Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Neil Lebovits. Neil Lebovits, CPA, CPC, CTS, before taking the industry by storm as a trainer and top class consultant, was a global president for Adecco, the world’s largest staffing & recruiting firm, where he sat on the global executive team. Previously, Neil was the president and COO of Ajilon Professional Staffing for North America, where he oversaw over 300 offices. Neil has done it all in the industry: permanent & temporary placement, sales, branch management, regional management, COO & president. He founded a leading industry training & development company, The Dynamic Sale, in 2009. Neil will be a featured speaker at NPA’s Global Conference in New Orleans, March 6-8, 2014.
Simply put and clinically proven…people buy for emotional reasons, but they justify it with logic!
Yes. People are persuaded by EMOTIONAL reasons and then they will try to back up their decision and prove it was logical. Yes, they really bought that Rolex for prestige and not because it’s so well made (even though it is well made). Therefore, you need to always be selling/ persuading using emotions! Sure, you need to continue to throw out the usual pros/selling points/logic…they’ll definitely need that! HOWEVER, it won’t really persuade them. It will just provide the very necessary “justification.”
The media world learned this decades ago, which is why just about every commercial is emotion-based and not fact-based! Heck, how often do you even ask, “Now what were they advertising again??” Why do you think there are so many celebrity “pitch people?” Do you think you buy because a favorite celeb of yours did a commercial? YOU BETCHA! You also justify your logical reasons, but trust me, Nike wouldn’t pay millions to these people if they weren’t CERTAIN that the positive emotion that the celebrity conveys would be passed on your decision to buy!!
So, remember, your message should be crafted the same way. You know the drill. You need to find the hot buttons for your candidates and clients…
You need to FIND THAT PAIN!
Why do they want to leave their job? Why do they need to hire a star? What is at risk, etc. etc.? All easy questions, but you need to put these to work!
For every person, their hot buttons or WANTS can be stripped down to an emotional level. For example, if someone WANTS a fast-paced environment for their next job, this can be stripped down, perhaps, to the fact that they are actually currently very bored at their current job. They want this new environment so that they can be excited! The emotions here are thus BOREDOM and EXCITEMENT.
Notice that we stripped the emotion into a both a positive emotion and a negative/opposite emotion. One tries to achieve/gain/get EXCITEMENT but one also tries to avoid/eradicate, etc. BOREDOM.
You can and should do this with every hot button ALL OF THE TIME! Even if you are one of the good ones and constantly use emotions, are you using positive emotions or negative? Do you CONSCIOUSLY think about both the POSITIVE and NEGATIVE sides or do you always sell one side? Odds are that you are more positively focused…for example, you sell a job to a candidate about how exciting and fast-paced and challenging this new job will be.
Just as positive emotions are so key, so are NEGATIVE emotions! They should outweigh the positive emotions…at a minimum, sprinkle these in there all of the time! Negative emotions work better than positive because of the fact that people will work harder or be more persuaded to avoid pain then they will to seek pleasure.
Pain Avoidance!
The truth is that people are far more motivated to avoid pain or to avoid something bad from happening then they are to seek something pleasant. We covered several examples of this this in Hypnotic Selling and now you see why you must also do this with the EMOTIONS that you are using. It’s also why people are very motivated to avoid being left out of something good. It’s why you always see “Limited Supplies” or “only 100 plates will be made.” How can you apply this to your business?
Don’t talk about the fun challenge the candidate will have. Turn it into YOU WON’T BE BORED ANYMORE. Tell stories about how miserable you were in a job when you just weren’t excited anymore.
Don’t focus on how much faster their commute will be. Tell them, “You must be so excited to not have to commute for an hour anymore. That must stink sitting in that traffic.”
Scarcity
Let the candidate know you will only present a few people and they have until tomorrow to let you know, otherwise they are out since the job is highly in demand. Let the client know that you are presenting the candidate to them first, but the candidate is highly in demand and has a limited shelf life — the client must act quickly! Create scarcity in your pricing approach by offering limited time discounts or limited interview guides to the first X candidates who reply to a web promotion.
When to Use Emotions
- During interview
- During match call
- During prep/brief
- During debrief
- During sales calls
- Always!
