The first thing you need to understand if you want to succeed in sales is why people buy. Just ask yourself why you buy certain products and you’ll soon discover that Buying is 100% emotional and almost always comes down to two things: to move you towards pleasure or to avoid pain. By pain I don’t necessarily mean the physical type. Not paying your electric bill and having your lights turned off is pain.

Once you understand that buying is an emotional behavior, you will need to learn how to extract those emotions out of your prospect. You essentially must master the ability to use as few words as possible to give your prospect a strong visual sense of the pain they will avoid or the pleasure they will receive from buying your product. If your product doesn’t offer that then I suggest you find another product to sell.

Let’s use an example of joining a health club. On the surface, nothing seems emotional about joining the local gym. For this reason, the salesperson usually spends all of his time talking about how much equipment they have, the big pool and their childcare program. Basically they talk about the same thing that every other major gym offers. So what… who cares?

What really should be happening is the salesperson should stop and ask herself "what are the reasons (pleasure/benefit or pain avoidance) that people join health clubs" then she can go after the emotions of her prospective customers. I’ve never sold gym memberships but, aside from professional athletes, I’d bet that the two primary reasons most people join are to look better physically or to improve their health. There’s your emotion. Follow me here. What happens if you join a gym? You look better and become healthier. What happens when you look better or become healthier? You feel more confident, you become more attractive, you improve your blood pressure and other health concerns. What happens when you become more confident, attractive and healthy? Your dating life improves, your personal life improves, you make more money and you live longer.

So, while one salesman is boasting about their equipment and childcare I’d rather be telling you what you really need to hear to appeal to your emotions. I might say

"Mr. Smith, in many cases people that follow our program will add at least 1 inch of muscle to their chest and biceps and their stomachs get ripped in as little as 90 days. More importantly, they nearly always see immediate health improvements." Then I might ask a simple question like, "tell me, what would you like to accomplish by joining our gym?"

Of course, I probably know the answer already, but I want the customer to tell me what they want (Never assume that you know everything the customer needs). This question will help me to uncover any other goals the prospect may have. Remember this, if you want to close the sale you need to know what the customer’s needs are, not yours. When you understand their needs you’ll be able to address their emotions. We’ll cover more on this topic later.

If you get anything out of this e-book you better get this - IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CUSTOMERS NEEDS-NOT YOURS. Think about all of your buying decisions. I’m certain that you DIDN’T care about how big the company was or what awards they had. You cared about how the purchase of their products was going to benefit you. Period. I doubt you have ever made a buying decision that you didn’t feel met your needs in someway and further I seriously doubt that you have ever bought a product just because a company was the biggest or the best.

Let’s take another example and use something as simple as buying gas for your car. If you buy gas for your car it will take you to your destination. But what happens if you don’t buy gas? You run out of gas. What happens if you run out of gas? Your car stops running. What happens if your car stops running? You’ll need a tow truck, repairs, and other transportation. You get pain. You want to avoid pain so you buy gas. Do you see the pattern?

Again ALL buying decisions occur only when the prospect clearly sees the pleasure that they will gain or the pain they will avoid from parting with their money. This should make it abundantly clear why your sales presentation must attack your prospect’s emotions. Make sure you explain to them exactly how it is that you will satisfy their needs and your sales and positive response will literally triple.