salespeople begin the sales process from a position of logic and gradually shift toward emotion. In contrast, buyers tend to begin the buying process at the emotional level and over time shift toward logic.
At the beginning of the sales process, the buyer is asking a basic question about the salesperson: Do I like you? In the same moment, the seller is delivering a pitch on product features they believe will generate interest from the buyer.
Few things make sellers more unlikable than pitching. And so it goes throughout the buying journey. By the end of the sales process when the buyer is asking rational questions, putting objections on the table, and negotiating, the seller is reacting emotionally to perceived rejection, desperate not to lose the deal.
At the emotional level, the parties are perpetually out of sync (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 Seller versus Buyer
Of course, I'm not blind to the oversimplification of this example. Human interaction is complex and often nonlinear. However, dealing with people in the context of sales conversations doesn't need to be overly complex or overwhelming.
A handful of principles and influence frameworks guide most human behavior. When you learn to master these simple frameworks, you'll become a master of emotions, influence, and persuasion.
I've already shared with you one of the most cogent truths in sales: People buy for their reasons, not yours. It follows, then, that to be effective, you must approach people the way they buy rather than the way you sell.
This new approach requires sales specific emotional intelligence – Sales EQ. Sales EQ is the ability to manage your own disruptive emotions while at the same time accurately interpreting and responding to the emotions of stakeholders, in the context of the sales and buying processes. As you'll learn in the upcoming chapters, it is this emotional control that sets ultra-high sales performers apart.
4
PATTERN PAINTING, COGNITIVE BIASES, AND HEURISTICS
You can't argue with the brain: it wants what it wants what it wants.
Stop reading for a moment. I want you to focus on being aware of every visual, tactile, kinesthetic, and auditory stimulus in your environment. Try to focus on the obvious to the mundane: the color of the carpet, walls, the chair you are sitting in. Study each person walking by you or near you: what they are wearing, their facial expressions, and the content of their conversations. What sounds do you hear? What textures do you feel?
Try to take it all in at once. Instantly overwhelming?
Now, imagine what it would be like if you were forced to experience this massive sensory overload all the time. It would paralyze you.
Much like a computer, our brains can process only so much information at one time. As the cognitive load6 grows, it slows down and becomes less efficient. The brain is unable to focus, and attention control diminishes.
From a purely evolutionary sense, this inability to focus can put you in danger. Should there be a threat nearby – say a saber-toothed tiger crouched in the weeds, or a bus rolling down the street – and you are so overwhelmed with incoming sensory information that you fail to see it, bam! You are lunch or a pancake.
Pattern Monster
Moving slowly had the tendency to remove one's DNA from the gene pool, so our brains evolved to think fast. With so much sensory information hitting us at one time, we needed a way to manage it and focus only on environmental anomalies that might be dangers or opportunities.
The human brain is a pattern monster. It is a master at grabbing the billions of bits of information in the environment around you, interpreting the patterns, and behaving appropriately (in most cases) in response to those patterns.7
If your brain did not leverage patterns for decision making and adaptive response to the world around you, you'd be unable to function. Every bit of information would require analyzing before a decision could be made. Instead, the brain uses mental shortcuts (heuristics) to cut through the noise and make quick decisions.
A basic understanding of how these mental shortcuts work is crucial for controlling your own behaviors and influencing the behaviors of others. Let's begin with two facts about the brain.
1. It is tasked with keeping you alive and, therefore, focuses on things in the environment that are unexpected and could pose a threat while ignoring things that are the same (patterns) to ensure that it does not miss the former.
2. It is lazy, preferring the path of least resistance or cognitive load when making decisions, which also contributes to keeping you alive. When the brain sees a pattern, for example, that is similar to other patterns, instead of taking the time to analyze whether the two things are different, it assumes they are the same and uses that shortcut to make quick decisions.
Pattern Painting
If suddenly there was a loud noise nearby, your attention would be torn from these words and pulled toward that sound. Then, your brain would begin scanning your surroundings for anything out of place that could potentially be a threat while preparing you to deal with that threat. This is your fight-or-flight response. For the moment, a part of your brain called the amygdala has taken control of your emotions and behavior.
Think of the brain as a Russian nesting doll. The big doll on the outside is the neocortex. This is your gray matter – your rational brain. The middle doll is the limbic system – your emotional brain. The smallest doll is your cerebellum or autonomic brain – it manages all the little (but still important) things, like breathing, so you can concentrate on thinking.
All three brains are connected to the amygdala, which is housed in the limbic system.
The amygdala is the hub that processes all sensory input, connecting the rational, emotional, and autonomic parts of your brain and is the center for emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation. Fear and pleasure are the language of the amygdala, and it exerts a massive and compulsory influence over your emotional behavior.
To avoid wasting precious resources on things that don't matter, the amygdala focuses on and responds to environmental disruptions – different, unexpected, new, what it deems important to your survival, both physically and socially. This simple cognitive shortcut of ignoring boring patterns and being alert to anything that disrupts patterns is a key reason for our success as a species.
Salespeople who disrupt expectations pull stakeholders toward them. They paint boring sales patterns with bright colors. Pattern painting is how ultra-high performers (UHPs) flip the buyer script and change the game. Different is sexy. Different sells. The amygdala loves bright, shiny things.
Throughout this book are examples of how UHPs paint common patterns to disrupt expectation and differentiate themselves.
When your sales behaviors fall into an expected pattern, you will not differentiate and you will not garner attention. You do not create fear or promise pleasure. You are not interesting. Your dull colors are easy to ignore.
When you look, act, feel, and sound like every other
Dr. Mark P. Mattson, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4141622/.
