Prospect's Buy Emotionally But Need to Justify It Intellectually

People buy emotionally; we’ve all heard that. But what does it mean? It means that people make buying decisions emotionally and then justify these decisions intellectually.

In reading about SDI receiving a ten million dollar order from the DNDO, President Shan Hood’s statement nicely summarized the emotional aspect of a purchase that’s justified intellectually. In his statement he says the mission is to “make the world safer”. That’s a powerful emotional goal that SDI and their clients can feel passionate about. That statement is preceded by more factual elements of the company and their products that can intellectually justify the emotional response to the stated mission.

The psychological theory of transactional analysis tells us that there are three ego states within each of us: parent, adult, and child.

For your prospect to decide to buy from you, the child in him has to get emotionally involved in the process. This childlike need is why you should ask questions in your sales process that will evoke your prospect’s “pain” or true buying motive. Once you have found the problems, you should continue probing to find the underlying reasons, the effect on your prospect, previous efforts to correct the situation and the personal impact on him of continuing to live with the situation.

If you rush to close too quickly, you risk sabotaging the sale or buyer’s remorse later on because you haven’t intellectually justified the emotional response. That’s because you have not properly involved the parent and the adult in the process, and the child will lose interest rather quickly. Then the parent will step in and say, “Can’t you live without this?” Meanwhile, the adult is asking, “Does this make sense for you? Is this the best use of your resources?” In this case, the child made an emotional decision to buy, but the decision was not justified intellectually, and now your sale is in jeopardy.

Learn to appeal to all three ego states within your prospect; help him justify the emotional need to buy. Then you will see buying decisions made more quickly and you will also see your buyers remaining committed to the decisions they make.