CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCING CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY TO SALES

Don’t be naive.

A highly skilled salesperson is not just somebody who knows the product and wants to sell you his or her stuff.

No.

That salesperson is a scientist in a laboratory. To him or her, you are a money-carrying rat.

For example, recall the last time you bought a car. Do you think that your nice conversation with the sales rep was just friendly chatter?

While your pupils were dilating from the car’s sensuous lines and sparkly pearlescent paint, your nose was reveling in the fragrant high-end leather interior, and your brain was mentally drooling as your fingertips surfed the circumference of the hand-stitched steering wheel, that nice salesperson was reading you like a New York Times bestseller.

She was watching you closely, judging how her words were affecting your behavior and continually tweaking her actions and dialogue in real-time response to your every move.

You were a rodent in her sales laboratory, and her intention was to make you behave exactly the way she wanted. Her ultimate goal? A legally binding sales contract from which even Houdini could not escape.

Truth is, most salespeople don’t use anything other than methods found in the old dusty books of salesmanship: “Listen more than you talk,” “Try to determine your prospect’s interests and talk about them,” “Small talk first, then business next,” “Be pleasant at all times,” “Dress for success,” “Keep qualifying,” “Always ask for the sale.”

All of this is good foundational stuff, and you should follow these suggestions. However, if you were going into battle with a .38 special and knew that a six-barreled, 7.62-mm, 6,000-round-per-minute mini-gun was available, wouldn’t you ditch the tiny pistol and grab the bullet-showering beast? Only a fool would not.

This kind of basics-only salesmanship isn’t surprising. Think about it. How do most salespeople train for their jobs? They simply read up on their products, learn a little about their market (or not), shadow a current employee (often not the best one), and then go out and try their utmost to persuade people to buy. The majority use “lay” methodology and usually get mediocre results.

Psychological sales experts are different. They use powerful techniques of consumer psychology to get inside their prospects’ heads. They know how to persuade them to sign contracts, pull out credit cards, and fork over cash.

These are not superficial gimmicks invented by a clever writer in his pajamas typing up a story for a sales and marketing magazine. They weren’t created, revealed, or discovered by me, either. I’m just a humble emissary for this information with the ability to teach it in a clear, direct, and—I hope you’ll find—interesting manner.

Instead, these 21 principles are the results of decades of testing by dozens of respected and dedicated consumer and social psychologists far smarter than I am. Their workings have been verified in real-world situations with every type of product and service imaginable.

My previous book, Cashvertising, begins with a brief explanation of the foundational principles of consumer psychology, and then in the remaining pages—the majority of the book—teaches dozens of principles and tactics of advertising psychology to help readers boost the selling power of their ads, brochures, emails, websites, sales letters and other ad media.

BrainScripts for Sales Success, by contrast, focuses on 21 principles of consumer psychology, goes far deeper into each (since this entire book is dedicated to them), and features a practical twist: dozens of actual scripts showing you how to put the principles into action … how to speak them to others … and how to insert persuasion into every sales presentation. Whereas Cashvertising focused on advertising, this book focuses on person-to-person sales.

Remember the car sales rep we were just discussing? Don’t expect her to admit she’s using psychology to influence your thinking. These tactics are her ace in the hole, the tricks up her sleeve, and she’s not about to publicize her secrets. (If the techniques worked for you, would you let the cat out of the bag?)

The good news is that you don’t have to be a psychologist to use these techniques. Each is easy to understand and apply. You simply have to know how to apply them and when. They work no matter what you sell or where or how you sell it. As long as you’re dealing with human beings with normally functioning brains, the application of these principles will give you a marked advantage over salespeople who aren’t motivated enough to learn about them the way you are doing this very moment.

It’s sad. Some salespeople, even those who believe these techniques could work for them, still won’t use them. Why? Why wouldn’t you do everything you could to optimize your performance when it has a direct bearing on your income?

It’s like a waiter in a restaurant. He’s been granted the job, the customers come to him as a result of thousands of dollars’ worth of local advertising, and the chefs in the kitchen—if they’re good—make him look like a hero. Still, he provides lousy service, doesn’t know the menu, is rude to customers, and ends each day hot and annoyed, grumbling to himself in a puzzled tone, “Why the heck didn’t I get better tips?”

Imagine that! The entire income machine has been built for him—and entirely paid for without a penny from his pocket—yet he doesn’t max out his effectiveness by doing what’s been proved to work best. As a salesperson, unless you’re employing the principles I’m going to teach you in this book, you’re much like that puzzled waiter, pulling out your pockets and wondering why more cash isn’t falling to the floor.

Permit no hour to go by without it due improvement.

Thomas à Kempis

Let’s assume you already have the basics down, which you probably do. You give the prospect a big, hearty greeting. You try to find common ground to develop rapport. You ask questions to determine needs. You explain how your product will satisfy those needs and do so better than your competitors can. You continually test close and ultimately go for the final close and chalk up a sale.

Sounds okay, doesn’t it? Yes, but it’s the equivalent of running your new 1,200-horsepower Bugatti Veyron Super Sport—the world’s fastest production car—on 87 octane gasoline. Sure, it’ll move, and you’ll still smoke the slow-as-molasses 628-horsepower ZR1 Corvette. But as you sit behind that wheel, you’ll know that something just isn’t right.

This could be you right now. You are a highly qualified, competent, and skilled salesperson but are not optimizing your actions. You’re running on 87 when the far more powerful jet fuel—tested principles of consumer psychology—is sitting there on the runway, ready to be pumped, ready to help you fly higher, faster, and farther.

Are these techniques ethical? Yes, but only if you’re selling products and services of value. Even the most ethical and upstanding sales presentation won’t magically transform your shoddy product into a great buy.

Many consumers have a tough time making decisions, and so anything you can do to ethically help others decide to purchase a quality product of value is actually a service. It’s something you can feel good about.

But unless you’re just book window-shopping right now, I have to assume that you’ve already decided that using these principles and techniques to augment your sales falls within the parameters of your moral code. In that case, let’s stop talking about it and jump right in.