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Thinking vs Feeling

Thinking vs Feeling States

Thinking and feeling are different ways of assessing situations and making decisions.

  • Thinking means using logic and objective criteria for making rational decisions.

  • Feeling means using emotions and personal values for decision-making.

People naturally tend to be more of a Thinker or more of a Feeler. We aren’t 100% Thinkers or 100% Feelers all of the time. We can shift between a thinking state and a feeling state at different times and in different situations.

People Buy Emotionally

Why is this crucial for sales? People buy emotionally, and they justify their decisions intellectually. Our prospects buy emotionally in a Feeling state but give rational Thinker justifications for their choices.

When we’re in a thinking state we tend to become indecisive, more cautious, and not take action. It leads to analysis paralysis. This is not good for making sales. Feeling and emotions are good for sales.

Thinking is an even bigger problem if you’re selling a disruptive or emerging product/service where the prospect doesn’t have a planned budget and has little urgency. With this type of sale, the prospect often isn’t aware of your product or that their problem even existed. They can afford to be indecisive or not take action. They don’t NEED your product. When this is the case, your prospect will only take action if they have a sufficient amount of pain or a lot of excitement.

Techniques for Emotional Selling

So how do we tap into and connect with someone’s feeling state? How do we avoid putting them into a thinking state?

  • Avoid: Features and Benefits 

  • Lean Into: Pain and Excitement

  • Avoid: Pitching

  • Lean Into: Storytelling

  • Avoid: Complexity

  • Lean Into: Simplicity

  • Avoid: ‘Getting into the weeds’

  • Lean Into: Succinct high level explanations

  • Avoid:  Lots of factual, objective questions

  • Lean Into: Vision and dreaming

  • Avoid: Overwhelming your prospect with irrelevant information

  • Lean Into: Sharing only what is important to your prospect

  • Avoid: Overtalking and statements

  • Lean Into: Listening and questions

  • Avoid: Challenging implementation processes

  • Lean Into: Ease, support, help, and guidance

  • Avoid: Asking the prospect what they want to do next

  • Lean Into: Setting confident, prescriptive next steps

  • Avoid: Being overly scripted and distracted

  • Lean Into: Being in the moment and present

  • Avoid: Rushing

  • Lean Into: Taking the time needed

When to Engage the Thinking State?

The thinking state needs to be engaged if your product has a longer sales cycle and/or if your prospect has a relatively complex buying process. I’ve managing B2C sales teams where sales could be done on purely with emotional selling. We were able to shorten our sales cycle to 1 day in many cases. No need for the thinking state.

But if you’re selling to Enterprise customers (like my team does now) you must engage the thinking state too. You need to:

  • Know your prospect’s decision-making process

  • Ensure that you’re engaging other stakeholders

  • Learn about their budgeting process and how to secure an approval

  • Understand potential blockers/challenge

  • Have a clear picture of the procurement process.

Otherwise the initial feeling will fade, your deal will stall, and you’ll lose the sale to inaction or your competition.

Additional Resource