I once had a sales person call me and ask me the three things he should tell a prospect that he was visiting about our product (let’s call it the “Hyper-Scotchamtic 5000” or the HS5000). He also asked me to be on the call by phone. I suggested instead of using three things about our product that he think of three questions to ask the prospect. I hung up and waited for his call back.
About an hour later, he called. He said the prospect was committed to purchasing the product, but had just once question that he wanted me to answer… “Did the product have lasers in it?” This was a really strange question. I asked him why he wanted to know about lasers, and the prospect replied that he was just curious. He hoped the product had lasers it. I told him there were no lasers in the product. He remarked that he would probably take two of our product. I pointed out that he only needed one and could only use one.
When the call was over, I called the sales person back and asked him what was going on? What questions had he asked the prospect? He said he had only asked one main question. He hadn’t thought much about it, but just blurted it out. His question was, “What would happen to your business if your biggest competitor got the capabilities in our HS5000?”
Reason and logic, while they seem to form the basis of many sales and marketing campaigns, are not sufficient for their purposes. Why? Because we humans are not rational actors. If we were rational actors, we:
1. Wouldn’t vote against our self interests
2. Wouldn’t stay in relationships that were obviously bad
3. Would work only for money
4. Would fight wars for just causes
5. Would all buy BMWs
Ninety-five percent of our thought is unconscious and dependent on frames, metaphors, stories, images and narratives that help us make sense of complex situations. (More in upcoming posts.) Rationality allows us to function as a society. Think for example why someone accepts a scrap of paper for the purchase of a flat screen TV, or why we drive on the right side of the road expecting others to do the same. But is has nothing to do with why people buy or make decisions. You know this.
So why is it our marketing focuses on the five functions of the product, or our sales interactions talk about the five benefits? Sales processes that focus on questioning and the detail of capabilities without considering the non-rational components of buying are only partially adequate. Marketing programs that focus on why the product is better will be failures. Both because reason has little to do with why we buy.
We can use reason and rationality to understand why we are crazy or irrational (how the brain functions). But it’s time to get a little crazy in sales and marketing. Start appealing to the unconscious in B2B marketing.
The prospect in the example above wasn’t using reason when he responded to the sales person’s question; he was reacting to fear and a frame of failure. He was working though his own narrative of beating his competitor. He wasn’t using reason when he wanted two instead of one, or when he wanted to know about “lasers”.
Maybe we should start adding “laser’s” to our B2B sales and marketing processes. Lasers that look at the way our brains work might guide us to a new way to market and sell. Consumer marketing has known this for decades.
As an update to my post “Lost“, I thought I would share a study I just read which was recently published by the University of Michigan on empathy. I am not stating that there is a cause and effect here, but rather underscoring the need to add empathy to our sales and marketing communications and interactions. Here’s an excerpt. You can read more at University of Michigan.
