On the other hand, a business owner visualising the pain (lost work time, poor morale, lost customer orders, lost data etc) attached to not sorting out his ailing IT systems may well have “no choice” other than to invest tens of thousands to solve the issue and relieve their pain.

The more real this pain, the more of a motivator it will be for them.

But why not sell on both?

Outline the issue, stir it up and get people visualising the pain associated with their current actions, and then get them to picture what they want instead. The more real both visualisations, the more likely the client is to take action. This ability to take an image and get the client to vividly imagine it rather than the salesperson merely talking about it is a key differentiator of sales superstars.

However…

I prefer to drive individuals through progressive and positive means and am not always that comfortable with instilling fear. It smacks of caring less about the individual you are communicating with… It smacks of old school sales and is a harder face… In my opinion.

Ok, so it may be the only way at times, but given the choice, I’d rather create a culture and internal environment of win/win for anyone I communicate with and I think that is done better when people move towards what they want.

It is just my personal preference.

As always Andy, I am grateful for your sage contributions – thank you.

🙂

A.

However – all those sales examples you give evoke “towards” motivation, whereas in sales (I believe) “away-from” motivation is generally held to be more powerful. We’re hard-wired for fairly obvious evolutionary reasons to pay more attention to threats than opportunities.

In my experience most therapy clients aren’t thinking about emotional freedom – they just want to be released from emotional torment.

“Where a threat and an opportunity conflict, the opportunity loses”

Best wishes,
Andy