Whether we like it or not, we respond and buy on emotion.

We do this because we are frail creatures with hard-wired insecurities and a desire to improve our life, our status and our rank in society, or to make life just a little more tolerable. We respond to emotions and as a service provider, you need to remember this!

Marketing campaigns often fail because we may be selling logic instead of emotion!

EMOTIONS ARE FLEXIBLE, LOGIC IS RIGID.

Marketers know this, and therefore corporates spend billions on research to find better ways to tap into our psyche and hack our emotional core. All we can do, as lower-ranking plebs, is to adapt their strategies and resell it as our idea, like pimps.

Try not to sell logic; it hardly sells; tapping into emotions is the key!

People respond and resonate with products, goods, services and even other people through emotions.

Everything is for sale!

If a 10-year-old half-eaten sandwich with the face of the Virgin Mary can be sold on eBay for $28,000 and still make it on the Guinness World Records, you have hope in whatever it is you are trying to sell.

We have no idea about the weight, toasted degree, width, height, or thickness nor if the sandwich was gluten-free rye with vegan-friendly ham or penguin-free-100% pure butter. All we know is that it had the face of the Virgin Mary toasted over it. And that was the emotional selling point.

That’s it! The logical specifications of the sandwich were irrelevant, it sold because of the emotional appeal.

Selling the “Why” taps into emotions!

Emotions sell because it props up the “why” people should use you, buy your product or consider you.

This is no different to a job interview, going on a date, selling crap or even making new friends. We have to “sell” ourselves, which is all down to why.

• Why should I buy from you?
• Why should I hire you?
• Why should I date you?
• Why should I be friends with you?

This is where many companies fail in their marketing campaigns. They turn a simple advert into a documentary by showcasing too many of the product specifications. Instead, they should pitch “why” you want to buy their product.

Hey, if selling the “why” worked for Apple, then there is something into this “why”.

How did Apple do it? How did so many people want to buy Apple products with their retirement funds?

Simple, they took a free operating system, made it friendly, and sexy and squeezed it into an aluminium box with pretty design features at a premium price.

They then sold the “why” by selling you the lifestyle that comes with owning an over-priced clunk of aluminium.

How Apple pitched their campaigns is you can only be a great artist, musician, writer, entrepreneur, parent, mother, or lover if you own an Apple. In other words, how the market interpreted the adverts is if you don’t own an Apple product you will never be happy or successful like the people in their ads!

Emotions are our happy place

When people feel comfortable with a person, or a company, they will be more inclined to be attracted to you and/or your company products, why? Because of emotions, not facts!

No one cares if you can bench-press 400kg a 200 reps-per-minute or how fast you can swap out a Webber 32 Carburettor, they want to know if their emotional investment in you will be a good choice.

The same applies to selling your products. No one cares if your drain cleaner can unclog a drain at 2 million volts per square inch, driven 4,000 HP engine and comes in red.

Who cares? What we as the buyer want to know is will it stop me from having to put my hand down a clogged toilet.

Will your product make me feel good, confident, secure, accomplished, happy, enlightened, safe, satisfied, and glorified?

This is where you can close the sale because people do not necessarily invest in products, pitches or proposals. They invest in you (or your company).

Create rapport, sell the lifestyle and pitch with confidence. I will explain this further in the next few pages.