When we get a yes from a prospect, we feel really good about ourselves. Getting a yes is like an emotional high, and we feel like we have brought value to the marketplace. On the other hand, when someone tells us no, we may blame ourselves. Where did I go wrong? Even as an executive sales coach, I find myself reflecting and trying to figure out where I went wrong.Or sometimes we justify it by saying that this prospect is not the right fit for our product or service. And that may be true. But that’s not the whole story.

But the big problem I see often as an executive sales coach is that some sales professionals don’t fully understand why some prospects tells them yes and others tell them no. They don’t understand the psychology of consumers.

Even though we are all consumers, as a group, consumers are unique. Consumers purchase products or services based on emotional needs and wants. Then, they justify the purchases after the fact with logic. They say yes to experience pleasure or avoid pain. That’s it. After the fact, they will tell themselves a story about features or benefits of the product they’ve purchased; but in that moment, it’s all about the pleasure a product will bring or the pain it will eliminate.

It’s a perfectly natural way to think of course. No one wants to experience pain. We prefer pleasure. If you have a product or service and you can demonstrate how it can enhance your prospect’s quality of life, then you need to exploit that in your presentation. Make them see how your product can bring them pleasure or joy. It would just be natural that the prospect will say yes when you paint this picture. 

On the other hand, you learn what those pain points are for your client, then you exploit those in your presentation. You paint this life of pain without your product, and it is natural that they will say yes.

The problem is sales professionals assume people say yes or no based on financial needs, based on features and benefits, based on if the product is the right fit or not. And of course all of that does comes into play.

But at the root of that yes or no is the natural instinct we have as humans to seek pleasure and avoid pain. When you start to implement that little nugget of psychology in your sales process, you will start to see different results.

Knowing this bit of psychology doesn’t mean you’ve just unlocked the secret and you’re a sales expert. There’s different categories of pleasure. There’s different categories of pain. And there’s a process that you set in place. You speak with your customers and you help them to identify what pain is going to be the most impactful in their life and what pleasure is going to be the most impactful in their life. You need to learn that process, and I recommend you reach out to an executive sales expert, like me to do so.

https://youtu.be/UdLXGqtFuXQ