Universal Truth #2: The desire to be loved, to create closeness, look good, feel good, be remembered—even to belong—drives all of our decision-making. Our ability to uncover our customer’s emotional dominant motivators will dictate our success.
Tim never pictured himself in sales. He’d earned his helicopter pilot’s license in New York, his commercial pilot’s license in Michigan, and he’d graduated from nursing school in Seattle. He had flown hundreds of patients per year to emergency rooms by medical helicopter. He was proud of his work saving lives.
But Tim was frustrated: Competitors in the medevac business were crushing his business.
“How do I convince hospitals that our flight program is better than the competition?” he asked me. “We’re cheaper. In fact, we charge 38 percent less!”
Tim was so convinced of the incredible value he offered, that he pitched his services solely on price savings.
After he told me this, I paused.
“Do you have any children?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “My son is 11.”
“Imagine getting a phone call. It’s terrible news. Your son has suffered a snowboarding accident,” I said. “It’s life-threatening. In the moment you receive that call from Ski Patrol, do you care at all about the price of emergency helicopter transport?”
“Absolutely not,” he replied.
“Neither do your customers,” I told him. “They care about one thing: saving lives. You’re focusing on the wrong benefit. What’s the real metric hospitals use to judge medical helicopter companies?”
“Survival rate,” he told me.
“Perfect,” I said. “So what is your company’s survival rate compared to your competition’s?”
“It’s a million times better.”
“Really!” I exclaimed. “How come? What makes the difference for you guys?”
“We have much better medical practitioners,” he assured me. “We’re farther away, so it takes a little longer for us to arrive at the scene. But the quality of care we provide more than makes up for the slight difference in arrival time.”
Tim told me a story about a high-school boy who was recently in an accident.
“The competitor’s equipment broke down,” he said. “So we transferred the boy to our helicopter. We had to resuscitate him three times on the way to the hospital. But he arrived alive. We returned him to his family three days later.”
He continued, “Two weeks went by. I was sitting in a Starbucks when a middle-aged woman recognized me and broke into tears. She said, ‘You . . . you saved Brandon’s life.’ ”
After a bit of coaching, Tim changed his presentation. Instead of talking about price, he focused on the emotional benefits of using his company. He didn’t shy away from asking customers a very straightforward question: “What’s more important to you in choosing a provider: speed of arrival or number of lives saved?”
I spoke to Tim a month after our session. He’d just landed the biggest contract in his company’s history. How? He’d simply asked the right questions and told the story of saving the high-school student.
Once you understand what drives your customers, sales becomes much easier. Urgency is created by desire, not price breaks and manufactured pressure. But here’s the tricky part: These desires are often hidden. They’re subconscious or invisible.
Your job as a salesperson is to make the invisible visible.
A few years ago, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio revealed a groundbreaking discovery.
People with damage in the emotion-generating part of the brain, he noted, not only couldn’t feel emotions like love, jealousy, or pride, they also couldn’t make decisions.1 They couldn’t even make insignificant decisions like choosing between a hamburger and a chicken salad.
The rational mind cannot make decisions without involving the emotional mind.
We buy for emotional reasons, not simply logical ones. In my seminars, I ask participants to draw two columns. On the left, they write down their last major purchase—for example, a car, home, piece of jewelry, and so on. In the right column, they write why they believe they purchased it.
At first, the responses are predictably simplistic. For instance, a young man in my seminar told me he purchased a new Louis Vuitton briefcase because he needed something to hold his papers in. I asked why he didn’t just
purchase a backpack if he was simply seeking something to carry his stuff.
“They’re more economical,” I told him.
After a bit of banter, he cracked a smile and admitted that he traveled frequently. “I want to be treated with respect,” he said. “Like I’m somebody.”
Next, a man named Mario claimed he purchased his father’s Italian restaurant for the investment potential. After several more questions, he shared his deep need to impress his father. His dad never did believe in him. Mario would prove him wrong.
We all make these emotional decisions whether we realize it or not. I don’t blame these men for believing that they prized logic over emotion. After all, I don’t tell most people why I redecorated my home 15 years ago.
“There was a great sale over at Elegante Furnishings,” I told my pals when they asked me about my new decor.
But in truth, only my best friend Colleen and the sales clerk at Elegante knew the real reason I had invested in hardwood floors, an overstuffed couch, and the latest trends in artwork.
I had wandered into Elegante heartbroken, ashamed, and lonely. All I wanted was a long-burning spruce candle to rid my home of the smell of divorce. If I could have found one on my own, I never would have talked to a salesperson. Then I met Torrey, a rock star salesperson. Just by asking questions—and listening to me, and I really mean listening to me—she found out why I really wanted the candle.
We salespeople think we’re so tough, but we’re really putty in the hands of a pro. An hour later, Torrey had helped me redesign my home—and, more importantly, re-create my life. If Torrey had only asked me what I wanted that day, she’d have made commission on a $20 candle. Instead, she uncovered my core motivation for buying—and sold me $40,000 worth of furnishings. (She threw in the candle.)
Before we really dive into this chapter, I want to take a moment and offer some clarity of definitions. I will be using the terms “core motivators,” “Third-Level motivators,” “emotional motivators,” and “dominant buying motives” interchangeably. A recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) piece called them “high-impact motivators.”2 They all mean the same thing: the deeper emotional reasons that ultimately drive a person to a decision. (Later, I will refer to this idea as WIFM, meaning the customer needs to know, “What’s in it for me?”)
How can you, like Torrey, get to the heart of your customers’ core motivators?
Human beings are more alike than we are different. We all yearn for deeper connection. We all want more time and less stress. We all desire health and well-being, freedom, adventure, revitalization, and self-improvement, but most of all, we crave significance—a sense of purpose.
When companies connect with their customers’ deep emotional motivators, the pay-off can be huge. In the HBR article I mentioned earlier, the authors cited the success of a credit card campaign designed to emotionally connect with Millennials. After a well-known bank crafted messages that connected to the emotional desires of the generation, they saw use among the market segment grow by 70 percent.
That’s 70, with a zero after the seven. They didn’t change the product. They just changed which emotions buyers connected to the product.
The food chain Chipotle Grill created one of the most famous emotion-based ad campaigns in recent history—one that spread to 6.5 million YouTube subscribers in less than two weeks.3 The ad tugs at our heartstrings by increasing customer awareness of animal confinement, growth hormones, and toxic pesticides. This shows that even a fear of negative and painful emotions drive sales. (This was before their negative press regarding foodborne illnesses in 2015.)
Advertisers drive our purchase decisions by linking high-end kitchen stores with elegance, lingerie with sex, and candles with a feeling of revival. No one is immune. Just last week, I paid double the price for a Smart Water over a generic brand to keep me going during an upcoming business meeting. (I always wonder: If that water’s so smart, how come it can’t avoid being drunk by someone?)
It makes you wonder: Do we buy anything without emotion? Several years back, I found myself sitting next to the vice president of sales for one of the top tire companies in America. After explaining to him what I did for a living, I said, “I suppose it’s a little tough to sell tires emotionally.”
“Are you kidding me?” he laughed. “Haven’t you seen the baby ads?”
Then I remembered the famous Michelin tire commercials from the 1980s: “Because so much is riding on your tires!” I realized that Michelin had bought and paid for—decades earlier—space in my brain that said, “Michelin is the safest tire.” Wow!
There’s no question that you and I make purchase decisions based on unconscious yearnings and emotional motivators. The question is: What are the most common motivators? What are the drivers that cause us to act, buy, and consume?
For years, my training has centered on highlighting the few core emotional motivators that salespeople must uncover and sell to. New research bears out what I’ve been saying. With the help of experts and social scientists, the authors of the HBR piece created a “standard lexicon of emotions,” and in so doing, gave us a list of 300 emotional motivators that contribute to purchasing decisions.
Here are the seven motivators I’ve found to be particularly powerful:
Our brains are hard-wired for self-preservation. We buy life insurance, make financial investments, vote, and choose mates to secure a comfortable future. We hunger today—and postpone immediate gratification—for a more secure tomorrow.
Our desire for safety and security is a common motivator for products like:
Simple and complex pleasures drive us to do everything from wandering into a cookie store and buying extra chocolate chips to investing in a pontoon boat.
Our desire for adventure is a common motivator for products like:
People today are consumed with a desire for “likes,” friends, connections, and fame. The average Millennial today shifts between devices like phones and laptops 25 times every nonworking hour (and probably even more when they’re supposed to be working).
A few months ago I attended a training session where I heard Oprah Winfrey has probably interviewed more people than anyone else on the planet—from heads of states to rock stars to presidents. Whether the Duchess of York, Tom Cruise, or Michael Jackson, at the end of the show, when the lights go down, these international celebrities all asked Oprah the same question: “How did I do?”
It just shows you that fame doesn’t keep people from feeling insecure. In fact, nothing does, because life itself is insecure. A desire to feel that our life is significant is a common motivator for products like:
A desire to connect is a common motivator for products such as:
Connection is a common motivator for products such as:
This story makes me cry every time I think of it. It reminds me of the importance of defining our life purpose. Our day-today goals are but a smokescreen for the sense of purpose that burns within us. The desire for a sense of purpose is a common motivator for products that:
A need for education and growth is a common motivator for products like:
When you ask anyone over the age of 21, “What’s the most important thing in your life?” you’ll hear some variations on those seven desires. The order may be different, but our basic needs are universal. Throughout our lives, our core motivators will shift and twist, but in my experience, people find common themes that they return to time and again.
Even the most seasoned salespeople make mistakes that prevent us from truly unearthing our customers’ emotional motivators. The following are the most common missteps salespeople make that prevent us from really digging deep.
1. We offer unimportant, irrelevant information.
When salespeople don’t uncover their customers’ core motivators, they risk offering general and irrelevant information. I call this the “shotgun approach”: We fire off feature after feature, hoping that one of them will hit its target.
Research suggests that if you give someone too many options, eventually that person will just stop paying attention. Our brains are configured to make a certain number of decisions per day and once we reach that limit—our “saturation point”—we can’t make any more, regardless of how important they are. (Former President Obama has been quoted as saying that he makes his most important decisions in the morning while he’s still fresh.) Salespeople must keep their presentations simple and on point to keep customers engaged.
2. We fail to demonstrate actionable value.
To trigger a buying decision, we need to tailor the value to the customer. Most salespeople fail because they offer $200,000 solutions to $25,000 problems.
For example, Tanya sells executive training programs to Fortune 500 companies. She recently complained to me that she lost a big deal and didn’t know why. Her conversation with the prospect went something like this:
Prospect: We’re looking for training for our managers.
Tanya: Wonderful. Did you look on our website? What interests you?
Prospect: The emotional intelligence stuff. How much is it?
Tanya: How many people do you want to send?
Prospect: Our 15 department heads.
Tanya: Okay, that will be $5,000 apiece—or $75,000 altogether.
Prospect: Oh, that’s way over our budget.
Tanya: What’s your budget?
Prospect: About $10,000.
Tanya: Well, you can send two people then.
Prospect: Thank you anyway.
After hearing of Tanya’s lost sale, I offered her a bit of coaching.
“Just because a customer calls you and tells you they want to buy a product from you doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy it from you,” I told her. “It’s easy to uncover customer problems. The hard part is helping them see their problems as painful enough that they’re willing to buy now.”
I gave Tanya some suggestions for what to do next time she received a similar inquiry.
• Ask questions about why the customer is interested in your programs.
• Uncover the potential cost or other negative implications if they don’t move forward.
• Share with them the emotional and/or numerical cost of not moving forward.
I’ll go into more detail on this process of uncovering problems in a later chapter. For now, though, as we’re talking about emotions and sales, here’s how it played out when Tanya did a follow-up call.
Tanya: I’m following up on the conversation we had the other day. I’m just curious: Why were you originally interested in training your team?
Prospect: Well, we’ve had a bit of infighting between our departments.
Tanya: That’s not good. Tell me more.
Prospect: The salespeople don’t trust management—and management is blaming sales for the lack of performance. We’ve had massive turnover. We’ve lost six managers and 14 salespeople this year.
Tanya: Wow! What does it cost you to recruit a salesperson? The national average is about $40,000.
Prospect: That’s about right. And managers cost even more to replace! It’s been a mess.
Tanya: Our EQ program has reduced turnover by 50 percent. That program alone could save you over $300,000 next year. You could save your department!
As a result of this call, 25 managers attended the training. Why? Because Tanya followed a sales process, asked deeper questions, and showed the prospect that the financial and emotional value of the purchase far surpassed the price.
3. We lower the price instead of appealing to core motivators.
What would it mean to you if you doubled your income—with the same number of customers? Think about how it would feel to give the same amount of effort and earn two, three, or many more times as much.
Last week, I visited a client in Colorado and discovered their top salesperson, Brent, earns more than five times as much as the lowest performer in his company while talking to the exact same number of customers. Brent earns more than $500,000 per year and his colleague (at least his colleague for now) earns less than $80,000.
What made the difference? Brent creates emotional value rather than haggling about the price. He sticks to his guns when the customer tries to negotiate, and he’s never afraid to create tension and let the customer walk away.
If you’re not afraid to lose, you’ll never win.
Negotiating price can work with small purchases, but can backfire if not done correctly with larger-priced items. Why? When you sell higher-priced items, you’re better off increasing the emotional value rather than or at least before lowering your price.
Every time I travel to Mexico, the street vendors try to sell me wool blankets. “Miss, would you like a nice blanket? For you, only 400 pesos. No? How about 300? Special price for today only: 20 pesos!”
In my broken Spanish, I politely tell them price is not the issue. It’s 95 degrees and 100 percent humidity. How about a Popsicle?
Now, of course, many tourists simply want an inexpensive reminder of their trip, and the vendors know that. But when price becomes the only differentiator, the path of least resistance is to drop the price, change the offer, or throw in a whole lot of extras. When we sell to core motivators, on the other hand, we link value to emotions, and when the emotional value is strong enough, the objections go away.
If those vendors in Puerto Vallarta had only asked the right questions, they might have found out that my Grandpa Joe had given me one of those blankets for my dorm room, but it was lost when I moved. Had they asked if I had ever had such a beautiful blanket or if it was cold where I lived, I just might have bought it for the full 500 pesos.
Salespeople often drop their price out of fear or insecurity, because they think customers expect them to do so, or because they’re the ones who can’t afford what they’re selling. You need to be confident in your offer and figure out an emotional value that far exceeds your price.
4. We sell to secondary motivators instead of linking our offering to our customer’s core motivator.
The average salesperson promotes secondary motivators like saving money or “owning a nicer model.” Good salespeople focus on a customer’s core emotional motivators, not simply the features that define their product offerings.
If your value proposition centers around saving money, try focusing on the emotional benefits they’ll receive from the savings: Tell them what they can do with the money they save. My stepson Isaac sells solar panels. He’s risen to the top 20 percent in his company. When I asked him how he beats the competition, he replied:
All the other sales guys talk about the money the customer will save by installing the panels. I spend a bit more time with my customers. I dig deeper.
Last night, I found out that Mrs. O’Neil was intent on refurbishing her kitchen. So, I not only told her she’d save $300 per month, but I recommended she use part of the monthly savings to finally upgrade her kitchen with marble countertops and top-of-theline appliances. I even recommended a contractor. She bought on the spot!
5. We fail to listen.
Too many salespeople are so busy thinking about what to say next that they never really let what the customer says sink in. They miss opportunities to dig deeper.
“We have all been so busy broadcasting our message,” says speaker and sales trainer Linda Clemons, “and we are not tuning in. Thus we don’t get the right signal. We don’t get the right station. We don’t make the connection.”6
Halfway into my first year in sales, my regional manager, Tom Bennett, shared the story of Bill James, the best salesman he had ever met. James had sold to the last 18 out of 20 customers; there was no stopping him. We all gathered around to learn the details. “What does he say?” we wanted to know. “Where did he get his leads? What does he tell them?”
Tom replied: “He just listens so hard it hurts.”
Today, companies invest in big data and analytics in the hopes of learning about their customer’s emotional motivators.
Although most salespeople don’t have access to a multimillion-dollar advertising budget, you do have access to something much more powerful. You are face-to-face or on the phone with your customer. You have the ability to create trust, build rapport, ask questions, and tailor your presentation to your customer perfectly.
Think for a moment about what’s at the core—the very core—of what you’re promoting right now: What emotional need will it satisfy?
If you think deeply about your product or service in this way you will rise above the competition.
It’s important to know why your customers make buying decisions, but there’s another very important part of the equation: understanding why you’re selling. Only when you know why you’re working hard will you keep on working when the going gets tough. Ask yourself:
Answering these questions will bring you one step closer to selling with heart. You don’t need to share these responses with me, your spouse, or anyone else, for that matter. No one’s looking. You’re the only one who can know what drives you. Knowing your own reasons for doing the work you do—whatever they are—puts you in touch with the same emotional motivators that drive your customers. So give it your all. Answer from your gut. Know yourself.