If you can convince someone to sleep with you, then you can be a salesman or saleswoman. The key to effective marketing is understanding romance. In romance, you have to build chemistry and arousal before moving on to third base. In Sade’s words, you have to be a “smooth operator”. Once you grasp this concept, you can sell anything.
The problem is that so many sales people suffer from “pre-mature pitching disorder”. Sales people skip the foreplay and pay little or no attention to turning-on the customer. They just jump to the main act—trying to close the sale. This is wrong on all levels because you simply just can’t go for what you want without generating any customer interest. Charming the customer is the most important aspect of customer engagement. You’ll leave a lasting impression regardless of whether they buy from you or not.
If you want to be a sales guru, then it’s important that you think like a lover. You have to learn and master the art of seduction. Seduction involves inspiring desire and teasing the customer— getting them intrigued about your product. It’s like dating, but without the sex.
Are you going to pounce and bounce?
Customers are like women; they know that we want them to love us and our product, but what they really want is for us to love them. They worry about whether or not we are going to use them once and dump them. They don’t like one-night stands, where you get your needs fulfilled – without any commitment. Customers want to buy from a salesman who is invested in pleasing them — not just a hit and run experience.
You cannot have tangible success as a sales person until you grasp the concept of female attraction. Women need to feel safe and loved and committed to, for them to feel secure enough to let down their guard sexually. That’s why they feel uneasy about one-night stands. This same logic applies to customers. This explains why finding love is like closing a complex sale.
Neuromarketing; the better way to sell
Neuromarketing is the study of how customers choose what to buy and when to buy, and how emotions and intuition influence these decisions. Case studies show that our buying decisions can be influenced by something so subtle that we don’t even notice. Customers don’t decide what to buy consciously based on logic and facts but rather make decisions unconsciously based on emotions, feelings and intuition.
As earlier stated, customers are not so different from women. Women too don’t decide who to like or sleep with based on logic and facts. They too choose sexual partners unconsciously, based on emotions, feelings and intuition.
Neuroscience has confirmed that over 95% of our decisions are made unconsciously. The unconscious mind is responsible for our preferences and prejudices.
Why is Neuromarketing important?
Every year, 9 out of 10 new products fail. These products fail because the companies have not embraced the art of seduction. They have not invested enough in understanding customer psychology.
In 1975, Coke was number 1 in the Soda business. They had a flawless distribution system, their marketing was on point and most of all, their incredible brand loyalty created legions of happy customers.
Pepsi was the new kid on the block, and were set on displacing Coke from the number 1 position. So they came up with the Pepsi Challenge. Pepsi invited people to do a blind taste exercise between Coke and Pepsi. To their surprise, people picked Pepsi over Coke.
Pepsi had come up with this brilliant idea to get people to try their product. They were winning hands down. Coke started to panic. They started issuing statements questioning the credibility of the results and responded with adverts suggesting that Coke was better than Pepsi.
Coke was so desperate, they tried to change their secret formula to copy Pepsi. They created the “New Coke”. This was a total disaster because the customers were not comfortable with the new Coke. It was sweater than the old coke, but for some reason, they liked the old coke better. This response was counter intuitive but it forced coke to recall the “new coke”.
Where did Pepsi go wrong?
The challenge was a brilliant idea but it was not successful in displacing Coke from the number 1 position. The brand attachment to Coke was so strong, people were willing to overlook the fact that Pepsi was sweater.
The campaign failed because it didn’t do a good enough job understanding cult psychology. The creative vision behind the campaign was fantastic and must have gotten people thinking about Pepsi, but it failed to make consumers switch.
While Pepsi sales eventually picked up, that rise in sales didn’t come from the Pepsi Challenge.
Pepsi’s biggest blunder was the failure to complete customer conversion. They didn’t do enough to get people to switch to Pepsi as their default cola. The fact is, Pepsi tasted better than coke. So logic would suggest that customers would choose the product that tasted better. But as earlier established, customer decisions are not based on facts and logic. They are based on emotion and feelings.
Coke was branded as a “feel good” product. So people naturally attach taking coke, with feeling good. Their ads would read, “Open a coke. Open happiness.”, “Taste the feeling.”, “Share a coke and a song.”
Pepsi should have worked harder on getting people to make Pepsi a habit—on creating a “Pepsi cult”. They should have chosen a marketing strategy that appeals to people’s emotions and feelings. As earlier stated, dating a customer doesn’t end when they give you a try; that’s only the beginning.
How to practice Neuromarketing
Neuromarketing started because conventional marketing does not work. Traditional marketing is about understanding what customers want and then building a product that matches their taste. The problem with this approach is that customers don’t always know what they want.
Neuromarketing uses facial coding to identify facial reaction to an advert, eye tracking to identify the specific areas on the advert the customer’s attention is focused most, voice analysis to judge the tone of voice but not the words a customer says. Neuromarketers understand that consumers don’t always do the things they say they’ll do.
Advertising is designed to achieve one of 2 things; to form an opinion about a brand or to change an opinion about a brand. If you’re going to have chance at achieving either, you need to learn how to appeal to people’s emotions. Sales is purely about feelings and emotions.
You must learn to diagnose the pain and fears the customers have in their subconscious. If you are selling a beauty product for women, you’d first-of-all need to understand why the women are insecure about their bodies
Once you’ve successfully diagnosed the pain and fear, you’d then need to demonstrate how your product will take that pain away. Remember, marketing is not about selling products, it’s about influencing perception. It’s about exposing people to the idea that you CARE. And that idea will define their reality. Reality is something we construct. If you can make customers believe that you care, they will buy anything from you, including things that don’t add any value to their lives. Neuromarketing is all about creating the best customer experience. Ultimately, that is the only thing that can keep customers loyal.
