Emotional Sales Buying Decisions
-by Shamus Brown
All sales buying decisions are uniquely personal and emotional in their nature.
This is important because people purchase based on their personal, emotional wants.
They don't always purchase (or do) what they need.
So are you selling to a need that your product fills, or are you selling to a want that your prospect has?
Many sellers make the mistake of selling to a need.
They think..."she needs this... once I show her how it fits her need, she'll have to purchase it".
I have heard many sales people tell a prospect that they want to have a meeting to "sit down and discuss their needs".
Wrong.
People purchase their wants
And needs and wants don't always match.
But sometimes needs and wants are matched or rationalized in the mind of the prospect.
You Rationalize Your Wants to Meet Your Needs
Ever eat a Snickers Bar?
I have. Quite few of them in fact.
Now when did I ever need a snickers bar?
It has almost zero nutritional value. It does have caloric content. And if I am starving, and there is nothing else around, I'll eat one (notice the rationalization here?). Or to be more honest, I'll eat one occasionally if I want one because it tastes good to me.
But really now, who needs a friggin snickers bar?
How about a water delivery service for the home? You know, bottled spring water, that sort of thing that people pay a buck or more a bottle for. What motivates this purchase?
When I was a kid, no one had bottled water in their home. We just drank water from the tap. And if it tasted bad at someone's house - tough. We drank it anyway (OK and we walked ten miles barefoot in the snow to get it too... just kidding).
Do people really need home water delivery service? Most people do not need it. Virtually anyone who lives in any city in the US has city water service running out of one or more taps in their home. And anyone who lives in the country likely has well, which probably gives them better water than people get in the cities in many cases.
We Used to Haul Buckets From The Well...
People don't need their water in bottles. They already have water flowing from their taps! In fact plumbing was invented so that water wouldn't have to be carried from the source into the shelter for use like in ye olden days.
Yet water delivery services have flourished in the last 15-20 years.
It started out with the Evian craze in the 80s. It became trendy among the aerobics workout types.
Couldn't understand that personally. I tasted one of those Evian bottles and the water had a plastic tinge to it. Yuck. Seemed crazy to me.
Then people started getting afraid of their water. What's in that tap water? I am not so sure, so give me the bottled stuff.
Now We Pay for Bottles Hauled From The Springs
Now every person carries around bottles of water. And people have it delivered to their homes and offices.
All this because we want it. Bottled water often tastes better (if it hasn't been sitting on the shelf in plastic too long that is), is convenient to carry, and makes us look a little more hip.
So we want it.
And we are willing to spend dollars for it.
And we justify, or rationalize, our decision to buy that bottled water with the promised health benefits, or the purity of its source, or the integrity of the brand name.
But as far as needing it... well you can walk over to any tap right and get the water you need for sustenance. The bottled water you have because you want it.
All buying decisions are first personally emotional, and then rationalized to convince our logical mind that we needed it.
Related Sales Buying Decisions Article:
The Force That Drives Buying Decisions
Originally published in the EGOPOWER sales newsletter.
Find the complete listing of sales articleshere.
