In sales, your best bet is to appeal to your prospect’s and client’s emotions. Forget about the logic (for the most part) as it comes in a distant second to emotions. The following story is about how powerful emotions can be. Some college students experimented with this and the results are astounding.

The students all got together and agreed before class started that if the professor moved to the right of the classroom, to the student’s right as they were facing the classroom, the students would sit up and pay close attention. They would be very quiet, smile, and nod approvingly at the professor. But if the professor moved to the left of the classroom, the farther left he went, the students would cut up, act out, throw things, look away from the professor and act disinterested.

Class began. They followed through with their plan and it didn’t take but about a half an hour and the professor was pegged into the right side of the room, standing there for the entire rest of the class with the students absolutely gobbling up everything he said, excitedly listening, nodding, smiling and showing their approval of all that he was doing.

The next day the students decided that they would do the exact same thing but just reverse it. As the class began the professor was already off to the right of the room. Immediately the students would cut up and act up and act disinterested and as the professor would go to the left of the room, they would act interested and they would do what they should. It took not too long and the professor was pegged over into the left side of the room.

The professor was absolutely unaware of what was going on (on the conscious level) but was intensly affected by them (subconsciously).

What happened here? Well, fundamentally we are seeking approval. We want to be encouraged and listened to and like knowing that we are impacting people positively. We want people to be interested in what we say. We are reacting on an emotional level.

How would you like to be able to affect people in that same way and get them doing things and responding to you in ways that up to now has been happenstance?

Here’s something to remember: first and foremost, people are led to the decisions they make based on their emotions. Emotions bring people to decisions and logic cements or breaks the decision. In the scheme of things, logic plays a very minor part. Of course, every person is different, but generally, 80-85 percent of decision making is based on emotion and only 15-20 percent is based on logic.

If you are making your living persuading but aren’t using emotions well, you will most likely never make much money, at least the cards are stacked strongly against you. A person who can make strong logical arguments but is not adept at utilizing emotion has the cards strongly stacked against them.

So how do we do this? Well, stay tuned for an upcoming article for more information about getting to your prospect’s and client’s emotions.