The 6 Emotions that Matter Most in Sales

The majority of you reading this will probably say you make buying decisions based on the facts. While this might be the case for a small group of you, the majority of you are wrong: you make most of your buying decisions based on emotions.

Knowing this to be the case, salespeople that don’t take into account the emotions that appeal to their prospects are going to have a harder time selling than those that do. Understanding your prospect’s emotions that play a role in buying decisions is critical to getting your prospect to a “yes.”

According to sales expert, Geoffrey James in his piece for Inc., “6 Emotions That Make Customers Buy,” there are six emotions playing a part in all of our buying decisions: greed, fear, altruism, envy, pride, and shame. Each of these emotions motivates us to make a buying decision, and works with the others on the list to decide how much, with whom, and when we act. Here’s how they influence the decision:

• Greed: We feel we will gain something from the purchase.
• Fear: We worry we will miss our or lose if we don’t act.
• Altruism: We can help others with this decision.
• Envy: We make sure we act to stay competitive.
• Pride: We want to look smart for making a good choice.
• Shame: We don’t want to look stupid for making a bad choice.

How do you do this? You have to learn about your prospects. To that end, here are four questions that identify the prospect’s emotional influence:

1. What are the prospects key distinctive characteristics? When you determine their characteristics, meaning types or personalities, it’s easy to see what emotion has more influence in their decision.

1. What do they want most? This answer remains elementary to successful sales. Using basic human behavior as a foundation, you can determine what most people want, even when they don’t tell you outright. The reality is that many times they don’t know themselves, or don’t want to admit it. For example, the “Market-Share Leader”, wants to keep their share; the “Startup” wants to take market share from the leader. Both of these examples of prospect types get different pitches appealing to these desires and the emotions associated with them (fear for the former, pride for the latter).

1. What drives the most value for their business? Research your prospect’s business to identify what their tried-and-true products are. Once you know this, you can better craft your pitch to appeal to a need for help with keeping/growing/fixing this area.

1. What are your prospects habits? Seeing past behavior helps predict future choices. Look for these indications to get a better idea of how to work with your prospect’s existing habits with your pitch.

When I consult organizations on their Customer Experience, we look at the emotions evoked during the different moments of the experience. We also do research to understand who their Customers are. We have all of this information available when we design their experience to evoke the proper emotions deliberately so that our client can provide the experience that upholds the values of their brand and creates Customer Loyalty and Retention.

However, these same emotional moments also occur in the sales process—whether that’s Business-to-Consumer or Business-to-Business.  Just like during your Customer Experience, you need to have an idea what emotion you evoke deliberately to the consumer or business during the Sales Experience. Furthermore, you have to know what emotion is most likely driving the buying decision in the mind of your prospect.

The fact is most of us make buying decisions based on the six emotions according to James, no matter how rational we think we are. Embrace this notion when creating your sales pitches, and you are far more likely to get your prospects to yes.

What do you think? Does appealing to emotions make you more successful in sales/ I’d be interested to hear your insight in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Case Study: Increase Your Sales by 47% By Doing This…

• The One Question To Ask When Making Decisions

• Is Your Firm a Used Car Salesman?

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world's leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX