I was working with a room full of Architects recently, building their skills for interviews and presentations. I bumped into something that I have encountered a lot over the years, which is the folks I’m working with don’t seem to have an easy facility with emotion words. So, I was asking them questions like, “Well, if your prospect is in a situation like that, how do they feel about it?” And their response would be, “Well, they would feel like they’re in a situation like that.” It was very intellectual language that was keeping them from really feeling anything when they were talking about it. So, I kind of had to push, and it led me to realize that a whole lot of people don’t have a terribly high emotional quotient and EQ.
The thing to understand is that when human beings are considering buying something, there’s an emotional transition that needs to happen. Purchases get made with emotional decision-making; it’s not just an intellectual thing. And this doesn’t matter what kind of person you’re talking about—you could be the most rational human being alive, but you’re still going to make a decision based on how you feel. And there are two things to talk about with somebody when you are offering something to them, whether it’s a new idea for them to invest in or whether it’s something to literally say, “Yes, I will devote my funds or the funds of my organization to it.” So, the two things to consider are: how do you feel right now, and how do you want to feel?
I don’t necessarily mean that you’re going to want to explicitly ask those two questions to the people that you’re talking to, but you do want to consider them. At the very least, you want to ask yourself, and if you’re a team, you want to ask yourselves the question, “So what do the decision-makers here feel right now? What problem are they experiencing, and how do they feel about it right now?” And at the end of the day, after everything is successful, how are they going to feel? If you can do that, then when you present to them, you can use language that’s informed by what you have decided. Ideally, you’ve decided based on insider information, based on having talked to these folks before you’re pitching to them, so that you can speak in a language that they are listening for so that they can ultimately experience, “Ooh, this is great. These folks understand me. They understand how I’m feeling right now. They understand how I want to feel, and the services that they’re offering here will help me shift from where I am now to where I want to be.” And of course, all of that will be subconscious or unconscious, but that’s how you sell to anybody.
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