85. People Make Most Decisions Unconsciously

You’re thinking of whether or not to make a purchase of software for your department at work. You do some research online, have some vendors make presentations to you, and talk to people in your industry to see what they use. What factors are most influential in your decision-making process?

In my book Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, I explain that people like to think that they’ve carefully and logically weighed all the relevant factors before they make a decision. In the case of the software purchase, you’ve considered the features and functionality of the software, the reliability of the vendor, and the pricing of each contender. You’ve considered all those factors consciously, but research on decision-making shows that your actual decision is made primarily in an unconscious way.

Unconscious decision-making includes factors such as

• What most other people are using: “Most people seem to go with product X.”

• What is consistent with your persona (commitment): “I’m the kind of person who tries the latest and newest.”

• Whether you can pay off any obligations or social debts with this purchase (reciprocity): “That vendor gave me a free 60-day trial and free training and support.”

• Fear of loss: “This product is on sale, and if I don’t buy it right now the price may go up.”

• Your particular drives, motivations, and fears.

Unconscious Doesn’t Mean Irrational or Bad

Most mental processing is unconscious, and most decision-making is unconscious, but that doesn’t mean it’s faulty, irrational, or bad. People are faced with an overwhelming amount of data (billions of pieces of data come into the brain every second!), and the conscious mind can’t process all of it. The unconscious has evolved to process most of the data and to make decisions according to guidelines and rules of thumb that are in the individual’s best interest most of the time. This is the genesis of “trusting your gut,” and most of the time it works.

Audience Research is Critical

In order to fashion a presentation that will compel action, you need to know as much as possible about your audience, including the possibly unconscious reasons that will compel them into action.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the logical reasons why someone should take action and to forget that most people are deciding based on unconscious, and often emotional, reasons.

Image The power of knowing your audience

I was giving a presentation to a client about why they should change the design of their software. I believed that by changing the software they would save money on customer training and calls to the help desk, and they would have the satisfaction of creating a product that people wanted to use. But I also knew that the decision to stop development on the product in order to fix the problems I was talking about was a big decision for the product manager. In preparing my presentation, I had to decide how best to frame my recommendations to the client. If I wanted them to be willing to fix the problems with the software, even if that meant affecting the project deadlines, should I talk about saving money on customer training? Calls to the help desk? The reputation of the company in the marketplace?

Before I put together my presentation, I interviewed my main contact at the company, as well as two other people: a colleague of my contact, and my contact’s boss. In those interviews, I discovered that my contact’s boss saw himself as a maverick, someone willing to take risks and go against the prevailing winds.

When I put together my presentation, I focused on how stopping product development at this time was a bold move, that going to market with a “just OK” product that had some problems was what everyone else did, but that a maverick, someone who was willing to take risks, would do something bold: pause development and fix the problems. Of course I also gave all the regular logical reasons that this was a good idea.

It worked. The message to the “maverick” came through in the presentation. He decided to stop production and fix the problems. Because I took the time to understand my audience and what would motivate them and compel them to action, I was able to adjust my presentation to spur action. In the chapter “How to Craft Your Presentation,” you will learn how to put your audience research into action. In order to get people to take action, though, you must know your audience well.

And Don’t Forget the Logical Reason on Top

Although the real reasons for taking action are based on unconscious factors, once people decide to act they will need a logical, fact-based reason to explain their action to themselves and others. You should, therefore, provide a logical, data-based reason why they should decide to act—but realize that that may not be the only or even the real reason for the decision.

Takeaways

• In order to influence people to take action, you need to understand their unconscious motivations. The more you know about your audience, the better able you will be to communicate in a way that propels decision-making.

• When people tell you their reasons for deciding to take a certain action, you have to be skeptical about what they say. Because decision-making is unconscious, they may be unaware of the true reasons for their decisions.

• Even though people make decisions based on unconscious factors, they want a rational, logical reason for the decisions they make. So you still need to provide the rational, logical reasons, although they’re unlikely to be the actual reasons that people decided to take action.

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