Nail-Biting Suspense
After almost two years of work, we delivered our final presentation and proposal. On the eve of the decision I couldn't sleep. Perhaps that I was close to an all-out anxiety attack and mental breakdown is a better description.
But the next day no word came. Then another day went by and another. I called, but no one answered; I left messages that were not returned, and tried to pry information out of the gatekeepers. Nothing. Crickets.
I put on a brave, relaxed face, but I was in a state of panic. In my heart I knew that no news was bad news. After working closely with these stakeholders for so long, we'd become friends. I knew that none of them wanted to deliver the word that we were not the vendor of choice.
Over the next weekend, I talked myself off the ledge and came to grips with the fact that my dream of landing the account was not going to come true. I prepared to move on, knowing that there was a likelihood, after expending so many resources on the deal, that I might not have a job.
The Answer
On Monday morning, I drove to the office early and prepared to start rebuilding a pipeline that had been obliterated while I'd focused my complete attention on a single deal.
Just a little after 8:30 my phone rang. The receptionist told me that Randy (my coach at the account) was on the line.
“Randy, nice to hear from you! How was your weekend?” I did my best not to sound as desperate as I felt.
“Good, Jeb. How about yours?”
“Fantastic,” I lied.
“Hey, I'm sorry I didn't return your calls.” There was no emotion in his voice. “Our team met last week to go over the proposals, and honestly it wasn't an easy decision. All the companies did a great job. But we made a choice, and I don't want to keep you in suspense any longer.”
My heart was racing as I braced for the worst.
“It was unanimous.” His voice was solemn.
I could feel the bad news coming.
“We've decided to go with you guys!” He started laughing, clearly enjoying the pain he'd caused me.
The Reason
“Thank you! That's incredible. Thank you!” I was gushing and could barely find words as a wave of relief rushed over me.
We quickly put together a plan for the next steps and getting a contract over to his legal team. I was anxious to get off the phone and share the good news with my wife and our team, but, before I let him go, I asked what compelled them to pick my company.
“You know, we just felt like you guys were a lot like us.” He pointed to how much fun his team had the day they toured our production facility.
At lunch, we shut the plant down, brought in barbecue, and ate on paper plates – his stakeholders, our sales team, and the plant employees all mingled together. He explained that they enjoyed spending time with our people without all the formality. His team felt our people were down-to-earth and cared – just like them.
Closing that deal was a two-year ordeal requiring a significant investment of resources, a team of people dedicated to the cause, and hours and hours of work on strategy, stakeholder mapping, endless financial analysis, and extensive supply chain work to source and customize an array of products, not to mention all the emotional anguish.
But it wasn't the six-inch-thick request for proposal (RFP) response with every imaginable spec that closed the deal. Nor the final presentation we spent three days and nights rehearsing. Nor the detailed implementation plan that took a week to develop. Nor the research, demos, samples, and data. Not planes, fancy entertainment, or sports tickets.
In the end, they felt that we were more like them than our competitors were. They felt more comfortable with the people on our team and our company culture. They liked us more. We were a safe choice. A pivotal decision swayed by the whim of emotion. A similarity bias. Unquantifiable and irrational.
It was the biggest deal I'd ever closed. Huge. The commission on the account alone was enough to purchase a 5,000-square-foot home with cash (which I did) and have enough money left over to make a significant contribution to my savings. Just like that, at the age of 26, I went from the depths of depression to the top of the world. Closing that deal changed my life and set my career on the fast track.
Since then I've closed bigger and more complex deals worth millions more dollars. Yet, no other sale taught me more about what matters most in sales. It was a humbling lesson on why what we often believe is important to influencing the outcome of a sale is just dead wrong.
It also put me on the path I've been on as a practitioner, leader, author, consultant, researcher, and trainer for the past 20 years, on a mission to answer two simple, yet frustratingly elusive, questions:
1. Why do people buy?
2. How do we influence them to buy?
To Buy Is Human
People act on emotion and justify with logic. From complex to completely transactional impulse purchases, emotions drive buying decisions. Science is stacking up one study after another demonstrating the leverage emotion exerts on the choices we make. The real-life examples are legion:
■ A banking executive makes a $500,000 enterprise software decision because she likes the account executive, Geoff, better than the competitor's sale rep – she tells him she appreciated his thoughtful birthday card.
■ Michelle pays more for the same mattress because she feels like her sales rep Gwen cares more about her than Ray at Gwen's competitor.
■ A vice president of safety and compliance at a major electrical utility makes a million-dollar decision on safety equipment because he “just feels like he can trust the rep he's working with.”
■ Carrie buys a car that is not exactly what she wants because she doesn't want to let down the sales rep who helped her.
■ At a wine-tasting party, people feel that the wine with the higher price tag tastes better even though every bottle is filled with the exact same low-cost wine.2
■ John buys a stock because the company's name is easier to pronounce.3
■ People choose Pepsi in a blind taste test but think Coke tastes better when they can see the cans.4
■ I close my dream account because the stakeholders feel that we are similar to them.
Daniel Pink says that to sell is human;5 likewise, to buy is human. Though as humans we are certain that we're making choices based on rational logic, our best interests, or organized facts, science says that we often don't.
In one research study, a liquor store played German beer hall music on Tuesdays and French music on Wednesdays. Correspondingly, German beer sales went up on Tuesdays, with French wine sales increasing on Wednesdays.
On the sidewalk outside the store, researchers peered into brown bags and interviewed the patrons to learn why they purchased the beer or wine. Most of the shoppers gave logical reasons for their purchase —saw it in a magazine, recommended by a friend, cooking steaks tonight, like the taste of premium beer– proving that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.
As humans, it is important that our self-image correlate with our decisions. So, we fall on logic to justify subconscious buying behavior.
Emotion is why well-educated executives make multimillion-dollar decisions with massive implications for their companies because they feel that one sales team cares about them more than another. Despite all of the tools, information, and data at their fingertips, in our Internet-connected