The vast majority of sales training today is highly focused on interpersonal communication, and for good reason.
You can’t possibly be expected to sell anything if you can’t properly and effectively communicate with others.
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But in learning how to communicate well, you have to take a look into human psychology.
You can’t communicate effectively with a prospect until you know the why and how of the human nature of buying decision-making.
There are four basic psychological reasons prospects are motivated to purchase a good or service.
These reasons are unchanging and apply across-the-board regardless of what is being purchased.
Learning these reasons and the psychology behind them will increase your sales prowess, so let’s take a look at them.
1. Justification
Your prospect has a deep need to justify their buying decision.
While all purchasing decisions are both analytical and emotional in nature, how much is analysis, and how much is emotion depends on the purchase itself.
For instance, an individual purchasing a car is going to be making that purchase based largely on emotion.
Someone in charge of signing off on a large corporate contract is going to use analysis, not emotion, to justify the purchase.
Most buying decisions lie somewhere in between these two ends of the spectrum, and learning to provide your prospects with the information they need will help them feel confident with their decision as they give you a yes.
2. Emotional Needs
Every purchase has some element of attempting to satisfy an emotional need.
This differs from justification in that unless the emotional need is met (and often this emotional need isn’t something that is consciously known), all the justification in the world won’t make that prospect buy.
There simply must be an element of emotional involved.
You can help discover what these emotional needs are by asking questions of your prospect.
Find out what the ultimate goal is for their future and how this purchase fits into that scenario.
If you can figure out the emotional motivation for the purchase, you can succeed in making the sale by speaking to these motivations in your presentation.
3. Relationship
Your highest chance for closing a sale will come only after a relationship with your prospect has been formed.
Your prospect needs to feel as if they are understood, and that their needs will be met by the purchase.
They need to know that you’ll be there after the purchase to offer support. They need to feel they can trust you, and that you feel they are important both as a business and individually.
There are many ways that you can create a foundation for a genuine relationship with your prospects.
- Discuss interests and hobbies you have in common
- Talk about your company and how you feel it serves the needs of people just like your prospect
- Offer to show your prospect testimonials, and have them contact prior clients, this will give your prospect the social proof necessary for them to trust you, and ultimately buy from you
If you can master relationship-building with your prospects, you will rarely be rejected in your sales negotiations.
4. The Experience
You’ll be much more apt to close the sale if you’re able to offer your prospect a sneak-peek into owning your product, or utilizing your service before they actually buy.
By doing so, you’ll be effectively proving to your potential customer that your offering solves the problem that needs to be solved.
It’ll be inescapable because it’s right there in front of them. It will also show that you have confidence in what you’re selling, and confidence makes sales.
Once you’ve satisfied these four basic psychological needs, it would make sense that the sale is a given. And it very well might be.
But, as humans, we have something called psychological (or cognitive) biases, which are certain thought patterns that seem to make us make illogical buying decisions.
This post is part of a series – Psychology of Sales: Understanding the Customer Mindset. You can find the other posts below.
- History of Psychology in Sales
- How To Utilize the 10 Most Common Psychological Biases
- Key Psychological Sales Strategies
- Using Reverse-Psychology Sales Techniques
- The Psychology of the Close
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