Leveraging Cognitive Biases and Unique Selling Propositions to Influence Buyer Decisions

The best way to show the buyer’s old reptilian brain a clear difference is to have a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighting a benefit for your product or service that makes it unique. If you do, the buyer’s old brain can make a quick decision. To show this clear distinction, you must use words such as “unique,” “only,” and “top-rated.” Additionally, not only must it be different from your competition, but it also must be relevant to your buyer.

Develop a USP for your company. The buyer will understand your company is unique and will make the easy decision to choose you. There is an additional practical application of the reason to have a strong USP. If you do not have a USP, buyers don’t see a significant difference between your company and your competition. Therefore, most buyers will keep looking, and your sales process becomes stalled. Or the buyer’s old brain will view your offering as a commodity and will start negotiating your prices.

One other old brain activator is about all about Vivid Images. Written words have little influence on the old brain. The old brain only stores images/pictures and uses them for pattern matching when it sees new images. Facts and figures often have less impact.

Use the power of video. Wake up the buyer’s old brain with self-explanatory pictures and videos in your presentations, in your proposals, and on your website.

Use stories about your customer successes with other customers. The great salespeople are the great storytellers. Place videos on your website of your best customers telling the stories of how you and your company have made them successful. This is a terrific application of combining the power of video with the emotion generated by a customer story.

Our brains are very complex organs. They contain one hundred billion neurons, and each neuron has ten thousand connections or synapses. For our brains to make complex decisions, it takes a lot of energy. Therefore, over hundreds of millions of years, our brains have learned to save that energy by developing short-cuts, snap judgments, and rules of thumb to quickly make adequate decisions based on a limited amount of information. These shortcuts are called cognitive biases.

When our brains sense smoke, we immediately think there is a high probability that a fire is causing the smoke. Our brains are being helpful in warning us of potential danger.

Cognitive biases are helpful when speed and efficiency are needed in decision-making, but in some cases, a bias can lead us down the wrong path. In this instance, the cognitive bias is called a heuristic. An example is stereotyping.

The availability bias is a mental shortcut that causes us to rely only on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. We make decisions based on the knowledge readily available in our minds rather than examining all the alternatives. This bias gives our brains a quick shortcut to the answer needed.

The false consensus bias occurs when people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typically related to those of others. We assume other people think and feel as we do.

The choice-supportive bias comes into play after we make a decision. When we choose something, we tend to feel positive about it, even if the choice has flaws. We buy a dog. We think our dog is awesome even if it bites people once in a while. People tend to trust any piece of information that supports their choice. We can be blind to information that opposes the choice we made or a strongly held belief.

The optimism bias causes us to believe we are at a lesser risk of experiencing a negative outcome compared to a positive one. Our old brain tends to make us more optimistic than we should be (wishful thinking). We are wired to believe the future will be better.

The sunk cost bias is our tendency to irrationally pursue an activity that is not meeting our expectations because of the time and/or money we have already spent on it. We stick with opportunities too long when we have already invested a lot. “We can’t give up on this opportunity. I’ve been working on it for nine months! I’m sure that it will close soon.”

The familiarity bias comes into play when the familiar is favored over novel places, people, or things, despite the seemingly obvious gains from something new. Therefore, we are biased favorably toward messages that are frequently received. We judge them as safe. For example, we are influenced by media ad campaigns that appeal to our interests.

The reciprocity bias describes the impulse to reciprocate to others for what they have done for us. When we give something to another person, their old brain feels obliged to reciprocate. Reciprocity is a social norm and potent motivator of relationship-building behavior. The term “much obliged” means the other person is driven to give back to you.

Source – The Neuroscience of Selling: Proven Sales Secrets to Win Over the Buyer’s Heart and Mind by John Asher

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43998058-the-neuroscience-of-selling