You Buy Out of Emotion & Justify It Later with Logic

You Buy Out of Emotion & Justify It Later with Logic
People are emotional creatures. Yes, logic does play an important role in our day-to-day ability to function and think. But it is our emotions that drive us to decide, to act, to choose or not to choose, to respond to the situation at hand. In the sales arena, it is our emotional nature that overrides all else in moving us to buy—not logic and not the cold, cruel facts of product features and service offers. It is our emotions that rule the day.

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion.
Daniel Goleman
Emotional Intelligence

Those emotional impulses to act, or gut feelings if you will, that Daniel Goleman refers to are wrapped in a cognitive consciousness we call “logic” or “rational awareness.” It's an area of the mind that deals only with the facts of things. It is at this cognitive conscious level, or logical realm of our minds, that we support the emotional motives for decision-making, or as Goleman says, our “tendency to act.”

Emotionally Centered & Logically Dispersed

I refer to it as being “logically dispersed” in our thinking and decision-making process to buy. Logic is dispersed throughout our thinking and is used selectively to support the emotional decision to buy. In other words, we disperse facts and rational thought whenever there is a need to justify the emotional motives for buying something.

For example, I buy a red sports car for fun and the appeal it has in making me feel youthful and successful; I justify it logically to my wife that it was a good purchase price, a once-in-a-lifetime deal and that we will save money in the long run because it is great on gas. I know it is weak logic…but it is logic nonetheless. We go through this emotionally centered, logically dispersed cycle every time we purchase something.

Harry Mills, author of twenty-two books on sales, negotiation, and influence and whose clients include IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young, Lexus, and Toyota states, As rational human beings, we like to think that logic drives most of our decisions. But the factis, in most persuasive situations, people buy on emotion and justify with fact. People may be persuaded by reason, but they are moved by emotion.

It is emotion that causes us to drop our natural defenses and distracts us from the sales expert’s intention to persuade. It is emotion that requires less effort to process mentally than logical thought or argument. It takes more mental effort to process facts than it does an emotional appeal.

Emotional stories are more interesting than facts. Emotional contact through imagery, music, vocals are all much easier to recall than factual evidence. Emotions rule. Why? The reason is because we are emotionally centered creatures by nature. That is not to say that logic, the cognitive consciousness, is divorced of the emotional connection and our ability to act or decide.

In fact, logic and emotion are intertwined. They are partners that are dependent upon one another, jointly affecting the overall impulse to buy. But it is the emotional center that exerts the greatest force on our urge to purchase something.

Scientifically, the evidence is overwhelming as to the fact of our emotionally centered nature and its link to act, to decide and to buy. Research that began over 150 years ago examined the relationships between emotions and reasoning skills. The ability to act and decide is lost when areas of the brain that govern emotion are damaged through accident or illness.

Dr. Antonio Damasio, neurologist from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, completed and published a study in 1994 confirming that patients with damage to the emotional triggers within the brain demonstrate “terribly flawed” decision-making ability yet they show no deterioration in IQ or cognitive ability. “Despite their intact intelligence,” Dr. Damasio states, “they make disastrous choices in business and their personal lives and can even obsess endlessly over a decision so simple as when to make an appointment.”

When our passions, or emotions, are aroused, the emotional side holds the rational in check, insinuating itself in precedence and importance in the decision-making process. We are simply “hardwired” this way through a fast-track neural network where rational thought runs indirectly connected with the body’s functions.

Emotions actually stimulate the mind three thousand times faster than regular thought, verifying that in most situations, emotions move a person to act faster than rational thought ever could. This is one of the underlying reasons why our choices are based on approximately 80% emotion (Emotionally Centered) and 20% on selective logic (Cognitive Consciousness).

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
Dale Carneghie
How to Win Friends and Influence People

Thus, remember the next time you are sitting across from a customer presenting them with an insurance solution, it's not what it is (the feature) that we sell which creates an impulse to buy from within, it's what it can do (the benefit) for the customer that is powerful and persuasive that compels them to buy. It is the emotional need that we help fill that drives the buying decision for people. Logic, reason, and good sense are merely used in support of that emotional reason for why a person will buy from you.

Features Tell, Benefits Sell

I don't sell an insurance policy, per se. I sell, peace of mind, no worries, trust & confidence, ease & availability, no hassles, assurance, comfort, well being and all those other emotional needs and concerns in order to serve my customers. That's what I do...And I frame my sales conversation around these emotional words or ideas and place my focus, not on features or facts about my product, but around the benefits the customer will enjoy as a result of the insurance product being presented.

Mike, what we have concluded here together is that you need $200,000 in life insurance to cover the mortgage as well as provide some funds for "Little Mike" to go to college if you were to die today. Do you see where we came up with that number, Mike? Sarah?

What that all really means to you both is that you will have the peace of mind and comfort knowing that all you two have worked so hard for; the house and the horses you raise, the lifestyle you have built for “little Mike,” won't be at risk of being taken away for reasons of bankruptcy, or worse yet, public auction if you were to die today and there was no money coming in from your job anymore, Mike. And Sarah, you won't have to worry about how college will be paid for because the money will be there for both of you when you need it. What a relief that must be for you right now. What do you think?

Lead with emotion when speaking to your customers...let their logic tell them they did the right thing when they buy off of you.

Copyright © 2009 - Tony Cefalu