Neuromarketing - The Psychology of Persuasion
“For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, one is striking at the roots”
- Henry David Thoreau
Author John Gardner once said “most ailing organizations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, but because they cannot SEE their problems”. Albert Einstein said it another way “the most significant problems we face today cannot be resolved at the same level of thinking as when they were created”. What both these gentlemen are referring to is a change in mindset, a shift in paradigm.
Emotion Drives Decision
Accurate paradigms serve to explain & then to guide us. The way that persuasion works is counterintuitive. We have been told for years that people decide based on rational, logical thinking. That business decisions were based on the data and devoid of emotion. That was wrong! Neuromarketing scientist have finally proven that which world-class sales people have always known . . . decisions are made on emotion, and then rationalized with logic. Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence said it best -“Although our business culture places great value in intellect devoid of emotion, our emotions are more powerful than our intellect.”
The 6 Emotions Move Persuasion
In order to increase sales, salespeople must appeal to the emotion first. Prospects decide, usually on a sub-conscious level, whether they will buy based on emotion. Then they will, consciously, use the data to support the position they have already taken. What is quite interesting is that the prospect usually does not realize that they have subconsciously been persuaded before the data is even presented. The key for the salesperson is to understand which emotions drive persuasion. We have learned from neuromarketing that there are 6 of these emotions, we call the 6 Compliance Principles™ - for example, credibility. We tend to automatically accept the instruction of someone we believe to be an expert in their field. Therefore, salespeople need to learn how to consistently trigger the fact that they are experts. We do that with our behavior, our skill-set, which we discuss in the tab entitled Skill-Set.
If you want to make minor, incremental changes & improvements, work on systems. But if you want to make significant quantum leaps, work on paradigms. At Program on Persuasion® we are fixated on uncovering the underlying principle and providing accurate paradigms. If you would like to have the 6 Compliance Principles™, just click on the button below and we will send them to you at no charge.
