Top sales people know that in order to make a sale, the acronym BANT must be present. This stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing. Simply put:
- There must be funds available to make this purchase
- The person you are selling to must be the decision maker or have the authority to say yes
- There must be a clear (and most likely compelling) need for your product or service
- And finally, the prospect must want to buy today as opposed to sometime in the future
Let’s focus on Authority. We know that selling to someone who is not the decision maker is almost a complete waste of our valuable time. Yet so many people are doing just that when they are making their presentation to their target’s conscious mind as opposed to speaking to the real decision maker- the prospect’s subconscious.
Prof. Tim Wilson of Virginia is quoted often about a statistic that talks of the rates of information processing (absorption) by brain: Brain processes about 40 bits of info per second consciously whereas the unconscious processing is eleven million bits per second. These numbers were given in his 2002 book “Strangers to Ourselves.” Further research has shown similar numbers:
Dr. Norretranders book ‘User Illusion” was a translation of his original Danish version published in 1991.
So what does this mean and how does this help us? Think about when you walk towards a door. Even if you have never been in front of that door you instinctively reach out and push it, pull it, or turn a knob- all this is done effortlessly and seems to be without much thought. Fact is your brain has put in a lot of thought in that decision at a subconscious level. To know whether you should pull it towards you or push it out, your subconscious mind is looking through past life experiences, examples and previous references of doors that you have approached similar to this one and tells you exactly what actions to take. The same process happens during every moment of your life- including your sales conversations.
As a matter of fact, according to A. K. Pradeep of “The Buying Brain”, as much as 95% of our decisions are made by the subconscious mind. As a result, the world’s largest and most sophisticated companies are applying the latest advances in neuroscience to create brands, products, package designs, marketing campaigns, store environments, and much more, in order to appeal directly and powerfully to our brains. Are you? What are you really saying in your presentation? Are you making it easier to buy or does your presentation create red flags in the buyer’s subconscious? The real decision maker in their mind is scanning through hundreds, maybe even thousands of past conversations, life experiences and scenarios to see what they should do. That ‘gut feeling’ isn’t so mysterious after all. Just like the example of the door, your subconscious is asking: Have I been here before? And if so, what did I do? How did it work out? What should I do?
Over the next few weeks we will go deeper into this topic and spend a lot of time talking about many different influence and persuasion strategies that you can incorporate in your customer’s experience. We will discuss strategies that are pulled from a broad range of topics such as:
- Influence/Persuasion
- Nuero Linguistic Programming (NLP)
- Nueroscience/Nueromarketing
- Behaviorism/Psychology
- Hypnosis/Hypnotherapy
- Attraction/Seduction
- Motivational Speaking
- Game Theory
- Sales
And much more…