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
Related Article