about your offering that was so compelling to that person that they absolutely had to take action?

And begin to create a little bit of a list that you can use and start to build on and help to develop that sensory acuity so you are listening for peoples compelling emotional outcome and that you have the ears to hear what it is that they really want in all of your interactions going forward.