According to studies, the concept of being “unbiased” is merely hypothetical. Every decision that a person makes involved two mental activities – the rational or logical mind and the irrational or emotional mind. However, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found out, people with injury or structural damage in the part of brain that controls emotions cannot make decisions. This proves that emotions and psychology play a bigger role in decision making than logic and reasoning.
Marketing experts use this information to their benefit. Although you need to work on both rational and irrational parts of the customers’ brain, you get better returns by concentrating more on the emotional quotient.
So how do you use psychology to sell?
Identify the Client’s Need
In order to make the most of the psychological impact of customers’ decision making, you need to identify the needs of your clients. So, the first step is need identification. You can ask situational questions followed by confirmatory questions in order to be sure about their needs.
Well framed questions give you the psychological benefit because the customer believes that you are trying to help him or her. Put yourself in their shoes and analyse their needs.
Build a Bond
The best way to gain psychological advantage is to build a bond with prospective customers. Indulge in a bit of small talk and create a rapport. Studies on marketing strategies have shown that the salesperson is as important as the product in closing a deal. This means that you need to sell yourself as well as your flowers. Creating a healthy rapport is a good way to do it. This approach also helps transition the purchase away from a commodity transaction into the realm of a personalize service.
Pleasant Demeanour
Psychology of a person is always more inclined towards a pleasant demeanour. This means that if you talk politely, have a smile on your face and a positive way of talking, you are more likely to engage customers.
This applies to different modes of engagement including written content, social media or any other channel. Irrespective of the communication channel, the bottom line is to be pleasant. (Don’t be afraid to break this rule occasionally by taking a controversial approach to spark conversation.)
Make a Good First Impression
Work hard to create a favourable first impression. This in turn ensures that customers progress to the next stage of the selling cycle. A good first impression wins half the battle for you, and helps to cement in the buyer’s mind that you are a reliable source of information.
Elaborate the Emotional Importance of Flowers
People in North America usually buy flowers for some occasion and they want flowers that perfectly match the event. So, rather than elucidating about how good the flowers look and where you source them from, focus on the underlying meaning of each type of flower.
Tell them how a particular kind of flowers suits the occasion and the recipient. You can convince them sooner and more effectively.
When it is about buying flowers, emotions are almost always the single biggest influencing factor, so, make sure that you capitalize on it.
Very good points. I’ve heard it said that rather than thinking about selling a customer a product or service we should focus of solving a problem they have.
This works perfectly with floral arrangements. As you point out, this is an emotionally driven decision. People may feel they need some guidance in buying flowers for a particular occasion and/or for a particular person. After all, people want t to do what is appropriate and will bring joy to the recipient and they might not know quite how to do that. What particular flower best suits the occasion?
So the customer will look to us to give some advice on that decision. They don’t want to feel pressured or to think we are trying to sell them something out of their price range. Really, it is not a stretch to think of it as a wonderful opportunity to be of service to someone in need. They may feel very stressed in this decision-making process, or the flowers may unfortunately be for a funeral or other sad occasion. We can help them, even as we are selling a product.
Thank you for posting this! It brought up a lot of good points. I think the most important thing especially for small business owners is to create a good bond with the customer. Being nice, friendly, and having a positive attitude can have a great impact on how others see you.
If you are smiling and friendly, I would be a lot more likely to purchase an item from you. I would also be a lot more likely to return if I had a pleasant experience the first time, this builds customer loyalty. That is also why I always try to have a neat and professional appearance as well.
It’s true that there’s nothing that is completely an unemotional decision, either it’s a family related decision or a business related.
You article provides a very good tutorial about the ways to do good business with a good amount of profit.
Identification of clients need is very important and building a bond with the customer is a excellent idea for doing good business.
Thanks for providing this useful information on psychological aspects that can augment one’s ability to sustain more clients! Things such as body language, the tonality, and the mere mannerisms of what that individual engages themselves in contributes to giving a good impression to others. If people can’t become comfortable in how their service provider is speaking, it will cause inconsistencies. This is why it’s important for others to work on their speech and gregarious skills to develop a larger experiential learning to know how to assess certain circumstances with their clients.
And that takes simple trial and error, and knowing that how to be pleasant and professional to one’s clients is always a good thing. And learning how to change your perception on any challenge that may be overwhelming is imperative in order to find the solutions to conquer over those struggles. Thanks for the giving a good overview on how psychological applications and behaviors are supplementary to becoming a credible service provider.