Section 8 Understanding Psychology of Selling
Summary of current understanding of the psychology of selling.
Characteristics of a successful salesperson.
A great deal of research has been carried out to discover what makes a successful salesperson.
The consensus is three fold and contradictory.
The three characteristics that make up a successful salesperson are, communication skills, similarity to the buyer and expertise.
Skilled communication involves flexibility, skills in questioning and building rapport.
The paradox is that one person cannot easily fulfil both roles of similarity and expertise. It is possible for a skilled sales person to chose the most appropriate in the circumstances they face. It is possible to build rapport by acting like the buyer but the buyer won't perceive someone who is the same as themselves as an expert.
Conversely if a sales person adopts the role of an expert s/he cannot be similar to the buyer.
So the current strategy is to encourage salespeople to act as much like the buyer as possible and draw on additional or outside expertise.
Written material can take the role of the expert and endorsements can be used to add expertise.
Influence techniques used in selling.
Augmentation (deliberate mistakes).
The salesperson stresses a strong point about the product or service and then (with a show of embarrassment) allows a weakness to be revealed. This builds a stronger belief in the integrity of the salesperson.
This is the same technique as the 'double sided message' used in public relations and which can be used in sales letters.
Reactance (anxiety) reduction.
Decision making always involves a degree of anxiety. When buyers experience a high level of anxiety they form negative attitudes to the sales person and or the product. They can 'react' and do the opposite to what they intend. In practice this can mean buying from another company.
Reactance reduction is usually combined with efforts to reassure the buyer that they have full control during the purchasing process. The best way of doing this is to give the buyer control.
Foot in the door.
Ask for a small request that is easily granted and then ask for more.
Door in the face.
Ask for an unreasonable request that will be refused and drop down to a more reasonable (pre-planned) request. This technique does increase the likelihood of the second request being granted.
'Every penny helps'.
Reducing a large cost to smaller amounts.
Low balling.
After reaching agreement at a lower price the sales person starts to introduce extras that increases the price. Surprisingly perhaps, this is very effective.
Sampling.
Give the buyer a sample. If the buyer takes the sample away for a trial it is known as the 'puppy dog sale'.
The most effective method.
Multiple methods are the most effective.
Reaction (anxiety) reduction has proved to be the most effective general sales method. It becomes more effective if used together with augmentation and another method.
Sales presentations can be planned to use multiple methods
Industrial buying psychology.
The similarity between building business relationships and social relationships.
In reality there is very little difference between a business relationship and a social relationship.
From time to time we are placed in positions where we want to develop new social relationships. When building a social relationship it is important to start slowly.
An analogy can be made with sport and I put cricket and tennis as examples. Before a cricket match the players practice in the nets and before a tennis match the opponents warm up. During this phase there is no competition. The bowlers and tennis players lob half volleys to each other to allow the other person to 'get their eye in'.
It might be the case in some consumer marketing that the sale is a one off situation where no future relationship develops; but in industrial marketing one of the main objectives is to build a long term relationship. Companies don't have relationships with each other. The people in one company have relationships with the people in another company. The aim in business, if possible, is to make these relationships permanent.
We call the building of a business relationship 'selling'. In reality selling is no different to a person who moves to a new area needs to make new friends.
There are three important factors in building new social relationships that are now taught in schools and can be read about in magazines and books. They are so simple that most people figure them out for themselves before they leave school.
1. You don't make the other person feel at risk
2. You encourage the other person to talk to you more than you talk to them. This is normally done by encouraging the other person to talk about themselves and you listen actively.
3. "Don't come on too strong".
Buying is an interactive process. There needs to be a buyer and seller so buyers need sales people just as much as salespeople need buyers. When a buyer is actively looking for something s/he is also looking for a suitable salesperson.
So the first job in sales is to find buyers who are actively looking for the product they are offering.
To understand industrial buying and selling in depth we need to look at some aspects of social psychology.
Modern psychology takes a 'cognitive' perspective. That is it considers how people think when they act.
Buyers always think before doing anything.
Sometimes they only think for a split second and sometimes they think about something for months.
When buyers think about a purchase they also access memory and emotions.
Thinking is an emotional as well as a cognitive process. Every thought we have brings with it a congruent emotion. Unless we are anxious when the emotions can disrupt our thinking.
Decisions about whether to buy something or not involve thoughts, memories and emotions. The emotional aspect of decision making is the most influential.
Thinking about a purchase provokes feelings of anxiety to a greater or lesser degree.
Every time we make a decision we experience anxiety to a greater or lesser degree. The more meaningful the decision is to us the greater will be the anxiety.
When anxiety reaches a certain level we begin to think irrationally.
When we experience anxiety our brains act in a set way that is difficult to override and we can't expect buyers to override the anxiety they are feeling.
When we experience anxiety about making a decision three things happen in a progressive sequence.
1. We avoid thinking about the subject
2. Our brains block access to thoughts about the subject
3. We will 'escape' if the anxiety gets too high.
As we approach the point of making a decision the anxiety will increase.
When we make a sales approach to someone we cause them to feel anxious.
We need to keep the anxiety they feel to a minimum by giving them reassurance and working with them in a manner and speed that they will accept.
Attitudes
This mix of thoughts, memories and emotions is called, an 'attitude'.
Attitudes can be identified and measured.
Attitudes are a measure of like or dislike. They are never neutral and are formed very quickly. A positive attitude can be easily changed into a negative one. It is difficult to change a negative attitude into a positive one but it can be done.
Salespeople are usually faced with a negative attitude at first. We automatically feel this when we talk to somebody new and we can see it when we are face to face.
There are techniques for understanding and changing attitudes. This is a major part of our job as sales people.
We reduce the anxiety they feel to a minimum to reduce the formation of negative attitudes and promote the formation of positive attitudes and they begin to 'like' us.
Like many old Victorian adages the saying
"Familiarity breeds contempt." Is the exact opposite of the truth.
Familiarity, in fact, breeds content.
The need for information
When we buy things that are meaningful to us we need information about them. The more meaningful the more information we need.
If something isn't meaningful we act on emotional cues.
Most industrial purchasing is meaningful to the buyer and so they will need a level of information equal to how meaningful the purchase is.
Make a list of the general factors that make industrial purchases meaningful.
Information tools at our disposal.
Letters, leaflets, faxes, e-mails, notes, brochures, web sites, phone calls.
The psychology of persuasive design and copywriting.
Some advertising designers now understand how to design a layout so that key information is noticed and might be remembered. The principles of advertising design and copywriting can be transferred to all written and visual communication.
Use pictures, headlines, sub headlines and a strap line in letters and leaflets.
Copywriting
Write from the buyer’s point of view and tell a story.
Make a list of what your product or service offers a potential customer and a list of what they have to gain.
What you have to offer
What they gain
When writing a letter focus on what the customer gains not on what you have to offer.
A highly persuasive formula…
The psychology of persuasive communication has gown since world war 2. A highly persuasive formula for presenting an argument is called the double sided message.
Step one
Put forward your strongest argument and link it to a credible source.
Step two.
Put forward a weak counter argument and link it to a very low credible source.
Step 3
Either repeat your first point again or state your second strongest argument.
If you want to see this in action watch the BBC news. Warning this could make you a bit cynical as the penny will soon drop that most ‘news’ items are actually well staged public relations exercises.
If you want to delve deeper into the psychology of persuasive communication read Philip Zimbardo’s The Psychology of Attitude change and Social Influence (McGraw Hill 1991).
But be prepared to lose some naivety…
Interpersonal communication
Selling has a great deal in common with counselling.
Questions get a conversation going and keep it going
Build rapport by mimicking
Deepen rapport by reflecting back. This is done by paraphrasing what the other person has said to you and saying it back to them.
The so called 'objections' that old schoolers refer to are really questions that allow a conversation to develop.
Wit practise things like yes (or no) tags can be introduced into a conversation. "I think you are quite interested in this subject aren't you?" "If they had proper locks they wouldn't get broken into would they?"
There's a lot more to this subject but practising questions and reflecting back will bring about open and honest conversations that lead to the best outcome.
Selling is all about conversation and the essence of conversation is…
Asking questions, listening and listening to the answers.
Good advice would be to read up as much as possible about the subject and develop your own style by practise. There are cultural and personal differences.
I have whittled business questions down to seven which I have learned off by heart and have practised so that I can use any variation as and when needed.
I use a very informal and conversational manner emphasising my Yorkshire accent.
1. I erm, I just wondered if we could have a quick sort of business conversation…?
2. Erm, what’s the current state of play regarding xyz…?
3. Are you looking to make any improvements?
4. Oh I see, so what problems are you facing just now…?
5. Are looking at alternatives then?
6. So, erm, if we were allowed to make an approach about this, how, erm, how would we go about it?
7. OK, so what should I do now (to help you)?
The erms and hesitations are emphasised because you should always be trying to allow the other person to interject and take over the conversation.
In almost all successful sales conversations the sales person starts the conversational ball rolling and the buyer takes over and controls the conversation. You should be quietly encouraging the prospective customer to do most of the talking.
The will come a stage in the conversation when the buyer starts to interject into the conversation. When this happens back off let them speak and listen to them.
‘Connecting’ with other people
Ron Holland in his book Talk and Grow Rich writes that people are either visual, auditory or emotional in how they think. They leak out this thinking pattern in what they say. A visual person would refer in speech to sight in one form or another, an auditory person the sense of hearing and an emotional thinker would mention feelings. Ron says we should become aware of this and model the other person to gain rapport.
This is more difficult than it may seem and people don’t give that many clues. However it is important to model another person if we want to gain a strong rapport and the best way to do this is to mimic them. If you watch friends when they are together they mimic each other without thinking about it and the closer the friendship the closer the mimicking.
Wendy Jago an NLP coach in her book The NLP Brain Builder (Piatkus 2010) outlines what NLP calls meta programmes or ways we process information and act in the world. According to Wendy Jago we think in the following meta programming. (I’ve adapted this into a table and linked it to other psychology observations).
Logical step by step thinking
Holistic big picture thinking
Step by step small chunks of information
Big picture large chunks of information
Procedural (logical)
Inventive (creative)
Actions and thoughts in the present time
Actions and thoughts set in the future
Away from problems and action
Towards problems and actions
Lower risk threshold
Higher risk threshold
Task Centred and focussed
People centred and multiple ideas
Doer
Thinker
Visual thinker
Internal conversations
More predominant in
Men
Women
Older people
Younger people
Experienced
Less experienced
Less confident
More confident
Big company
Small company (except with autocratic boss)
Autocratic/strong leadership
Democratic/Laissez faire
Quicker snap decisions
Slower considered decisions
Respond best to
Short bytes of information throughout
Short bytes initially then longer conversations and a lot of information
Pictures, charts graphs etc
Pictures with explanations
More formal approach
Can be more informal
Step by step approach getting small agreements to proceed to the next step in a current time frame
Paint a big picture will get agreement on the complete idea. If you can, put the whole idea to them and set it in the future
Features
Benefits
Likely to…
Make snap decisions that they won’t easily change
Take longer and appear indecisive until they are sure then they buy in big
Want delivery in part to test
Want the whole thing as soon as possible
Resist arranging meetings and then want short meetings
Want early meetings that last a long time
Will tolerate less product knowledge
Will demand in depth product knowledge
More tolerant of errors
Less tolerant of errors
More loyal
Fully committed initially but can change suddenly with no apparent reason – when a new idea comes along – less loyal in the long term
In decision making teams that consist of both types of meta thinking patterns this group will tend to dominate the outcome and usually win if there is conflict
In mixed teams this group will tend to shy away from conflict unless they have really bought into an idea when they can push hard for change but will then become unpopular and may be removed from the team
Tend to stay in the same job and get promoted slowly
Change jobs and roles and can achieve sudden leap frog type promotions
Implications of NLP for telephone marketing
We almost always work at the cutting edge of the sales process finding new business opportunities. This means we are always talking to new people and we need to build rapport with them as quickly as possible.
We have to make presumptive assumptions about the people we are talking to. The best initial policy is to keep early calls short and then assess the call and alter our approach to suit the other person next time we speak to them.
We use questions to get to know people. We can test for logical and holistic thinkers by asking simple open and closed questions. In an early call a logical thinker is likely to respond to an open question with a yes or no answer or a very short answer. Whereas a holistic thinker may respond to a closed question with a more in depth answer than we might expect. Little things like this – which is down to individual style – allows us to make a presumptive assumption and test the response. If we get a good response we carry on in that style if not we change to suit the person we are talking to.
If you haven’t already realised, as salespeople we have to be competent at both styles of meta processing so that we can ‘connect’ with everyone we talk to; at least as much as possible. We will however always ‘connect’ better with people who process information in the same way that we do.
Counsellors and therapists learn these skills and we should do the same.
Practising and building social skills for business
Sales people, even very successful sales people, just like a lot of actors have low levels of confidence and self esteem. This is compounded by the false belief that to be successful as a salesperson you have to be pushy and even aggressive, at least 'determined'. Most sales managers in Britain have the false belief, which unfortunately they try and put into practice, that we salespeople need to be pushy, dynamic go-getters.
All of this pressure on us lowers our confidence.
Remember, to be really successful in sales take the 'old school' ideas and do the opposite.
Here's some general guidance on improving sales related social skills
Social Skills
Small talk.
Small talk is something we love to hate. It can be very shallow and almost seem a waste of time. Small talk is the mainstay of social interaction and it acts as a warm up to more serious or personal conversations. It also acts as a way to build an impression of the person we are talking to and to give them an impression about us.
If we lack confidence or self esteem, as many successful salespeople do, we can make the mistake of being too open or ask inappropriate questions that tend to be too personal too quickly.
A little advanced planning can help and it is a good idea to have a few low risk general opening questions to ask when meeting people for the first time.
Exercises.
1. Think of a topical news story that you could use for small talk and phrase a few low risk questions about it.
2. Think of a personal experience that you could talk about to get conversations started and phrase some low risk questions about similar experiences the other person might have had.
3. Think of three topics that you would want to avoid talking about with someone you don't know. Then avoid talking about them.
4. It can be interesting to talk about a well known person who has done something stupid and psychoanalyse what the have done.
5. Small self disclosures usually encourage the other person to self disclose.
News Stories
Personal experience
Small self disclosures
Famous person to discuss
Topics to avoid
Listening skills
We all think we listen to what other people are saying but in reality we tend to be distracted by our own stream of thought. Conversation is a two way process and a satisfying conversation is where someone actually listens to what we are saying. It makes sense then to be a person who is able to listen.
Listening is a valuable social skill and believe it or not being a good listener will make you stand out and be noticed more than being a good talker. Listening is a very seductive skill that draws people into talking to you. Feeling that we 'have been heard' makes us feel very valued. Listening to others makes them feel valued and rewarded.
How to listen…
1. Use what are called 'minimal encouragers' such as nodding, 'OKs' and 'oh yes' and other short expressions of interest.
2. Maintain eye contact
3. Use positive body language
4. Use open questions to demonstrate interest and keep the conversation going
5. Reflect back what the other person is saying
Problems in saying no or yes…
One of the problems that people who lack confidence (as most salespeople do ironically) is an inability to say no or yes appropriately. How often do you find yourself agreeing to do something you don't want to do because you are afraid to say no?
Here's a table that might help you to rationalise situations where you might have to say no (or yes) appropriately.
Person/Situation
Fear/Worry
Truth/Rational response
Asking for something…
Be positive when making a request.
If you think your request will be refused then it probably will. Although a lot of people say a pessimistic attitude avoids disappointments a pessimistic attitude brings constant disappointment.
An optimistic attitude will bring about more positive results and less disappointment.
Ask for something in a concise straightforward manner. If a request is camouflaged in an apology or justification it makes people suspicious.
Rehearse and practise
Either alone or with colleagues, friends or family rehearse business conversations. People taking the part of the buyer should be co-operative. It is quite rare to meet an awkward buyer in real life and people who try to be awkward ruin the practise sessions.
The idea is to boost skills and confidence.
Mobile phones and MP3 players can all be used to practise questions so they become second nature to you.
Business related questions that can be adapted to your own style and to different circumstances.
(See Guerrila Marketing,
Jay Conrad Levinson Piatkus 2007)
For detailed information and a list of questions
There’s no magic formula for opening a sales call. The best way is to get straight to the point. If they let you introduce what you can provide, there is a chance this will develop into a meaningful business conversation. Most of the time you will get blocked and the conversation won’t develop but you need to be ready for when it does.
Business relationships start by asking questions that allow you to get to know the other person and build a relationship through professional trust.
Here is a list of topics that might follow a typical business conversation. They are very general and should be adapted to your own requirements. Any serious sales person of whatever level of experience should learn them so they become second nature.
I’m… from… we are/do/make/supply…Can I very quickly introduce xyz to you? Or, We’d like to very quickly introduce xyz to you…?
30 second introduction….what it is 8secs, what it does 8secs, how it helps 14secs.
What do you look for in a supplier?
How do you measure supplier performance?
What areas are you trying to improve?
What are you currently doing with....
How do you use abc product/application?
What exactly problems are you facing?
What’s causing the problem?
How long has it been going on?
What will happen if you do nothing?
How can I help?
Who are your best customers?
What is prompting your interest in ........?
What do you want to accomplish?
Why is this important to you?
What is prompting you to consider taking action?
What’s in it for you to implement this .......?
Can you walk me through the decision-making process?
Who else is involved?
What is his/her role?
How does your company reach a decision on this type of purchase?
How could we present a solution?
Do you anticipate any problems?
If we could improve one thing, what would it be?
How can we make your life easier?
What alternatives are you considering?
Which is most important to you: price, quality, service, delivery, customer support, and/or ease of use?
Which of these is the least important?
What do you mean by quality?
What do you think these problems are costing you?
What is the potential impact on your business?
How would this change affect you?
What’s the budget?
Understanding anxiety and how it makes us behave.
Our nervous system is divided in two the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. For practical purposes we'll call them action and relaxed.
We can't be in both at the same time. Our emotional state is where we are on either scale.
Memories are encoded in direct relation to the emotional state we are in.
Memories encoded in the action state are difficult to recall in the relaxed state and vice versa.
We can switch from relaxed to action in one fortieth of a second and it takes about twenty minutes to switch from action to relaxed.
Pretty much all the time we are at work we are in action mode. Anxiety is experienced in action mode. Anxiety can be experienced as distressing or exciting. The basic physiology of excitement is the same as that of anxiety but we perceive the emotional state differently. This has a direct bearing on our buying experience.
How do you feel when you are buying new clothes, a new TV, phone laptop. Buying the experience of going to the theatre or a film or a meal?
Rate the experience
bad good
What about buying electricity or gas or services from the local authority – council tax...
bad good
What about shopping for food, can this be a chore or a pleasure?
When shopping for food as a chore do we forget things? When shopping for food as a pleasurable experience do we buy more?
In the action state the tingle of excitement is in fact the same physiology as the gnawing sense of anxiety. We want more excitement and less anxiety. We move towards one and away from the other.
So, how does someone feel when you contact them for the first time and realise you are a sales person?
Lets look at some of the mental mechanics of anxiety.
Level
Memory effect
Action prompt
Mood state
Low anxiety
Reluctant to encode, “forget it” “No thanks”
Avoidance
Annoyance
Medium anxiety
Experience memory blocks
Unable to think about it – often do nothing
Want it to go away
High anxiety
Flood of memories
Flight or fight
Fear or anger
How do you feel when you get a sales call?
It will almost always be one of the above. This is how people feel when we call them and we need to overcome or even reverse this and change the mood state of the people we call to one of reasonable acceptance because we are not going to make them (very) anxious.
In the back of our minds lets form some kind of strategy to overcome this while we examine just one more aspect of the psychology of buying that is relevant to us.
Cognitive dissonance or buyer’s regret
Think back to the last time you bought something that was either expensive or meaningful. This could be something like a new phone? Think of something where you had to make a choice.
Lets use the choice between Blackberry, iPhone or Android as an example and you have a free choice.
Is deciding a pleasurable form of mild anxiety that might give more of a tingle than a gnaw?
Now you have made your choice and have bought the phone. Now how do you feel? At first great but how long before some little doubts creep in?
We all experience these little doubts after we make a meaningful purchase no matter if it was the right decision. Americans call it buyer's regret and a lot of marketing effort goes into reducing this feeling. Most car adverts for example are aimed at people who have just bought a car - reinforcing their decisions.
We all experience this every time we make a decision to do anything. It is called cognitive dissonance or a feeling of unease. Even when we make mini decisions we get a sense of unease afterwards like a check on what we have done. It helps us to learn and it is a useful form of mild anxiety that is linked to encoding memories as good or bad.
The more meaningful the decision the higher the dissonance.
The dissonance can be so small that it is like a faint whisper in the breeze.
Every time you have a business conversation with someone they feel a sense of regret afterwards.
What can we do about it and can we reverse it?
Could we formulate some ideas in the back of our minds as we just examine a bridge to the practical aspects of this coaching session.
The power of questions.
If we ask someone a question
they will (nearly) always
give us an answer
This applies to you and me and more or less everyone we speak with.
So let's examine one of many ways we can use a question to make someone feel good.
We are going to pay someone a compliment and ask a question all in one statement. The basic – and most effective – format is to compliment something they have done and ask they how they did it. For now we'll have a practise.
Have a look at the person next to you and notice something that is worth a compliment. Just write down the compliment and a question about how they did it, where they bought it or something similar.
Now pay the compliment with a question in one smooth statement.
After this coaching session do it to the first person you meet. On the way home think about how you can pay a compliment like this to someone at home and do it the first chance you get. See and feel how it works. Now do it every day. Give compliments every day.
One of the laws of success incidentally is to give what you want to receive. (Good karma)
We can open a sales call with a compliment by doing a quick research on the company finding something to compliment. Then pay a compliment to the person we speak to and ask a question about it. It doesn't take long to get the hang of this.
Next time someone cooks a meal for you notice something about the meal, compliment the cook about it and ask him or her how they did it and watch the glow of appreciation form as s/he tells you about it.
The practical section starts with the first verse of a Rudyard Kipling poem:
I Keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I know)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
Use the wisdom of this poem to turn your Christmas compliment into a conversation where the other person does most of the talking...
We can use this knowledge to turn a phone call into a meaningful business conversation where the person we are calling enjoys speaking with us.
Short introduction to the psychology of attitude change
An attitude is a measure of liking or disliking of something. We have attitudes to everything and they are fairly easy to measure but not so easy to change. Attitudes will fall into a cluster and most sales people will try and present their own argument that might be outside the current attitude range. This will just reinforce current attitudes. In order to change attitudes we start by presenting arguments that are just inside the current range and slowly nudge an attitude change in the direction we want.
An interesting book that covers the psychology of persuasion is The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence by Philip Zimbardo. McGraw Hill 1991
Questions and yes tags...
We get to know people by asking questions – don't we?
The process is the same in business as it is in social conversations - isn't it?
And we can practise among ourselves and with family and friends - can't we?
Open questions...
How What Where Who When Why (with a cautionary note on using why)
Practise
1. Refer in passing to some previous information
2. Mention something of interest
3. Ask an open question about it
Live call with an attempt to start a conversation.
1. Find something of interest about the company we are going to call.
2. Prepare 3 open questions about the company
Make a live call, mention previous conversations in passing and ask a question about the item of interest.
Develop the conversation by asking other relevant questions.
End by asking if you can send some more detailed or specific information.
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