This excerpt is from the Herman Trend Alert and it highlights a very important fact for all salespeople (emphasis mine):

"Loyalty will focus more on emotions than on rational, incentive-based initiatives." According to behavioral economists, economic decision-making is 70 percent emotional and 30 percent rational. Thus, the loyalty programs that touch us emotionally will work the best; those that focus on the emotional side of the decision making process will create connected, passionate, and engaged customers. Expect to see more emotional appeals that involve our families, relationships, those in need, etc.

I’m going to breeze right past the “behavioral economists” title (sounds like a great description for a salesperson) and hit that decision-making statement.  It is true.  We shorten it up to stating that people make decisions emotionally and they justify them later intellectually.

This is an important truth in selling.  This being the case, intellectual data dumps like feature/benefits will be less effective than probing for pain in the prospect’s world.  Too often I see salespeople in the field go intellectual, especially in tech-related sales, which neutralizes, or even inhibits, their sales effectiveness.

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