Use Emotions To Drive Purchasing Decisions
People buy on emotion first and then rationalize second.
Why do you buy one brand of sneakers over another? Or vehicle? Or pasta? Most are made the same and have the same quality. It’s probably because you have an emotional attachment to that particular one. And that is powerful.
In the book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason And The Human Brain, author Antonio Damasio talks about how it is impossible for people to make a decision without emotion. In his book he describes a patient that had a severe brain injury that affected the part of the brain that controls emotion. Because of the extent of his injuries to that part of the brain, he didn’t have any emotions.
So to see how emotion plays into decision making, they gave the patient two dates for their next visit, and asked him to pick one. The patient pulled out an appointment book and looked at his calendar.
For the next 30 minutes the patient went back and forth between the two dates, giving reasons for and against each. Some reasons given were possible conflicts with other engagements. Another was possible weather conditions. Yet another was why a weekday may be better, or not, than a weekend day. Virtually any reason one could think up was given as a reason not to pick one day or the other.
Eventually they had to pick the date for the patient, as he couldn’t get past the cost/benefit analysis of the task.
But if he would have had a little bit of emotion, he would have ‘gone with his gut’ or would have ‘listened to that little voice inside’ and picked a day.
Your customers aren’t like this patient, as they have emotions. So you need to talk to that part of them. They may have all the facts on why yours is better, but if they don’t ‘feel it’, they won’t buy your product or service. Emotions are more powerful than you think in the buying process.