Impulse Psychology

Here’s a post from a couple of years back by a consumer champion site who’s cheek I quietly enjoy from time to time. Their aim was to stop you from making that disastrous impulse buy.

These five pointers are well worth heeding. They surely offer a stern stress test when salivating in-store.

I am intrigued though as to how, with a little thought, these could be adapted with a slight switch and applied to a hesitant prospect. True solution sellers will know that we only sell what people need, and when a win-win will result. So, in reverse order…

Switch on the logical brain – Did you live fine without it yesterday? In true solution selling, the answer is of course, no. Getting the prospect to focus on the pain you would have removed, or the pleasure that could have been unleashed, is always a good idea.

Talk to your ‘significant other’ about it – They refer to your better half, but the point is just as valid for anyone in their operation who is impacted by the change you propose. I sense the trick is in finding someone for whom your new wares are incredibly attractive to act as your hesitater’s sounding board.

A hundred quid a day keeps the blues away – Another cracker if you’ve identified losses are mounting up by each day of procrastination. Can they truly afford to wait a day for each hundred, thousand or million they might invest?

Work hour equivalent – Along similar lines, another helpful tactic, especially if productivity improvements, increased profits or stemmed losses result. Breaking down a large solution expenditure into quarterly, monthly, weekly or even hourly rates has long been the recourse of highly successful salespeople.

The generous stranger. Perhaps the one bizarre option, would your prospect really prefer the cash if offered by a random person? You could turn this around with the old, ‘if you could take this for free, would you have it now…’ pattern.

As for impulse decisions, I’ve occasionally been involved in benefiting from them. In my first ever software role, our order form was specifically designed to encourage people adding an extra module at sign-up. When helping wholesaler vendors too, the technique of having standard products lined up to talk about once a deal for others was done continues to work well.