Selling in a Crisis

38Emotional Experience Matters

There is a truth in sales: Your stakeholder's emotional experience as they walk through the decision journey with you is a more consistent predictor of outcome than any other variable.

In other words, it's how you sell, not what you sell, that matters most. The tangible features and attributes of your product, service, software, or solution are less important than how stakeholders feel about you.

Though important, you will not win deals on facts, features, and financials alone. To close sales, you must win heart share and mind share. The decision journey is how individual stakeholders make the emotional commitment to do business with YOU. It is individual, emotional, nonlinear, and often irrational.

Shaping the decision journey and bending win probability in your favor is the primary function of the sales process. The key is shaping the sales process to put yourself in as many situations as possible to interact with the right stakeholders.

In each interaction, and throughout the entire sales process, stakeholders are asking themselves five very important questions about you. When the answers are yes, it becomes almost impossible for people not to want to do business with you:

1. Do I like you? You are more likable when you are polite, confident, enthusiastic, and professional. However, the easiest, fastest way to be likable is to listen. Think about it – the most unlikable person in your life is the person who is standing in front of you pitching ...