The Decision to Buy is ___

From one of my very first ever solution sales training courses.

At the very beginning of the day (yes, training was done in whole days back then), this question was posed by the yoda. Writ large in caps on a flip chart sheet. 'Round-the-room, please.

Half-dozen of us. Solely, I was pretty much brand new to the profession.

Various answers spluttered forth.

No-one provided what was sought.

100%.

Apparently.

Mostly, a commonplace proportion was proffered. 50/50. 3:1. Even good ol' 80-20.

Upon the reveal unsurprisingly, given the participants, pushback flowed.

One aspiring clever clogs even switching it all around; the decision NOT to buy is 100% UNemotional.

Yet as a heuristic to shape a selling career, that first morning contention remains firm.

I thought on this upon glancing at a quote from Kahnemann. Derived from Hume. Expressed at least as early as Plato.

"Reason is the slave of the passions"

There's a political trope;

'Facts don't care about your feelings'

Yet everyday on the likes of rolling tv news, when confronted by 'facts' that seemingly contradict their stance, a person will rather double-down. Unswayed by doctored, out-of-date, misleading and on balance, likely to be non-, facts.

This buying battle between the left- and right-brain is constant.

Contemporary social psychologist Jonathan Haidt brings his own metaphor. Our two sides being emotional (the Elephant), and analytical (its Rider).

Is buyer approbation in the gift of his elephant alone?

Many a treatise has been put forward on how to appeal to the emotion of the buyer.

Personal frameworks, such as identifying which of 'power, money or autonomy' apply to individual buyers, are pillars of many a 'complex' commercial sell. Purposely flagged as part of qualification.

For a giggle, I asked Google chatbot, Gemini. Its opinion on the matter;

"Facts alone rarely persuade someone to change their mind."

With a helpful citation provided as proof via recent Turing research data and award-winning 90sec video pitch clip.

The seasoned sales pro knows irrational intuition beats rational logic when a buyer weighs up their scales.

Allied with the classic heart-over-head steer; you'll always feel better going with your heart, even if it turns out to be 'wrong'.

Here's one comment I nodded to;

"Humans are justification machines. We post-rationalise our emotional decisions to tell ourselves they’re driven by reason."

Facts that reinforce that emotional pull are accepted. Facts that challenge it are rejected.

Without the emotional tick-in-the-box, your deal is going nowhere.

Have you got yours?