Who’s in control?

The little girl in the supermarket had clearly set her heart on the Halloween skeleton outfit and was performing the ultimate tantrum dance in an effort to overturn her Mum’s refusal to allow her to have it. “Stop it now ! her mum was saying “ We bought the witches outfit last week, you’re lucky to have such a nice costume”.  It certainly brought back memories.

My train of thought moved on to my own teenagers and how things have changed when it comes to their influencing tactics for getting stuff. 

Fortunately we never had too many “I want it NOW !” tantrums when they were younger but we had;  tears, “why can’t I have it now”, “ James got one why can’t I ?” conversations, which have progressed into ‘there’s this really good deal , whereby I can get a games bundle…..”. 

We have all heard that people buy emotionally, which is true, but what is also true is that we apply intellectual justifications to that decision.

The child having a tantrum was displaying  the raw emotional reaction  of  “I want it… now”  My teenagers are beginning to display the additional behaviour that they have learned of constructing the intellectual business case to help justify the emotional driver that was driving their desire to buy some new computer games, or clothes  or…well you fill in the rest.

The psychological theory of transactional analysis tells us that there are three ego states within each of us: parent, adult and child. In his best seller, I’m OK - You’re OK, author Thomas Harris says, “It is as if within each person there is the same little person he was when he was three years old. There are also within him his own parents. These are recordings in the brain of actual internal and external events, the most significant of which happened in the first five years of his life”.  These parent recordings can be broadly defined as critical or nurturing, telling us what we should and should not do. The child in the supermarket will have recorded her mum (critical parent) telling her she was lucky to have such a nice outfit, not that her mum thought the skeleton outfit was great but not as scary as that witches outfit she got last week (nurturing parent)

The child is always with us, whenever we are mad, sad, glad, or scared, we are in our child ego state. Our learned behaviour usually stops us throwing a tantrum, except when we ‘loose it’, but it remains as the primary driver of much of our behaviour.

And lastly, the adult is the logical, rational, decision making, information seeking part of our make up; never emotional, always carefully weighing the pros and cons of any situation.

So how do we use this knowledge in business? In order for your prospect to decide to buy from you, the child in him has to be emotionally involved in the process. Their child has to think, “I really want this, I need it, it will help solve my problem.” This is why in your sales process, you should have a well-crafted questioning strategy that will engage a prospect’s inner child and an emotional decision to buy, assuming that your product is an appropriate solution to the problem.

Now the parent and adult ego states want to get in on the act . They will start checking if this decision fits with their criteria, is there money available? is it the right time? Does it conflict with parental scripts?

Once everybody (parent, adult, and child) is on board and properly involved, you can move ahead to show your prospect how you will solve their pain. Since you’ve already addressed the buying motive, budget, and decision-making processes, you’ve cleared out the three biggest across-the board objections in sales: suitability of product or service; price; and ability to make a decision.

And you thought you were in control, scary?