How emotional selling can improve your sales strategy
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” Dale Carnegie
Three days ago, I needed a baker for a job, and a few of my friends sent some contacts to me. I contacted five bakers at the same time.
Some ignored my messages, while three responded.
Of the three who responded, two were in my city, while the last was at a completely different location.
But,
I contracted it to the baker outside my city
Why?
She appealed to my emotions; she went far and above, and I literally loved her personality.
I didn’t give her the job because she was the most qualified but because she appealed to my emotions, which made me feel good.
In the real sense, I shouldn’t have contracted it with her because of the distance, but I did and trusted her anyway.
That is exactly what emotional selling does to your business.
In this article, I’ll be honing in on what emotional selling means, how to leverage a client’s emotions to drive sales, and how emotional selling helps your business.
What is emotional selling?
Simply put, emotional selling is marketing or advertising rightly done by appealing to your client's or customer’s emotions, influencing them to make a sales decision.
Emotional selling appeals to a customer’s emotional experience, and it basically deals with uncovering someone’s motivation for purchase.
Emotional selling has also been described as using emotional leverage on a prospect’s feelings to make a sales decision. Emotional selling basically drives a customer’s decision.
In all of the foregoing, one thing remains constant: using an emotional appeal to influence someone’s decision whether or not to make a purchase.
How do you leverage a prospect’s emotions to drive sales?
Strong emotions, whether positive or negative, can dictate a customer’s emotional reaction to whether or not to buy your goods or services. This only goes to reiterate that emotions, whether positive or negative, have a role in influencing our decisions.
The question is, "How can you leverage your prospect’s emotions to drive sales?
Here are five emotions that can be leveraged in your sales campaign
1. Fear
Fear is a negative emotion that builds up over time. Buyers may be driven to seek assistance and ask questions about what solution your product can provide and how it promises to revive their failing business due to their negative emotions of fear.
One way you can leverage this isn’t to intimidate them into buying your products. You can leverage their fears by first allaying their fears. Help them plough through their barrier of fear by subtly introducing your services and what they stand to gain from them.
2. Build up their excitement
I would be happy to respond to an email that suggests that the article I wrote was inspiring, that an interview I gave was mindblowing, or that my performance at the state’s sports was amazing rather than a generic email from someone who hardly resonates with me.
Leverage this emotion by taking the time to do thorough research about your prospect. People love validation. Make them feel validated and seen. There should be a level playing ground. Understand that a lot of people are more emotional than logical beings, and this is because emotions drive more than 80 per cent of our decision-making, while logic makes up the rest.
3. Fear of missing out/Curiosity
Fear can have a negative connotation regarding danger; leveraged in sales, it’s a strong motivator. You can leverage this emotion by showing your prospect what they stand to lose and gain from using your product. Show them testimonials of people with similar problems who have used your product and have scaled up. When you do, you’re leveraging on their emotions not to miss out or be the odd one out.
4. Hope
You can leverage this emotion by focusing on the grey areas which need some adjustment by your client, and you can adopt the use of storytelling to encourage and embolden them.
5. Shame
Shame is a powerful emotion you can leverage to drive sales; a typical example is referring to a past mistake that cost your prospect a lot and how it can worsen if they don’t use your product.
How emotional selling helps your business
- It increases your customer satisfaction and improves sales.
The fact is that every brand strives to achieve the highest standard of customer satisfaction. This further reiterates why brands invest in their customer service departments. This is because customer satisfaction affects your retainer ship and business revenue. A low customer experience inadvertently means low retainers. In a search by Kolsky, it was discovered that only 1 in 26 unhappy customers actually complain. More importantly, though, 91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers leave.
2. Giving your clients/customers a more personalized service is one viable way to make good sales.
The major reason for a personalized service is that it makes your prospects and clients feel like they’re transacting business with real humans and this makes them more comfortable. As rightly pointed out earlier, emotions drive 80 per cent of our decision-making while logic makes up the rest; as such, your prospects, clients, and customers are real people who want to be heard, who wants to be listened to, and who wants to be seen. Genuinely focusing and personalizing your reach sets you apart from your competitors.
3. Helps build your customer’s loyalty
Customer loyalty is the act of choosing a company’s product over that of competitors. When a client is loyal to a company, they’re not easily swayed by any factor, either money, availability or the rest. Customer loyalty is important because, without any repeat customers, your business might suffer a great deal.
4. Leads to more recommendations
Trustpilot says 89 per cent of consumers worldwide try to read reviews before buying the products. Recommendations help people make informed decisions. More client and customer recommendations are essential for businesses that want to thrive.
5. Challenges your sales team to innovate new ways to drive sales and connect more with prospects.
No company is exempt from sales challenges, and this is because your company’s sales team are real humans who also have emotions. In this wise, emotional selling provides new challenges for your sales team to innovate new and viable ways to successfully reach out to prospects and clients while leveraging emotions to start a sales conversation.
