The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible pdfdrive com

Emotional Versus Practical Reasons
For example, some people sell life insurance by stressing its affordability
relative to competitive policies, the size and reputation of the company, the ease
of monthly payments, and the role that life insurance pays in financial planning.
These are all important, but they are not the reason that a customer buys life
insurance. He buys it chiefly for “peace of mind.”

---

One of the top life insurance agents in the country told me that he has a very
simple question that he uses when calling on new prospects. He asks, “Do you
feel responsible for providing for your family if something were to happen to
you?”
If the prospect does not say yes to this question immediately, he spends no
further time trying to convince him of the importance of life insurance. He has
found that if a person does not feel highly responsible for his family, he will be
reluctant to take out insurance to provide for them in case of an accident.
By the same token, there are questions that you can ask to determine if the
emotional need that your product satisfies is important enough to your customer
for him to buy what you are selling if you can convince him that this need will
be satisfied. Your choice of questions is often the key to identifying needs
correctly.
The Two Major Motivations
The two major reasons that people buy or don’t buy, respectively, are desire
for gain and fear of loss. The desire for gain is obviously to be better off, for an
improvement in conditions of some kind. Your first task is to help your prospect
understand how much better his life or work would be with your product
compared to the way it is now.
The second motivation is fear of loss. As we’ve discussed earlier, prospects
are afraid of making a buying mistake, of getting stuck with something they
don’t want, don’t need, can’t use, and can’t afford. Since this has happened to
them so many times in the past, they are cautious about allowing it to happen
again.
Here’s an interesting discovery. Desire for gain has a motivational power of
1.0. But fear of loss has a negative motivational power of 2.5. In other words, the
fear of loss is two and a half times more powerful than the desire for gain.
People are much more motivated to buy if they feel they are going to lose
something by not buying, than they are in anticipation of the benefits they will
enjoy if they do buy.