Tag Archives: how the human brain makes decisions

Sales training for everyone who touches the customers

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Everyone who works for a sales and service organization will eventually have some contact with clients or prospects. So everyone needs the confidence to present your business professionally in a way that will assist the sales process of the official sales team.

When running sales training I always suggest we invite,  anyone who wishes to consider a career move to selling. After the sales audit is complete we may choose a few to invite as well.

As an example of some of this content and an introduction to my sales style, you are welcome to download the first component of my sales training series. This first session is the broad view of selling and is not specific to any industry. All in-house training is fully tailored to your industry with industry-specific examples, techniques and tools.

I believe as sales staff we are not selling something ‘to’ people, rather that we are assisting people as they make decisions. In real estate, we are helping them with an incredibly important decision so the process is even more difficult to do well. If as salespeople we understand how people make decisions we are able to help them in a way that will make the most sense to each person we met rather than just repeatedly giving out information about our offering, leaving them to make sense of it themselves.

Most sales training is only focused on how we word our information or the ‘pitch’. Some courses even teach ‘magic’ words or phrases that they claim will improve your sales performance. As an example, you may have heard trainers’ advice we refer to the price as the ‘investment’. But this all assumes that every prospect has the same existing knowledge of your product/service and that they are all looking for exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

I have a degree in Psychology, providing sales training since 1994, and have merged my knowledge of practical selling with how the human brain makes stable decisions. Starting from understanding why they are searching for this product or service and on the journey to that decision they currently are before introducing your solution. To do this the salesperson needs thoroughly know about the role of emotions, especially fear, in the decision process and how to build trust before a decision is possible.

The first session, which I suggest everyone attends focuses on how the brain works and what our role in that is when we are selling. The following sessions use that decision model in situation-specific contexts.

To create a training schedule tailored to your business anywhere in the English-speaking world please email me at maya@salesinventoryprofile.com

Places I have trained include Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada and the US.

How we make decisions and the effect of fear in building trust

Finding your way through the decision maze.

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Put your head on!

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effect of fear on how we communicate“Put your head on!”

I said this as an instruction to my children as I was pulling up in front of their primary school on a very rainy day last week.

I was attempting to be funny (first mistake – humour before midday). It was an instruction to them to put the hoods up on their raincoats.

Result: anxiety and confusion first, anger second – from both children.

The 11 year old sitting next to me in the front looked at me a little perplexed, got the message when he looked for cues in my face and saw that I was smiling. The 9 year old, who is as bright as a button but sitting in the back seat and had no visual cues, sounded distressed and said “What’s the matter, I have my head on?” The 11 year old came to the rescue “It’s okay, mum means put your hood up”.

It seemed so simple to me but it totally missed the mark and created a negative effect. It reinforced how important communication is and how we should not take anything for granted, even with an audience you think you know well.  After I had left them at their school I realised just how unreasonable my statement had been.

This day was the umpteenth day of heavy rain, our whole State was flooding, the dam in Sydney is overflowing (I know as an adult that it is within the dams processes but they don’t). We had just left our own garage slowly flooding through the light fitting and as we were rushing to get to school on time I was unable to do anything about it. They had asked if they would get electrocuted. I had quickly answered no but without any explanation as I was too rushed. To top it off the evening before we had watched a Johnny Depp movie called Sleepy Hollow about a headless ghost horseman in 18th century America chopping people’s heads off to find his own. As soon as he found and put his own head on he was happy to return to hell and stop killing people.

Well done mum! How far off the mark can my simple statement have gotten?

What a perfect reminder of how important it is keeping our communication simple, to the point and taking nothing for granted. How often in our business day do we communicate with people over the phone, quickly in passing and without any knowledge of the framework in their lives that affects their ability to interpret?

Having thought all this through and knowing the psychology of how the brain functions and the effect of fear I was able to reverse all of the effects of my miscommunication later that day and reassure everyone that they were safe and all is well in our world. Most of us don’t get the luxury of being able to deliver our message a second time.

Brain graphic

If you want to better understand the effect of our words on the way the brain works and how we process information, especially as it relates to developing trust and making decisions, I’d like to recommend my Emotions in Selling workshop. This course will show you how to keep your message within the listeners trust range so that they can continue to communicate with you rather than run for the hills and refuse to have anything more to do with you or your company.

 

To book your training contact me at maya@salesinventoruprofile.com

Are your staff developing trust or creating fear with your clients?

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Are your staff developing trust or creating fear with your clients? Have you ever wondered why clients DON’T buy from you when the call seemed to be going well?

I have launched my new workshop that is changing the way we sell in Real Estate. It is called Emotions in Selling – Helping clients make strong decisions.

I have developed this content from 25 years of selling having been a sales trainer and Coach for half of that time and from knowledge of how the brain works learned in my degree in Psychology. So the content is clearly anchored in understanding the workings of the mind first then translating that to the specifics of your sales situations.

I’m a bit over trainers who teach how to execute specific actions that have worked for them. Some parts of my training do include specific actions but I believe if you understand the intent of the underlying process you will be able to adapt the action to your own style and execute them well and so get the advertised outcome for yourself. If you just blindly copy others (even if the technique you are copying is absolutely fabulous) you don’t get the same outcomes they did because your situation is never exactly the same.

Content:

  • Understanding the neurological structure of the brain and how the flight/fight mechanism drives all decision making. We will review the progress of data arriving from the senses (hearing sight etc) to the two levels of thought processing; emotional and logical.
  • How to uncover the buyer’s personal perceptions of safety and the decision process they are using in order to guide them to use your service. If you contradict this process and trigger even the smallest feelings of fear they will reject you and your product.
  • Learn how fear and anxiety can turn your clients’ thoughts from caterpillars into pythons and how to prevent this so that the caterpillars turn into butterfly’s instead.
  • Learn how selling your own home is the scariest decision a person may ever make and how to guide them safely through their anxiety to a stable decision to list with you.
  • We will look at very specific strategies to maximize your message and they way you present it so that your clients are able to process safely through their emotional filter to make effective decisions that will not unravel when they continue to think about the situation after you have left or when they hear new data from your competition.
  • Importance of the customer doing at least half of the talking during the sales process in order for the purchase to be stable. Using the magic wand technique that helps a buyer express their needs so you can discuss the real value to them of your offering
  • How to manage your clients fear response to help them to continue to listen and have the ability to buy from you.

I believe this program will up skill the sales effectiveness of the entire office as well as providing more sales energy and focus. I encourage my clients to have all staff in their business sit in on it as everyone in a sales organization participates at some stage with our clients whether they are vendors, buyers, landlords or tenants. Most importantly each client interaction contributes to the reputation of our business and builds trust for our brand.

I’m offering to run a two hour session for just you or your team for just $750 +GST conducted at your office. Call me, Maya, for more info on 0407 005 290

For more articles on Trust in selling, check out our Emotions in Selling (EiS) training series here