
NASP
When people seek a solution to a challenge or want to make a change in their life, they are either seeking to avoid pain or gain pleasure. With this in mind, it is essential to understand whether the product, process, or service you offer helps your prospect avoid a business problem or moves them closer to their goals. Once you understand what your proposed solution is solving for, you can tailor your presentation to focus on those benefits.
People buy for emotional reasons and justify those purchases with logic. When you meet with prospects and they are encountering challenges in their career, they are experiencing some type of emotional response. Their challenge is either causing them some type of emotional pain or loss because they cannot achieve the pleasure they seek.
Many salespeople jump right into the logical reasons a prospect should buy their product or service and never touch on the emotional reasons. Have you ever had a sales meeting and your solution was logically the best choice for your prospect, yet they didn’t buy? That happens because you didn’t engage them emotionally during the sale. You didn’t find out the emotional reason they were seeking a solution.
Many prospects are seeking to avoid pain; they don’t want to lose their job, they don’t want to let down their team, they don’t want to be embarrassed, etc. Some are seeking long-term solutions, while others are looking for temporary relief and will find their way back to their old patterns due to their environment, lack of support, or simply the strength of their habitual behaviors.
Dr. Benah Parker, Vice President of Research and Development for NASP, wrote Transforming how the world thinks and behaves with the Human Success Operating System™*, a white paper that highlights the struggles and pain points that lead people to seek support. These can be categorized into a handful of challenges that, when recognized and understood, can help you to connect with your prospects on an emotional level and increase your chances of closing the sale. Some of these challenges are included here along with how you can align with your prospect and redirect them from the experience of the challenge to focus on the success of the solution you offer.
- Perfectionism
- Learned Helplessness
- Need for Control
- Boredom
- Fear of Loss
- Preemptive Rejection
- Trauma
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