Can you use emotions to create better sales results?

Last week we talked about how emotions can help your marketing have more impact by creating a more powerful sales message at the beginning of your client relationships. Understanding how your customer feels is especially important when they are uncertain about their own future.

The Army trained me on emotional intelligence after 9/11 before teaching at The War College. My earlier career focused on competitive intelligence and how to get people to share information in many different difficult situations. I’m exceptionally good at interviewing people about what they do well from my career in executive search.

I understand what role emotions have in people’s buying decisions and non-decisions. Over the past several month, Covid-19 has changed how we go to market. For many organizations, it has been a bumpy ride.

Emotions can increase trust in relationships

My conversations with entrepreneurs and sales leaders have convinced me how critical it is that we use more emotionally powerful messaging during our initial conversations and during our online sales presentations. Emotion creates trust and builds deeper, long lasting relationships.

Let me share an example that helps you connect with your ideal clients more effectively. It takes time to walk through this process with your own products and services. Done correctly it can help increase sales results significantly. For the people I’ve done this with it can be between 5 and 10 times.

Questions you ask to tap into clients’ emotions  

Let’s go through this together. Here are some questions you can ask:

How does your company compare to others ? This taps into their competitive nature.

How would you like to improve your team’s performance? This taps into improving others’ performance.

Have you heard about this new product from your competition? Curious and competitive, a great opportunity to maximize their time.

Did you hear about X? Scuttlebutt and competitive rumors are a great way to get and keep a leader’s attention. Don’t judge me on this, but it’s true.

How important is it to know the best way of doing X? Shortcuts can help you establish connection early in the conversation.

Do you know what your average customer is worth? With a little research or a follow up question you can pique their interest in your services. This is an opportunity to excite your client about working together. 

Where do you go from this role? Selling future opportunities always engages the imagination of your potential clients.

Obviously your doing well, (longer pause) who might you  have me talk with about with this current opportunity? This is gratitude. Help your client appreciate their current situation and you are building a brighter future for your relationship.

How to move potential clients from cool to hot

There are two emotions I’ve seen move my clients from cool to hot in almost an instant. They should not be taken lightly. They always work and can lead to unexpected results. Be careful trying this at home.

The first is passion. Find a person’s passions and they always talk with you. I have clients I haven’t talked with for over 25 years and bring up their passion and it’s like you never left.

Anger can change how ideal clients see you

Second is anger. This one is playing with fire. I’ve found several ideal clients because I was willing to deal with anger and their irritation head on.

Most executives have had at least one bad experience with a sales professional who didn’t deliver what they promised, and it caused the executive embarrassment with their peers. Remember embarrassment is a strong emotion. Actually, it kills more deals than any other factor I can think off.

Now you’ve seen a number of ways I use emotions when selling. To get your ideal clients you need to use emotions both in selling and marketing your solutions. As importantly you must know how your emotions are impacting your life. 

Next week we talk about how to apply this to your sales and marketing materials to get meetings and more business.

See you in 3 weeks.