6 Emotions That Make Customers Buy BY GEOFFREY JAMES Customers make decisions at the gut level. Here's how to use the customer's emotions to your advantage.

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Customers make purchasing decisions because they have carefully considered a set of good information, right?

Wrong.

Buying decisions are always the result of a change in the customer's emotional state. While information may help change that emotional state, it's the emotion that's important, not the information.

All buying decisions stem from the interplay of the following six emotions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every successful sales approach either creates or augments one or more of these emotional states. When enough of these emotions are present inside the buyer's emotional state, a buying decision becomes inevitable.

Understand Your Customer's Beliefs

However, these changes in emotional state can only be accomplished when the sales approach takes into account the customer's belief system.  It is this belief system that determines how each emotion play out.

For example, if a potential buyer sees IBM as her main competition, the "fear" and "envy" emotions will be vivid if the sales approach emphasizes competing with IBM.  (In the high-tech world, this is called "waving the blue flag of death.")

By contrast, if the potential buyer is an executive at IBM, she might be more afraid (and also a tiny bit envious) of competition from an unidentified upstart firm with the potential to disrupt a cash cow product.

Similarly, a sales message that "this is a green product that saves the environment" might score high on the "altruism" scale of some crunchy-granola executive in Seattle, but fall dead flat when presented to a decision maker who is politically conservative.

In other words, if you're going to create the emotions that drive decision-making, you need to know not just the audience's current emotional state, but also the beliefs that they're using to evaluate the emotional weight of anything that you might present to them.

And that means research.  The more thoroughly you research your audience, the more likely you'll be to understand their current state and the better you'll marshal emotions to change that state.

What You Need to Learn

It is only in this context that information finally comes into play.  The emotional change you're seeking in your customer will probably result from the expression of new information and the reframing of old information.

Remember, though, that it is not the information itself that is important, but the emotional effect that the information has on your audience. This is an essential distinction.

For example, suppose you're trying to sell an inventory control system to a high-tech firm. Your research indicates that

the company has been dinged by investors for having high inventories, and
its main competitor has just implemented a "just in time" inventory system.
That's just information.  What's really important is the emotional effect that those two facts will have when juxtaposed with one another–based upon the prospect's likely belief system.

Similarly, let's suppose your research also reveals that the prospect's CIO was just replaced and the new CIO was promoted from the ranks. What's important in this case is that the new CIO may lack confidence and is probably be risk-averse.

This handy bit of information helps you focus your sales approach to play upon the new CIO’s likely belief system (i.e., "If I screw up; I'll look stupid and may lose my job").

6 Emotions That Make Customers Buy BY GEOFFREY JAMES Customers make decisions at the gut level. Here's how to use the customer's emotions to your advantage.

416 SHARES | SHARE THIS ARTICLE


Customers make purchasing decisions because they have carefully considered a set of good information, right?

Wrong.

Buying decisions are always the result of a change in the customer's emotional state. While information may help change that emotional state, it's the emotion that's important, not the information.

All buying decisions stem from the interplay of the following six emotions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every successful sales approach either creates or augments one or more of these emotional states. When enough of these emotions are present inside the buyer's emotional state, a buying decision becomes inevitable.

Understand Your Customer's Beliefs

However, these changes in emotional state can only be accomplished when the sales approach takes into account the customer's belief system.  It is this belief system that determines how each emotion play out.

For example, if a potential buyer sees IBM as her main competition, the "fear" and "envy" emotions will be vivid if the sales approach emphasizes competing with IBM.  (In the high-tech world, this is called "waving the blue flag of death.")

By contrast, if the potential buyer is an executive at IBM, she might be more afraid (and also a tiny bit envious) of competition from an unidentified upstart firm with the potential to disrupt a cash cow product.

Similarly, a sales message that "this is a green product that saves the environment" might score high on the "altruism" scale of some crunchy-granola executive in Seattle, but fall dead flat when presented to a decision maker who is politically conservative.

In other words, if you're going to create the emotions that drive decision-making, you need to know not just the audience's current emotional state, but also the beliefs that they're using to evaluate the emotional weight of anything that you might present to them.

And that means research.  The more thoroughly you research your audience, the more likely you'll be to understand their current state and the better you'll marshal emotions to change that state.

What You Need to Learn

It is only in this context that information finally comes into play.  The emotional change you're seeking in your customer will probably result from the expression of new information and the reframing of old information.

Remember, though, that it is not the information itself that is important, but the emotional effect that the information has on your audience. This is an essential distinction.

For example, suppose you're trying to sell an inventory control system to a high-tech firm. Your research indicates that

the company has been dinged by investors for having high inventories, and
its main competitor has just implemented a "just in time" inventory system.
That's just information.  What's really important is the emotional effect that those two facts will have when juxtaposed with one another–based upon the prospect's likely belief system.

Similarly, let's suppose your research also reveals that the prospect's CIO was just replaced and the new CIO was promoted from the ranks. What's important in this case is that the new CIO may lack confidence and is probably be risk-averse.

This handy bit of information helps you focus your sales approach to play upon the new CIO’s likely belief system (i.e., "If I screw up; I'll look stupid and may lose my job").

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5 Lessons From Warren Buffett's Office Hours | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

5 LESSONS FROM WARREN BUFFETT'S OFFICE HOURS

HOW DOES WARREN BUFFETT PAINT THE CANVAS OF BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY? HE GAVE AN OFFICE HOURS INTERVIEW UNPACKING THE HOW AND THE WHY.

BY: DRAKE BAER

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---

It's easy to have a mentor-crush on Warren Buffett: He's worth $50 billion, he's had friendships that have lasted decades, he leans in. For an hour this afternoon, the Sage of Omaha made our mentee dreams come true.

Buffett was interviewed by Caroline Ghosn, cofounder of women's careership startup Levo League. The live-streamed conversation drew from Buffett's 82 years of facing fears, finding heroes, and painting canvases--if you have questions, ask him on hisLevo profile.

DON'T SWEAT THE FUNHOUSE MIRROR

Buffett told Ghosn about how he orignially wrote the essay about women and work that ran in Fortune as a possible forward to Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. In it he writes of his friend, the late Katharine Graham, who was the CEO of the Washington Post Co. and won a Pulitzer for her autobiography.

He writes that she had been convinced by society that women did not have equal potential in business--a "fun-house mirror" that did not reflect reality, as the Post's stock went up 4,000 percent over her 18 years as boss, and yet "her self-doubt remained, a testament to how deeply a message of unworthiness can be implanted in even a brilliant mind."

PAINTING A CANVAS

Throughout the interview, Buffett talked about how Berkshire Hathaway was his canvas, one that he got to paint on every day. He doesn't need to work, he says, but does because he loves it. This is the same alignment he looks for in the people he surrounds himself with, he says. When you work with people who are already rich, they'll work because they choose to do so, "rather than being on a yacht somewhere."

But you don't have to be rich. Buffett says that while it may take a job or two to get there, you should do the work you love.

ON HEROES

"If you tell me who your heroes are," Buffett says to Ghosn, "I'll tell you how you'll turn out." He says that you want to hang around with people that are better than you: Buffett has had a dozen or so major heroes, he says, starting with his father, to his first wife, to Katharine Graham and others. The key is to associate with first-class people.

BIGGEST FEAR: PUBLIC SPEAKING

As an introvert, Buffett had an immense fear of public speaking. So when he was studying at Columbia, he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course, but never went. Then he got back to Nebraska and he learned to talk to people, including teaching classes at the University of Omaha--and a little lesson from Susan Cain could have helped, too.

"You have to be able to communicate in life and probably schools underemphasize that," he says. "If you can't talk to people or write, you're giving up your potential."

HABITS TO BE CULTIVATED, PERSON YOU WANT TO BE

"Just imagine you could be given 10 percent of the future earnings of one person you know," Buffett says. Would you pick the smartest person? The fastest runner? No, Buffett says: "You're going to pick the person that has the right habits."

The qualities that you admire the most in others are the ones that you should develop in yourself, like cheerfulness, generosity, and giving credit to others. If you look at the natural leaders, Buffett says, they're the people you want to work with. So you, then, can become that.

Bottom Line: "Find the job you would have if you were independently rich. Associate with people you love doing what you love," Buffett says. "How can it be any better?"

[Image: Flickr user Fortune Live Media]5 Lessons From Warren Buffett's Office Hours | Fast Company | Business + Innovation:

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Global Partnerships Portal for Peace and Development The best business meeting place on the net, to advertise and post for: - Business looking for resellers or franchisee in another country; - Government organization that have tenders or are looking for international partners; - Nonprofit looking for grants, sponsors, volunteers or international projects; - Church looking for interfaith or international partners; - Sport organization or club looking for sponsors or international partners; - Culture organization looking for international partners to cooperate; - Science organization or laboratory looking for international partners or projects; - Health, Travel, Arts, education etc organizations to partner and network.