All the research proves this, but most of us are holding ourselves back by selling just with cold, rational logic.
In this blog, we explain why and how to actually appeal to a buyer’s emotional side (without creepily baring your soul and inner demons).
Cybersecurity sales is hard enough without doing it with one hand tied behind our back! I guarantee that right now there are deals in the pipeline that are stuck because you haven’t appealed to the buyer’s emotional side.
Figuring out how to do that will give your deals oxygen and enable you to get more, and higher quality opportunities in the future.
Unfortunately, cybersecurity is full of people more comfortable with logic than emotion.
It is uncomfortable to think and talk about emotional things. It requires a deeper understanding of our prospects than many of us know how to get to.
But…if you can get great at simple approaches and ideas you can transform how you sell. You can connect with the emotional reasons why buyers buy, not just the logical ones.
Here are 4 ways to do that….
1. Tell stories that are vivid, memorable, and emotional
Stories have been used for thousands of years to pass on wisdom, laughs, history and facts. And we all tell sales stories.
But, don’t use the boring, logical stories that are “case studies”. The best sales stories follow the hero’s journey narrative structure so popular in Hollywood blockbusters. They connect emotionally with your prospect.
The hero (the customer) has a problem and then meets a guide (you/your company) who has a plan to fix the problem, there are consequences if the hero fails, but they don’t… they succeed and there are results and the hero is well, a hero!
Download the Great Sales Story Cheat Sheet to use this structure to tell great stories.
2. Sell status
Too often we just talk about how the company benefits. This is wrong!
We should also talk about how the individuals will gain from working with us.
How might they raise their profile and their status in their peer group? How might other or more senior leaders perceive them differently when this project is a success? It’s a rare individual who doesn’t like kudos, accolades, pay raises, and promotions!
Some examples:
- frame outcomes with how they can benefit "You could be known internally as the person who shaved $2m off the tools budget!”
- offer to feature the company and the hero “if this plays out as I think it will you be will on stage at our customer conference sharing with your peers how you achieved such great results.”
3. Use emotional words
Emotional words are powerful and connect with prospects more deeply!
But how to use emotional words without being weird?! Simple...
Instead of saying “the CFO is asking you to save 5% on operations” say “it must be frustrating that you are being asked to slim down an already tight budget”.
Instead of “it takes 5 days to remediate incidents”, say “you said you were annoyed that it takes 5 days or longer to remediate incidents”
4. Highlight the personal consequence of missing out or being left behind
This is NOT about creating deals with fake timeouts!
It is about helping them understand that others could be leapfrogging them. One of the biggest challenges we face is motivating a buyer to buy soon and not in 12 or 24 months.
So help them realize they will look bad if they do nothing. How? Say things like…
“there is a shift in how people are thinking about this. Those that are embracing the shift are seeing big outcomes that the laggards are not.”
“Everyone is going to be doing it this way eventually, the question is when are you comfortable making the change. Do you want to lead the change and be proactive? Or do you prefer to wait for a little and let others lead the change?”
Even the most technology-oriented buyer has an emotional side to them!
And all the studies show that people make decisions to buy based on unconscious, emotional reasons and then figure out how to justify the purchase. It’s not called an ROI JUSTIFICATION for anything!
The good news is we don’t have to make a dramatic shift in the way we sell to connect with prospects. These simple, tactical shifts will make a big difference in your sales results.
Because when you feed your prospects unconscious, emotional brains they will see you in a different light and will be more likely to want to do business with you.
You might also like this blog: Don't assume your prospect "gets" how amazing your product is
Unstoppable’s sales operating system is designed for cybersecurity startups and removes the random guesswork, provides repeatable sales plays, and enables you to grow more consistently, and faster. Schedule a strategy call
