When To Use Facts Vs. When To Use Emotions To Make a Sale

As a decision-maker, you may believe that the senior executives in your organization (or any organization) would make a decision based on hard facts after careful consideration of the pros and cons across multiple scenarios before reaching his conclusion. If so, you would be wrong.

According to Gerald Zailtman, a professor at the Harvard Business School, 95 percent of purchase decisions take place unconsciously.i.e. we (intuitively) reach a conclusion based upon an emotional response, which we then back up with a logical reason. And it’s why we believe our own decisions, are completely rational.

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Having said that, it does not mean that facts are useless to a salesperson. Facts play a pivotal part in sales. The right facts.i.e. that can influence your emotional position on a decision, but ultimately it’s the emotion, not the fact, that’s important.

Salespeople cannot ignore the power of combining emotion and facts. Getting the balance right is the real challenge.

A solely rational sales pitch can often go nowhere. And is more likely to fail.

Especially true for complex products or services, with multiple versions of pros and cons available in the market, a potential buyer can be easily overwhelmed and do nothing because of “analysis paralysis”. For the salesperson, this would mean a lot of wasted time. 

Having said that, we often overlook the emotional side. Why?

Well, long story short, we all like to believe that we are rational, logical people and we like to think that the people who we're trying to sell to are also equally rational.

Appeal to the Emotional Side

According to The salesforce.com blog, every decision is based on one or more of these six subconscious reasons:

Greed. "If I make a decision now, I will be rewarded."

Fear. "If I don't make a decision now, I'm toast."

Altruism. "If I make a decision now, I will help others."

Envy. "If I don't make a decision now, my competition will win."

Pride. "If I make a decision now, I will look smart."

Shame. "If I don't make a decision now, I will look stupid."

With the right research, your sales team can play up to whichever one is most appropriate to the prospect.

To successfully connect with the emotional side, explore the pain points, and how you can help them resolve it. One of the best ways to do this is through a story. 

As a general rule, to sell simple or low cost products, logical selling works best because simply knowing the facts is enough to convince someone to buy. However, to sell complex products, intuition-based tactics are used to be able to control the information shared with a prospect and not

Conclusion

When it comes to facts vs. emotions, they both support each other. And developing a relationship with a prospect is obviously essential for this to be effective.

- Yogesh Babu