The first part of understanding the principles of using emotional information in selling is to understand yourself.

In order to effectively achieve this, you need to determine what your emotional triggers are.

What behaviours, comments, words, reactions, objections, tone, body language, etc. are likely to evoke an emotional response in you?

How are you able to manage and express this response in ways that don’t damage the relationship?

How do you want to leave your customer feeling?

Remember, people are more likely to remember how you made them feel rather than what you said.

Think about how you can make your customer feel excited, happy, enthusiastic, engaged, or any other pleasant, constructive emotions.

How can you exceed expectations through emotional connection?

It’s no good just doing more than you say that you’re going to do, if the customer perceives little or no value in this.

How can you ensure that the customer gains some satisfaction from your actions?

What emotional response can you offer that a competitor can’t?

This is linked to your unique selling proposition.

What will differentiate you from the competition?

How is your product or service different?

What makes you different from other salespeople?

Why should the customer buy from you and not someone else?

Emotional selling is a technique that uses a customer’s feelings to influence the purchasing decision rather than the logic or the features of what’s being sold.

Emotionally connected customers are more likely to purchase from you and are more likely to recommend you and your products to other people.

Emotions and Emotional Drivers

Increasingly it’s becoming recognise that every decision is emotional.

Making a business-to-business purchase is undoubtedly a serious decision, and if you ask buyers how they came to a conclusion, they are most likely to refer to how they made the decision through logic and analysis.

It’s easy to convince ourselves into thinking we’re more rational than we actually are when we’re confronted with a decision.

The emotions from previously related experiences attach some emotional value to the options we’re considering. These emotions create preferences which lead us to our decision.

Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that when people hold contradictory beliefs, they experience an unpleasant state.

“I’m a rational, autonomous person.

Yes, I just did something pointless.”

This is known as cognitive dissonance.

They then try to make themselves feel less unpleasant by bringing one of the beliefs into consistency with the other.

With this in mind, it’s not hard to imagine a customer buying solely on emotion and then justifying it with logic as a rational decision later on.

Emotion should be of prime importance to consider during the sales process.

If you’re selling doesn’t hit an emotional high note, your chances of making the sale diminish considerably.

All buying decisions come down to a mixture of the following six emotional drivers. 

Greed. If I make a decision now, I’ll be rewarded.

Fear. If I don’t make a decision now, I’m in trouble.

Altruism. If I make a decision now, I’ll be helping others.

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

Pride. If I make a decision now, I’ll look good.

Shame. If I don’t make a decision now, I’ll look stupid.

Considering which emotional driver to focus on depends upon your buyer’s behavioural preferences – what will resonate with them most and your offerings value.

A word of caution here, we’re focusing on emotional intelligence in selling.  So it’s important to be aware that the very highest standards of professionalism, sensitivity and confidentiality must be at the forefront of everything that you do.

This can be achieved through empathy and by working positively with people’s emotions in caring, supportive ways, not manipulating their emotions to get what you want.