Sales is as much a mental game as it is a numbers one. The best sales professionals are invariably good psychologists, whether they realise it or not.
Incorporating psychological principles into your win rate optimisation strategy can have dramatic, game-changing effects. Among other benefits, a psychology-based approach helps you connect with potential clients, understand your market, and deliver your pitches in an engaging and non-robotic way.
In this article, you’ll learn why psychology matters in sales and how to implement proven psychological drivers in your sales process to steadily increase your sales conversion rate.
Why psychology matters in sales
Psychological factors play a core role in decision-making. It has often been argued that sales are driven more by feelings than logical assessments.
Positive emotions like trust and satisfaction lead to higher win rates, while negative emotions such as fear or dissatisfaction deter purchases. Consequently, sales strategies that evoke positive emotions and speak to existing preferences are far more likely to succeed.
But how can you structure your sales process to account for these all-important psychological factors?
The Win Academy approach: TetraMap profiling
At The Win Academy, we use a tool called TetraMap profiling to help salespeople understand their own dominant personality types. They then use these insights to determine the personalities of potential clients quickly.
This allows sales professionals to alter their approach where necessary to more effectively speak to the characteristics of prospects in a way that evokes positive emotion.
At its core, TetraMap is designed to provide insights about people based on observable traits and preferences.
While everyone has a myriad of preferences, most clients strongly associate with one or two that characterise their behaviour and communication style.
And understanding these dominant preferences is at the heart of a psychology-based approach to sales. When you have an in-depth understanding of preferences, you can refine your sales and pitching process over time, incrementally boosting your win rate.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the key psychological drivers this approach takes advantage of.
Key psychological drivers in win rate optimisation
In our experience, there are three psychological factors that play a primary role in win rate optimisation:
- Trust-building: The process of establishing credibility and reliability with your potential customers to foster a secure buying environment.
- Principle of reciprocity: The mutual exchange of value or favours, leading customers to feel obliged to return the favour, often through a purchase.
- Fear of missing out (FOMO): Creating a sense of urgency or scarcity, making customers worried about missing out on a product or deal, thus prompting quicker purchasing decisions.
We have also identified three key obstacles that, when overcome successfully, can drive up win rates substantially:
- Lack of trust: This is when potential customers doubt the integrity, credibility or reliability of the seller or product.
- Poor communication: This barrier involves unclear or ineffective exchange of information between seller and buyer, leading to misunderstandings or disinterest.
- Price sensitivity: This is the customers’ resistance to price levels that they perceive as too high.
How to overcome psychological barriers
Overcoming barriers and building trust is ultimately about creating an environment of psychological safety.
At The Win Academy, we use two main tools to help professionals achieve this: the SCARF model and the four pillars of trust.
Let’s take a look at each.
SCARF model
The SCARF model seeks to minimise threats and maximise opportunities in five areas:
- Significance: A feeling of being respected by others.
- Certainty: A feeling of familiarity, predictability and comfort.
- Autonomy: A sense of control over events.
- Relatedness: A sense of connection and belonging.
- Fairness: The perception of a fair exchange between the sales professional and the client.
Four pillars of trust
The four pillars of trust centre on four character traits and your potential client’s perception of them:
- I trust your character integrity: This pillar is about honesty and truthfulness and essentially asks the question “Are you congruent in your words and actions?”
- I trust your character intent: Intent is about the fundamental motive that drives your behaviour and the client’s awareness of it.
- I trust your competence and capabilities: Capability inspires confidence and is shown through your talents, attitudes, knowledge and style.
- I trust your competence and ability to deliver results: What is your response when a client, either tacitly or explicitly, asks, “What is your track record? They will evaluate you based on your past, current and anticipated results.
Sales training emphasises the value of challenging customers positively, fostering a reciprocal exchange of insights and nurturing a trusting relationship. The Win Academy’s approach involves understanding personal and business motivators through value-based questioning and personal, human engagement.
Our training also develops business storytelling skills, one of the most potent, tested tools for cultivating personal connections with clients. Effective storytelling builds positive emotions, which is the firmest possible foundation for a future business relationship.
Case study: Outsourced services
During and after the pandemic, we collaborated with a major services outsourcer to enhance its client conversations. Our focus was on using business storytelling to help the sales team have more effective, more engaging conversations with prospects.
The company saw an almost immediate uptick in its win rate, highlighting the power of storytelling in the B2B context.
Due to the success of our early initiatives, we’ve now developed bespoke programmes for the client, customising content to their specific products, solutions, and market environments.
Conclusion
The interplay between psychology and sales success is undeniable. An evidence-based, tested understanding of psychological principles provides a distinct competitive advantage. By tapping into the fundamental realities of human behaviour and preferences, your sales strategies can be finely tuned for optimal win rates.
What’s more, using psychological insights in sales not only enhances immediate results but creates a positive, empathetic basis for long-term relationships.
The Win Academy’s approach rests on this philosophy. It recognises the importance of building psychological acumen in sales professionals and applying it in a practical, results-oriented way.
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