Are you creating a human connection with your prospects?

Over the weekend I was traipsing around the streets of Sydney looking at open houses.

There were a lot of people like me looking to make a decision on where they want to live for the next 10-30 years.

This was an emotional decision for me and many of the other house hunters there on the day. We weren’t looking at the brochure handed to us at the front door with the rental yield, council rates, body corporate fees, and so on.

Instead, we were all walking around wondering what it would be like to live there. “I love this light!” “What would it be like here in the afternoon sun,” “I’m not a fan of that kitchen,” “Maybe we could put the TV here,” “The other house down the road had a different front yard setup, do you think that would work here?”

By projecting ourselves into the house, we were thinking of a future state and creating an emotional connection with the house. It was only on the way out that I decided to finally speak to the real estate agent and review the brochure they had provided, so that I could rationalise my emotional connection with data.

Now, instead of rationalising myself out of the inflated Sydney property market I am trying to find ways to rationalise my way in, because I am so connected to that house. I am sure I was not alone, it was an amazing place!

In the world of software sales we are always so rational, providing our prospects with case studies, the latest white paper, maybe even pricing. We regularly forget that people buy emotionally and then they rationalise that decision with data.

We regularly forget that people buy emotionally and then they rationalise that decision with data.

But don’t listen to me, listen to this guy

I don’t expect you to change your selling behaviour simply based off my observations while looking for a new house… but I want you to draw inspiration from the works of Nobel Prize winning Economist, Daniel Kahneman.

In his 2011 book, titled Thinking, Fast and Slow, he describes the two ways of thinking which psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West refer to as two systems of the mind, System 1 and System 2.

In his words;

• System 1 operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control.
• System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.

Kahneman goes on to further describe System 2 as the ‘conscious, reasoning self’ and System 1 as the hero, as it is the main source of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. Throughout the book he talks about how our emotions drive System 1 decisions, and that System 2 rationalises those decisions with data.

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Bringing this to life in sales

So how do we bring this theory to life in sales? How do we make emotional connections with our prospects and customers?

The first thing you need to stop doing is sending your prospects data driven case studies, detailed reports, and white papers. This content is System 2 relevant and provides rational data once an emotional decision has already been made.

Think about it: what is the content that really sticks out in your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn feed?

It is content that talks to the emotions that you can relate to. Other people just like you are going through similar challenges and experiencing a joy that you can understand. More often than not, this content isn’t a data laden report, but a video or meme with real human emotions.

A study by BuzzSumo, that analysed 100 million headlines on social media, found that the use of emotion in a headline has a direct correlation to the amount of engagement and interaction it receives. The top performing posts from the study used words like this:

• Tears of joy
• Make you cry
• Give you goosebumps
• Is too cute
• Shocked to see
• Melt your heart
• Can’t stop laughing

So, how do you bring this emotional element into your day-to-day sales process?

Here are four steps that you can follow.

Step 1 - Build an emotional Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Creating an emotional ICP is a way for you to start understanding the emotional drivers of your ideal customer. Because even in B2B sales we’re really talking about a human-to-human connection between the buyer and the seller.

On top of the typical elements you would include in an ICP, such as the demographics, job title, and daily routine, you also want to build in some emotional elements. For example, what impact do they want to achieve in their business? How does that affect them personally?

A great way to discover these personal emotional drivers is to first think about the rational thought process. These rational drivers are what makes someone successful in their role. It might be that they need to increase sales in their division, or they need to make their team more productive, for example.

On the emotional side of things it’s more about understanding what these rational drivers actually mean. How do people feel about achieving these rational goals?

They might be scared that they won’t hit their number and could lose their job, or they are frustrated with the overall productivity of their team. Fear and frustration are emotional drivers of decisions.

Ultimately you are trying to determine the emotive words and language you can use that will allow you to associate these feelings with a rational thought process.

Pro tip: Make sure you use and highlight emotive words, these words should be a huge part of your communication with your customers moving forward.

Step 2 - Map out the buying process

The key to this step is to understand where each prospect is at in the buying process when they come to you. You want to listen for cues and triggers that a prospect provides that will help you recognise if they are in the awareness stage, or they are looking to be educated, or perhaps they are in the final stages of their decision process.

So how do you handle the emotional and rational drivers at each of these key buying stages?

• Awareness. This is when they are just figuring out that they have a problem. It’s a great opportunity to help them understand what those problems are, and emphasize the emotional feelings that are associated to those problems.
• Education. At this stage customers generally know that they have a problem, and they want to be educated about the potential solutions out there. But you need to make sure that you are connecting this education with the right emotional pain. For example, if someone puts their hand up and asks for a demo of your software, you need to quickly understand the emotional driver behind that decision so that you can use it to diagnose their situation and move towards prescribing them a solution.
• Selection. When it comes to the pointy end of the buying journey, prospects are probably asking for details such as pricing. If they contact you at this point they may have already been through this process with another vendor, or they have completed much of the journey themselves online. They want you to assist them with making that final decision.

By listening to your customers you can really understand where they are in the buying journey, and align your conversations appropriately.

Pro tip: Regardless of where in the buying journey you first have contact with someone, you need to connect with them emotionally before you take them through a rational sales process.

You need to connect emotionally before you take someone through a rational sales process.

Step 3 - Align your content to the buying process

After you have mapped out the buying process and can appreciate where each new prospect sits in this ecosystem, you need to determine the content you can use at each stage that talks to both the emotional and rational drivers of these people.

Most sales reps send content that is super rational in nature. Things like white papers or data-driven case studies, as I mentioned earlier. These things certainly have their place in the decision making process, but they are useless if you have not created an emotional connection with the challenges of the prospect first.

Some of the most compelling content you can use to spark an emotional response from prospects are customer stories. Here is an example of a customer story from one of our clients, CultureAmp, talking about their experiences with Winning by Design.

If you can show a prospect another person who has experienced similar challenges in the past, and share their story, it allows the prospect to visualise themselves in their shoes.

So whether you are having a conversation with someone over the phone, or sending them an email, these stories are your most powerful piece of emotional content.

Make sure that your case studies are focused on the emotional pain rather than the rational. And if you are going to project rational data, preface it with an emotional driver that resonates with your prospect.

Pro tip: Some of the best emotional content may actually come from other thought leaders in your industry. If you discover one of these people, create an alert for every time they publish new content. Make sure you are the first person to comment on and share that content, and by association you will begin to build a name for yourself that is related to the emotional problems your business solves.

Step 4 - Embrace video

There is no doubt that video content is rapidly growing in popularity. It’s estimated that one-third of online activity is spent watching video, and that 59% of business executives are more likely to choose video over text content, when given the choice.

Video is real, it’s tangible, you can see a human on the other end of the camera - it creates an emotional connection. So you need to stop sending prospects documents, and start embracing video.

You don’t need to rely on high-end video production and company content, you can easily create your own. You have a smartphone in your pocket or on your desk, use it to share a story with your prospects. Whether they are in the awareness, educational, or selection stage of the buying process, a personalised video is going to create an amazing emotional connection.

Pro tip: Check out video sharing tools such as Bonjoro, Soapbox by Wistia, and ViewedIt by Vidyard to create quality personalised video in no time.

So there you have it, how are you going to create an emotional connection with your next prospect?