Do people buy only on benefits or to avoid loss?

Grant Leboff: Nicola, one of the things that always strikes me is - in sales, people think of salespeople as having to be quite positive types of people to do well, and that might then mean they sell the benefits and they sell the reasons and the value that they offer, but one of the points you make in the book is that actually a lot of people buying not to get the benefits, but to avoid the loss.

Nicola Cook: Absolutely.

Grant Leboff: Would you like to explain that and how that plays out for a sales person?

Nicola Cook: It's quite an interesting concept because your right. We still need to be able to match the benefits of what we're selling to the solution that's going to offer value to the customer. But what we need to also understand is that's not the reason why they buy. The reason why they buy is that once they have created an emotional attachment to that, that the fear of loss of now not having it far outweighs the pain of what they've got to give up in order to get it.

So I liken it to like a seesaw. OK. There's pain of loss on both sides. So what if I buy, what have I got to give up in order to have the benefits? Usually in a business context, it's an amount of money, sometimes it's a period of time as well, and effort to put something in place.

Or what's the pain of not buying? The pain of not buying is that my situation won't change or it may potentially get worse. It's only when the pain of not buying far outweighs the pain of what I've got to give up in order to have the benefit, will they then be motivated to want to say yes.

So the way that we used to teach this - well not me, but you know - the sales leaders and trainers of the past used to teach people to kind of go; 'Well, you know, if you don't buy it today, I can't guarantee I have the same deal tomorrow...' which is all very, 1998 sort of car salesman style.

And that's not the way people want to be sold to now. But we have to understand that what's motivating them underneath their questions and the decision making is, they're equating which is going to feel less painful. So people don't say yes. People say ‘yes’ when they associate more pain with saying ‘no’, if that makes sense?

Grant Leboff: So how does that play out for sales person? Because obviously the salesperson's going to sell their benefits and sell the value they've got to offer. So how did they allude to that pain without, obviously, explicitly saying to someone, you know your life's going to be terrible if you don't buy!! So how does that play out?

Nicola Cook:[Laughs] Be a little bit more subtle than that! - Again, it's all down to the questioning. There's a questioning technique in the book that I teach called 'digging for the hot button' and the hot button itself has five different parts and one of those is to find what we call the 'wound'.  And the wound is; what's the consequences of not buying? There's a list of questions in there that you can ask, but some of them all as simple as: 'So what would it mean if we didn't solve this problem?' So I like using partnership language and my questioning: 'So what would it mean if WE didn't solve this problem?' Suddenly what that does for the prospect is it suddenly allows them to think about, oh, well actually what would happen if we didn't solve this problem? And you're sat there, obviously, as the person who's wanting to help them solve that problem. So it's that type of questioning that will help them understand and help the sales person understand, what the consequences would be of them not engaging with you.

Grant Leboff: And with this avoidance of loss is, there anything that a salesperson can do to prepare in advance, so in their own mind, they can start to spot signals with a prospect and say, oh, I can see where this loss is for them?.

Nicola Cook: Well, I mean that comes down to your research as well and understanding the part of the market and the sector and what I call the client Avatar, the persona, the type of person that you're selling into, and understanding the value that that person will gain and also what they potentially will lose out on. As you become more experienced, you'll start to understand that the biggest killer often in sales is inertia. It's not necessarily the... 'I've got to invest an amount of money in order to engage with you.' It's the upheaval that engaging with you will create and if things are not drastic right now, if they're OK, then I'll put up with being OK versus having to go through upheaval to gain value.

So what we need to do, is have in our tool bag, a load of examples and case studies of companies that have created great leaps or had great gains by pushing through that inertia and taking the risk to then, basically, work with you.

So understanding that your Avatar is really the key thing. And then making sure that questioning is really refined and you follow the lead with your customer and listen - really listen - to what it is that they're saying, so that you understand what's important to them - because not everybody's the same - and it's understanding those emotional needs and how important those emotional needs are to them, so if they don't feel that, and if they don't feel that by engaging with you, what impact is that going to have on them personally and their business as a whole?