Praise for Neuro-Sell

‘Modern-day selling is not about convincing others to buy your

products and services. It’s all about facilitating the buying
decision so that your buyers convince themselves. This
requires an in-depth knowledge of how others think, what their
preferences are and understanding their world. Within this book
Simon Hazeldine covers real-world, practical advice and
techniques to tap into the buyer’s brain so that you can
influence them on a much deeper level then your competitors.’
Sean McPheat, author of eselling®

‘Simon Hazeldine has, once again, given us a brilliant work on

how to be more effective in today’s hotly-competitive world. He
builds on the solid, scientifically-grounded principles of
neuroscience (which he has studied extensively) and shows the
practical application of these principles in real-world selling and
interaction. I was enthralled with this book and read it cover to
cover. All I can say is “Wow!”. Simon takes you through the
step-by-step process for selling, and yes, it is a process. He
fully, and in rich detail, describes the four types of people you’ll
encounter in your sales and demonstrates ninja-style effective
techniques to get the results you need. I just hope my
competition doesn’t get hold of this masterpiece. It is a book to
be studied, not just read. Get it. Devour it. Apply it. Your
business and your life will be better for it.’
Terry Brock, MBA, CSP, CPAE, author, professional
speaker, marketing coach

‘Simon Hazeldine has conducted extensive research into

neuroscience to understand how the brain responds during
neuroscience to understand how the brain responds during
sales and negotiation and when a person is making buying
decisions. His insights have created a highly effective sales tool
that will help you close more sales with less effort.’
Allan Pease, author of the number one best-seller
The Definitive Book of Body Language ‘Simon Hazeldine
has taught me so much about how the brain works, and as
a professional property investor it has helped me make a
lot more money. I thought I could work people out until I
read this book! Simon’s neuro-sell, brain-friendly selling
information is something you’ll wish you knew years ago,
and you’ll realise just how much money you left on the
table. Once you’ve read this though, it will ALL change. Do
it now.’

Rob Moore, best-selling property investment author and

co-founder of Progressive Property

‘Simon Hazeldine’s latest book Neuro-Sell is a must read if you

want to know how to increase sales and understand the
science behind why people buy. When you understand the
science of neuro-selling you understand how to best adapt your
approach and as a result you will win more business.
Simon successfully takes the complex issue of how our
brains work and provides an easy-to-understand, practical road
map to give anyone who reads his book a significant advantage
in how to use the science of neuroscience to significantly
increase sales. Great book Simon!’
David Tovey, business development speaker, author of
Principled Selling

‘Simon Hazeldine's Neuro-Sell combines the latest

neuroscience research with hard-won sales experience to
introduce the reader to the power of "brain-friendly selling".
Essential reading if you want to create long-term client
relationships in a world where technology has levelled the
persuasion and influence playing field.’
Jamie Smart, author of
Clarity: Clear Mind, Better Performance, Bigger Results

‘Neuro-Sell is a fascinating and compelling read, which

manages to get the right balance between science and practical
application. It translates leading-edge research into simple,
easy steps and actions that anyone can take to be a more
effective salesperson. Anyone who needs to sell needs to read
this book.’
Heather Townsend, author of
The Financial Times Guide to Business Networking
 Note on the Ebook Edition
For an optimal reading experience, please view large
tables and figures in landscape mode.

This ebook published in 2013 by

Kogan Page Limited
2nd Floor, 45 Gee Street
London EC1V 3RS
UK

www.koganpage.com

© Simon Hazeldine, 2014

E-ISBN 9780749469221

Full imprint details

For KP and TJ as always
Contents

About the author

Foreword
Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The harsh reality facing sales professionals

2 The background to neuroscience and how it applies to

selling

3 A guided tour of your customer’s three brains

The reptilian (old) brain
The emotional (mid-)brain
The rational (new) brain
Mirror neurons

4 The buying process and the buying brain

Go upstream!
A primitive brain in a modern world
Stay away from danger; move towards reward
Neural maps

5 Adaptive selling
Adapting to the nature of the selling situation
6 The PRISM model of human behaviour and adaptive
selling
Brain chemicals
The four quadrants
The four customer colours

7 How to read your customer and how to adapt your style

Observe
Classify
Adapt

8 The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process – the first

phase: Consider
Stage 1: consider

9 The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process – the

second phase: Maximize comfort
Stage 2: comfort part I: connect
Stage 3: comfort part II: chameleon
Stage 4: comfort part III: control

10 The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process – the

third phase: Establish context and catalyse
Stage 5: context and catalyse
Stage 6: check

11 The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process – the

fourth phase: Convince
Stage 7: convince
12 The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process – the fifth
phase: Close the deal
Stage 8: confirm and conclude

13 Some more brain-friendly selling tips

Being memorable
Keeping it simple
Making changes
Using metaphors
Going multi-sensory
Spatial association
Giving the customer’s brain something to complete

14 Body language and the truthful brain

Observing the customer

15 Neuro-negotiating
Why (most) salespeople aren’t good at negotiating
Two distinct skill sets
The importance of feeling comfortable feeling uncomfortable
The five stages of negotiation
The importance of planning and preparation
The four different negotiators
Different negotiation styles
The power/comfort balance
Comfort builders
Power builders
Is the customer lying?

16 Conclusion
References
Further reading
Index
About the author

Simon Hazeldine works internationally as a professional speaker,

performance consultant and corporate trainer in the areas of sales, negotiation,
performance leadership and applied neuroscience. His focus is on inspiring and
enabling exceptional performance and delivering improved bottom-line results
for his clients.

Simon is the best-selling author of five books: Bare Knuckle Selling, Bare
Knuckle Negotiating, Bare Knuckle Customer Service, The Inner Winner and
Neuro-Sell.

He has a Master’s degree in psychology; he is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales

and Marketing Management, a long-standing member of the Professional
Speaking Association and a licensed PRISM Brain Mapping practitioner.

Simon is also the co-founder of www.sellciusonline.com – the leading online

resource for sales professionals.

Simon’s client list includes Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies, and as a
Simon’s client list includes Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies, and as a
highly experienced and in-demand international speaker he has spoken in over
30 countries across six continents.
Foreword

Inknow
my roles as a board chairman and director of nine different companies, I
that to succeed in the modern world of business you need to do a better
job of finding, getting and looking after your customers than your competitors
do.
Although this may seem obvious, it is much easier to say than to do. The
profession of selling needs to be transformed from one populated by far too
many pushy, commission-hungry sales people to one populated by ethical,
customer-centric sales professionals.

This book uses cutting-edge neuroscience research and insight to produce a

highly effective, brain-friendly selling process that is powerful, ethical and
customer friendly.

This groundbreaking book provides powerful cutting-edge insights that will give
you an unfair advantage in selling situations. I particularly like the way that
Simon takes what is clearly a very complex science and communicates it in
easy-to-understand and practical terms that can be easily understood and applied.

Take the lessons from this book, apply them in your business and join the new
world of brain-friendly selling. You’ll be glad you did. And so will your
customers.

Mike Greene
Star of Channel 4 TV programme The Secret Millionaire
Author of Failure Breeds Success and Into the Eye of the Storm
www.mikegreene.co.uk
Acknowledgements

Myproofreading
wife Karen, who in addition to providing countless hours of helpful
is without a doubt the kindest and bravest person I know.
My son Tom for putting up with a dad who has spent far too many weekends
locked away in his study writing this book.

Colin Wallace, PhD, formerly of the US-based Center for Applied Neuroscience,
for all of his support, generosity and input.

My fellow co-founders of www.sellciusonline.com, Phil Jesson and Graham Jones.

Thank you for your help and support and lots of chips.

Sue Richardson for connecting me with Kogan Page in the first place – you are a
superstar!

Mike Speight for the superb photography.

And finally my editor Liz Gooster, who has helped to make this a far better
book.
 Introduction

Ittelevision,
would appear that in our modern world it is not possible to turn on the
read a newspaper or visit a news website without seeing some
reference to neuroscience – the fields of science dealing with the structure and
function of the nervous system and brain. Neuroscience has seen many of its
major discoveries within the last 10 to 15 years, and thanks to powerful neuro-
imaging technology new discoveries are being made on a regular basis.
Neuroscientists are increasingly able to understand how our brains function and
influence our behaviour. And as a result companies are increasingly looking to
neuroscience for a commercial advantage. The list of companies currently
involved in some form of neuroscience research is extensive. They want to
understand how to interest people in their products and services and most
importantly how to influence them to buy.

I am not a neuroscientist. I am an author, speaker and consultant who specializes

in sales performance. Perhaps most importantly, I am an active sales
professional myself. I have my own company, and if I don’t sell successfully my
profits suffer. Although I find the latest neuroscience research to be of interest, I
am a pragmatist. My primary interest in neuroscience is in using it to improve
my ability to sell successfully. The question I asked myself, which led to this
book, was ‘How can I use neuroscience research into how the brain functions so
that I can then use this insight to enable me to sell to my customers (or more
specifically sell to their brains!) more successfully?’ The answer to that question,
which is based on extensive research, lies within the pages of this book.
Although in this book I quote the comments made by a number of eminent
neuroscientists, I should make it clear that the overall interpretation I have given
of the relevant neuroscience is my own.

The human brain is the seat of decision making, where decisions to take action
and go ahead with a purchase or not are located. In this book you are going to
learn how to work positively with the human brain that resides inside your
customer’s head. You will learn how to ensure your sales approach and
methodology are ‘brain-friendly’, which will result in your customer’s brain
becoming increasingly receptive and welcoming of your sales message (and
you!), thereby maximizing your chances of sales success. You will then have a
distinct advantage over your competitors who understand less about how the
brain works. They may have a very ‘brain-unfriendly’ approach that results in
their customer’s brain rejecting them and their sales offer at a very early stage in
the sales process.

I think it is appropriate at this early stage of the book to discuss the concept of
ethics. Undoubtedly there will be some people who are concerned that what
neuroscience is discovering (for example about how people make decisions to
buy certain products) may lead to the ability to manipulate people to take certain
actions, perhaps even against their better will or judgement. Within the pages of
this book you will learn some very powerful principles of persuasion that if
correctly and intelligently applied will significantly enhance your ability to
persuade others to take certain actions. My definition of ‘correctly and
intelligently applied’ involves ensuring that you are adopting a customer-centric
approach to your selling. This is based upon understanding what the customer
needs and deciding if you are able to support the customer in achieving this aim.
It is about helping customers to come to a decision that is right for them. If you
do your job properly, then the majority of the time this will involve customers
choosing your products and services. However, in some cases they would be
better served by someone else, and the faster you discover this the faster you can
move on to a more viable prospect for your products and/or services.
If you wish to succeed in sales in the medium to long term then building a base
of satisfied customers whom you can use for referrals, references and
testimonials should be a major priority. Hence my emphasis is on adopting a
customer-centric sales approach.

The process outlined in this book will help the people you are selling to better
The process outlined in this book will help the people you are selling to better
understand what it is that they need, so that they can make better buying
decisions. To some degree they will be persuading themselves! This can be
achieved by:

asking the right sort of questions that raise potential customers’ awareness
of their requirements;
helping them to understand their decision-making processes;
providing the specific information that they need at each stage of the
decision-making process;
delivering the information they need in a manner that suits their individual
preferences.

When you sell in this manner you are maximizing the chances of the decision
being a favourable one for you too.

Outside of the world of selling a great deal of interaction between human beings
involves some form of persuasion. From persuading an employer to offer you a
job or persuading a well-qualified candidate to join your company, to persuading
your children to behave in a specific manner, to persuading someone you find
attractive to go on a date with you or persuading someone to sponsor you for a
charity fund-raising event, persuasion is a fundamental part of human behaviour.
We are often engaged in the act of persuasion.

Anyone adopting a manipulative approach to selling will rapidly discover that

this produces only very short-term results (you will get caught out at some stage)
and a very bad reputation. And, in today’s highly connected world (as a result of
the rise of developments such as the internet and social media), your bad
reputation may rapidly become apparent. It may also result in you not being
comfortable with the face staring back at you from the bathroom mirror either.

Persuasion expert Dave Lakhani states in his book Persuasion: The Art of
Getting What You Want (2005) that ‘Your intention will ultimately determine
whether you’ve persuaded or manipulated.’ The techniques in this book could be
abused, but that fact alone should not prevent them from being shared with sales
professionals who will use them to help others and in doing so help themselves.
The late Zig Ziglar, the legendary US motivational speaker, expressed it this
way: ‘You can get anything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other
people get what they want.’

Persuading people ethically and helping them to make decisions that truly
benefit them will give you a solid foundation on which to build your future sales.
The methodology outlined in this book will provide you with powerful
persuasion principles that will power your sales success. Leaving people in a
better place than when you met them will guarantee your long-term success in
the sales profession.
 1
The harsh reality facing sales
professionals

Selling has always been a challenging profession. In sales your success, or

lack thereof, is always obvious. Either you succeed in bringing in the
business and hit your target or quota – or you don’t.

It is easier to measure and manage the performance of people in sales than in any
other profession. If you aren’t making your numbers you feel the heat!

We live and work within a capitalist system. Competitive markets are one of the
key components of capitalism. In a capitalist society competition in business is a
fact of life, and history shows that competition tends to increase and get more
intense. For those of us in the sales profession, an increasingly challenging
commercial environment is the reality we have to live with.

And then there are other factors that are adding to the challenge that sales
professionals face:

Economic downturns have hit businesses hard. The effects of recessions

last long after an economy starts to recover. Businesses that have become
more financially cautious as a result of tough economic times do not always
release the purse strings. Many learn to manage with less expenditure than
they did previously and decide to keep it that way.
The rise of globalization with the economic growth of countries such as
Brazil, Russia, India and China has introduced new competition into
Western markets.
Products (and companies) are constantly being replaced by more effective
or cheaper alternatives. Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1950) referred to
this as a process of ‘creative destruction’ and described it as ‘the essential
fact of capitalism’.
Product margins decrease as a result of increased competition, rising
production costs and more aggressive and professional procurement
practices. Over time these factors will erode the profitability of every
product or innovation. An ongoing trend towards commoditization exists in
many markets.
The amount of buyer time allocated to sales professionals is declining (for
example caused by downsizing of procurement departments), driving a
need for sales professionals to be able to maximize the reduced face-to-face
sales time they do manage to secure.
An ongoing trend towards a more participative style of management has led
to a greater empowerment of employees, with greater levels of personal
accountability and a sharing of corporate goals. This helps to develop pride
in expertise and emphasis on quality and doing a good job. This has led to
buyers who take a strong personal interest in driving a hard bargain!
The growing availability of information via internet-based research is
increasingly leading to buyers who are better informed, and therefore
possess greater levels of market knowledge or expertise than previously. An
added complication is that as a result of their research many buyers are
more likely to be misinformed (a little knowledge can be dangerous after
all!), placing an additional demand on sales professionals to develop the
ability to sensitively re-educate buyers.
In order to maintain margins many industries are shifting their marketing
and sales focus from product to services and solutions. This has created a
demand for sales professionals who can make the transition from a
transactional ‘box-shifting’ approach to a consultative ‘value-added’
approach. Many transactional salespeople are struggling to make this
transition.
 Cost of sales is becoming a major concern for many organizations. Personal
selling is the most expensive method of transferring goods and services
from manufacturer to customer and according to research is responsible for
up to 55 per cent of total sales and marketing costs. Surveys show that some
traditional sales methods (such as cold calling) are becoming less effective
(and therefore more expensive) than they used to be.

As a result of the many challenges mentioned above, companies are striving to

maximize the performance of their existing sales force, and sales professionals
are feeling the pressure. Therefore sales professionals need an edge – the latest
neuroscience research is that edge.

In this book you will learn about ‘brain-friendly selling’ that will make the
whole process easier for everyone involved. We can now ensure that our sales
messages are brain-friendly and appeal to the parts of the brain (both conscious
and unconscious) involved in decision making.

Sales professionals are a vital component of a capitalist society – every sale ‘is
capitalism writ small’ (Knight, 2008). Without sales professionals businesses
would fail.

As I am fond of saying in my keynote speeches, ‘In business nothing happens

until someone sells something!’ Selling is one of the most important jobs (if not
the most important!) in the commercial world. My hope is that what you learn
from this book will make that important job just a little easier and bring you
greater levels of success and achievement.

I believe the future of your sales success, and indeed the future of selling, lies
within the three pounds or so of brain cells contained inside your customer’s
head. The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe, so
let us begin by exploring it and understanding it.
 2
The background to neuroscience
and how it applies to selling

Theorganized,
human brain is widely acknowledged as the most complex, flexible, best-
highest-functioning system in the known universe.

Our brains control nearly everything we do. The brain appears to be a relatively
small part of the human body – weighing about 3 pounds and making up about
only 2 per cent of our body weight. However, it is estimated that the human
brain contains 100 million nerve cells known as neurons and uses 20 per cent of
the oxygen we breathe and 20 per cent of the energy we consume. The enormous
consumption of oxygen and energy is required to fuel the many thousands of
chemical reactions that take place in the brain every second. These chemical
reactions underpin our actions and behaviours. This theory is, however,
complicated by many facts: different levels of these chemicals can produce
different effects. These substances do different things in different brain parts.
Each interacts with others in different ways under different circumstances. Each
harmonizes with many other bodily systems and brain circuits, setting up
complex chain reactions.
It should be pointed out that neuroscience is the scientific study of not just the
brain but the rest of the nervous system too. The brain is the central part of the
nervous system. The nervous system allows us to respond to what we experience
in the world around us.
The nervous system has two main divisions. The central nervous system is made
up of the brain and the spinal cord. The nerve fibres that branch out into the
body from the central nervous system form the peripheral nervous system. The
peripheral nerves are constantly sending information to the central nervous
system, which processes it and then sends signals back to the peripheral nervous
system.
This book explores how we can apply knowledge gained from neuroscience
research about how the brain and the rest of the nervous system operate to gain
an advantage in persuading other people to make decisions that benefit
themselves and us as sales professionals as a result.

For the sake of reading ease I shall refer to ‘the brain’ in its widest sense as an
integral part of the wider nervous system. So unless specific reference is made to
a specific part of the nervous system or brain you can assume I am referring to
the wider nervous system.

For decades neuroscientists and neuropsychologists have been researching and

studying the human brain to better understand how it functions and what brain
processes influence our behaviours and actions. Knowledge and understanding
about the brain are growing rapidly, with the vast majority of major discoveries
and knowledge about the brain having been made in the last 10 to 15 years.
More research has been conducted and more published on the brain in this time
period than in the whole of human history.

One of the reasons for this acceleration of knowledge is the availability of brain-
scanning technology such as electroencephalography (EEG), which uses sensors
to capture the tiny electrical signals that brain activity produces. Other
technology includes functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which
measures the increase in oxygen levels in the flow of blood in the brain. This
indicates when activity in specific parts of the brain increases. In short, EEG is
good for knowing when activity happens in the brain and fMRI is good for
knowing where in the brain activity happens.
As a result of such research we are starting to get a deeper understanding of how
the brain functions when it is making decisions. This is an area of great interest
to sales professionals, because our job is to influence people and persuade them
to make decisions and take action. The better able we are to understand how the
brain functions when making decisions to take action, the better able we are to
understand how to tailor our sales approach, messages and behaviour to achieve
the results we want for our clients and ourselves.
We may think that our clients and prospective customers are intelligent, rational
individuals who make well-considered and logical decisions. We may think that
they go through some process of contemplating and considering the features and
benefits of the product or service on offer and process this information in a
logical manner in order to arrive at the decision to proceed. When our clients and
prospective customers don’t make the decision we want them to make we may
consider them to be mistaken and foolish! We know full well what we would
have done in their situation. The answer was obvious – if only they were as
considered and rational as we so obviously are!

However, neuroscience research sheds new light on to how people actually make
decisions, and the truth may shock you:
According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 per cent of our cognitive
activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 per cent of brain
activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness.
(Szegedy-Maszak, 2005)

The vast majority of human thinking (including decision making) takes place
below the level of conscious and controlled awareness – in our unconscious (or
as it is sometimes referred to our subconscious) mind.

Let us define what is meant by the conscious and unconscious mind. Your
conscious mind is your reasoning, objective level of mind. It is the mind you are
aware of when you are fully awake. It is the mind that you consciously ‘think’
with – you are aware of your cognitive (thinking) processes. The unconscious
mind consists of the processes that occur automatically and are not usually
available to self-examination or meta-cognition (‘cognition about cognition’ or
‘knowing about knowing’ or ‘thinking about thinking’) of our thinking
processes. These can include thought processes, memory and motivation. Your
unconscious mind is your automatic, subjective level of mind. It operates below
your level of conscious awareness. It is a mixture of thoughts, emotions,
your level of conscious awareness. It is a mixture of thoughts, emotions,
feelings, memories and other cognitive processes that we are not aware of and
can probably not explain or articulate. You may at times be vaguely aware of
this mental activity that exists outside your conscious awareness. A hunch or
intuition that you struggle to articulate would be an example. And it is such
hunches that may make the difference between customers saying yes or saying
no to your sales proposal.

In this book the unconscious mind, or rather more accurately the cognitive
unconscious, is defined as all of the mental processes that operate outside of
conscious awareness.
To illustrate how the conscious and unconscious mind operate, our senses are
receiving and taking in over 10 million bits of information every second! Our
conscious brain can process only 40 bits of information per second. The rest has
to be processed unconsciously. The unconscious mind will rapidly process these
using an instinctive good/bad short cut interpretation that allows it to pay
attention if required to anything that might threaten or assist survival and well-
being.

This unconscious processing influences feelings, decision making, behaviour

and actions, indeed the vast majority of thoughts and feelings that influence your
customer’s behaviour, and decisions about whether to purchase your product or
service occur in the unconscious mind:
At least 95 per cent of all cognition occurs below awareness in the shadows of the mind while, at most,
only 5 per cent occurs in high-order consciousness.
(Zaltman, 2003)

In addition, emotions are an integral part of people’s decision-making process.

As we will see in the next chapter, although different areas of the brain are
largely responsible for processing emotions and more logical information, these
areas communicate with each other and jointly influence our decision making.
Emotion and reason are intertwined elements of our decision-making process.
They influence and are influenced by each other.
As you will discover in the next chapter, the emotional centre of the brain is one
of the oldest parts of the brain in evolutionary terms and as a result exerts the
primary influence on our thinking and decision-making processes. ‘Most of what
we do every minute of every day is unconscious’ (Paul Whelan, neuroscientist,
University of Wisconsin).

So we now have a greater understanding of what is happening inside people’s

brains when they make buying decisions. We are beginning to understand the
hurdles and challenges the brain presents to sales professionals.

Going forward we will explore how to make our sales approach and process
‘brain-friendly’ to ensure that the buyer’s brain, at both a conscious and an
unconscious level, is open and receptive to our sales message and responds
positively to it. The ‘Neuro-Sell’ process that follows is a brain-based and brain-
friendly approach to selling successfully.

But before we do that I need to take you on a guided tour inside your customer’s
brain – or rather your customer’s three brains – which is what I’ll do in the next
chapter.
 3
A guided tour of your customer’s
three brains

If the human brain were so simple that we could

understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.
(LYALL WATSON, AUTHOR)

Innecessary
order to understand how the brain functions when we are selling to it, it is
to understand something about its structure and how it operates.
Whilst this book has been designed to be highly practical in nature, your ability
to successfully implement the brain-friendly selling strategies it contains will be
enhanced if you have a working knowledge of the human brain. This chapter
will help you to have just that.

Our brain is vital to our existence. It regulates involuntary activities such as

breathing, digestion and heartbeat. It also serves as the seat of human
consciousness, storing memories and enabling us to experience emotions. Our
brain allows us to survive. In addition, as we will explore in Chapter 6, it gives
us our personalities and makes us who we are.

The brain is very complex – indeed as mentioned in Chapter 2 it is the most

complex structure in the known universe! As a result the neuroscientific
language about the brain is also extremely complex.

If you are reading this book then you probably aren’t a neuroscientist (hello and
a warm welcome to any neuroscientists who are reading this book!) but are
someone who is interested in understanding how the brain functions and
operates when it makes decisions to take action so that we can use this insight to
sell easily and more effectively to the brains that we interact with. So what
follows is a simplification of a very complex brain. The brain is an incredibly
complex and interconnected series of networks (the brain has the equivalent of
200,000 miles of ‘wiring’) with incredible capabilities. It contains over 100
billion brain cells called neurons, between 100,000 and 1,000,000 different
chemical reactions are taking place inside it every minute, and it is capable of
making approximately 200 billion calculations per second. New discoveries
about it, how it works and what it is capable of are being made on a regular
basis.
For practical purposes this book will contain many oversimplifications. For
example, if I say that ‘This part of the brain is responsible for X’, then it must be
remembered that no part of the brain acts alone or solely does one thing. All of
the thoughts, emotions and actions we have are the result of many parts of the
brain working and acting together.

Let us make sure we have an effective working knowledge of the brain’s

structure so that we can discover how to sell to it most effectively.

Your customers (and customers-to-be) do not have one brain – they have three
brains (see Figure 3.1):

1. The old brain – this comprises the brainstem and cerebellum and is referred
to as the ‘reptilian brain’, the ‘lizard brain’ or the subcortical brain. This is
the oldest part of the brain (in evolutionary terms). It connects the brain
with the spinal column. For ease of understanding and memory this will be
referred to as the reptilian brain in this book.
2. The mid-brain – this comprises the limbic system (which is described in
detail a little later in this chapter) and can be referred to as the ‘mammalian
brain’, the ‘emotional brain’ and the ‘truthful brain’. For ease of
understanding and memory this will be referred to as the emotional brain in
this book.
 3. The new brain – this comprises the cortex and neocortex and can be
referred to as the ‘human brain’ or ‘rational brain’. For ease of
understanding and memory this will be referred to as the rational brain in
this book.

FIGURE 3.1 Your customer’s three brains

The reptilian (old) brain

The old brain gets its name from the concept that it evolved first in the
evolutionary history of animals on the planet. It evolved more than 500 million
years ago, and it is similar to the entire brain of reptiles today. This is the reason
that it is referred to as the reptilian brain. And, although our brain evolved over
time, the basic elements of it are still intact and form the lowest of the three tiers
of our brain today. This primitive part of the brain is concerned with survival.
Various cells in the brainstem determine the overall alertness level of the brain
and regulate vital body processes such as heartbeat and breathing.

You may at this stage be wondering what this part of the brain has to do with
selling. The answer is: a great deal!
Firstly, all motor and sensory nerves go through the brainstem to the rest of the
body, and it plays a vital role in basic attention arousal and consciousness. For
example, there is a bundle of densely packed nerve cells located in the central
core of the brainstem called the reticular activating system. It runs from the top
core of the brainstem called the reticular activating system. It runs from the top
of the spinal cord into the middle of the brain. In addition to a host of other
functions the reticular activating system is the brain’s chief gatekeeper, which
screens and filters what type of information will be allowed through. Anything
that is deemed as irrelevant is filtered out. It is rather like a PA or secretary who
decides which calls get put through to the CEO.

Only two categories of information are allowed through: 1) information valuable

to have right now; 2) information that alerts you to threat or danger. This
primitive part of the brain has little or no patience if the subject does not
immediately concern well-being and survival. At first contact with a stranger, for
example (such as a first meeting with a new sales professional such as yourself),
it will instantly conduct a threat response and decide if the stranger is friend or
foe. It will also determine if the stranger could be a form of sustenance or a
potential candidate to reproduce with!

It prioritizes survival first (the avoidance of pain and danger) and then achieving
comfort (so it will respond to pain avoidance first). It should be stressed that this
is a mechanical, selfish and unconscious part of our brain.

It does however have a very strong influence. For example, if initial contact with
a salesperson stresses the ‘gatekeeper’ the automatic fight/flight/freeze response
is stimulated. This can happen in a fraction of a second. Part of this process
includes shutting out all other message receptors, which means your opportunity
to communicate is severely limited.

Several of the characteristics of this part of the brain will be referred to in later
chapters as we look at how to make this part of the customer’s brain regard us as
friend (rather than foe), and to classify ourselves and what we are selling as
useful and rewarding and therefore something to be paid attention to.

The emotional (mid-)brain

As the brain evolved the mid-brain or limbic system developed. It is referred to
as the mammalian brain, as it is thought to have first evolved in mammals. This
as the mammalian brain, as it is thought to have first evolved in mammals. This
is where emotions are generated, along with many of the urges (usually
concerned with survival) that direct our behaviour. The limbic system has other
functions also. For example, a part of the brain called the thalamus acts as a
relay station directing incoming sensory information to the appropriate parts of
the brain for further processing.

It is important to realize that although this part of the brain is also unconscious in
function it has a profound effect on us because it links the brainstem with the
higher reasoning functions of the cerebral cortex, and feeds information to it.

The limbic system is a part of the brain that in a similar way to the reptilian brain
reacts reflexively, instantaneously and without thought in real time. It gives off a
true response to information coming in from the environment and plays a key
role in developing and carrying out instinctive emotions and accompanying
behaviours. For that reason it is sometimes referred to as the ‘truthful brain’.

In terms of behaviour it is also the part of the brain that generates our body
language, and as we will see in Chapter 14 a sales professional’s ability to read
and respond according to the customer’s body language is a powerful skill to
master and an important part of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process.

A very active element of the limbic brain is what we can refer to as the ‘fear
system’. This system detects danger and instinctively produces reactions and
behaviour that will maximize your chances of survival. The key part of the brain
that is involved is called the amygdala. These are small regions (your brain
possesses two amygdale – one in each hemisphere) in the forebrain where fear is
registered and generated.
Information about external stimuli reach the amygdala via a direct pathway from
the thalamus (the brain’s relay station mentioned earlier), as well as travelling
via the part of the brain called the cortex, which will be described shortly. As
you may expect, the direct thalamus-to-amygdala route is faster than if the
information goes via the cortex first. In survival terms this is advantageous, as it
allows us to begin to respond to the perceived danger before we know fully what
the stimulus is.
the stimulus is.
If the information travels directly to the amygdala it misses out on the benefit of
cortical processing and will at best be a crude representation of the stimulus.
Most of us will have had the experience of seeing something that our limbic
system perceived as a threat (there is a snake in our garden shed!), which
triggers a fear reaction (for example, our heart rate suddenly increases) and then
once the stimulus has been assessed turns out not to be a threat – the snake turns
out on closer examination to be a piece of rope! And relax…

Again you may at this stage be wondering what this part of the brain has to do
with selling. The answer (again) is: a great deal!
The amygdala has a greater influence on the cortex (where rational, analytical thinking takes place) than
the cortex has on the amygdale, allowing emotional arousal to dominate and control thinking.
(Professor Joseph LeDoux, neuroscientist)

The phrase ‘emotional arousal… dominate[s] and control[s] thinking’ is of great

importance to us as sales professionals. The limbic system can dominate and
control the thinking of your customer.

As mentioned in Chapter 2, the majority of cognition including decision making

is unconscious. To sell effectively we must make sure that we and our sales
messages are ‘brain-friendly’ so that we can arouse the limbic emotional brain in
a way that supports our selling rather than handicaps it. This concept is at the
very heart of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process.

The rational (new) brain

The cortex and neocortex are the newest (in evolutionary terms) parts of the
brain. Because it is responsible for complex thought this part of the brain is
sometimes referred to as the ‘thinking brain’ or the ‘intellectual brain’.
It is this part of the brain with its ability to analyse and interpret data at a level
that is unique to human beings that sets us apart from the rest of the animal
kingdom. This part of the brain processes information received from the senses
and regulates cognitive functions such as thinking, speaking, learning,
remembering and making decisions.
remembering and making decisions.
Although the cerebral cortex of the brain is complicated it basically fulfils four
key functions:

1. Sensing. This is the receipt of sensory signals from the outside world. Each
of the five senses picks up signals and sends them to specific regions of the
brain for each sense. The signals come into the brain as individual pulses of
electrical energy from each of the sensory organs, and these small bits of
information have no meaning to the brain in their raw form. In short, it is
getting information.
2. Integration. This is where the individual signals get added together. The
small bits are merged into larger patterns that become meaningful such as
language and images. In short, it is making meaning of this information.
3. Creating ideas and plans. When the parts have been integrated the sum of
them generates a plan for what action is required and where. In short, it is
creating new ideas.
4. Execution. The motor function then executes these plans of action by
sending motor signals to the muscles, which act in coordinated ways to
create the required movements. In short, it is acting on the ideas.

If you were to look at the brain from above you would see that it has two
hemispheres (which are divided by the longitudinal fissure) (see Figure 3.2), and
it is covered in a thin skin of folded and wrinkled tissue called the cerebral
cortex. If unfolded the cortex would measure about 60 centimetres by 60
centimetres. The two cerebral hemispheres account for approximately 85 per
cent of the brain’s weight.

FIGURE 3.2 The two hemispheres of your customer’s brain

The billions of neurons in these two hemispheres are connected by bundles of
nerve cell fibres called the corpus callosum, which constantly transfers
information backwards and forwards between them. Information arriving in one
hemisphere is almost instantly available to the other hemisphere, and their
responses are closely harmonized to provide what appears to be a seamless
perception of the outside world. Some research suggests that the corpus callosum
is more developed in the female brain, with many more neurons connecting the
left and right hemispheres, enabling the female brain to move between the
processing capabilities of each of the hemispheres more easily than the male
brain.
Although not identical, to a large extent each of the hemispheres is a physical
mirror image of the other. The function of the hemispheres has been the subject
of much interest and research by neuroscientists. Each hemisphere appears to
possess its own special skills, strengths and weaknesses, and its own way of
processing information.

Perhaps as a result of the excitement and interest generated by research into the
difference between the left and right hemispheres, an oversimplified view of
hemispheric functioning emerged and became popular. A series of far-too-rigid
dichotomies emerged that ascribed various functions solely to the left (logic,
science, reason, cognition) and right (art, creativity, intuition, emotion)
science, reason, cognition) and right (art, creativity, intuition, emotion)
hemispheres. While neuroscience has moved far beyond this, the
oversimplification still persists in the wider public perception. The concept of
such a rigid divide between the functions of the left and right hemisphere is a
myth, and a popular myth at that!

Brain regions have certain functions because of the integrated brain systems that
they are a part of. These functions are properties of these integrated systems
rather than of isolated areas of the brain. Mental functions involve
interconnected regions of the brain acting together.

That being said, research shows that the two hemispheres do have specific ‘hard-
wired’ functions that under normal circumstances will always tend to develop in
a particular hemisphere. The brain is very malleable or plastic and can be
influenced by environmental factors, so some brains do end up being organized
in very different ways.

Although the concept of such a rigid divide between the functions of the two
hemispheres is too simplistic, and the constant interaction between the
hemispheres makes it challenging to pinpoint what is happening where, brain
imaging shows us that the suitability of the hemispheres to specific functions or
skills is approximately as is popularly understood – although these functions and
skills are not as rigidly divided to one hemisphere or the other as many people
believe. Under normal circumstances certain skills will tend to develop on a
particular side of the brain. It is believed that the different processing styles and
structure (there are subtle differences between some neurons on the left and right
side of the brain) of the two hemispheres influence the various functions that
they tend to perform.
The left hemisphere is often described as analytical, as it is suited to recognizing
the parts that make up the whole. It appears to specialize in linear processing,
which is sequential, moving from one point to another in a step-by-step manner.
It is analytical, logical and precise. This makes it suitable for thinking about and
implementing detailed plans. It is seen to be more calculating than the right brain
and has an affinity for whatever is mechanical and impersonal. It needs certainty
and to be right.

The right hemisphere is often described as holistic, as it is suited to combining

the parts to make a whole. It appears to specialize in parallel or simultaneous
processing, integrating individual parts or components and organizing them into
a whole. It seeks patterns and gestalts (an organized whole) and is interested in
relationships. It is seen to be more emotional than the left brain. It has an affinity
for whatever is living and personal. The right hemisphere makes it possible to
hold several possibilities simultaneously, and it is able to tolerate uncertainty.
Abilities such as empathy and self-awareness are largely dependent upon the
right hemisphere. In general it is more closely connected with the limbic system
and is involved in the experience of emotion.
The right hemisphere is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The left hemisphere is predominantly
hard-wired for systemizing.
(Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, University of Cambridge)
The right hemisphere is particularly adept at processing novel information and the left hemisphere is
particularly adept at processing routine, familiar information.
(Professor Elkhonon Goldberg, Clinical Professor of Neurology, New York University School of Medicine)

Each of the hemispheres is divided into four cortical lobes (occipital, parietal,
temporal and frontal). The frontal lobes are divided from the parietal, occipital
and temporal lobes by the central sulci and the lateral fissure. The regions of the
brain that predominantly receive sensory information are located behind the
central sulcus and lateral fissure in the occipital, parietal and temporal lobes. The
occipital lobes lie at the back of the brain and are made up almost entirely of
visual processing areas. The temporal lobes are situated around the ears and deal
with sound, speech comprehension (usually in the left hemisphere only) and
some aspects of memory. The parietal lobes sit above the occipital lobes and
deal with functions connected with movement, orientation, calculation and
certain types of recognition. In front of the parietal lobe sit the frontal lobes,
which deal with thinking, conceptualizing and planning.
There is a functional difference between the front and back of the cortex.
Sensory information from the outside world goes predominantly to the sensory
cortex in the back of the brain. This part of the cortex is involved in long-term
memory and where the brain maps our knowledge of the world. It contains data
from the past and is where connections between different experiences are made.
This large region at the back of the brain (encompassing the occipital, parietal
and temporal lobes) is not just an area for processing sensory information; it is
also where information from the various senses is associated and integrated
together for higher-order processing.
The rear half of the brain is described by PRISM Brain Mapping (which will
feature extensively in Chapter 6) as the ‘database brain’.

The front of the cortex is where some of the most advanced functions of the
brain are performed. These are sometimes referred to as the ‘executive
functions’ of the brain. It is here that thoughts are organized so that they make
sense, things are weighed and considered, decisions to take action (or not) are
made, plans are developed and progress is monitored. This is the part of the
cortex that is active in creating ideas and solving problems. The front of the
cortex is more orientated to the future.

A key section of the brain involved in the above activities is called the prefrontal
cortex. This is a section of the outer layer of the brain that sits behind the
forehead. It was the last major region of the brain to evolve. Although it
accounts for approximately only 5 per cent of the brain’s volume, it is the key
part of the brain that gives human beings such an advantage as a species. The
prefrontal cortex coexists with the limbic system in a delicate balance. It is the
prefrontal cortex that acts to restore the balance when emotions get stirred up
and potentially out of control. In times of emergency and great stress the
emotional limbic system takes control of the brain.
Although we live in modern times, our brain has not changed significantly for
100,000 years and at an unconscious level can treat modern-day stressful
situations that are clearly not life-threatening as a threat. When this happens the
limbic system becomes dominant and the rational cortex is not able to function
as effectively as would be helpful.
As we shall see as we go forward this can be very important to our success as
As we shall see as we go forward this can be very important to our success as
sales professionals in closing the sale!

Mirror neurons
Now that you have an understanding of your customer’s three brains, I would
like to explore one of the most fascinating discoveries in neuroscience – mirror
neurons. They were discovered by neuroscientist Dr Giacomo Rizzolati from the
University of Parma in Italy. Dr Rizzolati and his team were conducting
experiments in motor neurons (motor neurones are neurones that carry signals
from the spinal cord to the muscles to produce movement) and were being
helped by some monkeys whose brain activity was being monitored. One day a
lab assistant returned from a break eating an ice cream. A monkey who was also
taking a break from participating in experiments was just sitting in a relaxed
manner. As the monkey observed the ice cream being consumed, electrical
activity in its brain was triggered as though it was actually consuming the ice
cream. This included making the physical movements required, for example
lifting its arms to raise the ice cream to its mouth despite the fact that the
monkey was not eating but only watching.
Rizzolati’s interest was aroused, and his team developed a series of studies. In
one study, when a monkey saw another monkey or a human eat a peanut, the
neurons in the monkey’s brain fired as if it was also eating the peanut. Time after
time, neurons in the prefrontal cortex reacted to the perception of the actions that
were observed.

The theory about mirror neurons is that, when you watch someone perform an
action, for example participating in a particular sport, you automatically simulate
the action in your brain. However, it is not just the physical action that is
simulated. Mirror neurons appear to be able to reproduce or mimic almost
anything we experience, including the emotions another person is feeling. If you
observe a group of sports fans watching their favourite team you will see them
physically tensing up, moving, wincing, cheering and smiling as their mirror
neurons respond to the action on the pitch. They respond almost as if they were
playing the sport themselves.
To continue the sporting theme, interestingly our mirror neurons react when we
see a ball being kicked, when we just hear a ball being kicked and even when we
say the word ‘kick’ or hear it being said.

When watching a movie in the cinema or a play in the theatre we see actors use
emotions to express how their characters are feeling, and our mirror neurons
inspire the same feelings in us, moving us emotionally to be excited, thrilled, sad
or happy.

On the PBS television programme NOVA scienceNOW (PBS, 2005), presenter

Robert Krulwich participated in an experiment with Professor Marco Iacaboni
from UCLA where he looked at a series of photographs of different facial
expressions whilst having his brain scanned by an fMRI machine. In the first
part of the experiment Krulwich was asked to physically mimic the facial
expressions he saw. In the second part of the experiment Krulwich was asked
just to look at the photographs of the facial expressions and remain motionless.

The results showed that the part of Krulwich’s brain that was activated when he
made a facial expression was also activated when he only saw the facial
expression but didn’t mimic it. In addition when he saw a happy face the ‘happy
emotional part’ of his brain activated, even when he made no facial expression
himself. When he did mimic the facial expression the relevant part of the brain
became even more active. Professor Iacoboni believes that mirror neurons can
send messages to the limbic system and enable us to tune into, empathize with
and connect with each other’s feelings.
Mirror neurons are also believed to be a very powerful learning system, where
we can rapidly learn from others as mirror neurons respond when observing
them performing certain behaviours. Mirror neurons are sometimes referred to as
the ‘monkey see monkey do neurons’.
A further theory is that mirror neurons are a powerful predictive survival system,
as articulated by Dr Giacomo Rizzolati: ‘Our survival depends on understanding
the actions, intentions and emotions of others… Mirror neurons allow us to
the actions, intentions and emotions of others… Mirror neurons allow us to
grasp the minds of others not through conceptual understanding but through
direct simulation. By feeling, not by thinking’ (Blakeslee, 2006).

So we have seen that the human brain possesses multiple mirror neuron systems
that specialize in understanding people’s actions, the social meaning of their
behaviour, their emotions and their intentions.

Professor Iacaboni strongly believes that mirror neurons provide a unifying

mechanism that allows people to connect at a simple level. As he states, ‘Mirror
neurons suggest that we pretend to be in another person’s mental shoes. In fact,
with mirror neurons we do not have to pretend; we practically are in another
person’s mind’ (Than, 2005).

We will return to the fascinating subject of mirror neurons and how they may
apply to selling effectively in Chapter 9.

This concludes our tour of your customer’s three brains, and many of the themes
from this chapter will be referred to as this book progresses. In the next chapter
we will explore the process our customers (and their brains) go through when
they buy something.
 4
The buying process and the
buying brain

There is a process involved in selling successfully. Indeed selling is a process.

Some of the clients that I work with have a structured sales process that their
sales leadership encourage and train their salespeople to use.

A more common situation I encounter is that the clients I work with don’t have a
sales process (or at least they don’t have until I get involved!). Their salespeople
do the best that they can and to some degree they ‘make it up as they go along’.
They will have some approach that they follow, but it is likely to be largely
unconscious and based upon historical trial and error. Although there will be
successful salespeople within companies that have not adopted a structured sales
process, their success will be more as a result of accident than design. In general,
an underperforming sales force is the result of all categories of salespeople from
underperformers to those at the top of the sales league table never fulfilling their
true sales potential.
The degree of success that salespeople experience is often directly related to
their ability to follow a tried and tested and proven sales process. When a proven
sales process is followed correctly the result is increased sales.
In Chapter 8 you will be introduced to a cutting-edge ‘brain-friendly’ selling
process – but more of that later!
An even more concerning situation is that I can count on the fingers of one hand
the number of clients I initially encounter whose sales process is orientated
around and to the customer’s buying process. If we pause for a moment to
consider then this can be seen to be a concerning situation. The salespeople will
be orientating their sales process (if indeed they have a conscious process) to
their own aims and agenda. They will be largely viewing the sales process from
their perspective. It is a sales process that they, in some way, take the customer
through. The focus is largely on the result that the salesperson wants to achieve.

This is concerning because the customer is the most important person in the
sales interaction. For a start, customers are the ones with the money! It is
customers who will make the final decision whether to buy from you or not, and
they will do so only if they believe that the purchase will benefit them in
achieving their aims and objectives. It would therefore make sense to consider
things from their perspective, wouldn’t it?

I am aware that there will be some experienced sales professionals who are
reading this and getting somewhat offended that I am implying they are not
customer focused. I am not implying that you are not customer focused – I am
implying that you are not customer focused enough!
If you don’t do so already, I am going to invite you to consider the sales process
in terms of the customer’s buying process. Let us assume the customer’s
perspective, identify the process the customer will be going through when
moving towards a purchase decision and then align our selling process to match
the customer’s buying process. In doing this we will be providing customers
with whatever it is they need to move through their buying process to a
successful conclusion. When this is done well the successful conclusion will
usually involve making the decision to purchase from you.

So, if successful sales professionals orientate their sales process so that it aligns
with and follows the customer’s buying process, then what does the customer’s
buying process look like? To illustrate let me use an example that most people
will have experienced of purchasing a new electrical item such as a television,
laptop, tablet or smart phone. This is a reasonably significant purchase for most
people and therefore will usually not be a rapid, impulse purchase (although
there are always exceptions!).
Firstly, you identify that you have a problem. For example, your current
television breaks down, your laptop’s performance starts to slow down or you
become aware that your current phone is now looking rather dated as against the
newer models your friends possess. You will then go through a process of
identifying a possible solution to your problem. You may conduct some research
online, read some magazines that contain useful information, ask your friends
for their advice, visit one or more retailers to browse or ask the salespeople in a
store for their advice. Depending on the purchase and your personality (more on
this later!) this may be a short or a long step in your buying process. Using the
information you have gleaned, you will then refine this and identify your
preferred solution to your problem. For example, the model of smart phone you
want is decided or the specification of your new tablet is defined. You will then
identify potential suppliers and may request pricing quotations from them and
compare and contrast these to determine where to place your business. You may
choose to use the information you have gleaned to negotiate with more than one
supplier, perhaps playing one off against the other. You will then make your
final buying decision and purchase your desired item. Once you have taken
possession you will evaluate your purchase against the criteria or specification
you decided you wanted.

This is a fairly simple and straightforward process, which most of us will have
been through as consumers many times. You may also have experienced, as I
have a number of times with well-known high street electrical retailers, being at
a relatively early stage in the buying process (such as gathering information on
possible options), only to encounter a salesperson in the store whose sole focus
seemed to be to get you to buy something as fast as possible – perhaps by
pushing you towards that week’s ‘never to be repeated special offer’. The
salesperson was clearly much further ahead in your buying process than you
were, which is very annoying and, although driven by an understandably strong
desire to get the sale closed as quickly as possible, very unprofessional.
At an individual level it will vary from person to person how conscious and
considered the buying process is. For example, you will recall from Chapter 2
that up to 95 per cent of brain activity, including decision making, takes place
beyond conscious awareness. However, I would suggest that the process outlined
will, to some degree, be followed for significant purchases.
Where larger-scale buying (in terms of the amount of money involved or the
strategic importance of the purchasing decision) is taking place then a more
delineated and formal procurement process will usually be followed. The
common steps are not dissimilar to those of the personal buying process outlined
above and will usually consist of some variation of the following:

1. Identify the need or problem or become aware that a need or problem

exists.
2. Identify possible solution characteristics.
3. Search for possible suppliers of a solution.
4. Request solution proposals from one or more suppliers.
5. Analyse the solution proposals.
6. Evaluate the solution proposals to determine the preferred supplier.
7. Negotiate terms with the chosen supplier.
8. Award the contract.
9. Integrate and induct the supplier.
10. Review the supplier’s performance.

If customers have an identified and structured buying process then they will
usually share this with you. Your task then is to align your sales process to
customers’ buying processes, providing them with exactly what they need at the
time they need, therefore making the sale much easier. An awareness of
customers’ buying processes allows you to get ahead of the game and be well
prepared as each stage presents itself.

If, as is often the case, customers do not have a formal or conscious buying
process then it is important to elicit the process they will go through. As 95 per
cent of brain activity is unconscious, customers may have an unconscious or
instinctive process they will follow, and it can be helpful to both them and you if
instinctive process they will follow, and it can be helpful to both them and you if
you can make this more conscious. Asking questions to elicit their (largely)
unconscious process will be useful. Examples include:

‘What process will you follow to make your decision?’

‘How will you be making your decision about what is right for you?’
‘How will you go about selecting the right solution or supplier?’

Helping customers to get clarity about how they will make their purchasing
decision will add value to the customers and help to position you as a credible,
helpful and useful supplier.

Go upstream!
It is best practice to become involved in the buying process as early as possible.
If, for example, you can get involved in the first stages of need or problem
identification and identification of possible solution characteristics then you will
be best placed to influence and shape customers’ understanding of what they
need. We will return to this subject when we look at the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-
friendly selling process in Chapter 8.

Having defined a typical buying process we can now go one step further and
integrate what we understand about how the brain works when it is making
buying decisions.

A primitive brain in a modern world

To fully understand how the brain operates when making buying decisions it is
important to realize that approximately 100,000 years ago our brain reached its
current form and size. Our brains, though highly adaptable, haven’t developed or
changed a great deal in the last 100,000 years, so although we live in a modern
(compared to our primitive ancestors) and very safe world a lot of our brain
function (particularly our unconscious brain functioning) is designed to ensure
our survival, as was outlined in Chapter 3.

Our brain is attuned to achieving this task. It evolved at a time when food could
be scarce, and if you wanted to stay alive you had to be able to hunt effectively,
rapidly spot danger, and distinguish between friend and foe. In addition, you
wanted to ensure the ongoing survival of your species, so finding a suitable mate
and reproduction were also high on the agenda – so in some ways not a lot has
changed!

This has great ramifications when we are considering how best to sell to our
customer’s brain. As mentioned earlier, most of our decisions, actions, emotions
and behaviour depend on the 95 per cent of brain activity that takes place beyond
our conscious awareness. Although we may like to consider ourselves (and our
customers) as intelligent, rational and logical thinkers and decision makers, in
reality most of the thoughts and feelings that exert an influence on us occur in
the more primitive, unconscious areas of our brains. Whilst we (and our
customers) may like to think that we make very considered and conscious
decisions, and that we follow a structured process where we carefully consider
the key attributes and criteria a product or service may deliver to us, this forms
only a relatively small part of how we make decisions.

We need to be aware that in the human brain decision making occurs at two (at
least) levels – in the more evolved and rational cortex and in the more primitive
subcortical area in the limbic and reptilian brain.
In reality, people’s emotions are closely interwoven with reasoning processes. Although our brains have
separate structures for processing emotions and logical reasoning, the two systems communicate with
each other and jointly affect our behaviour. Even more important, the emotional system – the older of the
two in terms of evolution – typically exerts the first force on our thinking and behaviour. More important
still, emotions contribute to, and are essential for, sound decision making… Indeed, decision making
hinges on the simultaneous functioning of reason and emotion.
(Zaltman, 2003)

The older parts of the brain exert a powerful influence on our behaviour. Our
brains process the vast majority of the data received from our senses
unconsciously, and the primitive parts of the brain can and do react
unconsciously to stimuli in a matter of milliseconds. This is much faster than the
rational cortex. At its core the brain is very emotional, the cortex and the limbic
rational cortex. At its core the brain is very emotional, the cortex and the limbic
system coexist in a delicate balance and the immense power of the more
primitive parts of the brain cannot be overlooked if we want to sell successfully
to it. The limbic system will react faster and before the cortex and therefore can
hugely influence how the brain is functioning and therefore how receptive it will
be to your sales message.
In Chapter 8 we will discover how to approach a customer in a ‘brain-friendly’
manner so that the brain accepts, rather than rejects, us and our sales message.

Stay away from danger; move towards reward

A fundamental organizing and operating principle of your brain that drives your
thinking, behaviour and action is to avoid and move away from anything that is
perceived to be painful, dangerous or threatening, and to move towards anything
that is pleasurable, comforting or rewarding. At its core this is a hard-wired
survival instinct of the human brain. It has played a vital role in our evolution,
and although it may not always be as practically useful in our safe, modern
world it is still driving our behaviour and that of our customers.
Everything you do in life is based on your brain’s determination to minimise danger or maximise reward.
Minimise danger, maximise reward is the organising principle of the brain.
(Gordon, 2000)

Although the ‘stay away’ and the ‘towards reward’ drives are active all the time
in the human brain, it is the ‘away from’ drive that is stronger and faster. If we
consider the almost constant danger our primitive ancestors experienced in their
environment it makes evolutionary sense to prioritize keeping us safe from
injury or loss of life by giving this drive a stronger limbic response. It is very
rare for the vast majority of people in our modern society to be exposed to
genuine threat of injury or death. However, the hard-wired ‘away from’ survival
instinct is still constantly active.
Situations or stimuli that appear to be or are coded by the brain as threatening
can also trigger the ‘away from’ response. These include a loss of control, loss of
approval, loss of status or standing, walking into a room of strangers, speaking in
approval, loss of status or standing, walking into a room of strangers, speaking in
public, change that is imposed upon us, losing our jobs and, in the case of a
customer when making a buying decision, fearing that a salesperson may con or
trick us in some way into making an unwise buying decision. In addition,
meeting a stranger for the first time can trigger a threat response in the human
brain.

Although few of these scenarios are truly threatening in terms of injury or death
the reptilian and emotional parts of the brain do not have the capacity for logic
and analysis. It is instinctive and automatic, and many stimuli will be
categorized as posing a threat by this part of the brain. Speaking in front of a
large group of people is an example that many people will be able to identify
with.

If the threat response is triggered, resources of glucose and oxygen will be drawn
away from the customer’s prefrontal cortex, making it more difficult for the
customer to make decisions and think about new ideas and concepts. The
customer’s brain is more likely to revert to automatic or unconscious processes
and err on the side of caution in order to minimize risk.

Rewards that the brain is interested in will include food, sex, relationships and
connection with others, approval from others, satisfaction from achievement (the
brain is goal orientated), certainty, happiness and contentment. On a moment-by-
moment basis your brain is constantly scanning your environment, looking for
signs of danger or opportunities for reward. So as your customers proceed
through the various stages of the buying process their brains will be constantly
seeking signs of perceived danger or reward.

At a conscious and particularly unconscious level customers’ brains will be

moving away from pain and towards reward questions such as: ‘Does this ease
my pain, solve my problems, ease my frustrations, reduce my stress, keep my
job safe, get my boss off my back, stop me getting sacked or stop me looking
stupid, incompetent or incapable?’ ‘Does this bring me pleasure, make me look
good, get me approval, get me some more time, make me more money, help me
to achieve results, help me make a wise decision, make me positively
recognized, help me achieve my targets, get me my bonus or get me promoted?’
We will return to using these two powerful driving forces to close more sales in
Chapter 11.

Neural maps
As described earlier, our brains contain somewhere in the region of 100 billion
nerve cells called neurons (see Figure 4.1), which create brain activity by
carrying an electrical signal from one neuron to another. Each neuron can
connect with up to 10,000 neighbouring neurons. The parts of the neurons that
join up are rather like branches, and there are two kinds – axons, which conduct
signals away from the neuron, and dendrites, which receive incoming
information. The part of the neuron that does the connecting is called the
synapse – each neuron can have many synapses. Information is communicated
across a tiny gap where each axon meets a dendrite, called the synapse.

FIGURE 4.1 A neuron

In order for electrical signals to cross the synaptic gap, each axon secretes brain
chemicals called neurotransmitters, which are released into the gap when the
neuron is suitably ‘fired up’. The neurotransmitters trigger the neighbouring
neurons to fire up too. A chain-like effect is produced simultaneously in millions
of neurons that are connected together.
The brain is an incredibly busy place, with 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion
synapses communicating information with each other. The synapses that
communicate with each other the most frequently, communicating the same
message repeatedly, become stronger. The synapses that communicate less
frequently become weaker. The connections that are made between neurons can
be thought of as pathways. Information flows quickly and easily along old-
established pathways. A fresh pathway information flow will be slower and
more difficult and use more energy. This is why learning a new skill takes more
effort than performing a skill you have mastered. If you are an experienced
driver you will find driving your car to be a relatively effortless task. If you are a
learner driver you may find yourself exhausted at the end of a one-hour driving
lesson. The brain is designed to be energy-efficient, so established pathways and
automatic processes will tend to become the brain’s default, as they use less
resource than establishing new pathways.

Despite the commonly used metaphor the brain is nothing like a computer! It
does not process information or assemble thoughts and feelings from individual
bits of data such as strings of digits. The myriad of neural pathways in the brain
combine to create mental frameworks or patterns that we can usefully think of as
‘maps’ – they are sometimes referred to as ‘schemas’. These ‘maps’ or
arrangements of neurons represent entire ‘chunks’, concepts or templates of
knowing, perceiving or cognition. Most cognitive functions involve the
interaction of such maps from many different parts of the brain at once. The
brain assembles perceptions by the simultaneous interaction of whole ‘maps’,
relating one whole map to another and looking for similarities, differences or
relationships between them.
At one level these can be thought of as mental structures of preconceived ideas,
organized patterns of thought or a framework that represents various aspects of
the world we inhabit. They are very useful, as they allow us to navigate through
our everyday environment without effortful processing – this uses minimal brain
resources, saving energy for other tasks. For example, everybody has a map of
how doors work. The map will be a generalization about the function of doors
(to facilitate our entry to and exit from buildings, for example) and how they
operate (they move in one of two directions, inwards and outwards, and entry
into the desired building is by either pushing or pulling as appropriate). The
appropriate action can be determined by either observing other people using the
door in advance of you or by looking for helpful signs that indicate the
appropriate action required. This very useful map allows us to move in and out
of the buildings we inhabit using the minimum amount of brain resource.
Imagine how much mental energy you would use if you consciously had to
assess and analyse every door that you encountered on a day-to-day basis!
We use our maps to organize our current knowledge, which provides us with a
framework for future understanding. The maps provide us with a system of
organizing and perceiving new information. The way we understand something
new (a new door in a new building we have never visited before) is to link it into
an existing map or framework. We will tend to rapidly organize new perceptions
into existing maps, allowing us to act with minimal effort.

Now for the bad news about maps! Firstly, our brains are far more likely to
notice things that fit into our current maps. This can influence and inhibit the
uptake of new information. This proactive interference can be seen, for example,
in the many generalizations and stereotypes that human beings use in the course
of their day-to-day life. Some of these (as in the case of the door example) are
highly useful, whereas others can dramatically inhibit people considering new
ideas, ways of working, innovation and so on. The brain’s default is to stick with
what is known, as this consumes fewer energy resources and gives the brain a
sense of certainty, which is important to a brain that has evolved to survive in a
hostile and challenging primitive environment!
In addition, as mentioned above, when we are trying to understand new ideas,
thoughts or concepts we will attempt to connect the new thing with our existing
structure. We attempt to understand the new with reference to the content of our
existing maps. This content will be gleaned from and referenced to past
experiences.

So, when our customers are making a buying decision, they will be processing
So, when our customers are making a buying decision, they will be processing
the potential new purchase in relation to data that are currently stored within the
content of their existing map frameworks. This can make the selling of new
concepts or ideas challenging. It can be difficult enough at a conscious level, but
if we then add the challenge that 95 per cent of cognition, including decision
making, occurs at an unconscious level the scale of the challenge is clear.
To succeed we will need to be able to ‘speak’ to and work with all three of a
customer’s brains at each stage of the buying process. The salespeople who are
likely to be the most effective will work with the cortex, where more rational
thought takes place, and be sensitive to the huge influence the subcortical area
(the reptilian and limbic brain) has on the customer’s decision-making process.
As we move through the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process this book
will explore and expose you to how to do exactly that.
 5
Adaptive selling

Infits-all
the past, salespeople were often trained to follow a very standard one-size-
sales presentation or sales script. The idea was that the standard
presentation or script contained tried and tested selling techniques that would
persuade the prospective customer to say ‘yes’. This approach was symptomatic
of the more traditional, transactional ‘push’ style of selling that was prevalent in
the past. It is sometimes referred to as ‘spray and pray’ or ‘show up and throw
up’. That is, you deliver your standard sales message to every prospective
customer and hope that sometimes it will get you a positive result.

As the world of selling evolved, perhaps in response to customers becoming

more educated and resistant to the standard and all-too-common ‘push’
approach, a shift towards a more consultative and tailored approach to sales
became more common. The salesperson spent more time understanding the
customer’s context, circumstances and challenges so that a more customized
solution could be devised that would more accurately reflect the customer’s
unique needs. This is sometimes referred to as a ‘pull’ approach, as the
information the salesperson requires and, to varying degrees, the structure of the
solution are ‘pulled’ or elicited from the customer.
More and more salespeople began to be trained in consultative selling
techniques, and on the whole these have proved to be more effective than the
traditional ‘push’ approach. In addition, more and more customers have
experienced the consultative approach and have come to expect it and prefer it.
Criticism has sometimes been levelled at the more consultative approach that it
is a lengthier and more time-consuming approach. Salespeople using a
consultative approach have been criticized for being too customer-orientated and
lacking the ability to challenge their customers and drive the sale to a
conclusion.
So it would appear that broadly speaking we have two approaches to selling. In
my opinion debating the validity of the two approaches is short-sighted. What
we appear to have is a continuum of selling styles and approaches ranging from,
at one extreme, a ‘push’ or ‘hardball’ approach to, at the other extreme, a highly
consultative ‘pull’ approach. To debate the superiority of these two extremes
adopting an either/or approach is to my mind a very narrow and unproductive
exercise. What will be more productive and useful is to explore an approach to
selling that is practical, flexible in approach (avoiding either a one-size-fits-all or
an either/or approach and indeed incorporating the best of each approach as
required) and most importantly proven to improve sales performance. Allow me
to introduce you to – adaptive selling!

When using adaptive selling, salespeople flex, alter and vary their selling
approach depending upon:

1. the nature of the selling situation;

2. the stage of the buying process that the customer is currently in;
3. the specific interests and needs that the customer has in relation to the
product or service in question;
4. the personality and buying style of the customer, as adaptive salespeople
will tailor their questioning, probing, sales presentation and closing
methodology based on the customer’s behavioural preference, and will also
respond to feedback (both verbal and non-verbal) that they receive from the
individual and adapt accordingly.

Adaptive selling is a practical and powerful approach to selling. Indeed research

has demonstrated that the practice of adaptive selling is welcomed by
salespeople and has been shown to increase their sales performance. A research
paper by James Maxham at Louisiana State University concluded that:
 In the midst of increased competition and rising training costs, management should consider
incorporating adaptive sales training into their training structure. Salespeople in this study buy into
adaptive selling as an effective method. It has been shown to increase sales performance, and salespeople
have indicated in this study that more adaptive sales training is necessary, in relation to other training
topics.
(Maxham, 1997)

The theory behind adaptive selling is that the successful outcome of a selling
situation is determined by both the customer’s deliberation of the benefits of the
product or service being offered and the customer’s experience during the sales
interaction. The salesperson’s ability to create the right chemistry, rapport and
connection with the customer will be as important as the ability to communicate
the key benefits of the proposal to the customer.

Neuroscience research into how the brain functions would support this thinking.
As we saw in earlier chapters, reason and emotion are intertwined elements of
our decision-making process. They influence and are influenced by each other.
Adaptive selling is an approach that acknowledges the importance of both reason
and emotion with regard to selling successfully.

This chapter outlines the core elements of adaptive selling, so that you can
successfully incorporate these into your sales approach, which in turn will lead
to improved sales results.

Adapting to the nature of the selling situation

There are certain ways in which salespeople may have to adapt, dependent upon
the nature of the selling situation they face. These may include the factors
detailed in the following sections.
Industry or sector
The structure of specific industries can lead to salespeople needing to adapt their
approach in order to be successful; for example, there may be specific
constraints, such as legal requirements or distribution channels. In addition,
specific industries or sectors will possess different characteristics, such as their
relative speed or competitiveness, which will drive the need to adapt
accordingly.
The size of the sale in question will also have an influence over the salesperson’s
behaviour. For example, a large transaction may require a more in-depth and
detailed sales approach, perhaps within the formality of a structured tender
process, whereas a smaller transaction may be able to be dealt with more
quickly. In some industries the sales cycle will be short and in some it will be
long, and salespeople have to adapt their approach accordingly.

It is not within the scope of this book to go into the intricacies of a myriad of
different industries and sectors. Readers who are experienced in their industry or
sector will already understand where and how they need to adapt accordingly. If
you are new to your industry or sector then building your knowledge of how it
operates and its structure and methodologies should be a high priority for you so
that you can adapt accordingly.
If you are selling directly to the consumer rather than business to business then
again a certain degree of adaptation will be required, dependent upon the nature
of the product or service you are selling. Generally speaking, the higher the
value of the transaction, the more care and deliberation customers are likely to
take when making their purchasing decision. For ‘big-ticket’ purchases more
consideration will have to be given to eliciting and then aligning to the buying
process that the customer will follow.

I will assume that you possess the necessary knowledge (or are currently
engaged in a rapid learning process if you do not!) to adapt your sales approach
to your industry or sector, so that we can look at the other three key areas of
sales adaptation.
sales adaptation.

The stage of the buying process that the customer is

currently in
In Chapter 4 I outlined the typical stages in a customer’s buying process:

1. Identify the need or problem or become aware that a need or problem

exists.
2. Identify possible solution characteristics.
3. Search for possible suppliers of a solution.
4. Request solution proposals from one or more suppliers.
5. Analyse the solution proposals.
6. Evaluate the solution proposals to determine the preferred supplier.
7. Negotiate terms with the chosen supplier.
8. Award the contract.
9. Integrate and induct the supplier.
10. Review the supplier’s performance.

And as previously mentioned it is very important to adapt our selling approach at

each stage of the customer’s buying process so that we align our selling process
to the customer’s buying process. If you understand customers’ buying processes
then you will be able to provide them with whatever they need (eg information,
specification, pricing) at the stage that they need it. This will allow customers to
move through their buying process as quickly as possible, which means that the
deal is closed as quickly as possible. This is good news for both customer and
salesperson.
In addition, if you understand customers’ buying processes and when each stage
is likely to occur then you can anticipate what will be required so that you can
prepare thoroughly for each stage in advance of it occurring. You will also then
be in a better position to influence customers as they proceed through the buying
process. The earlier you are involved, the more influence you have. For example,
process. The earlier you are involved, the more influence you have. For example,
if you are involved at a very early stage then you may even be the trigger that
initiates customers becoming aware that they have a need or problem in the first
place.

That being said, it is more common for customers to have some idea that they
have a problem or need. However, by being involved at a very early stage you
are able to help them to explore the nature of their problem, help them to become
fully cognizant of the costs or implications of the problem, and influence their
thoughts on what a potential solution may look like.

If customers have a formal buying or procurement process (as is often the case
with larger expenditure) then it is relatively easy to elicit the process that they
will follow. If they do not have a considered (or even a conscious) buying
process then it is helpful to discuss and agree with them the steps they will
follow so that you can align to them, and adapt your selling approach as
required.

Far too many salespeople firstly make premature proposals that are not aligned
to where customers are in their buying process (ie they are made far too early)
and secondly do not adapt their proposal to the specific needs, style and
personality (more of this later!) of the customer. In addition, if you commence
negotiation of commercial terms too early, you will have missed the opportunity
to fully persuade customers of how suited to their needs your solution is and to
maximize their perception of the value you will bring to them.

The specific interests and needs that the customer has in

relation to the product or service in question
As mentioned above, it is vitally important to adapt all of your sales proposals so
that they meet the identified needs of the customer in question. Although there
may be many similarities between customers in the same industry or sector there
will also be many differences. Good salespeople will make sure that they
understand these differences. They will go to great lengths to understand the
customer’s situation in great detail. They will identify the problems, challenges
and objectives of the customer. They will confirm and agree these and make sure
and objectives of the customer. They will confirm and agree these and make sure
that the customer is fully aware of the impact and cost of these challenges.

They will then show how the key benefits of their product or service help
customers to solve their problems, remove their challenges and meet their
specific objectives. Each sales presentation will be adapted to meet the specific
needs and interests of each customer. In the modern world of selling, standard or
‘canned’ sales presentations have had their day.

In addition to the above, when selling to businesses it is important to bear in

mind that people will have certain criteria, needs or interests depending upon the
role that they fulfil in their organization and/or the role that they fulfil in the
buying process. We can usefully think of five broad categories of buyer:

1. Senior managers or executive buyers. These buyers will be the senior

leadership of the organization you are selling into. Examples include
business owners, CEOs and managing directors.
2. Technical buyers. These buyers are individuals who have technical
knowledge and expertise in the field or area of the product or service you
are selling. Their specific job role will be dependent upon the nature of
what you are selling. Examples include IT managers (for IT and technology
sales), scientists or technical specialists (for industrial sales) and human
resources personnel (for people development and training sales).
3. Operational or functional buyers. These buyers are people who will be
involved in operational or functional aspects of their organization.
Examples include supply chain, logistics or distribution managers, plant or
factory managers, and sales managers.
4. Legal buyers. These buyers will be from your customer’s legal function (or
external legal support) and will be involved in legal aspects such as terms
and conditions, risk exposure and liability.
5. Procurement buyers. These buyers are members of the organization’s
professional procurement department and are involved in the acquisition of
the goods or services that the organization needs to operate.
Owing to the nature of their responsibilities, each of these five categories of
buyer will have different interests, needs and requirements. Wise salespeople
will adapt their selling approach according to these, so that they are
communicating the benefits of their product or service in a way that is of most
interest to these different buyers. For example:

Senior managers or executive buyers. Owing to their senior position in the

organization and their responsibility for making high-level decisions about
strategic direction, strategic execution and policy these buyers will usually
be more interested in and focused upon these areas. If you can demonstrate
that your product or solution will help them to take the organization from
where it is now to where they want it to be then you will capture their
interest. It is important to understand their strategic priorities and strategic
themes so that you can align your product and service to these. If you
successfully do this then you can succeed in positioning yourself more as a
strategic enabler, and perhaps strategic partner, than a transactional
supplier.
Technical buyers. Because of their technical specialism and focus these
buyers will often ask the most in-depth and probing questions about the
characteristics of your product or service. To have credibility with them,
you must understand your product or service in depth. They will be
interested in making sure it is ‘fit for purpose’ and in comparing it with
their current understanding of what is available in the market. In some
industries they will also have concerns about the compatibility of your
product or service with whatever they are currently using. For example,
they will want to be certain that your product or service won’t interfere with
the smooth running of what is currently being used, and that it will integrate
with and preferably enhance it.
Operational or functional buyers. These buyers will have an interest in how
your product or service helps them with their specific functional or
operational responsibility. These managers will be interested in anything
that improves the capability, efficiency or effectiveness of their function.
For example, a sales director will usually be interested in growing sales, or
a supply chain manager will usually be interested in improving the
efficiency and effectiveness of the organization’s logistics. I specifically
use the words ‘usually be interested in’ deliberately. Although we may
initially make some assumptions about likely areas of interest, it is
dangerous to do so without checking. Different sales directors, for example,
will have different areas of focus dependent upon the current situation with
their sales force. By identifying what these areas of interest are, you can
then adapt your sales approach to address these areas.
Legal buyers. These buyers will usually be qualified legal professionals and
will therefore have great interest in contractual matters, terms and
conditions, the scope of the contract, areas of risk and liability and so on. It
is good practice to engage with these buyers as early as possible in the sales
process, so that you can understand and address any areas of concern
sooner rather than later. Leaving such matters until later in the sales process
can slow it down significantly. In many cases you will need to be
accompanied by a legal professional from your organization, whom you
will need to brief thoroughly so that he or she can be most effective in
helping to bring the sales process to a positive conclusion.
Procurement buyers. Many salespeople will report that procurement buyers
are interested in only one thing: price! Whilst it is true that these buyers will
often be the most price-focused of the five types of buyer, their interest is
broader than this. They want to ensure that the products or services that
they are buying meet the organization’s requirements, for example in terms
of quality, suitable quantity, within certain time periods, at certain locations
and at the best possible price. Such buying decisions are rarely made on
price alone (perhaps with the exception of certain widely available
commodity items). Price will usually be a factor, but it is a mistake to
assume it is the only factor. Despite what procurement buyers tell
salespeople – it isn’t just about price. Procurement buyers are also
interested, for example, in value for money and suppliers who can reliably
 deliver what they need. It is worth noting that procurement buyers need to
demonstrate that they have added value to the buying process by way of a
saving or procurement improvement, and wise salespeople will adapt their
sales approach to ensure that this is possible!

The personality and buying style of the customer

Every human being has similarities with every other human being. And every
human brain has similarities with every other human brain. However, each of
our brains is also totally unique – dependent upon factors such as inherited
genetic factors and environmental influences.
As we shall see in Chapter 6 these differences are responsible for the different
personalities we experience when we meet different customers. Some customers
make very quick decisions, whereas some customers make very slow decisions.
Some customers seem to want a huge amount of detail, whereas other customers
seem to need only a brief summary. Some customers seem open and friendly,
whereas others seem distant and cold.

Attempting to sell successfully to these different personalities can get

challenging. Far too many salespeople assume (incorrectly) that the way they
like to be sold to is the way their customers like to be sold to. Nothing could be
further from the truth! One of the keys to sales success is to sell to all customers
in the way that they like to be sold to, or rather sell to them in a manner that best
suits the way that they prefer to buy. So a vital component of adaptive selling is
adapting your own behaviour and communication to best suit the preferences of
the customer you are selling to.

In Chapter 6 I will introduce you to a model of human behaviour that has been
developed as a result of extensive neuroscience research. It will provide us with
a powerful way to observe, identify and adapt our selling behaviour based upon
the different customers we encounter and the personality profile they possess.
This model will enable you to do three vital things:
 Observe. Sense and register the various personality cues from your
customer’s behaviour.
Classify. Correctly interpret these and identify the customer’s personality
preference.
Respond. Adapt your behaviour and selling style according to the
preferences of the customer.

As we have seen, the effective use of adaptive selling depends on firstly

selecting the correct sort of adaptation required and then employing the sales
behaviours that properly correspond to this adaptation. There are six areas to be
aware of and to take action on:

1. Elicit your customer’s buying process and agree these stages with the
customer.
2. Align your selling process to this buying process.
3. Adapt your selling approach accordingly, anticipating in advance what the
customer will require.
4. Go ‘upstream’ in the buying process as much as possible to maximize your
influence and to shape your customer’s perception of what is required in a
way that is beneficial to your solution.
5. Adapt how you articulate the benefits of your product or service to meet the
specific needs, challenges, problems, interests and objectives of each and
every customer.
6. Adapt your selling style to suit the personality preference of each customer.

So let us continue our journey into our customers’ brains by discovering one of
the most powerful models of human behaviour, which you can use to power
yourself to new heights of sales success.
 6
The PRISM model of human
behaviour and adaptive selling

During two hot August days I was first introduced to a fascinating and cutting-
edge profiling instrument that was the inspiration for this book. I was lucky
to be attending a training programme to become a certified PRISM Brain
Mapping practitioner. I was already familiar with a variety of traditional
psychologically based psychometric instruments and had used them extensively
in my work as a consultant and corporate trainer. I was in for a pleasant surprise,
as PRISM was different to anything I had ever encountered before. Colin
Wallace, from the Center for Applied Neuroscience, who has spent over 20 years
studying human behaviour, was delivering the PRISM practitioner certification
training, and he led those of us who were lucky enough to be attending on a
fascinating journey through the incredible organ that is the human brain, the
realms of neuroscience and the PRISM Brain Mapping instrument itself.

PRISM Brain Mapping is the world’s most comprehensive online neuroscience-

based behaviour profiling instrument. It can be used in a variety of ways – to
help make better recruitment decisions, build better teams, develop leaders,
improve performance, inform succession planning decisions, improve
communication, improve customer service and the area that particularly caught
my attention – improve sales performance.

As I drove home from the first day of the PRISM practitioner training my own
brain was working overtime! The exciting possibilities for improving
salespeople’s performance using the latest neuroscience research and the
remarkable insights into human behaviour that the PRISM model offers sparked
idea after idea in my brain! At about the halfway point on my journey home,
heading north on the M1 motorway in the UK, the traffic ground to a halt and, as
a result of a serious accident several miles ahead of me, remained stationary for
the best part of two hours. Usually getting stuck in a traffic jam would be a
source of frustration, but on this evening it gave me a lucky opportunity to grab
my notepad and to start furiously writing my ideas down. The two-hour delay
seemed to pass in an instant, but by then my initial ideas had begun to take
shape.

After successfully qualifying as a PRISM Brain Mapping practitioner I

approached PRISM and explained my idea for this book. They very generously
offered their support and guidance – as well as a huge amount of very helpful
information and research findings! Perhaps most importantly, they generously
offered to provide each reader of Neuro-Sell the opportunity to complete the
online PRISM Brain Mapping questionnaire and receive a copy of their own
introductory PRISM Brain Map absolutely free of charge. If you visit www.neuro-
sell.com you will be able to register, firstly to gain access to the online
questionnaire that you need to complete in order to download your own
introductory PRISM Brain Map report, and secondly to gain access to a series of
exclusive resources that are available only to readers of this book.

The PRISM Brain Map report that you will receive will provide you with a
fascinating insight into your personality and behavioural preferences. This will
also help you to gain the maximum benefit from this book, so please take the
time to visit and register at www.neuro-sell.com so that you can download your
very own PRISM Brain Map report immediately.

PRISM represents a comprehensive synthesis of some of the latest thinking on

how the human brain works and why people behave in very different ways. In
contrast to traditional psychological models it is not based upon any one
theoretical view of human personality, but is a combination of current
knowledge of brain functional activity.

PRISM has been developed over a 15-year period to exploit some of the recent
discoveries in neuroscience. Recent advances in neuroscience and brain imaging
have enabled a more in-depth examination of the chemical, functional and
structural aspects of the human brain and how it works. The PRISM scales that
measure each individual’s expressed behavioural preferences were created and
validated by Dr Tenday Viki. Dr Viki is a chartered psychologist, a university
senior lecturer in forensic psychology, and a former visiting fellow at Stanford
University.

At the root of the PRISM model is the fundamental fact that all behaviour is
brain-driven. Brain development occurs as a complex and unique interplay
between the environment into which a child is born and his or her genes. As a
result of this each person has a unique way of perceiving and responding to the
world that he or she lives in. Those recurring responses, which in part are
inherited (nature) and in part learned (nurture), fall into patterns that can be
referred to as behaviour preferences. All people will exhibit their own personal
behavioural preferences through the things they say and do and also the manner
in which they say and do these things.

PRISM theory is based on the following principles:

1. The brain is a dynamic, electrochemical system. No one part of the brain

does solely one thing, and no one part of the brain acts alone. All our
thoughts, emotions and actions are the results of many parts of the brain
acting together to create patterns of activity.
2. In spite of the tremendous similarities between our brains, we all act
differently and have unique abilities and distinct preferences, desires, hopes
and fears. Although every human brain may appear to have a very similar
structure and be organized in the same way, the key to each of our different
personalities and behavioural preferences will be found in the fine-tuning of
the neural systems and networks of each person’s brain. These differences
are what lead to the defining qualities of our personalities and behaviours.
3. One pivotal concept that underpins our understanding of the human brain
and how it influences personality and behaviour is called neuroplasticity.
 This is the brain’s ability to change its physical structure – the way the
billions of neurons are connected together. These changes are the result of
the various experiences we have (and do not have) and involve nature and
nurture working together to create each unique brain. The brain never loses
this ability to change and adapt. Neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly
held position that the brain is a physiologically static organ, and allows us
to explore and understand how the brain changes throughout life.
4. As described in Chapter 4, despite the commonly used metaphor, the brain
is nothing like a computer! It does not process information or assemble
thoughts and feelings from individual bits of data such as strings of digits.
Instead, the brain is largely composed of ‘maps’ – arrangements of neurons
that represent entire ‘chunks’, concepts or templates of knowing, perceiving
or cognition. Most cognitive functions involve the interaction of such maps
from many different parts of the brain at once. The brain assembles
perceptions by the simultaneous interaction of whole ‘maps’, relating one
whole map to others and looking for similarities, differences or
relationships between them.

The PRISM model of human behaviour encompasses three key interrelated

factors that combine to generate human behaviour:

1. The brain’s architecture, including the neural networks that operate within
and between the brain lobes. As described in Chapter 3, the longitudinal
fissure divides the brain into the left and right hemispheres and the central
sulci and lateral sulci divide the frontal lobes from the parietal, occipital
and temporal lobes. This structure is represented by the four quadrants of
the PRISM model that are described below.
2. The level and flow of chemicals (ie neurotransmitters and hormones) within
the brain. The PRISM model focuses on the effect of dopamine, oestrogen,
testosterone and serotonin upon human behaviour, and this will be
described below. A number of independent studies have confirmed links
between these chemicals and the behavioural scales that you will see are
 contained within the PRISM model.
3. People exhibit their particular behavioural preferences. When they describe
themselves they tend to choose words and phrases that emphasize
behavioural characteristics they regard as central to who they are. Over
time, these words become encoded in their speaking habits – including their
facial expressions, tone of voice and body language.

In summary, PRISM is designed to explain behaviour in terms of the coordinated

electrochemical activity that takes place within the brain’s architecture.
Fundamentally PRISM is about our attention to the world – how we see and
respond to our environment and the people in it. It is about how we perceive and
represent our environment.
On a broad level the brain lends itself to partitioning, based largely on its
anatomy. All proposed divisions within the brain are, however, highly artificial
and are created in response to the human need to separate things into neat, easily
understandable units. However, we must always bear in mind that the brain
functions as a whole and, with that caveat in mind, the PRISM model provides us
with a useful schema that we can refer to when we are visualizing how our
brains are organized. It is, therefore, based on scientific principles and facts that
have been simplified into a workable model to facilitate understanding.

PRISM normally measures nine dimensions of human behaviour, but in this

book we shall focus our attention on the four main quadrants of the model.
When you have completed the online PRISM questionnaire and downloaded
your report you will see a circular image that represents the structure of the
human brain (see Figure 6.1). The top half of the circle represents the front of
the brain, the bottom half of the circle the rear of the brain. The circular image is
also divided vertically into two sides. The vertical dividing line represents the
corpus callosum, which you will recall from Chapter 3 divides the two
hemispheres of the human brain. The left-hand side of the image represents the
left hemisphere of the brain, and the right-hand side the right hemisphere of the
brain.

FIGURE 6.1 How the brain is represented on the PRISM Brain

Map

In addition, the circular image is divided horizontally. You will recall that the
cerebral cortex is divided into four major lobes (frontal, parietal, temporal,
occipital), and the horizontal dividing line represents the central sulci and the
lateral fissure that divides the frontal lobes from the rear lobes of the brain.
When combined with the vertical division, this produces four quadrants on the
image that represent the four lobes of the brain (see Figure 6.2).

FIGURE 6.2 The four quadrants of the PRISM Brain Map

When you look at your own PRISM Brain Map you will see that each of these
quadrants has a different colour – green, blue, red and gold (see Figure 6.3). The
PRISM quadrant model is a graphic representation of how the brain’s functional
architecture and neural networks interact with brain chemicals to create
behaviour, and each of the four quadrants is associated with specific behavioural
preferences.

FIGURE 6.3 The four colours of the PRISM Brain Map

In short, the PRISM model summarizes how the brain creates behaviour and how
specific behaviours are associated with brain areas. As you will see later, each of
the four coloured quadrants is associated with specific behavioural preferences.
When we understand these it will allow us to adapt our selling methodology and
style to suit these behavioural preferences, thereby maximizing our chances of
success.

Brain chemicals
As we have already explored the brain’s architecture and how it is represented in
the PRISM model, let us now explore some of the key brain chemicals and their
influence and impact on behaviour. As with the incredible complexity of the
architecture and structure of the brain, the subject of brain chemicals is also a
complex area. What follows is a summary and simplification, which is designed
to give you enough knowledge to understand how these chemicals contribute to
human behaviour and, most importantly, how we can use this knowledge to sell
more effectively!
Neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters pass important information from one neuron to other neurons
across a tiny gap (called the synaptic space or synaptic gap) between them and to
other parts of the body, to orchestrate specific functions. Neurotransmitters (such
as serotonin or dopamine) also produce the moods that affect our experiences.
The brain chemistry we create on a daily basis, often by our own thoughts,
determines how we feel.
Dopamine
Dopamine levels increase when the brain detects something new or novel or
something that is unexpected. Dopamine release in the brain is also associated
with activities that are pleasurable. For example, dopamine will provide us with
a feeling of pleasure and happiness after we have eaten.
In addition to being connected with the experience of pleasure and happiness,
dopamine is also generated by positive expectations or anticipations of
experiences that the brain perceives as a reward – these include sex and positive
social interactions. In this way dopamine can be thought of as the
neurotransmitter of desire!
Elevated levels of dopamine in the brain produce focused attention, increased
energy, motivation and goal-directed behaviours.
Noradrenaline
Noradrenaline is an excitatory chemical associated with physical and mental
arousal, and heightened mood.
Serotonin
Serotonin has an effect on people’s mood and behaviour control, conformity
seeking, anxiety level and sleep. Drugs that alter serotonin levels are used to
treat depression and anxiety disorders. Low serotonin activity is associated with
aggressive, angry and impulsive behaviour, with high levels being associated
with serenity and optimism.
Hormones
A hormone is a chemical released by a cell or a gland in one part of the body that
sends out messages that affect cells in other parts of the body.

Many people have heard of the hormones testosterone and oestrogen. Neither of
these hormones is actually made in the brain, but both can enter via the blood,
and there are receptors in the brain that recognize them.

Testosterone is popularly referred to as a male hormone and oestrogen as a

female hormone. In reality testosterone and oestrogen are produced and
responded to by both men and women. It is the proportions that differ, with, for
example, the male body producing more than 40 times more testosterone than
the female body.

The environment in the womb during pregnancy can change the balance of the
hormones that the foetus is exposed to, with some males being exposed to more
oestrogen in their mother’s womb, and some females to more testosterone. This
can affect the degree to which the individual concerned expresses certain
personality traits that are associated with testosterone and oestrogen. We will
explore this later in the chapter.

When a person feels aroused or successful the cerebral cortex sends a signal to
another part of the brain called the hypothalamus (an area at the base of the brain
that regulates much of the body’s hormonal activity) to stimulate the production
of testosterone.
The brain’s two hemispheres are connected by millions of nerve fibres, and
individuals who were exposed to more oestrogen in the womb have more
connections between these brain halves.

The four quadrants

To summarize, the PRISM model represents how the brain’s functional
architecture and neural networks interact with brain chemicals. Each of the
PRISM model quadrants is associated with a region of the brain and with the
influence of one or more neurotransmitters or hormones. As stated earlier, each
of the four coloured quadrants is associated with specific behavioural
preferences, and these reflect scientific studies into the effect of brain chemicals
on behaviour.
Green quadrant
High noradrenaline and dopamine levels are associated with the following
behaviours and are represented by the green quadrant on the PRISM model:

unconventional;
uninhibited;
optimistic;
mentally flexible;
spontaneous;
creative;
impulsive;
curious;
opportunistic;
energetic;
reckless.
Blue quadrant
High levels of oestrogen are associated with the following behaviours and are
represented by the blue quadrant on the PRISM model:

caring;
nurturing;
sympathetic;
idealistic;
agreeable;
supportive;
sensitive;
kind-hearted;
charitable;
tolerant;
unassuming;
sentimental.
Red quadrant
High levels of testosterone are associated with the following behaviours and are
represented by the red quadrant on the PRISM model:

competitive;
independent;
forthright;
practical;
aggressive;
emotionally contained;
decisive;
direct;
tough-minded;
daring;
focused.
Gold quadrant
High serotonin levels are associated with the following behaviours and are
represented by the gold quadrant on the PRISM model:

conscientious;
conventional;
cautious (but not fearful);
detail-oriented;
persistent;
precise;
orderly;
consistent;
careful planner;
calm.

The four customer colours

So, with the above in mind, let me introduce you to four different colours of
customer. Each of these customers thinks and behaves in distinct and different
ways. Most importantly for us, their buying behaviour is different, and we need
to understand this so that we can adapt our selling behaviour accordingly. If you
understand how customers buy you can sell to them in a way that best suits them
and will be the most comfortable to them:

The Green customer. The Green customer will tend to be very curious and
creative and will enjoy seeing things that are novel and new. In meetings
Green customers will be energetic and may seem restless. If they are not
absorbed in something that intrigues them they can get bored easily. They
tend to be optimistic, spontaneous and autonomous. In the extreme, Greens
can be hyperactive, impatient, impulsive and scatter-brained, and if you
have a customer with very strong Green tendencies then as a salesperson
you can add value to the relationship by providing balance to the impact of
these tendencies. Greens love creating ideas and exploring what is possible.
They will often think in metaphors and analogies, painting vivid pictures in
their minds. Involving them in creating an innovative solution will help you
to sell effectively to them. Since their preferred mental functioning is from
the right brain, Greens are not bound by the limitations and mental barriers
that restrict other behaviour preferences. They are possibility thinkers rather
than probability thinkers. They rely on their hunches and insight to get a
real feel for what is happening, and one of their greatest gifts is their highly
developed intuition. Green customers will tend to be warm, innovative,
optimistic, generous, fun-loving, adventurous, adaptable and trusting –
sometimes unduly so. They get pleasure from variety and new experiences.
If you can show them something new, novel or innovative then they will be
very interested. Better still, involve them in creating an inventive solution.
Then you will have their full attention!
The Blue customer. The Blue customer will tend to be compassionate,
warm, loyal and helpful. Blue customers will be polite, agreeable and
tactful. They will take care to promote good feelings between themselves
and the people they work with – they dislike conflict. They will try to
smooth out differences and seek consensus. They tend to be consistent and
reliable and maintain a steady pace. They are hard-working, patient and
very productive. In the extreme, Blues can be hypersensitive, overly
emotional, impractical, unrealistic and self-absorbed. As a salesperson if
you can help the Blue to balance these areas then you will add value to the
relationship. The quality of your relationship is something that is very
important to this colour of customer. Blue customers need to connect with
people at a deeper personal level than other colours of customer. This drive
to connect with others is linked with oestrogen and oxytocin – a chemical
produced, stored and triggered largely by oestrogen. When Blue customers
make buying decisions they will consider the needs of everyone involved,
as they want to please and to be valued. They like to create working
environments where people will feel comfortable and valued. Their self-
esteem is directly tied to, and influenced by, the quality of their
relationships with others. Their emotional stability is based on how others
react and interact with them. As buyers they are naturally cautious and
approach any kind of change with trepidation until they fully understand the
implications and the impact the change will have on other people whom
they feel close to.
The Red customer. The Red customer will tend to be very goal-oriented and
will focus intensely on work. Red customers excel at what is called
systemizing, which is the inclination to construct and analyse systems.
People who are systemizers express more testosterone. Red customers will
be assertive and authoritative. They can be very demanding and driven.
They like to work in an environment that allows them to be in control and
create results. In the extreme, Reds can become domineering, aggressive
and pushy. They can be poor listeners and insensitive to others’ feelings.
The salesperson who can help them to balance their strong desire to take
rapid action and help them to make effective decisions can add value to the
working relationship. As a result of their unusually focused minds, Red
customers may display a tendency to be outspoken and blunt. Men and
women who express high testosterone activity are, when under pressure,
less likely to strive to be polite, respectful, considerate or friendly. They
have little patience for anything that they perceive to be a waste of their
time. They are irritated by long, repetitive discussions that do not lead to
firm decisions allowing action to be taken. Reds are practical and
pragmatic. They are direct and decisive and like to move with speed and
efficiency. They are task-and action-focused.
The Gold customer. Customers with a Gold behaviour preference will tend
to be analytical, meticulous, guarded, rule-conscious, loyal, conscientious,
thorough and competent. In the extreme, they can come across as arrogant,
cynical, critical, distant and self-righteous. They believe in themselves,
their capabilities and their intellectual abilities. To Gold customers the
 details matter. They will be process-oriented and will approach their buying
decisions in a precise, consistent, sequential, linear, step-by-step manner.
They have a strong preference for careful planning and for schedules and
routines. They think concretely and are often literal, detail-oriented and
orderly, as well as cautious. They are analytical thinkers with a strong need
to be organized and accurate. They will want to determine the best way that
something should be done, and once their plan is in place they will
implement it without allowing themselves to be distracted until the task has
been completed. Gold customers may speculate excessively about their
buying decisions. They are slow to make important decisions because they
are cautious and meticulous. At times they can suffer from ‘paralysis by
analysis’, and the salesperson who can help them to make accurate buying
decisions will add value to the relationship. Gold customers are driven by a
need for perfection and want things to be done the right way. They want to
make a careful, considered and correct buying decision the first time! They
like to follow a process and dislike unpredictability or working at a fast
pace, because of the increased risk of errors.

In this chapter we have explored how PRISM Brain Mapping looks at the
structure and electrochemical activities of the brain, especially the interactions
between the brain’s hemispheres, in terms not only of attention and flexibility,
but also of our attitudes to the world. It is about how we perceive and represent
our environment.
We have seen that human behaviour is a combination of genetics (brain
composition and sensitivity to certain neurotransmitters and hormones) and
influences from our life experience. Through the infinite variables of genetics
and experience each person develops different ‘mental muscles’.

PRISM allows us to understand the different profiles or ‘maps’ that show, for
example, how people prefer to process information. These preferred brain
responses differ from person to person and form the basis of our observed
behaviour.
The PRISM model offers four behaviour profiles for the astute sales professional
to be aware of. These four types of people have different personalities and
respond to the world (and make buying decisions!) in very different ways.
Although every customer will be a unique individual (no two people are alike),
people will tend to have one quadrant that is what PRISM calls the ‘tip of their
behavioural spear’. This will be the individual’s ‘default’ way of interacting with
the world, and this should be the primary focus in the behavioural adaptation of
the salesperson.

In Chapter 7 we will look at how the PRISM model will provide you with the
ability to observe behaviour, draw sound conclusions about an individual’s
preferred thinking and behaviour and then adapt your selling approach and style
to suit that of each customer.
 7
How to read your customer and
how to adapt your style

This chapter will provide you with a simple but effective methodology to:
1. Observe. Sense and register the various personality cues from your
customer’s behaviour.
2. Classify. Correctly interpret these and identify the customer’s personality
and behavioural preference.
3. Adapt. Adapt your behaviour and selling style according to the preferences
of the customer.

The purpose of this adaptation is to minimize any interpersonal tension between

you and the customer, in order to maximize your ability to sell successfully to
that customer. As we will see later, the more you become like the customer, the
more comfortable the customer will feel in your presence.

As described in Chapter 4, a fundamental organizing and operating principle of

your brain that drives your thinking, behaviour and action is to avoid and move
away from anything that is perceived to be painful, dangerous or threatening,
and to move towards anything that is pleasurable, comforting or rewarding.
Therefore the more comfortable the customer feels with you the less likely you
are to be triggering the ‘away from’ response, and the more likely you are to
trigger the ‘towards’ response.
The more primitive limbic system default setting is to be distrustful. It is more
likely to initially judge a stranger as a foe than a friend. By using what you will
learn in this chapter, you will be able to make a very powerful positive first
learn in this chapter, you will be able to make a very powerful positive first
impression with new customers that will provide a strong relationship foundation
for the subsequent sale to be built upon.

As we have seen in Chapter 6, your customer’s personality and behaviour are

brain-driven. This chapter will enable you to observe external behavioural cues
and from these make conclusions about what sort of brain is nestling inside your
customer’s head so that you sell to it most effectively.

Observe
I will start with examining customers’ behaviour when you first meet them and,
once this foundation has been established, move on to looking at some
behavioural cues you may be able to identify before you make face-to-face
contact.

In order to observe customers accurately you will need to focus on three areas:

1. their non-verbal behaviour;

2. their verbal behaviour;
3. their working environment.

These three areas will provide you with a series of cues from which you can
draw conclusions on customers’ preferences.

Behavioural cues Table 7.1 outlines key behavioural cues

to watch out for.

TABLE 7.1 Behavioural cues

Non-verbal cues
Verbal cues
Working environment cues
Energetic state
Body language
 More open
Energetic, outgoing, Modern office.
body posture. More verbally lengthy when
dynamic. Fast- Memorabilia of
Big hand talking. Can be loud, lively
paced. May move experiences
gestures and and enthusiastic. Personal or
towards you displayed. Likely
facial informal style with others –
Green quickly, be to be
movements may tell stories and use
animated and disorganized-
when talking. humour. Great deal of tone
shake hands looking, with lots
Pronounced and speed variation. May not
enthusiastically on of piles of
facial listen well.
first meeting. paperwork.
expressions.
 Laid-back. Slow or More open, relaxed body Conversational style, Family and
steady. May walk posture. Slow, more softly spoken. Warm, friend photos.
towards you at a contained hand gestures friendly, agreeable Warm, homely
Blue steady pace, greet when talking. Intermittent and sensitive. Steady environment.
you warmly and eye contact – may look at and even tempered. Loose system
shake hands gently the floor rather than you Listens before of personal
on first meeting. sometimes. talking. organization.
 Status or
More contained
Energetic, impatient. Will get straight to the point. power
body posture.
Fast-paced, decisive. Little or no personal or small symbols –
Lots of frequent
May march towards talk. Direct, forceful style of large desk,
hand gestures
you purposefully, communication. Voice speed trophies.
Red when talking.
making firm direct eye will increase when emphasizing Efficient but
Steady eye
contact, and shake urgency. Will increase voice not
contact. May
hands very firmly on volume to take charge. May necessarily
stand rather than
first meeting. interrupt. particularly
sit.
neat.
 Deliberate.
May walk
towards you
More closed or tight Functional
at a steady
body posture. Little small talk. To the point, serious office.
and
Reserved and precise. Discussion may be short Graphs and
controlled
movements, few or or long depending upon the amount of charts to
pace, and
no gestures. Can information or data the person wishes track and
shake
Gold appear to gather. Direct but calm and control
hands
expressionless. Will measured style; will question and progress
briefly on
make reference to clarify. Little voice inflection; may be displayed.
first
materials containing monotone. May be periods of silence Very neat,
meeting.
facts and data during during conversation. tidy and
Slow or
meetings. organized.
steady,
step-by-step
style.
Language cues
In addition to the cues in Table 7.1, the specific language and words that
customers use and the questions that they ask will give you further cues to
correctly classify them. Although sometimes they may very well use the specific
words listed in Table 7.2, please also use these as general guidance for the areas
and subjects of conversation that customers will be interested in and drawn
towards.

TABLE 7.2 Language cues

As mentioned earlier, in addition to the behavioural cues that you can identify
when first meeting and interacting with the customer, it is often also possible to
gather some cues in advance of your first face-to-face encounter. You can do this
by conducting some research in advance of meeting the customer. As we will
explore in Chapter 8, sales professionals will always conduct research on new
customers before meeting them for the first time – but more on this later! One of
the easiest ways that you can research the customer is by using online resources.
Depending upon customers’ seniority and how active they or their organizations
are online, a quick search may reveal information that can help you to anticipate
what their behavioural profile is. Please note that I said ‘anticipate’ and not
‘assume’.

It is good practice for a sales professional to anticipate a number of factors

before meeting a customer. We can anticipate, for example, likely areas of
interest or challenges that customers are experiencing dependent upon the
industry that they are part of, possible concerns they may have about your
product or service (based upon interactions with previous customers) or their
likely behavioural preference based upon research that you have conducted.
When you anticipate you prepare in advance based upon your current knowledge
and understanding. This preparation can prove to be very useful.

However, you don’t blindly assume that your current knowledge and
understanding are correct. You will test it when you are with the customer. For
example, you may ask, ‘Mr Customer, several of our clients in the X sector have
told us that profit margins are being squeezed as a result of increased overseas
competition. Is that something that you are experiencing also?’

In the same way, you may anticipate the likely behavioural profile of customers
from your online research, which will help you with your planning and
preparation. But you will wait until you meet customers and interact with them
before making your final decision about their behavioural profile and likely
preferences.
The individual you are researching may feature in a number of ways online, for
example being profiled or interviewed on their own or other websites. We need
to be cautious, as sometimes this information will have been prepared by
marketing or PR people or, in the case of interviews, may have been edited by a
journalist, so we cannot always be sure that we are seeing an accurate reflection
of the person’s true personality and preferences.
One very powerful online research tool is the networking site LinkedIn.
Increasing numbers of businesspeople are members of LinkedIn and will have a
public profile that is available for you to view. The advantage of LinkedIn is that
people complete their profile themselves, creating a description and using
language that they are comfortable with. This can provide a rich source of clues
that we can use to anticipate their behavioural profile.

By way of illustration here are some genuine descriptions from people I am

connected to on LinkedIn. As I have worked with them I have a good insight
into their personality and behavioural preferences, and it is interesting to see the
cues their personal descriptions provide!

Green: – ‘… enjoy finding and creating…’;

– ‘I’m enthusiastic and passionate about…’;

– ‘Developing a creative vision’;
– ‘… out-of-the-box thinker’.
Blue:
– ‘I enjoy supporting and developing people’;
– ‘building long-standing relationships’;
– ‘… coordinating people’;
– ‘building teams and coordinating between departments’.
Red:
– ‘… close more business, faster’;
– ‘… get in control of business and drive excellence in execution’; – ‘…
dynamic and results-driven’;
– ‘… pragmatic, proactive and decisive’.
Gold:
– ‘… ensure adherence to… policy throughout the business’; – ‘…
considered approach to risk management’;
– ‘… strong attention to detail’;
– ‘… highly accurate’.
 – ‘… highly accurate’.

In addition to researching customers online you can gather evidence from early
interactions with them via e-mail and over the telephone. For example, let us
review the response we receive from each type of customer in response to an e-
mail confirming an appointment. The e-mail you have sent says: Dear Steve
Further to our telephone conversation, I am writing to confirm our meeting at your offices on Monday,
14 May at 2 pm.
As discussed, it would be helpful to understand more about your new project and to discuss how our
new service may be able to help you with this.
If you have any questions or have any specific areas you wish to discuss at the meeting please let me
know.
I look forward to meeting you.

Kind regards
Simon

A Green response is:

Hi Simon
Great – time works for me!
Our new project is looking really exciting and I’m looking forward to hearing about how your new
service can help us to innovate.
See you Monday – have a great weekend!
Kind regards
 Steve

A Blue response is:

 Hello Simon
Thank you for your confirmation. Please let me know if your plans change, as I am sure that I can move
things around if needed.
Attached is a map and address details to help you find us. Please note that there are visitor parking
spaces near the main entrance – this will be easier for you than the long walk from the main car park!
The proposed new project represents quite a significant change for the company, and I have some
concerns about how people are feeling about it and how we can introduce it in a way that minimizes
disruption to current ways of working.
I am looking forward to meeting you (and to learning about your people’s capability) on Monday
14th.
I hope you have a pleasant and relaxing weekend.

Kind regards
Steve

A Red response is:

Simon
In the diary.
Need to know about your execution/resource capability.
 Steve

A Gold response is:

Dear Simon
Thank you for confirming our meeting at 2 pm on Monday, 14 May at our Head Office in Meeting
Room 4.
Attached is a map and address details. Please note the postcode you need to use for your sat nav is
different from our main postal address postcode. The correct postcode for you is detailed on the bottom
left-hand corner of the map.
Please sign in at reception. They will call me and I can come and meet you and take you to the
meeting room. Because of our security procedure all visitors must be accompanied whilst on site.
The purpose of the meeting is to understand if you meet our criteria for a suitable external provider. If
this is the case then we can shortlist you for the next stage of the tender process.
I will prepare to present:

1. Where this new project fits into our existing process.

2. Outline of the scope, stages and timeline of the new project.
3. Key deliverables in terms of quality, cost and time.
4. Key stakeholders and project participants from our side.

Please prepare to present:

1. Specific examples/case studies of where you have undertaken such work before.
2. Details of existing customers that we can use as references.
3. An indicative cost breakdown of your service provision.
4. Your internal quality control processes and procedures.
5. CVs of the consultants you would propose as being suitable for this project.

I would also be interested to understand more about your company, including your full product and
service portfolio and profiles of your people’s capability.
Please advise what information you can send in advance of the meeting on Monday, 14 May.
Yours sincerely
 Steve

By attuning yourself to the cues in all of your customer’s communication, you

will maximize your chances of correctly identifying that customer’s behavioural
preference. This includes when speaking to the person over the telephone. We
can often be in the situation where we will speak to our customers over the
telephone before meeting them in person. And there may be people who spend
the majority if not all of their time interacting with their customers over the
telephone. If you refer to the verbal cues and language or word cues outlined in
Tables 7.1 and 7.2 and start to pay attention to these, you will find that you can
rapidly and successfully identify the customer’s behavioural preference over the
telephone too.

So we have observed the various personality cues from the customer’s

behaviour, and we now need to classify the customer.

Classify
From the information above you will start to be able to make an initial
classification. Please remain open-minded as to the customer’s colour for two
reasons.

Firstly, some people will take a little longer to correctly classify, as their
behaviour will not be so obvious or overt.

Secondly, as explained in Chapter 6 (and you will probably see this from your
own PRISM Brain Map), most people have one quadrant or colour that is their
main or primary preference (‘the tip of their behavioural spear’) and one that is a
secondary or supporting preference (‘the shaft of their behavioural spear’).
Therefore, you will probably pick up cues from both (or perhaps even other)
preferences.
As you become more confident and competent at classifying your customers you
will start to consider finer definitions such as ‘Blue/Gold’ (main or lead
preference Blue, supporting preference Gold) or ‘Red/Green’ (main or lead
preference Red, supporting preference Green), and this will then allow you to
preference Red, supporting preference Green), and this will then allow you to
adapt your behaviour even more effectively, as in addition to adapting to your
customer’s lead preference you can also incorporate some adaptations to the
customer’s supporting preference.
Now that you have made your initial classification you are in a position to adapt
your behaviour accordingly to harmonize with the buyer’s colour.

Adapt
Tables 7.3 to 7.6 outline the following for each colour preference:

1. what the customers like and are motivated by;

2. what they dislike;
3. the appropriate selling style and approach.

TABLE 7.3 Green customers

TABLE 7.4 Blue customers
TABLE 7.5 Red customers
TABLE 7.6 Gold customers
Reference copies of the tables can be downloaded free of charge from the
www.neuro-sell.com website once you have registered.

To finish this chapter, here are some phrases that you may like to use with each
type of customer:
Green customer: – ‘This will enable you and your company to lead the way
into the future.’

– ‘This will help you to take the lead in your market.’

– ‘This will put you at the cutting edge of your industry.’
– ‘This will provide you with the latest state-of-the-art/cutting-edge
product/service/solution.’
– ‘I’d really welcome your ideas and input into how this might work.’
– ‘It would be great to be able to showcase you as a client who is leading
the field.’
– ‘The main benefit to you is…’
– ‘This is the very latest solution/product/service.’
– ‘You are one of the first people to see this.’
– ‘Do you think you might have some other uses for this?’
Blue customer:
– ‘If you would like to speak to our other clients who have made this
transition successfully…’
– ‘This is a tried and tested and proven product that you can rely on.’
– ‘We are going to be around to help you whenever you need us to provide
help and support.’
– ‘We’ll make sure we take the time to carefully consider this with you
before we go ahead.’
– ‘This will provide you with reliability and security.’
– ‘I will make sure I provide you with whatever information and
reassurance you need to make the right decision.’
– ‘We can take some small baby steps with you.’
– ‘It would be helpful to gather the views of other people in your company
whom this would help.’
– ‘Our guarantee is 100 per cent rock-solid and eliminates any risk on your
part.’
 part.’
Red customer: – ‘You’re the type of person who would make this work.’

– ‘This will put you at the cutting edge and help you be a leader in your
field.’
– ‘You’ll be in total control of this.’
– ‘This will put you in the driving seat.’
– ‘This delivers results.’
– ‘Let me prove to you that this delivers results.’
– ‘This is a proven and effective way of…’
– ‘This will enable you to achieve…’
– ‘Let’s agree the action steps needed to get started.’
– ‘We can move as fast as you want!’
Gold customer:
– ‘Once you have taken the time to examine the facts…’
– ‘With the information I have provided you are in a position to examine
the facts, interpret them and draw your own conclusions.’
– ‘I have brought along all of the information that you’ll need to examine
this product thoroughly and draw your own conclusions.’
– ‘This is a proven product, and our case studies demonstrate that this is
something that you can rely on.’
– ‘We have achieved consistent results for Customer X. Would you like to
have the details?’
– ‘We wouldn’t want to go ahead until we were 100 per cent sure that it is
right for you.’
– ‘Our focus on high standards…’
– ‘We constantly measure, assess and review our performance.’
– ‘Let me show you the details/facts/breakdown/research.’

You are now equipped with the ability to observe your customers, classify their
behavioural preference and then adapt your selling style so that it suits their
behavioural preference and then adapt your selling style so that it suits their
preference. This will lessen interpersonal tension and make the whole process
more comfortable for everyone involved.
When I explain this methodology to my audiences as a speaker or to my clients
when consulting with them, someone invariably asks if changing your behaviour
in this way in some way makes you appear to be artificial or not yourself. If you
have this concern then let me put your mind at rest. When you utilize this
approach you do not suddenly adopt an entirely alien character to your normal
way of behaving. You subtly and respectfully adapt. You become a little more
Green, Blue, Red or Gold as appropriate. You flex and adapt your natural
behaviour – you do not change it completely! You are still your authentic self,
and this is important to making sure you come across with credibility and
confidence.
Indeed, as you become more like the customer in subtle ways and the
interpersonal tension disappears, the relationship between you improves and
becomes more positive. Customers don’t think anything is strange – they like
you. You are like them! This allows you to sell to them in a way that is
comfortable to them. And most importantly this allows them to buy in a way that
is most comfortable to them. Sales professionals who can help their customers to
feel comfortable when they are buying are the ones who are going to be the most
successful.

As a closing thought, the chameleon never stops being a chameleon. It just

changes its colour to adapt to and blend into its environment. And that is what
this chapter has been all about – blending elegantly into the customer’s preferred
way of buying. So I would encourage you to become a chameleon and change
your colour to match that of the buyer – to whatever degree feels comfortable to
you. The only people who will dislike it are your competitors…
 8
The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process – the first phase
 Consider

Thereachaima ofdecision
the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process is to help customers
that is right for them. We all want to make good decisions.
Our job as sales professionals is to serve our customers by helping them to make
decisions that benefit them. The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process is
customer-focused and customer-centric and actively involves customers in the
decision-making process. Nothing is ‘forced’ or ‘pushed’ upon them.

It reminds me of a quotation that is attributed to the Chinese philosopher Lao

Tsu: ‘When the best leader’s work is done the people say “We did it ourselves.”’
With apologies to Lao Tsu, my version is: ‘When the best sales professional’s
work is done, the customer says “I’ve just made a great decision!”’
This process has not been dreamed up in an ivory tower. It is based on a
powerful synthesis of cutting-edge neuroscience research, combined with a tried,
tested and proven selling process that has been extensively field-tested in live
selling situations. In short, this is a combination of cutting-edge science and
hard-won experience!

There are eight brain-friendly stages to follow. Please note that these stages are
intended to be a practical guide for you. There are no slavish sales scripts to
follow or steps to be confined to. Think of them as a useful handrail to guide you
through the sales process, from making a positive first impression all the way
through to getting a firm commitment from the customer.
The eight stages are:

1. Consider.
2. Comfort part I: connect.
3. Comfort part II: chameleon.
 4. Comfort part III: control.
5. Context and catalyse.
6. Check:
– cash;
– criteria;
– authority;
– pain;
– pleasure.
7. Convince:
– curiosity;
– clarity;
– contrast;
– concrete;
– certainty and credibility.
8. Confirm and conclude.

For ease of reading and understanding I have divided these eight brain-friendly
selling stages into five phases, with each phase occupying a separate chapter.
The first phase concerns the planning and preparation you need to do prior to
meeting the customer. The second phase is devoted to maximizing the
customer’s sense of psychological comfort. The third phase concerns gathering
and clarifying information on the customer’s situation so that you can
understand what the customer needs. The fourth phase is devoted to presenting
or pitching your products and services effectively. The fifth and final phase is
focused on closing the deal and winning the business.
So let us start our journey with looking at what you need to do before you meet
the customer to set yourself up for maximum sales success.

Stage 1: consider
The first stage of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process is to fully and
properly consider the customer and the sales call you are about to undertake. As
mentioned in Chapter 1, in business-to-business sales the amount of time that
buyers are willing to give to sales professionals is reducing. It is getting harder
to get in front of buyers, and therefore when you do get in front of the customer
it is vitally important that you are well planned and prepared.

If you are selling direct to consumers, as markets become more and more
competitive the number of companies vying for consumers’ attention and money
will increase. Getting in front of consumers will become more challenging. It is
vitally important that you maximize your ratio of meetings to closed sales, so
once more being planned and prepared is vitally important.

As all true sales professionals know, it is important to spend time considering

what you need to plan and prepare in advance in order to maximize your chance
of success. So let’s consider some of the vital elements.
Information on the customer
If it is new customers that you are visiting, it is important to research them prior
to meeting them. The availability of information available via the internet means
that research can be conducted quickly and easily.

If you are selling to businesses, in the vast majority of cases they will have a
website that you can review, and increasingly businesses will have a social
media presence. Conducting a quick but thorough review will usually provide
you with valuable information on the nature of the customer’s business.

It is increasingly becoming expected by business customers that you will have

researched their company prior to you meeting them. When you have done this
you can refer to what you have learned about their business and ask further
questions to understand more (we will look at the sales questioning process in
greater detail later in this chapter). Showing an interest in their business is also a
good way of establishing rapport with customers.

Information on the customer’s industry

If you are selling to specific industries on a regular basis, it is also important to
keep up to date with the latest developments in these industries. You may wish
to subscribe to relevant trade magazines, visit industry-related websites or
subscribe to e-mail newsletters and newsfeeds. This will keep you abreast of
what is happening, provide insights into the problems and challenges the
industry sector is facing and provide useful conversation topics when you are
meeting your customer. The ability to discuss the latest news or trends
knowledgeably with your customers will help to position you as an authoritative
sales professional.
Research by Dr Robert Cialdini (1993) from Arizona State University shows that
people feel a strong pressure to comply with requests from an individual whom
they perceive to be an authority. Society socializes people that obedience to
authority is the correct way to behave. Cialdini states that ‘it is frequently
adaptive to obey the dictates of genuine authorities because such individuals
adaptive to obey the dictates of genuine authorities because such individuals
usually possess high levels of knowledge, wisdom and power’.
Therefore it is important that you are perceived as an authority and expert in
your field by the customer. Customers are far more likely to respond positively
to your request if they perceive you to be an authority. Hence there is a need for
you to be knowledgeable and keep up to date in your chosen field so that you are
able to communicate your authority to the customer.

We must always be focusing on making the customer’s brain feel as comfortable

with us as is possible. If you are perceived as an authoritative expert then the
customer’s brain will feel safe in your hands and be more open and receptive to
your advice and suggestions.

Cialdini’s research shows that deference to authority can occur in a ‘mindless

fashion as a kind of decision making shortcut’. Therefore it is vitally important
that you work on establishing and communicating your authority and expertise.

Information on your products and services

In addition to researching the customer’s business and being well informed on
the customer’s industry, you have to be able to demonstrate your expertise in the
products or services you are selling. You must know your products and services
in detail and be able to answer with confidence and clarity almost any question a
customer might ask.

If the customer’s brain senses any unease on your part (for example, as a result
of a lack of product knowledge, or your inability succinctly to answer a
question), then the customer in turn will start to feel uneasy. You must exude
confidence and authority, as this will make the customer’s brain feel comfortable
and make the customer receptive to your suggestions.
Make sure that you are thoroughly planned and prepared and have whatever
materials, research, literature and other sales collateral you need with you. The
impression you must create in the customer’s brain is: ‘This person really knows
his/her stuff!’
Meeting goals
The amount of research that has been done into goal setting and its impact on
performance is impressive. One of the most robust conclusions to come from all
of this research is that goal setting improves task performance.

As I state in my book The Inner Winner (Hazeldine, 2012):

Goals influence performance in a number of important ways:

Goals focus attention and action on important aspects of performance

Goals set specific standards that motivate individuals to take action
Goals increase not only immediate effort and intensity, but also help to prolong effort and increase
persistence
Goals also prompt the development of new problem-solving and learning strategies.

In short, setting a clear goal (or goals) for your meeting gives your brain
something to focus and lock on to. On a day-to-day basis our brains are
bombarded with sensory information and, in order to manage this, certain
information is ‘filtered out’. The part of the brain called the reticular activating
system, to which you were introduced in Chapter 3, is what decides which
information it is important to pay attention to and what can be ignored. It helps
the brain to decide what to consciously focus attention on.

People who live close to airports or railways are not as aware of the noise of the
planes and trains, as their reticular activating systems dampen down the effect of
the repeated stimuli. This helps to prevent the brain being overloaded. By
contrast, if you have ever become interested in purchasing a particular model or
colour of car, because the goal that you now have in your brain influences what
your reticular activating system pays attention to, the world will seem to be full
of exactly that model and colour of car!
Therefore, to maximize your chances of sales success it is very important to have
clarity about the goals that you have for your meeting. Fundamentally, every
customer meeting should have one of two goals: 1) to close the sale; 2) to
advance the sale towards a close.
In many industries, particularly where the sale is more complex or where the
level of expenditure is high, it is not practical to close the sale in one meeting. It
will take several meetings for the sales process to be concluded. In these cases
you need to have a clear goal to advance the sale. This will prevent unproductive
meetings and the sales cycle being lengthened more than is absolutely necessary.

Your ultimate goal is to close the sale. This goal can be broken down into
several sub-goals that will support this. The sub-goals could include information
you need to gather in order to move the sales forward, understanding the buying
process that will be followed, identifying who will be involved in the buying
process, determining what it is you want the customer to believe about you and
your organization so that the customer feels comfortable about working with
you, and so forth. It is important to make these as clear as possible so that you
have clarity over what the goal is. Without some clear evidence you cannot
know if you have been successful or not.

Poorly articulated objectives such as ‘Build the relationship with the customer’
or ‘Keep in touch with the customer’ will deliver poor meeting results and waste
your time and, most importantly, the customer’s time. Make your meeting goals
very specific. Give your brain something to lock on to.

Here are some examples:

‘At the end of this meeting I will be able to articulate the nature of the
customer’s specific challenges and problems and gain the customer’s
agreement to these.’
‘At the end of this meeting I will be able to articulate the financial cost of
the customer’s specific challenges and problems in both the short and the
long term and gain the customer’s agreement to these.’
‘At the end of this meeting I will have identified the steps in the customer’s
buying process and which people will be involved at each stage, and will
have gained the customer’s agreement to these.’
‘At the end of this meeting I will have defined the criteria that the customer
 will use to determine which supplier the customer wishes to place the
business with and will be able to gain the customer’s agreement to these.’
‘At the end of this meeting I will gain the customer’s agreement that we
have the experience, expertise and capability to be the customer’s new
supplier.’

By having a very clear goal for the meeting, with evidence that you can use to
determine if you have met your goal, you give your brain something very
concrete to lock on to. You will have opened the specific sensory filters that will
support you in achieving your meeting goal, making your brain more attuned to
noticing the information that it needs to locate. The simple but powerful step of
defining the specific goal or goals you want to achieve in every meeting will
powerfully support your sales success.

Researching the person or people you will meet

In addition, as mentioned in Chapter 7, researching the individual people you
will be meeting using LinkedIn is a valuable exercise. Along with the
behavioural cues that will allow you to consider and prepare to adapt to their
preferred behavioural style, you can also learn about their career history, identify
areas of professional interest from their membership of LinkedIn groups and find
out the sort of people they are connected to.

Arriving at the customer’s premises

When you arrive at the customer’s premises, keep your eyes and ears open for
information that might be helpful. You can sometimes learn a lot from a
customer’s foyer from copies of internal magazines, annual reports, marketing
material, leaflets, posters, pictures and awards on display. You never know when
information you find will be useful to you. So don’t waste your time sitting
down drinking coffee – take a good look around! There is another very
important reason never to sit down in a customer’s foyer, and I will come to that
later in the book.
Be ready to adapt
As mentioned in Chapter 7, you need to consider carefully what you have
discovered so far about the customer’s possible behavioural preference.

It is good practice to prepare to meet any possible behavioural preference (or

combination of preferences) that you may come across. Be ready to meet and
sell to any possible combination of Green, Blue, Red or Gold customers. For
example, be ready to go into detail for the Gold customer, be ready to focus on
action with the Red customer, and so forth.
That being said, if your research gives you the indication that the person you are
meeting is very likely to be, for example, a Blue personality preference then you
can consider this and prepare accordingly. However, always be prepared for the
customer’s personality to be different from what you initially expected and for
other people to join the meeting. Always expect the unexpected!

‘Neuro-Sell’ Pre-Call Planner

When you visit and register with the www.neuro-sell.com website you will be able
to download a free-of-charge copy of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ Pre-Call Planner
document. This document will take you step by step through effective pre-call
planning. By using this document before every customer meeting you will be
maximizing your chances of success.

Now that you have thoroughly considered all of the planning and preparation
required to be a success when you meet the customer, you have established a
solid foundation upon which you can build a successful sales visit. In Chapter 9
we will move on to meeting the customer and making the customer feel
comfortable with us.
 9
The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process – the second
phase
 Maximize comfort

Inofthis chapter we will look at the second phase, consisting of stages 2, 3 and 4
the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process, which are all focused upon
maximizing the customer’s sense of psychological comfort.

Stage 2: comfort part I: connect

You will recall from Chapter 3 that, when you first meet the customer, you are a
stranger, and the more primitive parts of the customer’s brain will instantly
conduct a threat response and decide if you are friend or foe. Please don’t be
offended by this – we are talking about a mechanical, survival-orientated, selfish
and unconscious part of the customer’s brain.

In addition, as a result of the negative stereotypes that exist about salespeople,

customers may be concerned that the salesperson they are about to see might try
to pressure them to buy, trick or con them in some way, over-promise and then
under-deliver, over-inflate the price of the product or service or sell them
something they don’t need or far more than they need. Customers could be
feeling quite uncertain and insecure, so it is very important that at a very early
stage of the sales call we maximize customers’ sense of comfort and then not
only maintain this but increase it during the entire sales process.
There are some specific things we need to do to calm the reptilian and emotional
parts of the customer’s brain and make it feel comfortable with us when we first
connect with the customer.
Based upon what you learned in Chapter 7, as soon as you see customers you
will start observing their behaviour so that you can successfully classify their
behavioural preference and respond accordingly. This is designed to maximize
your ability to make customers feel comfortable with you and enhance your
ability to connect with them.

However, there are some ‘universal’ behaviours that you can exhibit that will
help a customer’s primitive brain to feel safe rather than threatened, helping it to
calm down and begin to feel comfortable. These are:

Smile. I appreciate that this may sound obvious, but a smile sends a strong
signal of friendliness and acceptance to the other person that the person’s
brain will respond to positively.
Use open, relaxed body language. This communicates a non-threatening
manner to the customer’s primitive brain.
Make sure your torso is facing towards the customer. When we like
someone we tend to turn towards that person (the opposite extreme is
turning your back on someone!). People will perceive us as being more
open and honest when they can see our torso.
‘Flash’ your eyebrows at the customer when you first make eye contact.
This is a universal body language signal where you raise your eyebrows for
about a sixth of a second when you are about to make social contact with
someone. This gesture communicates that you are feeling positive about
meeting the person.
Keep your voice modulation and tone calm; keep your voice speed
controlled and gentle. Our voice mirrors our emotional state, so your voice
needs to communicate a calm and non-threatening emotional state.
Mirror the handshake pressure of the other person. As a default make your
handshake firm but not too strong.
Don’t invade the customer’s ‘personal space’. Once you shake hands step
slightly backwards and to the side.

In terms of the importance of personal space, a researcher called Edward Hall

(1998) coined the phrase ‘proximics’, and this is a sub-category of the study of
non-verbal behaviour, which we will explore in greater detail in Chapter 14. Hall
discovered that all animals, including the human animal, need a certain amount
of space to feel safe. There is a cultural element (some cultures demonstrate
differences in how close people can be to each other in various situations), and
there is a limbic element. If you violate someone’s socially acceptable space by,
for example, sitting or standing too close you will trigger a negative limbic
reaction and heighten that person’s brain’s threat response.

Hall defined four distances and, although he did not mean these measurements to
be strict guidelines that translate precisely to human behaviour, they are useful
rules of thumb to follow:

Intimate distance is reserved for interactions with lovers, children, close

family members and close friends. This starts at touching and extends to
about 46 centimetres (18 inches) apart.
Personal distance for interactions among good friends or family members
starts around 46 centimetres (18 inches) apart from the person and ends
about 122 centimetres (4 feet) away.
Social distance for interactions with strangers, newly formed groups and
new acquaintances ranges from 1.2 metres (4 feet) to 2.4 metres (8 feet)
away from the person.
Public distance includes anything more than 2.4 metres (8 feet) away, and is
used for speeches and lectures. Public distance is essentially that range
reserved for larger audiences.

Do not get too close too early is the rule, as this will provoke the negative limbic
response described earlier!

If you get this initial contact correct you will have successfully started to
minimize your perceived threat response and increase the customer’s level of
comfort with you.

Stage 3: comfort part II: chameleon

As we discussed in the last chapter, it is vitally important to become a
behavioural chameleon and adapt your behaviour to best suit that of the
behavioural chameleon and adapt your behaviour to best suit that of the
customer. In addition to this, and to the universal behaviours described above,
there is another key universal behaviour that you can adopt that will positively
contribute to lessening any interpersonal tension and making the customer feel
comfortable with you.
Postural echoing
Research into non-verbal communication (Condon and Ogston, 1966; Kendon,
1970) reveals that when two (or more) people feel comfortable in each other’s
presence (for example, people who are friends) they unconsciously adopt similar
body postures. The more friendly and in agreement they are, then the closer what
is known as ‘postural echoing’ becomes. In addition they will display ‘gestural
echoes’, synchronizing movements such as leaning forwards, crossing and
uncrossing legs, nodding in agreement, and picking up their glasses to drink at
the same time. Research using slow-motion film has shown that a ‘micro-
synchrony’ of very small movements, which it is almost impossible to see with
the naked eye, also occur. People who are feeling comfortable with each other
will also echo each other’s vocal qualities, speaking at a similar volume, pace
and style. This behaviour is usually seen in people who perceive that they have
the same status, that is that they are at the same level.
This phenomenon is believed to be a non-learned and instinctive human
behaviour, which you may also hear referred to as ‘isopraxis’. Small babies
begin to mimic the facial expressions of people at a very early age in what is
believed to be a survival-driven bonding activity.

You will recall from Chapter 3 that Professor Iacoboni, who conducted research
into mirror neurons, believes that mirror neurons send messages to our limbic
system and enable us to tune into, empathize with and connect with each other’s
feelings. Mirror neurons may explain what many psychologists have believed for
a long time, that when you mirror another person’s posture, gestures,
movements, voice tone, voice pace and voice pitch you build a sense of comfort
and rapport with that person at an unconscious level.
Many studies have shown that humans communicate more information through
body language and voice tone than they do through the words used, and hence
the reason that mirroring the customer in this way contributes powerfully to the
sense of comfort and connection the person feels with you when you do it.

The existence of mirror neurons may also explain why so much of human
The existence of mirror neurons may also explain why so much of human
communication occurs in this way. Your customer’s brain is constantly
mirroring your posture, movements, voice pace and pitch and also your
emotions. This ability allows us to establish a deeper sense of mutual liking,
understanding and comfort. It helps us to come to a shared attitude and
agreement about how we can work together.

The practical application of this for you as a sales professional is to consciously

begin the process of mirroring or echoing the customer as soon as possible. This
will send a strong unconscious message of familiarity, liking and rapport. It is
important to do this subtly and respectfully, gradually becoming more and more
like customers in posture, gesture, movements, voice pace, tone and speed. As
you become like them they will increasingly like you.

This behaviour will help you to make them feel comfortable with and receptive
to you. You can then build upon this universal echoing by using your
observations about your customer’s behavioural preference and adapting your
sales approach as outlined in previous chapters accordingly. As Dr Robert
Cialdini from Arizona State University states in his book Influence (1993),
‘People prefer to say yes to individuals they know and like.’

The more you are like customers from a behavioural perspective the more they
will like you. The more they like you the more comfortable they will feel. The
more comfortable they feel the more likely they are to spend time with you,
share information with you and ultimately do business with you.

Stage 4: comfort part III: control

As you are moving through the early stages of the sales process it is important to
keep focused on maximizing the customer’s sense of comfort with you. Your
aim is to continually contribute to creating a state of mind where the customer’s
brain is open and receptive to your sales message. The more comfortable the
customer feels about you, the more open the message receptors in the customer’s
brain will be.
At this stage of the sales process you can add to customers’ sense of comfort by
providing them with a sense of control over what will happen. You can do this
by outlining the process you are going to follow. Explain that you won’t be
launching into any sort of pre-prepared sales pitch. Explain that, firstly, you
would like to understand about them, their business (if selling business to
business) and their goals. Stress that it is only once you understand their
situation that you will be in a position to see if you can help them or not.

When selling to new clients I always use a phrase such as ‘if I can help you or
not’; for example, ‘If I think I can help you – and I do mean if – then I would
like to make you a proposal.’ I do this for several reasons. Firstly, it reduces any
concerns that customers may have that, like far too many salespeople, I am
going to launch into a canned sales pitch. I am only going to make them a
proposal if I can help. Secondly, it suggests that I am selective about who I work
with (which is true), and this helps to establish my credibility. It also introduces
a sense of scarcity in that I may decide not to work with the customer. Dr Robert
Cialdini’s research also discovered that scarcity was a powerful principle of
influence.

Things that are difficult to attain or obtain are perceived as more valuable and
desirable. At an unconscious and more primitive level of the brain scarcity can
be perceived as a threat to survival and arouses powerful emotions that can
overwhelm the conscious or rational mind. I have found that introducing the
slightest suggestion or possibility of scarcity makes the customer want my
services all the more. For example, when I am contacted by conference
organizers to discuss booking me as a keynote speaker, I will always ask them to
tell me about their organization and what they want to get from the conference. I
explain that ‘I want to see if I am the right speaker for you, or not.’ The phrase
‘or not’ positions me as a speaker who is not desperate to get the speaking
engagement, that I won’t work for just anyone, and that I will speak at a
conference only where I will add value to the aims of the conference.
When meeting customers for the first time I also stress that they will always be
the ones in control, for example by using language like ‘You will be the one to
the ones in control, for example by using language like ‘You will be the one to
decide if we are the right partner for you.’ This acknowledgement that the
customers will be in control will be perceived as rewarding by their brain. It also
gives them a status boost, which again will be rewarding to their brain.
It is important not to overdo this. You want to position yourself as someone of
equal status, and an authority in their field. You do not want to be perceived as
subordinate to customers, as this will have impact later in the sales process –
particularly during the negotiation phase! You can exude calm confidence by
mentioning that you appreciate that they have a choice over who to select as a
supplier and you are interested to talk with them to understand their situation and
to see if you can be of help to them, or not. This calm confidence will help you
to exude an air of authority and certainty that will be very appealing and
comforting to their brain.
Another advantage of outlining the process that you will follow is that it
increases customers’ sense of certainty. The brain likes to try to predict what will
happen. In the primitive world of 100,000 years ago, the ability to predict
successfully what would happen maximized your chances of survival. Certainty
is a rewarding experience for the brain. Uncertainty on the other hand arouses
the limbic system in a negative manner. Until you outline what will happen and
when, there may be a degree of tension or discomfort on the part of customers.
Making them comfortable and certain about what will happen will help to get
them into an open and receptive state of mind.

As a result of the way the brain operates, and the fact that it is more likely that
the ‘away from’ threat response will be activated, we have to focus actively on
increasing feelings of comfort, certainty and reward throughout the sales
process.
So, by now, we should have a customer who is feeling comfortable with us and
who will be open to us gathering information so that we can be of maximum
help to the customer. In Chapter 10 we will explore how to do exactly that.
 10
The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process – the third phase
Establish context and catalyse

Thesalespeople
one factor that differentiates true sales professionals from the less capable
is their ability to develop an in-depth understanding of their
customer’s situation and needs. This chapter focuses on doing this to an
advanced level and covers stages 5 and 6 of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process.

Stage 5: context and catalyse

This stage of the sales process is about gaining an in-depth understanding of
customers, the context or circumstances of their situation, and their needs, goals,
challenges and problems. Once you have done this you can then use what you
have discovered as a catalyst to motivate customers to take action.
Just as medical doctors will not prescribe treatment until they have diagnosed a
patient’s symptoms, so it is vitally important to diagnose a customer’s problems
before offering any form of solution. However, with the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-
friendly selling process we are going to do more than gain an understanding for
ourselves. We are going to help and consult with customers so that they come to
their own conclusions and insights about what they need to do that is in their
best interests.

The four types of question

As described in my first book, Bare Knuckle Selling (Hazeldine, 2011b), broadly
speaking there are four types of questions that you can use in a selling situation.
These are:

closed;
open;
probing;
summarizing.

These can be remembered by way of the mnemonic COPS.

Closed questions
These are used to obtain a specific answer and to check facts. Examples include:

‘Was it a success?’
‘Is that the most important area?’
‘Does anyone else need to approve this purchase?’

Closed questions usually result in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

Open questions
These are broad, diagnostic questions that encourage customers to talk about
their circumstances. Open questions usually start with words such as ‘what’,
‘when’, ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘who’ or ‘which’ and usually result in a multi-
word or sentence answer. Examples include:

‘What do you want to change or improve about your business?’

‘What could your current supplier do better?’
‘How do you currently handle customer queries?’
‘Why are you considering a new supplier?’

It is important to stress that, whilst open questions usually result in a multi-word

or sentence answer and closed questions usually result in a single-word answer,
it is not always the case. Sometimes you will get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a good open
question and a long reply to a closed question!
Although many salespeople have been taught to ask open questions rather than
closed questions (as this helps with information gathering), both open and closed
questions are important and have their place in the selling process. Open
questions are used to gather information and closed questions are used to clarify
what you discover and get specific answers and commitments.

Probing questions
These are used to explore a point a customer has made. They allow you to drill
further into what the customer has said so that you can understand it in more
detail. This is sometimes called ‘chunking down’ and is a concept that we will
return to later. Examples include:

‘When you say you need to move quickly, how quickly do you mean?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘In what way do you think…?’
‘Give me an example of…?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Why did you mention that particular feature?’

A useful probing technique is to use ‘echo questions’. An echo question is where

you use the last word or few words of what the customer says as a probing
question. For example, if the customer says ‘We need a supplier who is reliable’,
the echo question is ‘Reliable?’ In this example, you are probing further to
discover how the customer defines ‘reliable’. If you did not probe, you could
make some assumptions about what ‘reliable’ means to you.

It is important to ‘chunk down’ or ‘decode’ the language that the customer uses.
This ensures that you understand exactly what the customer means by ‘reliable’.
Your customers will have criteria that they use to decide if a supplier is reliable.
Some of these they will be conscious of and some unconscious. The criteria can
form part of the 95 per cent of human cognition that is unconscious. By diving
deeper into customers’ language and therefore their thinking (both conscious and
unconscious) you gain a more accurate and precise definition of the criteria that
they will use to make a decision.
Asking probing questions around the customer’s buying criteria will allow you
firstly to identify what they are and secondly to prioritize them. Useful questions
include:

‘What is important to you?’

‘What is most important to you?’
‘The last time you took a decision like this, how did you decide?’
‘What criteria will you be using to make your decision about which supplier
to award the contract to?’
‘Of the four criteria you mentioned, which of these is the most important to
you?’

In addition to helping you understand customers’ criteria, you may also help
them to become consciously aware of the elements of their thinking – in this
case their decision-making criteria – that were previously unconscious. This can
help them to make a better decision and, as you were present when it happened,
this insight will often be attributed to you, which will help your credibility,
connection and relationship with the customer.

Summarizing questions
These are used to sum up the conversation you have had with the customer and
to confirm the discussion you have had so far. This helps to keep the sales call
on track and to check and clarify your understanding. Examples include: ‘So if I
understand correctly, is what you are saying…?’ and ‘So have we agreed
that…?’
A very elegant method of really understanding what your customer wants, needs
and values is to combine questions in a questioning funnel. You start with broad
information at the top of the funnel, and using a combination of open, probing,
information at the top of the funnel, and using a combination of open, probing,
summarizing and closed questions you get very specific information at the
bottom.
At the broad top of the funnel you ask more open questions that encourage
customers to tell you about their circumstances and what is important to them.
You then use probing questions to dig deeper, chunking down to gather more
information about specific areas. You can then use closed questions to clarify
information and check specific facts, and summarizing questions to wrap up the
questioning process. You can use a series of funnels to gather all of the
information you need to fully understand customers’ needs, wants and criteria.

FIGURE 10.1 The questioning funnel

I sometimes liken this process of questioning to gathering together the pieces of

a jigsaw puzzle. Imagine that you wanted to complete a jigsaw puzzle but did
not possess a picture of what the completed puzzle looked like. In that case it
would only be once you had all of the pieces together that you would be able to
see the full picture.

In the sales process it can be dangerous to assume that you know what the full
picture is, because that means you stop asking questions! You have to build a
picture is, because that means you stop asking questions! You have to build a
full and complete picture of customers’ circumstances and the problems they
face before you can build a picture of the solution with them.

Using chunking-down questions

I referred to the concept of chunking down when describing probing questions. It
is useful to think of this concept in a broader way than just asking probing
questions.

As the main aim of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly selling process is to help

customers come to a conclusion about the best course of action to take, the more
of their unconscious thinking processes (including their neural maps) that they
are conscious of, the more of an informed decision they will be able to make.

You will recall from Chapter 4 that these ‘maps’ or arrangements of neurons
represent entire ‘chunks’, concepts or templates of knowing, perceiving or
cognition. These are your customer’s mental structures of preconceived ideas or
organized patterns of thought. Your customer’s existing maps can influence and
inhibit the uptake of new information. So when customers are making a buying
decision, they will be processing the potential new purchase in relation to data
that are currently stored within the content of their existing map framework. This
process occurs at a conscious and unconscious level.

A metaphor that can help to illustrate the concept of chunking up and chunking
down is that of a lake. Consider the unconscious neural maps as being under the
surface of the lake. They can’t be seen or observed consciously by the customer
but they do exert a powerful (unconscious) influence on the customer’s decision
making. The customer is more aware of his or her conscious thinking that occurs
above the surface of the lake where it can be more easily ‘seen’. As mentioned
earlier the ability to be aware of one’s own thinking is known as ‘meta-
cognition’.
The questioning process that I will outline shortly will help customers to become
more aware of their thinking processes and the maps or beliefs that underlie
these. You are going to help them to make sense of and gain greater clarity over
these. You are going to help them to make sense of and gain greater clarity over
their circumstances and the challenges facing them in the achievement of their
goals.

In order to chunk down we ask probing questions to dig deeper into customers’
neural maps so that we can better understand their make-up and structure. To
follow on from the earlier jigsaw analogy, with chunking down you may have
assembled enough pieces of the jigsaw to assemble the outer frame of the
problem. We are now digging down to find further pieces of the jigsaw to fill the
complete picture in richer detail. We are in effect exploring these maps with the
customers. Metaphorically speaking we are getting them out of their head and
spreading them out on the table in front of them so that they can get a sense of
perspective and understand them better. Chunking-down questions include:

‘What specifically is it that makes XYZ company such a good supplier?’

‘How do you know that to be the case?’
‘How did you come to that conclusion?’
‘What evidence do you see that lets you know that this is a problem?’
‘What was it from your prior experience that led you to have that opinion?’
‘What effect is this having on your staff?’
‘What is happening that is causing a problem?’

In addition to this, chunking down can be applied to help customers understand

the nature and root cause of the problems facing them. This will be explained
shortly.

The other benefit of chunking-down questions is that they encourage customers

to switch their focus from more external processing to more internal, inwardly
focused processing. Chunking-down questions encourage them to stop and think,
go inside and reflect. This can often help customers to trigger insights about the
nature of and possible solutions to the challenges facing them. These are
sometimes referred to as ‘Aha!’ moments.

From a sales perspective, an insight will often involve customers overcoming an

existing assumption, or as a result of one or more of their neural maps being
existing assumption, or as a result of one or more of their neural maps being
raised to the surface and exposed to the sunlight a better solution can present
itself. On a television programme (BBC, 2013) this was described by Dr Simone
Ritter from Radboud University Nijmegen as a ‘schema violation’, where a
normal pattern of thought or behaviour is disrupted. Well-travelled neural
pathways are abandoned, forcing new connections to be made between brain
cells.

When customers have a moment of insight they quite literally think differently.
When this creative spark occurs, a part of the brain called the anterior superior
temporal gyrus activates (we have an anterior superior temporal gyrus on both
sides of our brain, but interestingly it is the one on the right side of the brain that
activates during moments of insight), and a burst of what are known as gamma
brainwaves erupts from this area.

On a day-to-day basis we experience many different states of consciousness. The

brainwave activity in each of these states of consciousness has a unique pattern
that can be measured. Brainwaves change frequencies based upon the neural
activity in the brain. Brainwaves are electromagnetic wave forms that are
produced by the electrical and chemical activity of the brain. They can be
measured with sensitive electronic equipment called an electroencephalogram.
Brainwave frequencies are measured in cycles per second, or hertz, and fall into
broad bands:

Gamma (25 to 100 hertz). Although the gamma range is broad, a frequency
of 40 hertz is typical. Gamma waves have been discovered more recently
than some of the other brainwave states. Although less is known about this
state of mind, as described above research seems to show that gamma
waves are associated with bursts of insight and high-level information
processing.
Beta (13 to 30 hertz). Beta waves are most commonly associated with
normal, wide-awake states of consciousness and a heightened state of
alertness, logic and critical reasoning. Beta is increased during times of
 stress, enabling us to manage situations and solve problems.
Alpha (7 to 13 hertz). Alpha waves are present when people are more
relaxed, when daydreaming or during light meditation. They indicate an
alert state with a quiet mind. Increased alpha has been found to be present
in the brainwave patterns of people who practise activities such as
meditation, yoga and tai chi.
Theta (3 to 7 hertz). Theta waves are present during light sleep, including
the REM dream state and during deep meditation.
Delta (0.1 to 3 hertz). Delta waves are associated with the deepest levels of
physical relaxation. Delta is the slowest of the brainwave frequencies and is
associated with dreamless sleep.

Neuroscientists now know that a moment before the burst of gamma brainwaves
erupts from the anterior superior temporal gyrus, a burst of alpha wave activity
occurs in the visual cortex at the back of the right side of the brain. This appears
to momentarily ‘shut down’ the visual cortex, allowing the idea to bubble to the
surface of conscious awareness. You may have observed that sometimes when
people are thinking about a difficult problem they close their eyes to help
themselves concentrate. This burst of alpha brainwave activity appears to be the
brain ‘blinking’ to help the idea emerge into conscious awareness. So, when you
ask questions that encourage customers to chunk down or go inside, allow them
time to do this. Do not interrupt them by talking whilst they are thinking. Be
aware that they may look down or away from you and that their eyes may glaze
over or even close as they process your question. Allow this to happen.

When customers experience a moment of insight (the ‘Aha!’ moment), this

triggers a release of dopamine and adrenalin, which creates a lift in energy and
motivation. The combined effects of dopamine and adrenalin explain why, when
Archimedes experienced his fabled eureka moment, he allegedly leapt from his
bath and ran naked down the street!
When the moment of insight occurs you should harness this energy release and
channel customers towards taking action on their insight. You may never have a
better time to get their agreement to take action!

In addition, the brain rapidly associates one thing with another and particularly
remembers events that are emotionally intense. An advantage is that the
customer’s brain will associate or anchor the insight to you and as a result of its
intensity this moment will be more memorable. This helps you to position
yourself as an insightful adviser to the customer!
I experienced such a moment recently when I was providing one-to-one
coaching to the sales director of a large IT company. He had ambitions to
become the managing director but was struggling with a relationship problem
with one of his peers on the senior leadership team. As we were exploring the
problem he became stuck, not knowing what to do next. He looked at me and
was clearly not sure how to get out of the situation he was in. He was, if you
like, circling around a well-trodden neural pathway. I decided to ask a
provocative and leading question to see if I could unstick his thinking and said,
‘Isn’t it just time that you two sat down and talked about what isn’t being said
that should be being said?’ He then broke eye contact with me, his eyes glazed
over and he ‘went inside’. I remained silent and allowed him to process. After a
minute or so he suddenly sat bolt upright in his chair, his face lit up, his eyes
opened wide and he pointed at me and said, ‘I know exactly what to say to him!
Yes, that’s it! You are a genius!’ We then rehearsed what he needed to say and
how to say it, and the coaching session concluded. The next time we met he very
excitedly told me about the conversation he had had with his colleague and how
the relationship has been improved.

As I had (in his eyes anyway) achieved genius status (and sadly he is the only
person I am aware of to hold that opinion of me!) he readily agreed to book
further coaching sessions. I am pleased to report that he succeeded in being
promoted to managing director and even more pleased to report that he has
become a very lucrative client! The flash of insight was entirely his and his
alone; I just played some part in helping to trigger it. However, I have benefited
from the fact that it occurred and has become attributed to me.

Let us now explore a questioning framework that we can use to help us to

Let us now explore a questioning framework that we can use to help us to
understand the customer’s context and to help customers gain valuable insight
into the actions they need to take to solve their problems, overcome their
challenges and achieve their goals.

The Neuro-Sell questioning map

As you learned in Chapter 4, a fundamental organizing and operating principle
of your brain that drives your thinking, behaviour and action is to avoid and
move away from anything that is perceived to be painful, dangerous or
threatening, and to move towards anything that is pleasurable, comforting or
rewarding. The ‘Neuro-Sell questioning map’ is orientated to and designed
around this concept. It provides a structured way to question customers, to help
them to become aware of the challenges and opportunities they face and to
provide a dual force of ‘stay away’ from pain motivation and ‘towards reward’
motivation that will help you to close the sale.

The Neuro-Sell questioning map is illustrated in Figure 10.2, and a printable

copy is available for you to download at www.neuro-sell.com.

FIGURE 10.2 The Neuro-Sell questioning map

The process to follow is set out in the next sections.

1. Current situation
Where is the customer now? Question the customer to get a full understanding of
the current situation. Building on the pre-meeting research that you have
conducted, question further on where the customer is currently. When selling to
businesses you may wish to question customers about the market they operate in,
their competitors, their people, their strategy and what they are hoping to achieve
in the future, current initiatives and projects, how they see their business
changing and so forth. The aim of this stage is to develop a thorough
understanding of their business.
If you are selling to consumers you can conduct a trimmed-down version of this
to understand their personal and family situation.

2. Past
Where have they come from? It is helpful to understand customers’ previous
circumstances, particularly if what has happened in the past has contributed to,
or is the cause of, the current situation. For example, if they are experiencing
difficulties because their current IT infrastructure is struggling to cope then it
would be useful to understand, for example, that part of the problem was a
merger with another company that took place three years ago.

It can also be useful to understand customers’ personal or career history as a way

of furthering rapport with them and developing a deeper understanding of their
experience (which may shape their buying approach) and to identify factors that
may affect the criteria they will use to make a buying decision.

3. Problem or pain
Where are they hurting? What problems and challenges are customers facing?
What isn’t working as it should? What opportunities are being missed? Who or
what is not performing to the required standard? What frustrations do customers
have? It is important also to ask questions to begin to make customers aware of
what this is costing them. This can include:

Financial cost. How much is the current problem costing them? All
businesses are interested in reducing cost as a way of making more profit.
Where are customers wasting money? Where are they losing money?
Where are they missing out on opportunities to make additional money?
Strategic cost. Where is the problem impacting on customers’ strategic
aims? For example, if they want to expand their business how is the
problem preventing them from doing that?
Personal and emotional cost. What impact does the problem have on
customers. Is it making them or their employees angry and frustrated? Is it
wasting their time? Do customers or their employees have to work longer
hours because of the problem? Does it make their life more complicated
and challenging?

The aim of the questioning is to make the customer fully aware of the painful
The aim of the questioning is to make the customer fully aware of the painful
impact the problem is having. Your aim is to maximize the pain the customer is
experiencing. This will provide the maximum ‘stay away’ motivation for the
customer to move away from.
When I have been explaining this concept during speaking engagements or
during consultancy assignments sometimes people tell me that this seems
somewhat unethical or manipulative. My response is that what you are doing is
making the customer aware of the real, genuine cost and impact of the problem.
You are raising the customer’s awareness of the cost of the problem(s) being
faced. Sometimes people need to be faced with the brutal truth and the harsh
reality of their situation before they will be motivated to take action. If the
problem is causing them pain and, as a result of you making them more aware of
the impact of the problem, they take an action that they otherwise wouldn’t have
done, removing the pain and delivering them a positive result, then I believe that
you have been of good service to them. You have helped them to take a decision
that proves beneficial to them. If you have to ‘rub their nose’ in the reality of
their problem to motivate them to take positive action that improves their
circumstances, then I consider that to be entirely ethical.

To help to attune your brain to identify your customer’s potential problems and
pain, a worthwhile exercise is to brainstorm all of the possible problems and
challenges that your customers may experience. You can draw on your existing
knowledge and then challenge yourself to list as many as you possibly can. As
you add to this list over time it will become a valuable resource. You can use it
to add to the problems the customer tells you about. You can ask if, in common
with other companies in your customer’s industry or situation, the customer is
experiencing one of the problems. This can be positioned in this way: ‘Ms
Customer, a number of companies operating in your industry/area have told me
that they are experiencing X problem. Is that something that affects you too?’
Firstly, this helps to build your reputation as a switched-on, knowledgeable
authority within the industry in question, and secondly it may highlight further
problems that add to the customer’s pain, which you can sell solutions to.
It is not advisable to ever make assumptions about what a customer may be
experiencing, or indeed to make any assumptions whatsoever when selling.
Don’t assume – ask. However, anticipating likely or potential problems can help
you to be well prepared to discuss these and increase your ability to provide a
solution to them with your customer.

For example, one of my areas of specialization is transforming the performance

of my client’s sales forces. As I have consulted with different clients I often find
that many of them face similar problems with regard to their sales force
performance. Here are some examples that are on my ‘pain list’, and I hope they
inspire you to produce your own list for the industries or areas in which you sell.
My ‘pain list’ includes:

buyers becoming more economically cautious and procrastinating on

placing orders;
the demands from buyers for more for less;
sales stalling and failing to move along the sales pipeline;
profit margins under pressure and falling as a result of increased
competition and more aggressive procurement practices;
traditional, direct cold-calling failing, or becoming less and less effective;
getting face-to-face time with key decision makers;
poor levels of customer penetration, particularly at a senior management
level;
salespeople failing to identify the customer’s decision-making unit;
finding new customers;
securing appointments with new customers;
the shift from a transactional to a consultative or solution selling style;
too many salespeople performing below expectations;
struggling to recruit and retain effective salespeople;
salespeople struggling to balance effort and focus;
poor proposal to close ratios;
 struggling to retain existing customers as a result of aggressive competition;
sales managers not spending sufficient time (or having the capability) to
coach their salespeople;
an inability to differentiate themselves against the competition;
increasing cost of sales.

Ouch! I hope you can feel the pain! My pain list allows me to anticipate the
likely problems and pain that my customers may be experiencing. If they are
then I have prepared in advance to be able to discuss these and offer some
possible solutions. It also allows me to ask questions around common areas of
pain to see if the customer I am talking to is experiencing them too. Frequently,
asking such questions uncovers additional problems my customer has that I can
help with.

For all of the above I have ways to emphasize and multiply the pain (which will
be covered in detail a little further ahead in this chapter), and I have planned in
advance to discuss tried, tested and proven solutions to help customers with
these problems. Each of my customers has a unique set of problems and
challenges, and as a result I don’t offer or provide a one-size-fits-all or off-the-
shelf solution. However, my customers often have similar themes of problems,
and anticipating these means that I am thoroughly planned and prepared to
discuss these and to demonstrate how I have helped other customers to overcome
every single one of these problems. I would strongly advise you to be able to do
the same.

Making sure that your customers have clarity around the pain they are
experiencing provides compelling ‘stay away pain’ motivation to their brain.

4. Goal (future situation)

What do customers want to achieve? Ask questions to elicit their desired
outcome. Ask questions about what a successful resolution to the problem would
look like and what benefits it would bring them. Be aware that they may not
always be able to fully articulate this, and in helping them to become clear about
always be able to fully articulate this, and in helping them to become clear about
what they want to achieve you will again have been of good service and value to
them.
Many people in their business and personal lives can feel overwhelmed with the
nature and complexity of the problems and challenges they face. A salesperson
who works with customers to get clarity about what a positive goal or outcome
would be like, and to create a vision of a reality that focuses them on a new and
inspiring possibility, can add great value. The more value you add, the more
value customers will perceive that you and your products and services can bring,
the higher price they will be prepared to pay for them.

In addition, being helpful to the customer will trigger the principle of reciprocity.
Dr Robert Cialdini’s research shows this to be a powerful principle of influence.
In his book Influence (1993), Cialdini states that ‘one of the most widespread
and basic norms of human culture is embodied in the rule for reciprocation. The
rule requires that one person try to repay, in kind, what another person has
provided.’

Reciprocity is a powerful persuasion principle, and if you bring value to

customers through your selling process, by helping them to get greater clarity
over what would be most helpful to them, then you may very well trigger a
reciprocity response in the form of them placing their business with you.

Making sure that your customers have clarity around what a beneficial goal
would look like provides compelling ‘towards reward’ motivation to their brain.

5. Impact – ‘stay away pain’

So far we have made sure we understand customers’ situation, their history and
what has led up to their current situation. We have explored the problems they
are experiencing and the pain these are causing and we have determined a goal
or future situation where the problem has been solved.

We have started to develop the dual forces (‘stay away pain’ and ‘towards
reward’) that motivate a customer’s brain to overcome inertia and the status quo
to take action. However, we are now going to ramp up the impact of the dual
to take action. However, we are now going to ramp up the impact of the dual
motivation. To add more ‘stay away pain’ motivation, you now need to ask
clients a series of questions to make them consider the possible negative impact
on their business or personal circumstances if they do not take action to solve the
problems they are facing. We need to make them reflect upon and consider the
impact and costs associated with this. In step 3 we began to stir the financial,
strategic, personal and emotional pain. In step 5 we must increase customers’
perception of the pain they will experience if they do not take action.

Sometimes one of the strongest competitors you will face is customers deciding
to do nothing, where they decide to pause and procrastinate. They will do this
only if the pain that they perceive is not strong enough or the reward they will
receive is not compelling enough. So make sure this is not going to happen! Ask
questions to help your clients understand the full implications of not taking
action. What will be the costs, particularly the financial costs, of not taking
action? What will happen if the current circumstances remain? It can be helpful
to get them to consider the short-, medium-and longer-term consequences of the
problem to motivate them to take action. It is important to monetize the pain so
that you can provide great clarity to customers about what the problem is costing
them. They need to see this and feel this.

Recently I was consulting with a company selling unified communications

solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. The solution they provide
basically means that, whenever a customer calls the company’s telephone
numbers (either fixed or cellular), the system automatically routes the call to
someone who can answer it. This provides a good level of customer service – it
is preferable to the customer having to leave a message. If customers don’t get
their call answered they may phone a competitor instead, leading to loss of
business.
Some of the target customers for this service were service businesses like
plumbers and electricians. As part of my consultancy work, I spent some time in
the field with the company’s sales force meeting typical customers so that I
could understand the problems and challenges they faced. It became clear that
the majority of new business enquiries for such businesses came from people
the majority of new business enquiries for such businesses came from people
who had obtained the plumber or electrician’s telephone number from a local
newspaper advert, had seen the telephone number on the side of the plumber or
electrician’s van or had been given it from a friend or colleague. The potential
new customer then phoned the telephone number, and the plumber or electrician
took the details, visited the potential customer’s home or office and then
provided a quotation. The more telephone calls received the more quotations
issued, and the more quotations issued the more work obtained.

I interviewed several plumbers and electricians about the challenges and

problems they faced, and not being able to respond swiftly to calls proved to be a
regular theme. They told me that if they failed to respond swiftly they often lost
the chance to quote for the work, which in turn led to a loss of paid jobs. Using
this information I developed a method of making the plumbers and electricians
aware of the impact of this problem. Using the interview data I developed the
following example using conservative figures:

10 missed calls per week;

average call to quotation ratio: 10 calls lead to five quotations;
average quotation to paid jobs ratio: five quotations to two paid jobs;
average value per paid job: £750;
£750 × 2 jobs per week × 52 weeks per year = £78,000 in lost business.

Ouch! £78,000 would be a significant loss of revenue to most small or medium-

sized enterprises. You will be able to create your own examples using a similar
structure.
You can also maximize the strategic and personal or emotional pain. What are
the short-, medium-and long-term consequences of customers not being able to
deliver on their intended strategy? What are the personal or emotional
implications in the short, medium and longer term? How sustainable is it for
customers to expect their employees to put up with the frustrations they are
experiencing as a result of the out-of-date IT system? If the employees decide to
find a job somewhere else as a result of the frustrations they feel, what will the
find a job somewhere else as a result of the frustrations they feel, what will the
cost be of the disruption? How long will it take the customer to replace the
employee in question? How much will it cost the customer to find and train the
employee?

Stir the pain! If customers thought they had a headache before, make sure that
they now realize that they actually have a migraine! Give their brain a powerful
‘stay away pain’ motivation to avoid.

6. Impact – ‘towards reward’

You also need to add a corresponding amount of ‘towards reward’ for the
customer’s brain to want to secure. In the same way that you have extrapolated
the short-, medium-and long-term pain impact, now do the same by showing
customers the benefits they can expect to receive. This can of course be as
simple as reversing the loss or pain impact.

To return to the lost revenue example earlier, if the small business in question
was currently turning over £300,000 and secured the business rather than losing
it then this would be a 26 per cent increase in revenue and a corresponding
increase in profit.

As you have already asked the customer about current circumstances and what
the customer is hoping to achieve, you can attach this increase in revenue to the
achievement of business or personal goals, for example paying off a business
loan, recruiting an additional member of staff who will in turn generate more
revenue, paying off a mortgage, buying a new car, going on holiday to a
luxurious destination and so on. Give the customer’s brain a very powerful
‘towards reward’ motivation.

Demonstrating and emphasizing the reward in this way will also help further on
in the sales process when you discuss the price of your products and services. In
the example above the cost of purchasing the unified communications solution
on a monthly basis is absolutely dwarfed by the increased revenue it could
generate for the customer. This makes the buying decision a ‘no-brainer’ (pun
intended)!
The four colours of questions
The four colours of questions
In Chapters 6 and 7 we looked at how to adapt your selling behaviour to best suit
that of the customer. As part of the process of adapting and of stimulating desire
within each customer’s brain it is useful to adapt the style and sort of questions
you ask to each colour of customer. The following questions have been tailored
to be attractive and stimulating to each of the four colours of customer discussed
in Chapters 6 and 7.

Green customer
The Green customer will particularly respond to questions about the future,
future vision, experimentation, innovating, novelty, new ideas, creating,
possibility, leading the way and personal popularity, such as:

‘As you look into the future, what possibilities have you considered?’
‘What new solutions would you be interested to experiment with?’
‘In what areas or ways would you like to innovate?’
‘Have you thought about how you could create a solution to that problem?’
‘How do you think your customers would respond if they perceived you as
the thought leader in your industry?’

Blue customer
The Blue customer will particularly respond to questions about feelings,
stability, certainty, teamwork, people, relationships and communication, such as:

‘Which advantages do you think your people would like the most?’
‘What are your feelings about the best way to ease this product into your
range in a way that is manageable?’
‘So what do we need to do to maximize people’s certainty about this?’
‘What would you most like to do to improve teamworking and
communication on the back of this solution?’
‘What positive impacts would you like to see with regard to your
relationships with…?’
Red customer
The Red customer will particularly respond to questions about the form, task,
results, goals, independence and speed, such as:

‘Of the goals you mention, which is the one you want to achieve first?’
‘Can you outline the steps you want to take to get this done?’
‘How quickly do you want a solution to this road block?’
‘Is it important to you that you are in control of this?’
‘What results do you want to achieve and by when?’

Gold customer
The Gold customer will particularly respond to questions about facts, logic,
rational thinking, quality, standards and detail, such as:

‘How specifically do you know this is a problem?’

‘What facts have you gathered so far?’
‘What impact is this having on standards and quality?’
‘When you analyse the data what do they tell you?’
‘If we analyse where you are versus where you need to be what gap exists?’

Adapting your questioning in this way means that your questions will be
received with a higher degree of comfort and interest, as they will be the sort of
questions that the particular customer will prefer to be asked!

7. Solution positioning
Your customers will take action if their brain believes that the reward they will
obtain exceeds the ‘pain’ that paying the money for it will cost them, or the pain
they will experience from not taking action. In the example above, the reward far
exceeds the cost, making the buying decision comfortable and easy for the
customer’s brain.

Step 7 is where you ask summarizing questions, recapping the six previous steps,
to check your understanding is the same as the customer’s understanding:
to check your understanding is the same as the customer’s understanding:

where the customer is now – the current situation;

any past influences that are having an impact on the customer;
the problems the customer is experiencing;
the goals or positive outcomes the customer hopes to achieve;
emphasizing the impact of not resolving the problem;
emphasizing the benefits of resolving the problem.

In addition to the above, before you can confidently progress any further with
the sale you will also need to ask questions to make sure that you have clarity
about the customer’s decision-making process and who will be involved. Who is
the person with the final authority to make the decision to go ahead? You will
also need to know if the customer has the money or budget available to spend
with you. And who is the person with the authority to spend the money?

This process is sometimes referred to as qualification. In order to qualify that the

opportunity is valid and worth you investing any further time on it you need to
understand: 1) cash – whether the customer has the budget available to make the
purchase; and 2) authority – whether you have contact with or access to the key
people involved in making the decision. Are you talking to the organ grinder or
the monkey? I prefer a bold approach of asking direct questions such as: ‘Mr
Customer, do you have a budget set aside to solve this problem?’ or ‘Ms
Customer, do you have a budget set aside for this?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ then
you can ask, ‘Can you share that with me?’

Sometimes customers will reply that they cannot or will not share their budget
with you. If this happens say ‘Yes, I understand that’ and then make a further
attempt to flush out the budget by asking ‘Can you let me know some round
numbers?’, ‘Can you give me a ballpark figure?’ or ‘Can you give me some
guidance as to the range within which we ought to address this solution?’ You
can then build on this further by saying ‘Mr Customer, we have solutions to the
sort of problems we have been discussing that range from £5,000 to £25,000
[whatever price range you work within]. The reason I ask is that we can solve
most problems like this, but some cost £5,000 to solve and some cost £25,000. I
understand your desire for confidentiality, but should I address this as a £5,000
or £25,000 solution?’ This will usually result in the customer disclosing a figure
of some sort, or at the very least providing some ‘ballpark’ amount guidance.

If the reply is still ‘no’ then you can respond: ‘Well, that’s not unusual. How do
you plan to move this forward?’ This bold approach is designed to flush out if
the customer is really serious about moving things forward or is just looking for
some free ideas and help! If this is the case then you may have to take a decision
about how much more time and effort you are prepared to commit. You may be
better off investing your time in a more suitably qualified opportunity.

Customers may also deliberately respond with a figure that is on the low side.
This is usually done as a negotiation ploy – they hope that by ‘anchoring’ the
opening price on the low side they will get a cheaper overall price. We will look
at the whole subject of ‘neuro-negotiating’ in Chapter 15, but for now a counter
to respond with would be: ‘Hm. That could be a bit of a problem. I don’t think
we are going to be able to go first class on this one. I would need to take some
things out of our usual solution to be able to get a bit closer to your budget.’ This
communicates that you have confidence in your products or services and that the
only way you will be able to meet the customer’s budget is by tailoring your
product or service in some way to meet this.

Research conducted with people buying cars who stated that the price was ‘too
expensive’ paid a higher price overall when they were first shown a total price
and were then asked to take away optional items to reduce costs, as against
people who were shown the base cost of the car and then asked to select options
that they wanted to add, increasing the price as they added each option.
Presenting the attractive ‘deluxe’ version first gives something desirable for the
‘towards reward’ instinct in the brain to want and to move towards. In addition,
because of the hard-wired ‘stay away from pain’ instinct, the primitive brain has
a hard-wired fear of loss. This is triggered by you describing trimming down the
solution to fit the customer’s budget.
solution to fit the customer’s budget.

By now your questioning process will have established a very powerful

combined ‘stay away from’ and a ‘towards reward’ momentum in the customer’s
brain. In fact you will notice that the ‘Neuro-Sell questioning map’ switches the
customer’s brain back and forth between ‘stay away pain’ motivation and
‘towards reward’ motivation several times:

step 3: ‘stay away pain’ motivation;

step 4: ‘towards reward’ motivation;
step 5: ‘stay away pain’ motivation;
step 6: ‘towards reward’ motivation;
step 7: ‘stay away pain’ motivation, ‘towards reward’ motivation, ‘stay
away pain’ motivation and ‘towards reward’ motivation.

This is deliberately done to get the customer’s brain oscillating between these
powerful motivating factors and to create a powerful force of inner propulsion
that will move the customer’s brain to take positive action.

Be aware that the ‘stay away from pain’ threat response draws resources of
oxygen and glucose away from the prefrontal cortex, which will make it difficult
for the customer to consider new concepts and options. So ensure that before
moving on to your pitch you saturate the customer’s brain with ‘towards reward’
messages – the results (money, emotion, extra time) the customer will receive.

That is why you will see that the process ends with ‘towards reward’. We want
motivated customers in a positive, curious and receptive mood so that when we
finally move to selling them our solution their brain is in the best state to receive
it. We can do this using a concept called ‘priming’.

Priming
Research shows that words that you have heard recently or things you have seen
recently are remembered and unconsciously influence your brain and therefore
your thinking and behaviour (Bargh, Chen and Burrows, 1996; Dijksterhuis et
al, 1998; Macrae and Johnston, 1998). So, before you present your product or
service, prime the customer’s brain by talking about the positive aspects that are
most important to the customer and the results wanted. For example, ‘So you are
looking for a reliable and experienced supplier, with a track record of delivering
results, that you can form a long-term and productive partnership with.’ The
customer’s brain has now been positively primed and is therefore most receptive
to your sales presentation by, in this example, the use of priming words such as
‘reliable’, ‘experienced’, ‘track record of delivering results’ and ‘long-term and
productive partnership’.

So far in the sales process you haven’t mentioned or discussed your solution. At
this moment you have told customers what they can expect but not how. They
should now be curious about how this can be accomplished. When the brain is
curious it is highly receptive. It wants to know what the answer is. You can now
allude to your solution but not offer it yet, by saying ‘So, Ms Customer, I believe
I have a solution to the problems we have discussed and one that will deliver the
results you are looking for.’

Curiosity is one of the most powerful states that you can induce into a
customer’s brain. You will be aware that it is used to hook an audience in
movies and television programmes by devices such as ‘cliff hangers’ where the
audience is left curious about what will happen (sometimes from one show to the
next to make sure you tune in next week) or maintaining a sense of curiosity
about which character in the movie is the real murderer. These curiosity devices
are used because they are incredibly powerful! Therefore make sure you invoke
a strong sense of curiosity throughout your sales process (there will be more on
this concept in Chapter 11) – your customer’s brain can’t resist it!

Stage 6: check
This stage of the sales process is a quick mental checklist that you need to do
prior to transitioning to stage 7: convince. The checklist is designed to make sure
you have covered all you need to cover and have gathered the information you
need before moving into your sales pitch. The mnemonic CCAPP will help you
to remember the checklist:
to remember the checklist:

Cash. Do you understand the customer’s budget?

Criteria. Do you understand the customer’s buying criteria and have you
prioritized them?
Authority. Do you understand the customer’s decision-making process and
the people involved in making the decision?
Pain. Do you understand the negative impacts on the customer of the
current situation and the future impact if the problem is not rectified? Does
the customer agree with this?
Pleasure. Do you understand the positive benefits that the customer will
enjoy when the problem is resolved? Does the customer agree with this?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to each of the questions within the CCAPP mnemonic
then we are ready to move to the next stage in the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process and the next chapter.
 11
The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process – the fourth phase
 Convince

Perhaps the most exciting stage of the sales process for most sales
professionals is when they get to pitch or present their products or services to
the customer. This chapter will cover stage 7 of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process and provide you with a brain-friendly pitch process that will give
you an unfair advantage over your competitors.

Stage 7: convince
This stage is all about convincing the customer’s brain that the action you will be
proposing is a positive one, and that it will move the customer away from the
pain of the problem and towards the reward that your solution will provide.

Before we go any further let us just recap on some key points about our
customer’s brain. We have seen that at least 95 per cent of the thoughts and
feelings that influence people’s behaviour and decision making occurs below
conscious awareness in the unconscious mind: ‘consciousness is a small part of
what the brain does, and it’s a slave to everything that works beneath it’
(Professor Joseph LeDoux, neuroscientist, in Lehrer, 2009). Therefore it is a
mistake to believe that customers will make their decision by deliberately and
consciously considering the features and benefits of what you have to offer and
then processing this in a logical way to arrive at a decision to buy or not to buy.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that human beings are rational,
thinking decision makers and that we make deliberate and conscious decisions.
The misconception is that, when we make decisions, we consciously analyse the
data available, compare and contrast alternatives and carefully consider the pros
and cons before coming to a conclusion.
Customers’ emotions will be interwoven with their rational reasoning process.
The brain has separate but connected areas for processing emotion and logic, and
The brain has separate but connected areas for processing emotion and logic, and
the combination of and communication between these areas of working
influence customers’ decisions to buy or not to buy. Emotion and reason are
intertwined elements of our decision-making process. They influence and are
influenced by each other. Indeed research shows that making good decisions will
frequently involve a complex interplay of several different areas of the brain
working together. It’s not an emotional or rational decision. It is a blur of both –
emotional impulses and more rational consideration affecting our judgement
about what action to take.

We need to construct our sales message in such a way that it appeals to and is
received positively by both the customer’s conscious rational mind and the
customer’s unconscious emotional mind (see Figure 11.1).

FIGURE 11.1 Your sales message is received by the

conscious and the unconscious mind

It is also important to remember that sensory information will travel through the
older, primitive brain and then the limbic or emotional brain before it reaches the
rational cortex. An initial filtering process of all incoming data takes place. From
a primitive survival point of view this makes perfect sense. In moments of
emergency the limbic system commandeers the rest of the brain and rapidly
triggers a freeze, fight or flight response. There isn’t time to analyse and think;
we need to act to stay alive. And the older reptilian and emotional parts of the
we need to act to stay alive. And the older reptilian and emotional parts of the
brain are going to be the first part of the brain to receive the stimulus the
customer receives from us and our sales message before it gets passed up to the
cortex, where more ‘rational’ consideration can take place.
Anatomically the emotional system can act independently of the neocortex. Some emotional reactions
and emotional memories can be formed without any conscious, cognitive participation at all.
(Professor Joseph LeDoux, neuroscientist, in Goleman, 1989)

The prefrontal cortex is the key part of the brain involved in conscious decision
making. However, the rest of the brain is bigger and stronger! Without the other
unconscious parts of the brain ‘agreeing’ to the decision as well, the customer is
not going to say ‘yes’! So we shall look at how we can structure and deliver our
sales message in a way that is appealing to all three parts of our customer’s
brain! Let us look at the three areas of the brain and what each is interested in
and will respond to.

The reptilian and the emotional brain

In Chapter 3 we looked at how the more primitive parts of the brain – the
reptilian and limbic systems – are largely concerned with survival and
perpetuating the species.

PRISM Brain Mapping refers to these two parts of the brain as the ‘gremlin
brain’. If you have seen the film Gremlins you will recall that when the reptilian
version of the gremlins made an appearance they were nasty, destructive
monsters!
The reptilian and limbic systems are the brain’s chief gatekeeper or guardian,
and they screen and filter what type of information will be allowed through.
They pay attention to and allow through: 1) information valuable to have right
now; and 2) information that alerts you to threat or danger. These parts of the
brain have little or no patience if the subject does not immediately concern well-
being and survival.
They prioritize survival first (stay away from pain and danger) and then
achieving comfort, so will respond to pain avoidance first. Please remember that
these are largely mechanical, selfish and unconscious parts of our brain. They do
these are largely mechanical, selfish and unconscious parts of our brain. They do
not ‘think’ in the commonly understood definition of thinking. They rely on
feelings and impressions, which can be either constructive or destructive. Their
world is very black or white, bad or good, stay away or move towards reward.
They respond well to clear and solid contrasts, such as before/after, risky/safe
and faster/slower. Contrast helps the brain to make quick risk-free decisions.
It is important to remember that the reptilian and emotional brains judge things
very quickly and without any mercy. They will form an impression very rapidly
and sometimes using very little evidence. They have a tendency to focus on the
negative, as their primary focus is survival, and therefore constant vigilance for
threats needs to be maintained.

They like and demand instant gratification, lack self-control and restraint and
will act on impulse and emotion. These parts of the brain can overreact to
situations and fuel them with high and intense emotions. The PRISM metaphor is
a useful one for us to keep in mind – we don’t want to do anything to stimulate
the more primitive parts of the customer’s brain into perceiving us as any sort of
threat or danger. If we do our sales message (and ourselves also!) will end up
being rejected.

As these areas of the brain will first pay attention to staying away from danger
and pain (and will put more focus on this than on moving towards reward) it is
important to focus on the customer’s problem first. This will capture the
attention of the reptilian and limbic areas of the brain. The reptilian and limbic
parts of the brain are highly attuned to noticing any changes in the environment,
so consciously and deliberately moving during sales pitches, or doing something
unexpected, will grab their attention.
The rational brain
The cortex and neocortex are the newest (in evolutionary terms) parts of the
brain, and are sometimes referred to as the ‘thinking brain’ or ‘intellectual
brain’.

PRISM refers to the frontal lobes of this part of the brain as the ‘executive brain’
and the rear lobes (the parietal, occipital and temporal lobes) as the ‘database
brain’.

The rational brain is where working memory (or short-term memory as it is also
described), problem solving and more logical, analytically based decision
making take place. Its world is less black and white than the reptilian or
emotional brain, and it is involved in considering possibilities and analysing
data, discovery and logical thought. It will attempt to ascertain the facts and the
truth. When it has achieved this it will attempt to put things together in a logical
and structured manner and determine what action needs to be taken.

This part of the brain also has a conscience, and will consider ethical principles
of what is right and fair, making judgements about what is the correct course of
action to take.

Unlike the impulsive older parts of the brain, this part can choose to delay
rewards or gratification. The rational brain seems to be fulfilled by achievement
and satisfaction, which generally speaking are dependent upon having a sense of
purpose that involves having a direction and meaning to one’s life.
The database brain has two main functions – to think and act automatically using
programmed thoughts and behaviours, and to provide a reference source for
stored data, values and beliefs. The various parts of your brain have put data into
this area of your brain during your life. This part of the brain does not have any
original thinking or interpretation power, but acts on the information it has
stored. The neocortex, emotional brain and reptilian brain access the database
brain to see what previous data (in the form of experiences, memories and
beliefs) are available. These data will then influence what action is taken.
beliefs) are available. These data will then influence what action is taken.

How useful the data are depends on how accurate or valid they are. You may at
times find yourself selling to a brain that has retrieved previously stored data that
are not helpful to your sales attempt. For example, customers may have a belief
about the sort of product or service you are selling based on inaccurate data.
They may have heard someone say negative things about your sort of product or
service. Your job will be to understand and then influence the stored data that
are being used to underpin their belief.

The good news is that research shows that memories are very plastic and
malleable and can be altered, changed and adapted (Sanitioso, Kunda and Fong,
1990). In Chapter 10, we looked at probing and chunking down into the
unconscious thinking of your customer and surfacing more of it to help the
customer make a better decision. We will build on this through the rest of this
chapter. It is always useful to understand the beliefs and opinions your
customers have now (based on the data stored in their database brain) so that we
can meet them where they are before taking them somewhere else.

What follows is a series of considerations to use and incorporate into the

structure and content of your sales pitch.
Curiosity
The very first thing you must do with your sales pitch is to capture the attention
of your customer’s brain. And then you have to keep its attention.

If the brain encounters anything new, novel or unusual it pays attention! When
people experience anything that is different or unexpected, norepinephrine and
dopamine levels in the brain rise. This causes people to focus their attention and
makes them alert and interested.

The best way to capture the attention of the customer’s brain is to surprise it.
Some of the methods that I have used when selling various forms of consultancy,
sales training, negotiation training and management or leadership development
include:

Decorating the meeting room the client was using to hold the sales pitch
with materials we use when running sales training programmes. I re-created
the stimulating, engaging learning environment I create for programme
participants with props like wall posters containing key learning points,
inspiring quotations, music playing, and cards on the desk and floor that
participants use during exercises on the real programme. I then invited the
potential client to join us in the meeting room to start the pitch. The people
who were sitting on the client’s decision-making panel were very curious
about how unusual the meeting room now looked! I didn’t make any
reference to anything that I had adorned the room with until much later in
the pitch, thereby maintaining the sense of curiosity and the client’s
attention.
Having an acronym or mnemonic that contains the first letter of six key
concepts I will discuss displayed on a flip chart, and as the pitch progresses
I complete the words that match the first letter. I make sure I leave at least
one incomplete until really close to the end of the pitch, as the client’s brain
is crying out to close the gap!
Starting with a provocative and/or challenging question or statement, for
example ‘In your company how poor a level of performance can you
operate at and still keep your job?’ or ‘According to research at least 80 to
90 per cent of employees’ behaviour is determined by the behaviour of the
company’s leaders. This means that the behaviour I see your employees
exhibiting tells me what sort of leaders you are.’
Using a prop or device. As much of my sales consultancy is orientated
around the application of neuroscience, one of my regular travelling
companions is a scale replica model of the human brain. I will often have
this sitting on the table or desk in front of me and deliberately not make any
reference to it until much later in the pitch. As it is an unusual object it
attracts the attention and curiosity of the client.
Walking in with a giant full-colour graphical storyboard that provides a
visual representation of a solution I can provide. The entire pitch was
conducted using this and this alone. The client’s logo and references to their
customers and employees were contained on the storyboard, which showed
that it had been prepared specifically for the client. I left the storyboard
with the client at the end of the pitch at their request.
Telling them early in the pitch that I will reveal several pieces of
information that are compelling and interesting to them. I open what I call a
loop in their brain that they want to close. I don’t close the loop until much
later in the pitch, as a way of building curiosity and keeping their attention.
For example, ‘As we progress I am going to show you three tried and tested
and proven ways that we can deliver exactly the results you are looking for
and provide you with rock-solid evidence of our ability.’ As I say ‘three
tried and tested and proven ways’ I count off three times on my fingers. As
I move through the pitch and reveal each ‘tried and tested and proven way’
I mark each point verbally (‘So the first way is…’) and non-verbally by
marking off each point on the relevant finger. This reminds the client’s
brain non-verbally that there is yet more to be revealed. I will explain later
in this chapter why I choose ‘three tried and tested and proven ways’ and
why I specifically structure the phrase as ‘tried and tested and proven ways’
 rather than ‘tried, tested and proven ways’. So you will have to wait a short
while to find out the specific and powerful reason for that. Hopefully I now
have your attention and curiosity!

So please give some thought to how you can capture your customers’ attention,
and make their brains curious to know more. Trigger the release of
norepinephrine and dopamine to focus their attention and make them alert and
interested. You don’t have to be wild and wacky to surprise the customer’s
brain. You can do this in subtle ways that will still be very effective. Mysteries,
puzzles, questions, unexplained things and incomplete patterns are all powerful
ways to grab and keep the attention of your customer’s brain. Indeed, please be
aware that being too unusual and different can trigger a sense of anxiety in the
older parts of the brain, as too much novelty could mean a big change, and
change can be perceived as a threat to survival.

As mentioned earlier the reptilian and limbic areas of your customer’s brain are
highly attuned to notice any changes in their environment, so moving during
sales pitches or doing something unexpected will grab their attention. You can
use movement to make sure you don’t lose the customer’s attention. I would
recommend doing something to attract attention every few minutes or so.
Examples include, if you are using visual aids such as PowerPoint or Keynote,
blanking the screen and walking across to the other side of the room, alternating
between standing up and sitting down, passing something to the client to look at,
moving closer to the audience to make a key point, asking a question, illustrating
a point on a flip chart or whiteboard, displaying a visually impactful graphic or
photograph before providing the reason for showing it, and so forth. When
practising your pitch, plan to insert attention grabbers throughout it.
Chunk
To provide the customer’s brain with comfort and certainty chunk your sales
pitch into bite-size chunks or simple steps. Outline the process that you are going
to follow with the customer at the start of your pitch. This will establish a mental
pathway, which makes your pitch easier for the customer’s brain to process. This
primes their brain to expect each step (this helps with comfort and certainty) and
allows you to stimulate curiosity (as outlined above) by mentioning things that
you will be telling the customer about – only not just yet!
Clarity
It is important to provide the customer’s brain with clarity. To help customers
make a decision we need to provide clarity throughout the sales process and
particularly during the pitch. The greater the clarity we can provide the easier it
is for their brains to draw conclusions. As we will see later, when we provide the
brain with clarity rather than clutter and confusion it is far easier for it to process
the information it is presented with and make a good decision.
Conscious thinking is a complex interaction that includes billions of neurons,
and as a result the brain uses a lot of energy when doing it. As a result of the
brain evolving at a time when food could be a scarce commodity, it has evolved
to be as efficient as possible and to minimize energy usage where possible.
When making decisions and solving problems, the brain makes heavy use of the
prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex can become overwhelmed when faced
with confusing decisions to make. When faced with such a scenario the brain
may avoid making the energy-sapping decision or make an automatic or
unconscious choice. This is quicker and easier and uses less energy. The danger
is that the automatic or unconscious choice could be just to keep things as they
are, to stick with the existing supplier or to procrastinate on making the decision.
If you can minimize the energy usage by the prefrontal cortex you will maximize
the energy resources that the customer’s brain has available to make a good
decision that will serve well.
Salespeople who understand their product or service very well can sometimes,
because of their higher level of insight and years of experience, explain things at
a more advanced and abstract level than suits a person with less knowledge and
experience. When this happens customers can become confused and feel
somewhat bamboozled. Their brains are finding things too complicated and
confusing and as a result decision paralysis can result.

There is a limit to how much information the rational or conscious brain can
process simultaneously. A variety of researchers have concluded that the
maximum number of ‘chunks’ or ‘bits’ of information a person can keep in mind
maximum number of ‘chunks’ or ‘bits’ of information a person can keep in mind
simultaneously is between four and seven, with one study concluding that the
number of ‘chunks’ of information that you can recall accurately at one time is –
one (Cowan, 2001; Gobet and Clarkson, 2004)! The fewer variable factors that
the customer’s brain has to hold in mind to be able to make a decision needs to
be limited as much as possible. The ‘Neuro-Sell’ mantra is: less is more!

The customer’s capacity to make a wide decision is limited by the resources

available to the prefrontal cortex. The aim of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ approach is to
help the customer by making the buying process as brain-friendly as possible.
We can achieve this by providing clutter-free clarity to the customer!

A good way to provide clarity is to start with where the customer is now. In
Chapter 4 we looked at mental frameworks or maps that exist in our customers’
brains. It is a good idea to recognize where customers are now with their
thinking about the topic in question, what they believe and the opinions they
have.
It is important to make sure that we are ‘on the same page’ as our customers or,
more accurately, sharing the same map! Showing that we understand their
situation and beliefs helps us to build rapport with them. It is good to summarize
your understanding and check it is correct with customers. Getting them into an
agreeable frame of mind by agreeing with your explanation of their current
context primes their brain to being more receptive to agreeing with your sales
proposal.
We can then use this current situation or context to demonstrate how we can
move customers from where they are now towards a more beneficial situation.
The brain works by connecting new incoming information into existing maps, so
linking your ideas or proposal to the customers’ existing reality will make it
easier for them to understand and accept.

When people face a problem or challenge they usually attempt to apply

strategies that have worked for them in similar situations previously. Customers
will be projecting their experience from the past on to the current or future
problem or challenge as a way of dealing with it.
problem or challenge as a way of dealing with it.
Their belief about what might work could be a barrier to your proposal being
properly considered and accepted. It is usually more effective to meet them
where they are currently in their thinking (showing that you understand their
current ‘map’) and then build upon this and gracefully move them towards a new
positive solution than it is to tackle their existing ‘mental map’ head on.

The first step in making sure customers have clarity is to be certain you have
clarity yourself, that is, that you are able to articulate your proposal in a short,
sharp, brain-friendly manner, communicating the most important points with
impact. A useful framework is to use a technique I was told about by a
communications consultant who trained company executives how to make a
positive impression when being interviewed by the media. He told me that it was
important that they were very clear about the main messages they wanted to get
across, and I have found his framework to be very valuable for sales
professionals to use to consider the key messages in selling situations – both in
formal pitches and on more informal occasions.

You can adapt this to use earlier in the sales process as part of your pitch, and
you can also use this to summarize the key benefits or to provide your suggested
options.

He told me that he uses the metaphor of a house – what he called ‘the message
house’ (see Figure 11.2). The ‘roof’ of the message house contains your most
important point. This is a point that you make reference to several times, for
example at the beginning, middle and end of your presentation. When building
your sales presentation you need to give careful consideration to this message.
This message is going to be the number one thing that you want your customer
to remember from your presentation. Make your main message orientated
around something that provides a strong benefit to the customer. For example, I
often use the fact that I have a practical results-orientated approach, agree
success measures in advance of doing any work for a customer and guarantee to
deliver the agreed results. In a nutshell my main message is: ‘You want
improved sales results – I guarantee to deliver them!’ As simple as this may
sound, this frequently provides a point of contrast to my competitors, who
appear to spend more time talking about the service they provide rather than the
results the customer desires.

FIGURE 11.2 The message house

Your main message is then supported by your three key points. These can be, for
example, the main three benefits that you can provide. These should link up to
and meet the customer’s three most important criteria that you carefully
identified during the context and catalyse stage of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process (see Chapter 10). Owing to the limitations about the number of
items or chunks of information that can be held consciously at any one time, one
main message and three key points are a good number to provide. This number
can be processed, understood and decided upon by the customer’s brain.

A little earlier I mentioned that I would also explain the reason for using the
structure of ‘tried and tested and proven’ rather than ‘tried, tested and proven’.
The reason is that using the two ands adds rhythm, power and emphasis to your
message by separating and punctuating the three key points. Political speech
writers know this technique, and now that you are aware of it you will see it
being used quite often!

You then need to prepare your ‘fact foundation’. These are facts and proof points
You then need to prepare your ‘fact foundation’. These are facts and proof points
that you have ready to prove the validity of your main message and three key
points. Although we know that emotion plays a significant role in buying
decisions, we still need to have rock-solid proof of the capability of our products
and services.

Please remember that certain types of customers will need more facts and data as
part of their decision-making process (the Gold personality preference, for
example), and there is also a strong emotional benefit to providing this proof, as
it provides a sense of certainty, reliability and comfort that the brain wants to
move towards.
Contrast
Your customer’s brain (including the all-important older parts) responds
positively to clear contrast. To help it make the right decision provide it with
contrast, including contrast between what the customer’s situation is now and
what the situation will be like once the customer has chosen to purchase your
product or solution. Your contrast needs to provide:

A summary of the customer’s current state or situation, the problems being

experienced and the costs or impact associated with these. This provides the
‘stay away pain’ motivation for the customer’s brain to want to move away
from.
A summary of the desired future state situation that shows the rewards and
benefits that the customer will experience once the problems have been
solved by the purchase and implementation of your product or service. This
provides the ‘towards reward’ motivation for the customer’s brain to want
to move towards.
A positioning that shows your product or service as the enabler that allows
movement from where the customer is now to where the customer wants to
be (see Figure 11.3).

FIGURE 11.3 Your product or service enables the customer to

move away from the problem towards a positive solution
My good friend and key account management expert Phil Jesson has devised a
powerful framework that you can use when working with and selling to
customers. It is called ‘strategic bridges’. The framework shows the current state
of the customer’s business and the desired state of the customer’s business
within a defined timescale, for example within three years. Metrics or
measurements of where the customer is now and where the customer wants to be
are included, for example turnover, margin, etc.

You then determine the strategies that the customer is planning to use to take the
business from where it is now to where the customer wants it to be. These are
the ‘bridges’ that will enable the customer’s transition away from the current
state and towards the desired state (see Figure 11.4).

FIGURE 11.4 Strategic bridges example

In order to be able to develop and articulate this framework, excellent, in-depth

customer knowledge is required. Although it may take time to develop, the
rewards are an exceptional insight into the customer’s business, which will set
you apart from your competition.

In some instances you may have to work with the customer to develop the
strategic bridges framework. You can add huge value by helping the customer
strategic bridges framework. You can add huge value by helping the customer
construct it, and this deepens and strengthens your relationship.
I have used the strategic bridges framework on numerous occasions when selling
into my own customers, and the response has always been very positive. It
shows that you understand – really understand – their business and that you can
help them to achieve the results they desire.
You can then use the framework to discuss and agree how your products and
services help customers to successfully implement their strategies. There will
usually be a series of projects and initiatives aligned to each strategic bridge, and
if you can add value to these a sale will usually be the result!

You move yourself from being just another supplier to being regarded as a
strategic partner and strategic enabler, with all of the rewards that will bring to
you. You differentiate yourself and put clear blue water between yourself and
your competitors.

You will also notice that the strategic bridges framework builds on the ‘stay
away from pain’ and ‘towards reward’ principle discussed earlier. You can blend
the pain and problems of the current state and the results and rewards of the
desired state into the strategic bridges framework to create a powerful and
sophisticated brain-friendly selling tool. Based on personal experience I cannot
recommend it highly enough.
A further point of contrast is to demonstrate how you differ from and are
superior to your competitors. A good way to find out is to ask your existing
customers why they buy from you and the advantages they perceive you to have.
What you may think differentiates your organization might be different to what
your customers think! If you ask your key customers your points of difference
then you will rapidly develop clarity about what they are, as common themes
will occur. You can then incorporate these into your sales pitch. Your message
needs to clearly differentiate you from your competitors and provide a strong
point of contrast.
For example, one of my customers contracted me for a piece of consultancy
work. They are a FTSE 100 business with operations across the world and were
work. They are a FTSE 100 business with operations across the world and were
about to reorganize one of their largest divisions. As part of this they wanted to
merge three separate sales teams into one new global sales operation. They
wanted me to help them to do this and to ensure that their new global
salespeople had the required skill set. I was delighted to be told that this was not
a competitive situation, as they were talking only to me about this project. They
explained that this was because ‘You have a really in-depth understanding of our
business and you have a proven track record of delivering results.’

This is very nice feedback to receive, but most importantly it is powerful

customer feedback on how they perceive my points of difference that I can then
use with other customers, differentiating myself by focusing on my ability to
consistently deliver tangible results and performance improvement. While the
majority of my competitors talk about how great their training programmes and
consultancy are, I focus on what my customer most wants – improved results.

Later in this chapter we will look at how we can use this feedback from
customers in a very powerful and compelling way that will help you to close
more sales – but more of that later.
Concrete
If I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it.
(ALBERT EINSTEIN)

One of the challenges that many organizations face is the transition that their
salespeople must make from transactional selling to consultative or solution
selling. Owing to the competitive nature of most industries, margins are
gradually eroded as companies fight each other using price as the key point of
differentiation. If customers want to purchase a product and perceive no clear
point of differentiation between two suppliers, they will invariably place their
business with whoever has the cheapest price. And the margin spirals invariably
downwards.

In order to differentiate themselves and protect their margin position companies

increasingly have to shift their focus to be providers of tailored solutions rather
than just transactional suppliers of products. This has necessitated a shift from
the more traditional ‘box-shifting’ salesperson to the more consultative solution-
orientated salesperson.

One of the inherent challenges that accompany this is the salesperson’s ability to
sell less tangible and complex solutions, and finding or training salespeople to
sell successfully in this manner is a major point of pain for many sales directors.
Your sales pitch needs to be as concrete as it possibly can be. Intangible and
abstract ideas are difficult for the customer’s brain to process. Such thinking is
usually the domain of experts who are capable of processing in this manner.
As described earlier, when making decisions and solving problems the brain
places heavy demands on the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex can
become tired and overwhelmed when faced with confusing decisions to make.
So make your pitch as concrete as possible. Concrete language and concrete
explanations are required for most customers’ brains to grasp and understand a
concept. If you are selling a tangible product bring your product (or at least part
concept. If you are selling a tangible product bring your product (or at least part
of it) with you. Let the customer touch and feel it. If you are selling something
more intangible make it more concrete by providing a visual representation of it
or what it does, for example a flow diagram. Showing customers something is
far easier for their brain than them trying to imagine it for themselves.

About 25 per cent of the brain is involved in visual processing (more than any
other sense). Make sure you capture the brain’s attention with strong visuals. A
message accompanied by a picture is far more memorable. In order to consider
and weigh up a complex decision, the visual circuitry of the brain is frequently
activated, so providing a more concrete visual input can help the customer to
make an effective decision.

Visual images (such as flow charts and diagrams) can contain a lot of
information and are very brain-friendly, as they reduce the amount of
information the brain needs to use to take in the information. The use of visual
imagery can reduce the demand on the prefrontal cortex, which leaves it better
able to process information and make a decision.
Certainty and credibility
Your customer’s brain likes certainty. At a deep level the primitive part of the
brain links certainty to survival. A hundred thousand years ago the more certain
your environment was, the safer it was. Uncertainty felt like a threat to survival.
Fast forward 100,000 years to the present day and your customer’s brain is still
constantly automatically and unconsciously seeking certainty in preference to
experiencing uncertainty. Our brains are always looking to move away from the
discomfort of uncertainty towards the comfort of certainty.

Human beings are creatures of habit. We follow the same routines, travelling the
same way to work each day, sleeping on the same side of the bed, eating the
same sort of food and watching the same sort of television programmes day in
and day out. Yes, we also like some variety in our lives, but we have a deeper-
seated need for certainty.

Our affinity with branded goods is linked to a certain degree to the certainty that
these branded goods will provide. We feel comfortable that they will deliver
what we are expecting, which increases our sense of certainty, leading to the
higher psychological levels of comfort that our brain craves so much.

Your customers will want to be as certain as possible that you are a safe and
reliable supplier who will deliver on your promises. Customers may be feeling
somewhat insecure, nervous, exposed, concerned or that they are taking a risk
when choosing a supplier to work with. They are feeling uncertain. You must
communicate a strong degree of certainty.

Firstly, it is vitally important that you come across as an experienced,

knowledgeable professional who knows what he or she is talking about. You
must become an expert in your field with exceptional levels of knowledge in
your products and services. You must ooze authority and confidence (but no
overconfidence) from every pore of your being. Customers have to buy you first
before they will buy from you.
Secondly, your sales pitch must contain certainty and credibility drivers.
Certainty drivers are things that you can use to drive customers’ levels of
certainty upwards. Credibility drivers show customers that you have done it
before and are capable of helping them. Certainty and credibility are intertwined.
The more confident customers are in your credibility the more certain they will
feel, and the more likely they are to buy. Examples include:

Testimonials from existing customers. Dr Robert Cialdini’s (1993) research

references the power of what he calls ‘social proof’. People use the
behaviour or beliefs of other people to decide how to behave and act
themselves. The more uncertain people feel, the more likely they are to use
the behaviour of others for guidance. In addition, Cialdini found that people
are more inclined to follow the lead of people who are most similar to them.
So you may need to develop a series of powerful testimonials that allow
you to match them successfully with the customer to whom you are selling.
Large companies need to see testimonials from large companies. Small
companies need to see testimonials from small companies. If you can match
industry then that is even better. I recently closed a piece of business to
provide sales manager coaching and sales training for a large international
company. The training will be delivered in several languages across a
number of countries. Therefore the testimonial I used was from an existing
customer where we had worked successfully on that scale of project.
Perhaps the most powerful form of testimonial I can recommend is for you
to connect the new customer with one of your existing customers directly.
Allow them to talk about you and to meet together without you being
present. The power of this form of testimonial has closed many deals for
me. Sometimes just the fact that you have the confidence to offer to connect
them directly with one of your existing customers is enough for the
potential customer to feel a sense of certainty. Even though it is obvious
that you are only going to connect the potential customer with a happy and
loyal existing customer who will say positive things about you, the
transparent nature of the offer to connect them to discuss directly is
powerful.
Client lists. In addition to specific testimonials prepare a comprehensive list
of the sort of organizations you work with. I know from analysing data
from the website I use to promote myself as a keynote speaker that, after
looking at what topics I speak on, people usually visit my client and
testimonial page. They are looking for certainty.
Case studies. These are basically more in-depth versions of testimonials.
They need to be short enough to be read by a busy potential client but have
enough depth to prove your capability and track record. Be aware that when
you design them you should provide a big-picture summary for the Green
and Red customers, and provide a finer level of detail and proof for the
Blue and Gold customers. Your case studies need to explain the client’s
situation, the solution you provided and the results you obtained. Include
specific people-orientated examples for the Blue Customer. Your client will
need to be quoted and featured throughout the case study to build the social
proof.
Research from a recognized authority that proves the efficacy of your
product or service. This can be a very powerful certainty driver. Be
prepared to provide in-depth data to your Gold customers, who will take the
time to analyse the research and check the sources are accurate.
Guarantees. These are another way to provide certainty. The all-too-
familiar money-back guarantee is a strong certainty driver. If you don’t
deliver the client doesn’t pay. This also communicates certainty, as unless
you were certain of your capability you wouldn’t provide the guarantee in
the first place. The marketer Jay Abraham popularized the concept of the
‘risk reversal’, where the business takes all the risk away from the customer
by providing a rock-solid, 100 per cent no-quibble money-back guarantee.
This has been proven time and time again to grow sales.
Endorsements from people who are perceived to be influential or authority
figures. Celebrity endorsements are commonplace, and that is because they
work. I have secured endorsements from famous, high-profile
 businesspeople for my books. For example, multimillionaire Duncan
Bannatyne, star of BBC TV’s programme Dragons’ Den, wrote the
foreword to my book Bare Knuckle Negotiating (Hazeldine, 2011a), and
multibillionaire entrepreneur Michael Dell endorsed the book Bare Knuckle
Customer Service (2012), which I wrote with my co-author Chris Norton.
This is good for book sales, as the endorsements from these authority
figures provide certainty that the books are worth reading.
A pilot programme, study or test. This allows clients to ‘dip their toe in the
water’ first before committing fully. It allows you to prove your capability
and minimizes the risk to the client – very appealing to Blue and Gold
customers!

Make sure you have an armoury of certainty drivers in your sales arsenal. Your
customer’s brain needs certainty – your job is to provide it.

The power of ‘story-selling’

Another way you can add certainty is through telling stories. I call this ‘story-
selling’. This is such a powerful method of selling in a wider sense that I am
going to devote a separate section to this.

The method builds upon the research of Robert Cialdini about the power of
social proof and then expands and leverages this concept by harnessing one of
the most powerful and compelling forms of communication – the story.

Stories are found in countless aspects of human life, including speeches, books,
writing, education, songs, films, television, video games, theatre and art. Stories
play an important part in human culture. They are a ubiquitous component of
human communication. A study by anthropologist and evolutionary biologist
Robin Dunbar (1998) found that social topics, for example social activities,
personal relationships and personal likes and dislikes, which he broadly referred
to as ‘gossip’, accounted for 65 per cent of speaking time among people in
public places, that is, people largely telling stories about themselves and other
people!
Human history is rich with stories. Before the written word, stories were how
learning and wisdom were passed from generation to generation. Many religious
books and religious teachers make extensive use of stories to get their teachings
across. Human history is also rich with legend, fable and metaphor. Stories were
probably one of the earliest forms of entertainment. They have a lasting impact.
Aesop’s fables, for example, can be traced back at least to the 4th century BC –
proof of their longevity and power.

Most people’s early experience of story is a positive one. From bedtime stories,
listening to grandparents talking about the good old days, and reading fiction, to
watching stories on television and in the movies, our upbringing has been
saturated with story.

Now neuroscience allows us to understand exactly why stories are so powerful

and, most importantly for us as sales professionals, how we can use them to
inform, educate and influence our customers’ brains.

We all seem to enjoy a good story, but what is it about stories that makes them
so engaging? Why, when we listen to a narrative of events, for example, do we
seem to get pulled into the story?

In experiments conducted by Dr Uri Hasson and his team of neuroscientists at

Princeton University a woman tells a story whilst being monitored by an fMRI
scanner. A group of volunteers then listened to the story through headphones
while they had their brains scanned by the fMRI scanner. What is fascinating is
that, when there was activity in one part of the woman’s brain, corresponding
activity occurred in the listeners’ brains. When the woman had activity in the
emotional brain region the listeners did too. When her prefrontal cortex
activated, so did theirs! When she was telling her story she was planting ideas,
thoughts and emotions into the listeners’ brains. When you listen to stories and
understand them, your brain ‘dovetails’ with the brain of the storyteller. You
experience the same brain activity as the storyteller.
Hasson also recorded a graduate student record an unrehearsed story about a
disastrous high school prom that involved rival boyfriends, a fight and a car
crash, again whilst undergoing an fMRI scan. A group of 12 people then listened
to the recording while undergoing fMRI. Again the results show that the speaker
and the listeners had similar brain activity.
So, when you are telling your customers stories, the neural activity between your
brains synchronizes, increasing understanding, comfort, rapport and connection.
When you tell a story to customers, you can transfer experiences and emotion
directly to their brains. They feel what you feel. They empathize. Anything that
you have experienced (or that one of your other customers experienced and is
being transmitted via your story), you can get your customer to experience the
same. This phenomenon is likely to be related to the mirror neurons described in
Chapter 3.

In addition, whenever we hear a story, our brain attempts to relate it to one of

our existing experiences. Listeners connect the story with their own ideas,
memories and experiences. Stories engage our customers’ brains, drawing them
into the narrative, inviting them to join in and play along. A good story will elicit
similar emotional and motivational responses to the real experience being
described. In the same way that, when we read a fiction book, we are drawn into
the author’s world and re-create the experience of what is being described inside
our brains, your customers will be drawn into your selling story.

With stories you will not have a passive, uninvolved audience. Your customers
cannot just listen to your story – they will be drawn in because your story
deliberately activates their brains. Research shows that when people imagine
seeing flashing lights this activates the visual area of their brain, when people
imagine someone tapping on their hand the tactile areas of their brains are
activated and when people imagine looking at the Eiffel Tower in Paris their
eyes instinctively move upwards as though they were actually looking up at the
real Eiffel Tower! And if you take a short moment to imagine that you have
lemon juice in your mouth and imagine swilling the sharp and sour taste around
your mouth you will notice that you are now producing increased quantities of
saliva!

Stories also work in print, as anyone who has read a good novel will testify.
Stories also work in print, as anyone who has read a good novel will testify.
Stories about your existing customers, if well crafted, will stimulate the reader’s
brain. The brain does not make much of a distinction between reading about an
experience and experiencing it in reality. In each case, the same regions of the
brain are stimulated.
Structuring your selling story
Your customers’ brains are most likely to be stimulated by your story when
customers are drawn into the story and transported along by it. The events need
to unfold one after the other, with a clear demonstration of cause and effect. This
matches how our brains like to think.

What follows is a story-crafting framework that you can use to develop your
very own range of powerful selling stories. In keeping with the brain’s hard-
wired tendency to stay away from pain or discomfort and to move towards
reward your story needs to incorporate these motivating forces. The structure is a
narrative that presents a series of connected events with a clear cause-and-effect
format. This has been captured in a structure called the ‘Neuro-Sell story-selling
map’ (see Figure 11.5). A downloadable copy is available for you free of charge
at www.neuro-sell.com. Here are the elements we need to have in place for a
successful sales story:

Customer. If at all possible select a customer whose circumstances are as

similar as possible to the new customer to whom you are selling. Get as
close to the personal circumstances, company size and industry as possible.
For this reason you may need to develop a bank of stories to suit different
customers to whom you are selling. To minimize any push-back about the
lack of similarity you can inoculate against this by saying: ‘I appreciate this
customer isn’t exactly like you, as every one of our customers is unique.
However, I do think this customer is close enough for you to get an idea of
what we do.’
Character and characterization. Make the customer character in the story
as real and tangible as possible. If you have permission to do so, then use
his or her actual name. If not, then say something like ‘For reasons of
customer confidentiality I can’t mention his real name so let’s just call him
John.’ The more you can tell about the customer in the story, the more the
new customer you are selling to will be able to identify and empathize with
that customer. Throughout your story you can add to the character.
Characters may be presented by means of description and through
describing their actions, speech or thoughts.
Context. Set the scene for your story. Describe the situation and
circumstances the character was experiencing. Make this as vivid as you
can. Draw the customer who is listening to the story into the world of the
character, so that their (and your) brains begin to synchronize.
Challenge (create tension). You now need to paint a picture of the
challenges, problem and pain the character customer was experiencing.
Describe the issues the customer was facing; label and describe the negative
emotions being experienced – pain, anguish, stress, despair, hopelessness,
frustration. A very common plot in books, TV programmes and films is the
‘challenge plot’ where the underdog triumphs, the hero’s rags-to-riches
story is played out or someone triumphs over adversity. These types of
stories where characters overcome obstacles and reach their goals are very
appealing, and this sort of plot is very powerful when creating selling
stories. If you want to add great power and impact to your story, as you
describe the emotions the character customer is experiencing, experience
them yourself. As you describe the feeling, experience some of it yourself.
Demonstrate it in your voice, on your face and with your gestures and other
non-verbal communication. The mirror neurons in the listener’s brain will
be activated by this. This is providing a strong ‘stay away’ motivation that
will trigger the customer to take action.
Catalyst. This is where you and your products and services make an
appearance. It is your intervention that precipitates the positive change that
the character customer has been looking for. Articulate how you identified
the nature of the customer character’s challenge and provided a solution.
Contrast. Vividly describe the journey the character customer went on from
a place of pain and problems to a positive and pleasurable solution. Draw a
very stark and clear contrast that articulates the benefits your product,
service or solution has brought to the customer. Describe the gains made in
 money, emotion and time. Again, as you describe the emotions the
character customer is experiencing, experience them yourself. This is
providing a strong ‘towards reward’ motivation that, combined with the
existing ‘stay away’ motivation you stirred up earlier, will trigger the
customer to take action. Emphasize the results you achieved for the
character customer in the story.
Conclusion. Conclude with a very brief summary of where the customer
was and where the customer is now. Re-emphasize the results you helped
the character customer to achieve. You can then ask if the customer you are
telling the story to would like you to do the same for him or her.

FIGURE 11.5 The Neuro-Sell story-selling map

You need to keep your story short and sweet. Keep it to between one and three
minutes at a maximum. Any more than this and the customer’s attention may
start to wander! Here is an example:
Mr Customer, perhaps the quickest and best way for me to let you know what we do is to tell you a short
story about a customer we helped a few months ago. Ms X is the managing director of an XYZ business
that turns over £X million. I appreciate they aren’t in exactly the same business as you, but I do think
they are close enough for you to get an idea of what it is that we do to help companies like yours
improve their sales performance.
Ms X contacted us because, as in so many other businesses, her profit margins were being squeezed by
aggressive competition and her customers driving a hard bargain. Despite the fact that her sales team are
 aggressive competition and her customers driving a hard bargain. Despite the fact that her sales team are
quite experienced, they just didn’t seem to be closing as many deals as they used to. Even her most
experienced salespeople were struggling. In short, their pitch to win ratio was falling off a cliff. And
because of her salespeople feeling increasingly desperate they were starting to give in to customers’
demands to lower their price. So they were winning less business and making less profit. Ms X was
tearing her hair out. She had tried everything she could think of to improve the situation, but nothing
seemed to work. She was getting very nervous that she would have to downsize her company in order to
survive.
When we met with her we applied our unique sales force effectiveness assessment framework to her
sales process and her salespeople. It became apparent that the weak link in the chain was her
salespeople’s ability to differentiate her company from the competition and to be able to negotiate more
margin into the deals they closed.
We then agreed some robust commercial outcomes with Ms X so that we all had clarity on what success
would look like. We held a series of interactive workshops with her sales team and, using our unique
neuroscience-based pitch structure, helped them to produce value propositions that really differentiated
them from their competitors. We then took them through some demanding negotiation workshops using
highly realistic simulations to build their confidence and competence. And to make sure the learning was
applied and embedded we scheduled weekly virtual review sessions with them using our online training
platform to follow up on their plans and to provide ongoing coaching.
Within three months we had helped Ms X’s sales team put £4.6 million of revenue into their sales
pipeline and added 3 per cent to their bottom-line margin. Ms X can now sleep soundly at night knowing
that her business is in growth and that her dreams of expanding the business can be realized.
So that’s it in a nutshell! We helped a struggling business transform its sales capability and as a result
improve revenue and profit, moving it from a frustrating and difficult situation to a business whose
salespeople walk confidently into sales pitches and close deals with good margins.
Now I do appreciate that your situation is unique and that the ideal solution for your sales force will
therefore look somewhat different, but I would love to discuss with you how we could work with you to
improve your sales performance and your results.

I hope that this example inspires you to create your own series of sales stories!

Stories such as this appeal to, and impact upon, the conscious and unconscious
parts of your customer’s brain. If you have a well-constructed plot for your story
the customer’s conscious brain will be following the plot line and be curious
about how the person in question overcame the challenges faced. The
unconscious part of the brain is responding to the emotional experiences that the
story stimulated and is drawn to the journey in the story that moves the person in
it from a state of discomfort to one of comfort.

Stories help people to understand and remember. They make a lasting

impression. I was called recently by the sales director of a company who wanted
me to deliver my ‘Bare Knuckle Negotiating’ keynote speech at his company’s
annual sales conference. He told me that he had seen me speak at an industry
event a month ago and ‘just loved my stories’. My keynote speeches are
deliberately crafted to contain a series of real-life stories that I use to illustrate
key points and to educate and entertain my audience. It is interesting to note that
it is my stories that he most remembered, and as a result he wanted to book me
to deliver a speech to his sales force. Indeed I have met people who have seen
me speak several years ago and they will often tell me that they most remember
‘the story about when you…’. Be memorable with your customers and
customers-to-be – tell them stories.
If all has gone according to plan, customers should now be convinced that you
are the correct supplier for them and that your products or services will provide
them with the solution they are looking for. Your final task it to get their
commitment, and we will look at this in Chapter 12.
 12
The ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process – the fifth phase
 Close the deal

ItThis
has been said that if you can’t close sales then fundamentally you can’t sell.
chapter covers the eighth and final stage of the ‘Neuro-Sell’ brain-friendly
selling process and is devoted to the all-important matter of getting the customer
to make a firm commitment and to place the business with you.

Stage 8: confirm and conclude

As we move towards the end of the sales process we are nearing the time when
we are going to ask the customer to make a decision.

Please remember that fundamentally people buy: 1) a solution to problems (‘stay

away from pain’); and 2) good feelings (‘towards reward’). Therefore it is
important when you begin to conclude your pitch to summarize: 1) ‘stay away
from pain’ motivation – remind them of the pain they want to move away from
by making the right decision; and 2) ‘towards reward’ pleasure motivation –
remind them of the pleasure and comfort they can move towards by making the
right decision.

Invoking the fear-of-loss principle described in Chapter 10 will also provide a

powerful stimulus to take action. Research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos
Tversky at Hebrew University showed that the pain of loss was approximately
two times more powerful as a motivating force than the pleasure of gain or
reward and that these forces were powerful determinants of people’s decisions.
They named the concept ‘loss aversion’.
In human decision making, losses loom larger than gains.
(Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky, 1982)

So make sure that first you emphasize the loss that will be incurred if nothing is
done to improve the current situation and remove the problems and the effects
they are having on the customer. Stir in a healthy dose of longer-term loss
they are having on the customer. Stir in a healthy dose of longer-term loss
impact – ‘Based on the figures we have discussed I calculate that over the next
two years you would miss out on about £175,000 in lost revenue’ – and the ‘stay
away from pain’ pot should be bubbling nicely!

Now provide a reminder of the attractive nature of the future scenario that
customers will experience when they have made the right decision, the problem
and attendant pain have been removed and they are experiencing the outcomes,
pleasure and comfort of your solution. You may wish to make use of pleasure
and reward images in your sales presentation. When the brain is expecting a
reward (such as food, sex, money or positive social interactions) it generates
dopamine in anticipation – hence the profusion of reward imagery being used in
advertising! I am not suggesting that you litter your sales pitch with pictures of
scantily clad models, but good-quality photos showing pleasurable outcomes and
results (money, achievement, smiling or accepting faces, awards, status, etc) will
be attractive to the reptilian and limbic brain.

Dopamine is the drug of desire and is important to moving the brain into a
‘towards reward’ state. To maximize the transition from ‘away’ to ‘towards’,
maximize customers’ sense of certainty by minimizing threat (by emphasizing
certainty as described earlier) and then show the rewards they can expect.
Making reference to rewards will help to trigger dopamine release and desire for
your product. Research has shown that an unexpected or surprising reward
releases more dopamine than an expected reward, so it is a good idea to keep a
benefit in reserve and add this when customers aren’t expecting it. For example,
when you are summarizing your offer, wait until you have finished, check with
the customers if that meets their needs and then add the extra unexpected benefit
by saying, for example, ‘Oh, and I forgot to mention that when you place your
order you will also get…’ This will trigger a larger release of dopamine and
attendant desire, which will be helpful to you when you ask for customers’ final
commitment.

An important tipping point is that people will also buy when they are convinced
that the benefits they will gain exceed the cost of purchase. That is why your
sales pitch has to strongly communicate value and a quantifiable return on
sales pitch has to strongly communicate value and a quantifiable return on
investment. It has to show the customer’s brain that the benefits will far
outweigh the ‘pain’ of the purchase price!
Provide the customer’s brain with a clutter-free, clear next step and use this to
confirm actions on both sides and to conclude or close the deal. In my
experience, the actual final concluding or closing of the deal usually comes
down to nothing more complicated than asking customers if they are
comfortable with going ahead, and agreeing what needs to be done in order to
make this happen. The ‘close’ does not have to be (and shouldn’t be) some
dramatic crescendo that occurs at the end of the sales process. On the contrary, I
advocate checking in with customers throughout the sales process, getting
feedback from them on how they are feeling about what is being discussed. The
process I follow is to:

1. ask testing questions;

2. ask trial conclusion or closing questions;
3. ask final conclusion or closing question.

Testing questions should be used throughout the sales process and test or check
that you are on track. Examples include:

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Does this make sense so far?’
‘Does this seem to be going in the right direction?’

Trial conclusion or closing questions are used to test customers’ comfort with
making a decision and taking action. You are not asking them for their business
just yet; you are checking out that when you do ask they are going to say ‘yes’!
Examples include:

‘Is this what you were looking for?’

‘If we can get the specification you require, how close are we to going
 ahead?’
‘If we could do that would you be interested?’

Trial conclusion or closing questions will also help to highlight any areas of
concern or hesitation that customers may have.

The final conclusion or closing question is used to get the customer’s final
commitment, close the business and take the order. As a result of the testing and
trial conclusion or closing questions you have asked so far you will have a good
idea of the customer’s comfort level.
I monitor customers’ comfort and interest levels throughout the sale, paying
close attention to their verbal and non-verbal behaviour (more on this in Chapter
14), looking and listening for positive indicators that they are interested, feeling
comfortable and ready to make a decision. In the sales literature these are
referred to as ‘buying signals’ and include nodding in agreement, positive
language or sounds such as ‘Yes’, ‘Uh-huh’ or ‘OK’, leaning towards you and
your product or presentation, brightening up, talking faster and more excitedly
about your product or service, reaching out to touch the product, making notes,
calculating numbers and asking questions.

Once you have moved through asking testing and trial conclusion or closing
questions, and you are seeing and hearing a number of the positive indicators
described above, then this would be a good time to ask a final conclusion or
closing question. Examples include:

‘Would you like to go ahead now?’

‘Would you like to try it?’
‘Shall we get started straight away?’
‘When do you want to get started?’

The three-step questioning process combined with a careful monitoring of

customers’ comfort and interest levels is very effective. It does rely on you
asking customers for their agreement. The fundamental principle is that once you
are certain customers are interested and comfortable you should then move to
conclude or close the sale. Be bold and ask for the business. Never leave a
customer meeting without asking for the business or, in the case of longer or
more complicated sales cycles, concluding or closing on a clear and positive
action step that moves the sale forward. You either leave with the order or you
leave having demonstrably moved the sale forward. That is what sales
professionals do.

Limit choice if you want them to make a decision

If customers’ brains become overwhelmed with too many possible choices and
variety available to them then this can cause them to hesitate and to feel less
certain, with the result that they are likely to procrastinate. Having to choose
from a profusion of choices is confusing. Too much choice causes confusion,
and confusion causes inaction. Give them something to buy!

It is important to strike the right balance between providing a degree of positive

choice (the brain likes this, as it gives it something to move forwards to and
gives it control over what it chooses, and therefore a feeling of certainty) and
providing a profusion of choice that will be counterproductive.

Research by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper (2000) from Columbia and
Stanford universities respectively found that ‘people who had more choices were
often less willing to decide to buy anything at all, and their subsequent
satisfaction was lower when they had been confronted with 24 or 30 options than
when they faced six options’. Iyengar and Lepper add that ‘choice, to the extent
that it required greater decision-making among options, can become burdensome
and ultimately counterproductive’.
Neuroscientists know that there is a limit to the amount of information that can
be held and processed simultaneously in the brain. As mentioned previously, a
number of different pieces of research have concluded that the number of items
or ‘chunks’ of information that your customers are able to keep in their minds
simultaneously is limited. Therefore the fewer chunks of information, and the
fewer variable factors that customers have to hold in mind when making a
fewer variable factors that customers have to hold in mind when making a
decision, the easier it will be for them to make that decision.

Provide a limited choice of three main options as a maximum. This is brain-

friendly, as it gives customers a sense of autonomy and control and makes the
buying decision easier. If you overwhelm them with choice they may choose the
‘do nothing’ option.

Once customers have made the main option decision, it is then easier for their
brains to tinker with or make alterations to the characteristics of the main option
than to choose from a helpfully intended but overwhelming sea of options. The
sea of options is intended to provide maximum choice and therefore possibility
of purchase. What it does instead is to overwhelm the prefrontal cortex of
customers, drive their levels of uncertainty up and lead to decision paralysis or
procrastination.

If you have followed the process successfully so far, you will have secured the
customer’s business and closed the deal. However, just to make extra sure,
Chapter 13 contains even more powerful brain-friendly selling tips for you to use
to gain the advantage over your competitors.
 13
Some more brain-friendly selling
tips

Just to make doubly sure you get the business, here are some further areas to
consider when designing and delivering your sales pitch.

Being memorable
In some situations you may have to present or pitch to a customer (or a
committee involved in making the buying decision) and not be able to get a
decision on the day. Customers may be seeing several suppliers or wish to
consult with everyone involved in making the decision before going ahead. In
these cases you need to make sure that you, your presentation and your products
and services are memorable. The brain particularly remembers: 1) primacy (the
first thing it sees or that is said), so you need to start your pitch or presentation
with a strong opening ‘hook’ or benefit that will be remembered; and 2) recency
(the last thing it sees or that is said), so you need to finish your pitch or
presentation with a strong summary of your key benefits and differentiating
factors.
A common occurrence for some sales professionals is to participate in a
competitive pitching situation where the final shortlist of suppliers are invited to
present one after the other on the same day. The brains of the customers have to
sit through a series of supplier presentations and then make a decision on which
supplier to select. This puts a big demand on the energy resources of the brain.

This also has application for which part of the day is a good time for you to
make your pitch. Ideally you want to be the first or the last supplier presenting.
make your pitch. Ideally you want to be the first or the last supplier presenting.
If you end up with a slot in the middle ground, you are likely to be less
memorable and less impactful. You may also wish to consider that at the end of
the day the customers’ brains are starting to get tired and that this will be
impacting on their ability to receive and process your message.
Although I have successfully won competitive pitches at all times of day, my
personal preference is to be the first supplier, as the customers’ brains are at their
most receptive, and it provides the opportunity to shape their perceptions about
what they need in a way that favours my proposal!

For example, in a recent pitch, I was selling our sales performance capability and
services into a global digital advertising company with a colleague. We knew
that one of our competitors was an industry specialist. The competitor knew the
client’s industry very well and had a track record in it. I succeeded in getting our
pitch scheduled first in the day and, having anticipated (correctly as it turned
out) that the competitor would make much of their industry knowledge, I boldly
stated that we were not specialists in the world of digital advertising. I said that
we were specialists in improving sales performance and that we apply our
experience of transforming sales forces from and to a variety of industries,
bringing fresh ideas, fresh perspectives and world-class best practice to our
clients. I said that as part of our methodology we would want to gain a solid
understanding of the business and the challenges the client faced, and that we
had a robust consultative process that would help the client to properly
understand what sort of sales force was needed to deliver the strategy. In doing
so, I managed to prime and shape the customer’s perception of what they wanted
(eg the advantages of having a fresh and unbiased perspective) and when they
phoned to confirm that we had won the business specifically referenced our
ability to bring a fresh perspective that would differentiate their salespeople from
those of their competitors!
The following help with being memorable:

Being unusual. Doing or saying something unusual (within the confines of

 common sense and good taste!) will get you remembered.
Repetition. Things that are repeated tend to stick in the memory, so
articulate your key benefits and points of differentiation several times – at a
minimum towards the beginning of your pitch, during it and at the end of it.
Emotion. Events associated with strong emotion are more memorable, and
you can communicate emotion in terms of your own enthusiasm and
passion, and by going into and modelling the emotional states involved in
your customer story as described earlier. The mirror neurons in your
customer’s brain will get fired up, and the emotion is transferred from your
brain to that of the customer, making you and your pitch more memorable.

Keeping it simple
Make your pitch simple, straightforward and easy to understand. The customer’s
brain likes to conserve energy, so don’t make it have to work too hard. Keep
your explanations clear and jargon-free.

Keep any printed or visual materials clean and crisp, with plenty of ‘white
space’. Keep them clutter-free so as not to distract or confuse the customer’s
brain.

Distracting or irrelevant information is only going to exhaust prefrontal cortex

resources and interfere with the rational decision-making capability. If the
prefrontal cortex becomes overwhelmed, the customer’s brain will resort to
making automatic or unconscious choices, which may or may not be helpful to
you!

Making changes
Conclusive research about what the average attention span of an adult is has
been difficult to locate, but the research I have conducted indicates that it is
somewhere between five and 10 minutes. So it would appear prudent to plan to
make some sort of significant change or movement every five minutes or so
throughout your pitch.

Owing to the brain’s orientation reflex (an automatic and involuntary response to
a new stimulus that results in increased brain activity and increases in adrenalin),
any significant change or movement will recapture the full attention of the
customer’s brain. So deliberately build in several stimuli such as blanking your
PowerPoint slides off if you are using them (by pressing the letter B or W when
in screen display mode) and stepping in front of them to make a key point,
turning your PowerPoint slides on, moving towards or away from the audience
at key stages, walking from one side of the room to the other (more on this a
little later), tapping on the presentation, flip chart or whiteboard with a pen,
standing up and handing something to the customer at specific stages, and so on.
To keep your customer’s attention keep firing stimuli at them at regular intervals
that will activate the orientation reflex!

Using metaphors
A metaphor is a short cut to understanding; it can make it easy for the
customer’s brain to understand your message.

In a metaphor, one thing is compared to another. We understand new or complex

things in relation to things we already know. This can help to make complex or
unfamiliar things easier to understand. For example, at a networking event I met
someone who was a joint venture broker, who acted as the middle person
between two companies and helped them to work together in return for a
percentage of the increased business. This person used a metaphor to describe
the activity involved, which was ‘We are a dating agency for businesses!’
You can use metaphors in a number of ways. For example, in price negotiation
situations I sometimes use metaphors such as ‘You can’t pay Ford prices and
expect a Rolls-Royce’, and in sales pitches you can emphasize product benefits
using metaphors such as ‘Our new cutting-edge production process guarantees
that the edges of the product will be as smooth as silk!’

If your clients use metaphors at any stage of describing what an ideal solution
If your clients use metaphors at any stage of describing what an ideal solution
for them would look like, for example ‘It’s got to run like clockwork!’, then
‘steal’ the metaphor and make reference to it, for example ‘As you mentioned,
this will run like clockwork!’ Clients’ metaphors are meaningful to their brains,
so replay them back to the clients and link them to a benefit of your proposal.

Going multi-sensory
The more senses you can deliberately incorporate into your pitch the better. The
more sensory-rich your pitch is, the more engaging it will be to your customer’s
brain.

Seeing
Use strong, rich, vivid, clear visuals and consider where you place them.
Research by Dr AK Pradeep (2010) of NeuroFocus found that: placing images
on the left and words on the right is superior for rapid processing by the brain.
This is because items in the left visual field are perceived by the right frontal
lobe, whereas the right visual field is perceived by the left frontal lobe. Since the
left frontal lobe is specialized in most people for interpreting semantics, while
the right frontal lobe is specialized to process imagery and iconography, this
speeds up processing and contributes to a positive emotional impression.

Hearing
Vary your voice pitch, tone, volume and speed to add interest. Pause for effect
after making a key point. Ask powerful questions that engage the customer in the
presentation.

Touching
Touch is the oldest human sense and the most urgent and internal to our survival
and confidence. Wherever you can include a tactile element do so. Give the
customer something to hold, examine, weigh up or explore. If handing out
written material ensure it is printed on heavy, glossy, good-quality paper that
feels attractive.

Smell and taste

If you are selling anything that can incorporate these additional senses then make
sure that you do so. Although not directly connected with my pitch or what I am
selling, I will at times make use of these senses. For example, when scheduled to
pitch last at the end of four other potential supplier presentations, we arrived
armed with a box of cream cakes. I positioned with the customer that we were
aware that they had been listening to supplier presentations all day long, and as
we were the last we didn’t want them to be losing attention so the cakes were
there to help blood sugar levels! This was all done in a humorous manner and
had the added advantage of being somewhat novel and memorable to boot. We
got the deal.

Spatial association
One aspect to how the human brain works is its tendency to swiftly associate one
thing with another thing. Indeed one of the key aspects of how human memory
works is by association. For example, a certain favourite piece of music may be
strongly associated with a specific occasion or person. There is a piece of music
that is always played when my favourite ice hockey team come on to the ice at
the start of a game. The state of excitement that exists just before a game has
become associated with this particular piece of music, and any time I hear it my
brain starts to re-create the excited emotional state that it has linked to the music.

It is possible to associate, for example, almost any emotional state or feeling

with some form of sensory ‘anchor’ that you link to it. For example, the visual
stimuli or anchor of a blue flashing police light in your rear-view mirror will
tend to be associated with a particular state of mind and feeling!
A powerful use of this property of the brain is spatial association. Part of my
stagecraft as a professional speaker is to associate certain places or spaces on the
stage with certain times, people, emotional states and so forth.
An example that works very well in sales pitches is to anchor or associate a
current or past challenging or problematic situation with the left-hand side of the
area you are presenting with – to the left of the screen where you are displaying
your PowerPoint graphics, for example. You will associate this part of the room
in the customer’s brain with the problem being experienced, and it will be the
place and situation that provide the ‘stay away from pain’ motivation. You then
associate or anchor the right-hand side with the future solution. You will
associate this part of the room in the customer’s brain with the pleasure, comfort
and results that will be experienced, and it provides the ‘towards reward’
motivation. (See Figure 13.1.) FIGURE 13.1 Spatial association

You create the ‘stay away from pain’ association by discussing and describing
the problems, challenges and pain customers are experiencing with them
(demonstrating the negative emotional state yourself whilst doing this) only
whilst standing or sitting in this location. Customers’ brains rapidly come to
associate that area with the negative emotional states associated with the
problem. You create the ‘towards reward’ association by moving from the ‘stay
away from pain’ area across to the other side of the room where you have
decided to locate your ‘towards reward’ association location. When explaining
and highlighting the benefits, using a positive, confident upbeat emotional state,
you do this only from this location. Customers’ brains rapidly come to associate
that area with the positive emotional states associated with the solution.
that area with the positive emotional states associated with the solution.
You can also associate the transition between these two states by describing the
process you will follow or the journey you will take with customers whilst
walking from the ‘stay away from pain’-associated location across the front of
the room to the ‘towards reward’-associated location.

Many people’s brains will unconsciously code time along a mental line, with
what happened in the past over to their left-hand side and the future over to their
right-hand side. This appears to be the way that the brain codes and relates to
time. They will gesture, for example, up and to their left when describing events
from their past and gesture up and towards the right when describing events in
their future. For this reason the current (soon to be past!) problems the customers
are experiencing are spatially located to the left of the audience and their new
bright future is spatially located to the right.

This unconsciously sends the message that you can help customers to make the
transition from their current negative problem to a positive future solution. Once
you have established a positive ‘towards reward’ location, deliver all
conversations about the solution from this location in the room only.

If asked a challenging question from the audience during the pitch, step into the
‘neutral’ transition area in the front of the room (you want only positive ‘towards
reward’ associations with the future location), answer the question and, as you
emphasize the positive benefits of what you can do, step back into the ‘towards
reward’ location.
At some speaking events, the organizers will allow me or ask me to make the
audience aware of my books, products or services so that they can purchase them
if they want to. Using the above spatial association when talking about the
problems, challenges and frustrations that I or my customers have experienced in
the past, I do so from the left-hand side of the stage (from the audience’s point of
view). I then describe the journey or transition that solved the challenges as I
walk slowly across from the left of the stage (from the audience’s perspective) to
the right of the stage, where I conclude by discussing the new, positive outcome
that was achieved.
that was achieved.
For example, when talking about my learning journey as a negotiator from a
raw, inexperienced beginner, who got regularly ‘beaten up’ by his customers, to
the current situation where I have written a best-selling book on the subject, and
speak and consult on the topic across the world, I associate the past to the left,
describe the learning journey I went on and then describe the current, more
confident and capable negotiator I have become from the right of the stage.
The confident, capable state is associated with the right-hand side of the stage
from the audience’s perspective. And it is from this exact spot that I describe and
offer my books and products to the audience. The audience has seen me play out
my learning journey, showing the experience that has gone into my current state
of capability and confidence. Their brains swiftly associate these positive states
with my books and products, which always results in a queue of people wanting
to see me after my speech to make a purchase!

Please be aware that this entire process operates outside of the audience’s
conscious awareness. It influences them at an unconscious level. It is however a
very deliberate and calculated strategy on my part. And it should be for you too
– it is very powerful.

Giving the customer’s brain something to

complete
When I am asked to send customers a written proposal there are two things I
always do. I was introduced to these two very powerful ideas by Chris Norton,
with whom I wrote the book Bare Knuckle Customer Service (2012).
Firstly I call the proposal a plan, so rather than it being titled ‘Sales training
proposal’ it is entitled ‘Draft sales training plan’. I will usually call it a ‘draft
plan’, as this invites the customer to become involved in it and contribute to it.
This increases the customer’s sense of involvement and ownership.
This bold approach communicates confidence that we will be proceeding with
the ‘plan’, and allows me to include the second vital element – a strong action
summary at the end. I do this in a very specific way. Table 13.1 is a genuine
example that shows the action summary I included in a written proposal to
provide a sales training programme for a new client. All I have done is to edit it
to remove any specific client references for reasons of confidentiality.

TABLE 13.1 Action plan example

Action
Action step Timescales Completed
owner(s)

Shirley
Smith
Initial telephone call to discuss requirement 3 October Simon
Hazeldine

Andy
Meeting to further understand needs and Jones
requirements 7 October Simon
Hazeldine

Draft action plan reviewed

11 Simon
Hazeldine
October

Shirley
Draft plan reviewed
17 Smith
Andy
October Jones

Shirley
Smith
Agree commercial objectives and measures
20 Andy
Jones
October Simon
Hazeldine
Shirley
Smith
Programme content, format and timeline agreed
20 Andy
Jones
October Simon
 Simon
Hazeldine
Shirley
Smith
Familiarization of Simon Hazeldine with customer
27 Andy
products and services October Jones
Simon
Hazeldine

Programme design and materials produced

10 Simon
Hazeldine
November
Shirley
Smith
Programme dates scheduled
10 Andy
Jones
November Simon
Hazeldine

Brief line managers of participants and provide

programme overview for their subsequent review
14 Simon
Hazeldine
and follow-up January

Programme run for Group 1

1 to 3 Simon
Hazeldine
February
Shirley
Smith
Programme evaluation review
10 Andy
Jones
February Simon
Hazeldine

Programme run for Group 2

7 to 9 Simon
Hazeldine
March
Shirley
 Shirley
Smith
Andy
Programme evaluation review 16 March Jones
Simon
Hazeldine

Review progress, behavioural changes, sales

Simon
pipeline status and coaching requirements with 20 April Hazeldine
participants’ line managers (Session 1)

Review progress, behavioural changes, sales

Simon
pipeline status and coaching requirements with 25 May Hazeldine
participants’ line managers (Session 2)

Shirley
Smith
Review meeting to measure progress against Andy
agreed commercial objectives and agree next steps 31 May Jones
Simon
Hazeldine

If you take a look at this you will notice several things:

1. It details all of the action steps that need to be taken, who is responsible for
them and when they will happen by. This helps to increase the client’s
sense of confidence and comfort that everything will happen as agreed.
2. It includes the all-important evaluation of delivered results, which again
helps to increase the client’s feelings of confidence and comfort.
3. The first three actions are ticked and shown as being completed. This gives
a sense of action and progress, despite the fact that at this stage the client
has not given the final go-ahead! It also leaves a list of actions that need
completing. The brain likes closure and completeness. As mentioned
earlier, leaving things undone or incomplete (only the first three actions
have been ticked as complete) creates a desire for closure in the customer’s
brain.

In a study by consumer researchers Joseph Nunes and Xavier Dreze (2006),

loyalty cards were handed out to 300 customers of a local car wash. Every time
they had their car washed their loyalty card was stamped, and when the card was
full the customer got a free car wash. Two different types of cards were issued –
one stated that 10 stamps were required to receive a free car wash, but two
stamps had already been placed on the card. The second type of card stated that
eight stamps were required to receive a free car wash, but no stamps had been
placed on the card. In reality both cards offered the same incentive – if you buy
eight car washes we will give you a car wash free of charge. It was only the way
they were communicated that was different.
The data were fascinating. After several months, only 19 per cent of the
customers who had received the blank eight-space loyalty card with eight spaces
to fill had made enough visits to claim their free car wash. However, 34 per cent
of the customers who had received the 10-space loyalty card with two stamps
already included had made enough visits to claim their free car wash. And this
group took less time to complete their eight purchases than the other group!

According to Nunes and Dreze, perceiving the loyalty programme as something

that has been started but is incomplete rather than something that has yet to
begin motivates people more to complete it.

Although my action plan summary is not a loyalty card I believe a similar effect
is being produced. My customer’s brain feels motivated to complete the plan,
which is great news for me!
So there we have it: you have successfully journeyed through the Neuro-Sell
brain-friendly selling process. Please take the time to apply what you have
learned and incorporate it into your current selling process. Take action on what
you have learned and you will reap the rewards!
In Chapter 14 we will explore the fascinating area of body language or non-
verbal communication and what hidden messages the customer’s brain is
sending us on a constant basis about the customer’s readiness to do business
with us.
 14
Body language and the truthful
brain

Youon may be asking why a book about the brain and selling contains a chapter
body language or, as it should more accurately be described, non-verbal
communication. Selling is fundamentally about the process of communication,
and (although research data and opinion vary) somewhere between 60 and 80 per
cent of communication is non-verbal.

The part of the brain that is primarily responsible for non-verbal communication
is the limbic system. You will recall that the limbic system is one of the more
primitive parts of the human brain. It is unconscious and reactive. For this reason
it is sometimes referred to as the ‘truthful brain’, as the non-verbal
communication it generates (at least initially) has not been filtered or influenced
by the higher-order thinking of the cortex. It reacts instinctively to what happens
in the world around it and generates non-verbal communication based upon this.

Spoken communication can be considered and structured in advance of delivery.

Non-verbal communication is generated by the limbic system in real time and is
delivered unfiltered and without any conscious interference. As a result, it has
more purity and can provide us with a powerful insight into what someone is
really thinking and feeling. The customer’s non-verbal communication can
provide us with powerful cues that we can use to adapt and alter our sales
behaviour to maximize our chances of success.
So, to begin, let us define non-verbal communication. Fundamentally anything
that isn’t words can be classified as non-verbal communication, including:
 body movements;
eye contact;
facial expressions;
gestures;
interpersonal space – or proximics (mentioned in Chapter 9);
paralinguistics and vocal cues – tone, inflection, pauses, intonation, volume,
pace, pitch;
posture;
touching – of self and others.

Although some non-verbal communication is cultural (for example, the same

gesture such as a ‘thumbs up’ means different things in different countries) and
some is idiosyncratic, the indicators discussed in this chapter will be limbic in
origin.

In Chapter 9 we began to look at non-verbal communication and how to use it to

make the customer feel comfortable with us, so that the instinctive threat
response was not triggered. In this chapter we will be going more deeply into
non-verbal communication, focusing on becoming more conscious of it, so that
we can gather information that is useful to us.

Non-verbal communication is a fascinating subject that could easily fill several

books, so this chapter will focus on some of the key things to be aware of from a
sales perspective.

A key theme throughout this book has been to focus on and utilize the innate,
hard-wired ‘stay away from pain’ and ‘towards reward’ circuit in the human
brain. This chapter will develop this concept further, identifying non-verbal
communication that will tell us when customers are feeling comfortable
(‘towards reward’) or uncomfortable (‘stay away’) with us and what they are
hearing. If we pick up non-verbal indicators or displays of comfort then this
gives us feedback to carry on. However, if we pick up non-verbal indicators or
displays of discomfort then we need to slow down and consider what we are
doing.
doing.
When you have been in a car you may have experienced the effect of rumble
strips. Also known as sleeper lines or audible lines, they are a road safety feature
that alerts drivers to potential danger on the road by causing a vibration and
audible rumbling that is transmitted through the wheels of the car into the car
body. They are often placed across the road, and when you are approaching a
junction or roundabout the rumble strips warn you to slow down and take greater
care. Once you are attuned to the non-verbal indicators of discomfort these will
act like ‘rumble strips’ that tell you to slow down and make sure you do
something to make the customer feel more comfortable.

In addition, it is important that you make sure that your non-verbal

communication displays high degrees of comfort and confidence. If you look
comfortable then this sends a powerful and largely unconscious message that
you are confident about your products and services and are comfortable that they
will do what you say they will do.

You need to be perceived as a confident and competent authority who oozes

certainty! Customers’ brains will be comforted by this and will be drawn
towards it. Customers’ mirror neurons will start to register this feeling of
comfort and certainty coming from you, and they will in turn experience it for
themselves.

Any lack of comfort on your part will be registered, perhaps at an unconscious

level, and this feeling of discomfort and uncertainty may lead to you losing the
sale. For example, if your body language is inconsistent with your words, then
your clients may consciously or unconsciously register this and decide that they
can’t trust you.
In a Harvard Business School working paper, Assistant Professor Amy Cuddy
states that ‘an examination of 185 videotaped two minute pitches showed that
venture capitalists were far more likely to invest in entrepreneurs who displayed
confidence, passion and enthusiasm’ (Cuddy, Wilmuth and Carney, 2012).
Customers have to buy you before they will buy your product or service!
Observing the customer
In order to become proficient at observing our customer’s non-verbal
communication we need to keep some key principles in mind:

Context. Non-verbal communication needs to be observed in terms of the

context the person is experiencing. If, for example, the customer rushes into
the meeting with you very late, sweating profusely and out of breath from
having run from the other side of the building to meet you then this would
need to be taken into account! As you interact with your customers more
frequently, you will start to establish what their default or baseline non-
verbal communication is like, and you can then use this to provide a
backdrop for any behaviour that is exhibited.
Clusters. This chapter will describe a number of behaviours that could be
indicators that the customer is feeling comfortable or uncomfortable. One
behaviour or indicator on its own should not be taken as evidence that the
customer is feeling one way or another. Attune yourself to look out for
‘clusters’ of behaviour that when considered together provide more robust
evidence of how the customer is feeling.
Changes. Pay close attention to any changes in non-verbal communication,
as these are usually indicative of the internal state the customer is
experiencing. The most immediate non-verbal indicator or display is
usually the most accurate, as it has been generated from the reactive limbic
system before the customer has a chance to exert any form of conscious
control or influence over it.
Congruence. Pay attention to any difference or incongruence between what
is said verbally and what customers’ body language is saying. Any
differences need to be noted. If customers say, for example, that they are
comfortable with your proposal, but are indicating high levels of non-verbal
discomfort then this is a rumble strip moment! You need to slow down and
probe more deeply by asking some further questions such as ‘Is there any
aspect of the proposal that you would like to be changed?’ The
 incongruence is not necessarily a sign of lying or deceit (although it might
be – more of that later!); it may just mean that the customer is feeling
uncomfortable about some aspect of your proposal and feels uncomfortable
about sharing this with you. The Blue customer, for example, prefers to
avoid any conflict and may not vocalize some concerns with you for fear of
causing any offence.

So with this in mind let us go on a ‘top to toe’ journey through your customer’s
non-verbal communication!

The head
When customers are feeling comfortable their head may tilt over to one side or
the other. This can be a sign of friendliness, comfort or an attempt to build
rapport and is also believed to be a submissive behaviour as well as one used
during courtship!

During your sales pitch should customers’ heads suddenly straighten upright
then this could be an indicator that they have seen or heard something that they
don’t like.
The forehead
When someone is experiencing emotional or physical pain either directly or
when empathizing with another person the central forehead contracts. For this
reason it is sometimes called the ‘grief muscle’. The forehead is a very good
place to detect if the customer is feeling uncomfortable, as it presents real-time
limbic information on how the customer is feeling.
The furrowed forehead is usually a good sign that the customer is feeling
uncomfortable, anxious, concerned or confused. If the customer is feeling
comfortable the forehead will be smoother and unfurrowed (see Figure 14.1).

FIGURE 14.1 Furrowed forehead

The eyebrows
Lowering of the eyebrows is an indicator that the customer may disagree with
you or have doubts or uncertainties. And if the customer raises one eyebrow this
is a possible sign of scepticism.

Raised or arched eyebrows generally indicate comfort, confidence and positive

feelings. This can also indicate surprise or disbelief.
The eyes
They have been described as the mirrors to our soul, perhaps because the eye’s
retina is an outgrowth of the forebrain, so looking into someone’s eyes could be
rather like looking into the brain itself.

The eyes take in a huge amount of information and pass it to the brain, but they
can also provide a useful insight into what is going on inside the brain. For
example, the pupils of the eyes dilate (enlarge) or constrict (narrow) in response
to light conditions. However, they also respond to emotional changes. When we
see things we are excited by, we would like or that could be rewarding, our
pupils expand more than they would usually. And if we see something that we
dislike or find uncomfortable they contract more than they would usually. These
changes are unconscious, involuntary and beyond control and therefore are good
indicators of the customer’s level of comfort or discomfort.

In his book Manwatching, ethologist Desmond Morris (1978) mentions that jade
dealers in pre-Revolutionary China deliberately wore dark glasses in order to
conceal their excited pupil dilations when they were handed a particularly
valuable specimen of jade. Before they did this, their pupil dilations were
consciously watched for by jade salesmen. When they saw interest they put their
prices up! Perhaps there is something for us to learn from these salespeople of
old!

When customers feel comfortable with what they are seeing, the eyes and the
muscles around them will be relaxed and soft. When customers feel
uncomfortable the eyes and the muscles around them will be harder and
squinting may occur. Squinting or a narrowing of the eyes is a sign of discomfort
or dislike.
Squinting is one form of what is known as eye blocking. Other forms include
customers covering or shielding their eyes with their hands and lowering their
eyelids for prolonged periods (see Figure 14.2). This is an instinctive and hard-
wired behaviour if we see something we don’t like or that makes us
uncomfortable.

FIGURE 14.2 Eye blocking

You can also tell the sincerity of customers’ smiles by whether their eyes are
engaged in the process or not. When a smile is genuine and sincere (what is
called the zygomatic or heartfelt smile) the corners of the customer’s mouth will
come upwards towards the eyes and they become involved in the smile, with the
outer corner of the eye crinkling into ‘crow’s feet’. If the smile is less genuine or
false then the smile does not involve the eyes and no crow’s feet will be seen.
When we are emotionally aroused or stressed (such as when excited, when lying
and during courtship) our eyelids blink faster than the normal blink rate of about
15 to 20 closures per minute and can even increase to over 100 closures per
minute.
The nose
If customers are feeling uncomfortable and perhaps even stressed they will touch
and massage their nose more often (see Figure 14.3). Despite what you may
have read or heard, touching the nose is not on its own a reliable indicator of
lying. It is more likely to be an indicator of anxiety and discomfort, which may
possibly be as a result of the increased tension people experience when lying.

FIGURE 14.3 Nose rub

When customers are excited about something you may notice that their nasal
wings dilate. This appears to be a response to the brain needing more oxygen.
This can also be a sign that customers want to take some action.
The mouth
If customers are feeling comfortable their lips will be relaxed and loose. If the
customer feels uncomfortable or anxious you will notice that their lips tighten
up, press together and almost seem to disappear (see Figure 14.4).

FIGURE 14.4 Disappearing lips

Possible signs of discomfort or stress include licking of the lips, rubbing the
tongue backwards and forwards along and across the lips, lip biting and mouth
touching.
The chin
If customers touch or stroke the very end of their chin this is often a sign of
thought and consideration and should be taken as a positive indicator that they
are considering your proposal carefully (see Figure 14.5).

FIGURE 14.5 Chin consideration pose

The neck
If customers are feeling stressed or uncomfortable they may stroke or ventilate
(by pulling at the neck of their shirt or top) the neck area. When customers’
hands go to their neck there is usually something they are uncomfortable about.
They may also rub or scratch the neck behind their ear if they are feeling
uncertain about something (see Figure 14.6).

FIGURE 14.6 Neck scratch or rub

The arms and hands
One of the most commonly misunderstood non-verbal communication displays
is crossing the arms. Contrary to popular opinion this is not necessarily a sign of
negativity or defensiveness. To some people crossing their arms is a comfortable
or comforting thing to do. If, however, the arm fold is tight or they appear to be
almost gripping themselves, then it is likely to be an indicator of discomfort.
It can also be a blocking behaviour, which is an unconscious defence against
something customers find uncomfortable. They may also block you with a folder
or bag held up to their chest (see Figure 14.7). This is a sure sign that they are
uncomfortable.

FIGURE 14.7 Blocking

If customers are wringing their hands together or have interlaced their fingers
and are rubbing or stroking them together then this is a good indication that they
are feeling uncomfortable about something.

However, if customers rub the palms together then this indicates that they are
anticipating a positive result.

A sign of frustration or of holding something back is that customers will clench

their hands together either in front of themselves on their desk or in their lap. If
you see this gesture then it is a good time to ask if they have any questions or
concerns.

An important point to note when involved in the sales process or the negotiation
that invariably forms part of it is to be aware that open palm gestures are usually
associated with honesty and openness. They are saying ‘I have nothing to hide.’
If you speak with your palms downwards then this will make you appear more
commanding and can be a useful behaviour to use during negotiations to help
you to get your point across.
The chest
If customers are feeling comfortable with you and your proposal they will
unconsciously turn their chest towards you. And if they are feeling
uncomfortable then they will turn their chest away from you. The extreme of this
behaviour is if customers turn their back on you. Not a good sign!

As an aside, research by ex-FBI body language expert Joe Navarro (2009) shows
that people will perceive you to be more open and honest if they can see your
torso. So turning towards people and unbuttoning your jacket to allow what
Navarro calls a ‘ventral display’ will help customers to feel more comfortable
with you.
The hips
If you see customers shifting their weight from side to side on their hips or
shifting around in their chair (even subtly) then this is a sign that they are
uncomfortable with what is being discussed or shown.
The legs
If customers’ legs are crossed in a loose and/or low position on the legs then this
is usually a sign of comfort (see Figure 14.8).

FIGURE 14.8 Low leg cross

Crossing of the legs (when either sitting or standing) is often an indicator of

comfort. The act of crossing the legs takes one or both feet off the floor. If
customers are feeling uncomfortable, unconsciously the limbic system will get
them to place both feet flat on the floor – so they can make a fast escape if
needed!
A possible sign of discomfort is customers crossing their legs and placing the
ankle of one leg on to the knee of the other leg in a high leg cross, effectively
turning the legs into a kind of barrier between them and you (see Figure 14.9).
FIGURE 14.9 High leg cross

If customers’ legs are loose and splayed this is a comfort signal; if they are
together and tight this is a sign of discomfort.
The feet
If customers’ feet (and legs) are pointing towards you then this is a strong
unconscious indicator that they are feeling comfortable with you and what you
are saying. If, however, their feet are pointing away from you then they are not
comfortable and unconsciously their feet are pointing in the direction they wish
to go – away from you (see Figure 14.10).

FIGURE 14.10 Foot point-away

So there we go – a journey through your customers’ non-verbal behaviour from
top to toe!
Keep your eyes open and observe customers’ non-verbal communication. Look
out for signs of comfort that mean they are feeling positive about you and your
proposal. Their body is exhibiting ‘towards reward’ signs. And if you see a
proposal. Their body is exhibiting ‘towards reward’ signs. And if you see a
cluster of displays of discomfort behaviour then this needs to act as a non-verbal
rumble strip telling you that you need to slow down (and perhaps even reverse!),
as something is making the customers feel uncomfortable. So, when you see it,
slow down and ask the customers a question to check how they are feeling.
Maybe they have a query or concern that you can answer, which will make them
feel comfortable once more before proceeding with the sale.

In Chapter 15 we are going to explore how to steer a sale to a conclusion by

negotiating effectively.
 15
Neuro-negotiating

Although this is predominantly a book about selling it would be remiss of me

not to include some content on the subject of negotiation. Selling and
negotiating are two essential skills that you have to master if you want to prosper
as a sales professional. Selling and negotiating are both inextricably linked
together in the sales process. Although the boundaries between them are blurred,
they are two distinct stages and two different skill sets.

Selling is about convincing customers to purchase a product or service, or to

enter into some form of arrangement or agreement with you. Selling can be
defined as establishing a need or want to buy (remembering that people tend to
buy what they want rather than what they need), and then matching the benefits
of your product or service to that need or want. These benefits and how they help
customers to get what they want are articulated in your sales proposal or value
proposition.

Negotiating on the other hand is about agreeing the terms upon which the
purchase, arrangement or agreement will take place. This may include many
factors, such as volume purchased, delivery schedule and method, purchase
frequency, amount of payment, timing of payments, service levels, product or
service configuration and so forth.

To maximize your profit margin the golden rule is: sell first; negotiate second.
The reason for this sequence is that the more convinced customers are of the
benefits of your product or service the more they are likely to be prepared to pay
for it. Selling is about communicating the value of what you have to offer. The
more value customers perceive a product or service to give them, the higher the
price they will be prepared to pay for it.

On some occasions selling alone may be enough. You may be able to convince
customers to purchase your product or services without any negotiation taking
place. However, in the majority of modern selling situations, you will be drawn
into negotiation.

If you allow yourself to be drawn into negotiation too early (and experienced
buyers will attempt to do exactly this), you are weakening your negotiating
power and missing out on the opportunity to convince customers of the benefits
(and therefore the value) that your product or service will bring them. To prevent
this happening it is important to focus on three distinct stages in the sales
process. These are in sequence: planning and preparing; selling; and then
negotiating.

In the course of my work as a speaker and consultant working with countless

sales professionals, the situation that I encounter with most of them is as
illustrated in Figure 15.1. A small amount of planning is conducted. In my
experience far too few salespeople plan and prepare well enough for customer
meetings, and as a result of this the depth and quality of their selling are limited.
They will then frequently find themselves dragged far too quickly into the
negotiation stage (which lessens their ability to communicate value) by
customers, who are deliberately trying to tip the balance of power in the
negotiation in their favour.

FIGURE 15.1 An all-too-common scenario

The ideal scenario is as illustrated in Figure 15.2, where salespeople plan and
prepare for both the selling and the negotiating stage thoroughly. They then enter
the selling stage, spending sufficient time to understand customers’ needs and
wants and then articulating a powerful value proposition. They then make the
transition into the negotiating stage, maximizing profit margins by conducting an
effective negotiation that is built on a firm foundation of planning, preparing and
good-quality selling.

FIGURE 15.2 The ideal scenario

If the foundation of planning and preparation is weak, the selling stage will
usually be too shallow and short and will lead to the power balance in the
negotiation being tipped in the favour of customers. The customers will then
exploit their advantage, and salespeople’s profit margins inevitably suffer as a
consequence.
consequence.
We covered the importance of planning in Chapter 8, and if you take the time to
build a solid foundation of planning and preparation for your customer meetings
then your ability to sell will improve, which will in turn lead to you feeling
stronger and more confident in the negotiation stage. The more confident you are
feeling, the better your profit margin is likely to be.

Why (most) salespeople aren’t good at

negotiating
In my experience, in the majority of cases salespeople just aren’t as good at
negotiating as they need to be. Why is this?

At an early stage in their career salespeople are usually told to ‘keep the
customer happy’. They have been taught that happy customers are good
customers, and they will go out of their way to placate unhappy customers.
Customers know this and will deliberately make salespeople uncomfortable by
appearing to be ‘unhappy’ as a way of tipping the power balance in their favour.
They are using the principle of ‘stay away from pain’ and ‘move towards
reward’ with the salespeople. They create an uncomfortable situation for
salespeople, which the salespeople are motivated to move away from and
provide a way to move towards a more comfortable (and therefore rewarding)
situation. And all the salespeople have to do to feel comfortable is to give the
buyer a much lower price!
Customers (particularly professional procurement buyers, whom salespeople are
encountering more and more often) will attempt to shortcut the sales stage and
pull the salespeople out of their selling comfort zone and into their negotiating
discomfort zone. Experienced buyers will increase the levels of discomfort as
much as possible using psychological ploys and tactics. Uncomfortable
salespeople will often pay their way out of discomfort in the form of (at best)
some form of financial concession or (at worst) a non-reciprocated ‘give-away’.
They will literally pay their way out of discomfort with their employer’s profit
margin. For salespeople to become more effective negotiators they need to
margin. For salespeople to become more effective negotiators they need to
recognize this and ‘feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable’!

Two distinct skill sets

Selling and negotiating are two distinct skill sets. Although selling and
negotiating are inextricably linked there are distinct differences. In selling we are
attempting to persuade, convince, enthuse, justify and explain. By contrast in
negotiation we are stating our position, considering, making and weighing
proposals and making demands for what we want.

In the majority of cases salespeople are far less comfortable with negotiating
than buyers are. If salespeople receive sales training, the majority of the time
will be spent on the process of selling and very much less time (if any at all) will
be spent on the process of negotiating. Professional buyers (more and more
salespeople are encountering procurement professionals) on the other hand will
usually receive training only in negotiation. Therefore when it comes to the
negotiation stage of the sales process buyers usually have the advantage.

Having spent countless hours running realistic and demanding negotiation

simulations, I have often seen salespeople’s selling comfort zone once again
rearing its ugly head in terms of negotiation behaviour. Salespeople will tend to
do far too much information giving in the negotiation, driven by their
predilection for persuading and selling. In doing so, they miss out on gathering
the necessary information that would enable them to make effective negotiation
proposals. They spend far too much time thinking about things from their
perspective and not enough time where their focus should be – getting inside the
customer’s brain and understanding things from the customer’s perspective. On
the other hand professional buyers will tend to exhibit higher levels of
information gathering, giving them far more knowledge and information that
they can use to their advantage. In negotiation, knowledge is power.

To negotiate successfully, you need to understand – really understand – what the

other person wants to achieve. When you fully understand this you can create a
deal that meets the needs of both sides. If you fail to gather enough information
deal that meets the needs of both sides. If you fail to gather enough information
(as salespeople frequently do), your chances of securing a profitable deal are
very limited. Sales professionals need to move their own agenda and objectives
from the front of their mind to the back of their mind. The customer’s needs and
priorities need to be in the front of the salesperson’s mind – and they usually are
not.

The importance of feeling comfortable feeling

uncomfortable
With the powerful motivating forces of ‘stay away from pain’ and ‘towards
reward’ being leveraged by the customer on us in negotiation situations, it is
important that firstly we are aware of the power of these forces on our
behaviour. Having read this book you will be acutely aware of the power of
these forces, and indeed will become adept at using them to your advantage in
selling situations.

Secondly, we must take steps to neutralize their impact upon us and find ways to
use them to tip the negotiation in our favour. Taking the time to mentally ‘step
back’ and take a few deep breaths will enable our cortex to have greater control
and influence. We need to calm our own ‘gremlin brain’, allowing our more
rational cortex to run the show. In doing so we can calm and tame the powerful
hard-wired impulses to stay away from pain and move towards reward.
When we begin to feel understandably anxious during negotiations, remember
that our 100,000-year-old brain has detected what it instinctively regards as a
potential threat and is equipping us to deal with it. You feel nervous, your mouth
feels dry, your limbs shake, you start to sweat, you start to breathe rapidly and
you want to go to the toilet! You are feeling nervous and scared. Or are you?
When you are faced with what your primitive brain views as a challenge your
emotional reactions send your mind and body through a series of chemical
changes to help you deal with the situation. This involves your brain, nervous
system and adrenal glands. Your heart rate, muscles, and energy and
system and adrenal glands. Your heart rate, muscles, and energy and
concentration levels are brought to their most effective to help you to cope with
the situation. When we are faced with a real or perceived threat, the more
primitive parts of our brain trigger the ‘freeze, fight or flight’ response. This is
your built-in survival instinct being activated. This response occurs not only in
genuinely dangerous situations but also in situations that we perceive to be
threatening. Despite the fact that we are living in a sophisticated and civilized
society we are still using our 100,000-year-old brains. That is, we still react to
perceived threats in the same way our Neanderthal ancestors did!
We carry these patterns of behaviour with us from prehistoric times, as an
effective survival mechanism, and it works automatically without us having to
think about it. This automatic response was highly useful if you were about to be
attacked by a prehistoric creature, but it has its disadvantages in modern business
negotiations. We have been programmed over millions of years of evolution to
be able to instantly summon extra speed and strength when faced with a threat.
When faced with danger, or what we perceive as danger, the body and mind go
almost instantly through a series of complex chemical changes to help us to deal
with the situation effectively. The adrenal gland releases a large amount of
adrenalin into the blood. Our breathing and heart rate quicken. Our blood
pressure rises, and sugar is released into the blood to give extra energy. Our
muscles increase activity, and our lungs work faster. Our pupils dilate to give
better vision, and our metabolism is accelerated by our thyroid hormones. Some
of our physical systems, such as the digestive tract, are shut down to allow more
blood to move to the muscles. The intestinal digestion of food slows down, our
bladder sphincter muscle contracts, our sweat pores open and our saliva becomes
thick and viscous.
Perhaps you can see how these physical reactions are the same physical reactions
we might associate with being scared, nervous or anxious. The dry mouth, the
need to go to the toilet, perspiring, feeling nauseous and breathing heavily are
commonly associated with nervousness, fear and feeling scared. In fact you are
not really ‘scared’ or ‘nervous’ at all; it is the effect of hormones such as
cortisol, adrenalin, noradrenaline and dopamine. Your emotional reactions have
triggered these chemical changes to help you to cope with the threat, be it real or
imagined. Your brain is trying to be helpful!
So, when you feel as though you are nervous going into a negotiation, you are in
fact incorrectly interpreting the physical signs. These physical signs are in fact
positive; they are your brain and body ‘tooling up’ to perform well under stress.
Your body and mind want to bring your heart rate, muscles, energy and
concentration to their most effective levels.

Get used to this feeling; indeed welcome it, as when harnessed positively it will
give you a performance edge. Recognize it is happening, harness the feeling and
do not misinterpret it for something you have to move away from. Instead
embrace it, feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable and you will be in a strong
state of mind to negotiate from.

As a professional speaker, I am very used to stepping on to a stage in front of a

large audience of up to a thousand people. Every single time I do this, I
experience the chemical changes described above. I welcome them and indeed
thrive on them, as I believe this gives me an ‘edge’ when I am on stage. And I
experience the same feelings before an important sales pitch or negotiation. I am
grateful that my brain is doing its best to support me in doing a good job! I also
believe that it means that I am taking the pitch or negotiation seriously and not
getting arrogant or complacent. I want to be fully ‘switched on’ when delivering
a speech or a sales pitch or conducting a negotiation, as it means that I perform
to a far higher standard.

The five stages of negotiation

If you want to enhance your capability and confidence as a negotiator, it is vital
to understand that most negotiations go through five distinct stages. These five
stages are:

Step 1: planning and preparing. Far too many negotiators fail to plan and
prepare correctly! This vitally important step is often seriously overlooked,
 as the negotiators are too keen to get stuck into the action! Effective
planning and preparation are the hallmark of the professional negotiator. If
you do not plan and prepare properly, you can only react to what happens in
the negotiation rather than leading and controlling it.
Step 2: discussing and/or arguing. Depending upon the subject and the
people involved, this stage can be a relatively calm discussion or a raging
argument – or something in between. Whatever the nature of the
conversation taking place, the purpose of this stage of the negotiation is to
review the issue(s) and to exchange information. It is good practice to make
every possible effort to understand the other party’s point of view and to
make sure that the other party understands yours.
Step 3: signalling and proposing. Each negotiation that you become
involved in will have two possible solutions – one that meets all of your
needs and one that meets all of the other party’s needs. In reality the final
agreement usually falls somewhere in between these two ideal solutions.
Therefore as a negotiator you need to be on the lookout for signals or signs
of willingness from the other party to consider movement. Signals are
usually followed by proposals. A proposal is a suggested action, approach
or process that one party in a negotiation makes to the other party.
Proposals advance negotiations. Without them not a lot happens!
Step 4: bargaining. This stage of the negotiation is characterized by the two
parties trading with each other. Variable items are traded so that both
parties can achieve their objectives. The key to effective bargaining is
giving to get. Never make a concession without getting something of equal
or greater value in return. No freebies!
Step 5: closing and agreeing. Closing is when agreement to proceed is
reached. At this stage you have a deal!

The importance of planning and preparation

The most important stage in the entire negotiation process is step 1: planning and
preparing. Up to 90 per cent of your success as a negotiator is related to the
preparing. Up to 90 per cent of your success as a negotiator is related to the
quality of the planning and preparation that you do in advance of the negotiation.

Here are some of the vital elements that professional negotiators will include in
their planning and preparation:

Objectives. What specifically do you want to achieve and how will you
measure your success? Make sure you write your objectives down, as this
will make them more concrete. Unclear objectives will usually lead to poor
results. It is also vitally important to consider the objectives that the other
party may have and then check these are correct during the discussion
stage. Get out of your head and into the other party’s head!
Negotiation parameters. As most negotiations will fall somewhere in
between the ideal outcome of both parties, it is important to consider the
range within which a deal is possible. Define your ideal outcome (your
‘like’), a realistic outcome based upon your knowledge to date (your
‘intend’) and finally your walk-away point (your ‘must’). Then consider the
likely range of the other party. If you cannot secure your ‘must’ then you
must walk away. Not all deals are worth doing. For example, it is a good
idea to think carefully in advance of the absolute minimum price you will
be prepared to accept, a realistic price that provides you with a reasonable
margin and an ambitious price that would deliver a very good margin. You
can then open your price negotiation above your ‘like’ figure and negotiate
from there.
Negotiable areas. What are the elements that the negotiation will be
orientated around, for example contract length, specification and so on? List
areas that are important to you and those that you anticipate are important
to the other party. During the negotiation you will attempt to get some of
what you want by trading something the other party wants in return. Work
out what each concession will cost you so that you can make sure that you
always get something of equal or greater value in return.

Although we could go into the subject of negotiation planning and preparation in

much greater depth, if you commit to always considering these vital areas then
much greater depth, if you commit to always considering these vital areas then
your confidence will increase, and this will enable you to negotiate far more
profitable deals.

The four different negotiators

In Chapters 6 and 7 we met the four different ‘colours’ or behavioural
preferences that we will encounter when meeting our customers. We looked in
some detail at how to identify them and then adapt our behaviour when selling to
these different behavioural preferences.

Now let me add to this with some considerations to keep in mind when
negotiating with, as distinct from selling to, these four different behavioural
preferences.
The Green negotiator
Green negotiators will be more outgoing, social and spontaneous. Make
additional efforts to maintain this positive relationship with them during the
negotiation, as the tension that sometimes accompanies negotiations may
stimulate their fears of rejection. They dislike confrontational approaches to
negotiation, as they would prefer to look for creative solutions and ideas rather
than slugging it out!
As they like choices and options they will be open to look at new and creative
solutions. This sort of behaviour will be stifled if they are feeling tense: hence
the need to put additional positive focus on the relationship. Remain positive and
upbeat during the negotiation.
The Blue negotiator
Blue negotiators will be more calm, open and warm. Make additional efforts to
build on your existing relationship, as this will be important to them. They are
the behavioural preference that is most uncomfortable with conflict or
confrontation and will avoid it if at all possible. Match their calm nature.

They will probably want to hear your opinion or proposal first and will want to
consider it fully before responding. Be open and honest in your views; they will
need to trust you.

They are patient and steady negotiators and will take their time. They will often
want to consult with others to gather their views before bringing the negotiation
to a close.

They do not like radical change or pressure, so do not push them to make a
commitment. Negotiations with the Blue preference will take longer, and it may
take a number of meetings before the deal can be closed.
The Red negotiator
Red negotiators will be tough in their approach and will want, and expect, to
take charge of the negotiation, set the pace and be in control all the way through.
Negotiations with Reds can be fast and furious!

If you attempt to ‘fight’ them for control then they are likely to respond
negatively. Paradoxically, you can exert greater ‘control’ over Red negotiators
by allowing them the sense that they are in the driving seat. Use suggestions and
subtle hints to nudge them in the direction you want them to go in. Offer them
options that they can choose from, as this helps them to feel in control, and let
them know that you are willing to explore different approaches to achieving a
result.

They may appear rude, arrogant and impatient, but this is due to their high focus
on task, achievement and results. Help them to negotiate a deal that lets them
have a sense of ‘winning’ by achieving the results they need and they will
participate more fully.
The Gold negotiator
Gold negotiators can be challenging to deal with because they negotiate using
facts, data and proof. You need to be very well planned and prepared (they will
be!) and ready to answer a lot of detailed questions.

They want to negotiate the right deal and make the right decision the first time,
so they want to be certain, and they will attempt to do this by gathering concrete
proof and evidence. You will need to be very patient. Any attempt to push things
forward will be resisted.

They may very well want to discuss the fine detail of the ‘small print’, and once
their questions are answered and they have the information they need they will
start to feel comfortable with moving forward with a proposal in the negotiation.

They can appear cold and unemotional as negotiators, but this is just the impact
of their preferred behavioural style being amplified by the demands of the
negotiation.

Different negotiation styles

Good negotiators are able to flex their negotiation style as required. For
example, if you are making a one-off transactional purchase such as a car, a
house, a new kitchen or double glazing where you will not be having an ongoing
relationship with the other person, then you may choose to adopt a tough, hard-
bargaining approach. This is sometimes referred to as a ‘win/lose’ style. This
style is characterized by power plays, intimidation and hard-nosed tactics.

The downside of this style is that, as the more primitive part of the brain is very
active here, trust and flexibility are low. In this style I only benefit if you lose. I
get more if you get less. You can see how this situation will stimulate the
reptilian and emotional brain, which is why these styles of negotiation can be
very combative.
For negotiations that involve longer-term relationships a different style is
For negotiations that involve longer-term relationships a different style is
required, a style that looks to deliver a result for both parties, to find, create and
add value to the deal, and the relationship is often referred to as a ‘win/win’
style. To succeed with this style you need to keep your negotiations brain-
friendly, limiting the perceived threat response and keeping the reptilian and
emotional brain in check as much as is possible.

Although in reality the subject of negotiation style is more complex than a

simple division between win/win and win/lose styles, this broad definition will
provide a useful working model for us to use.

The power/comfort balance

Power, or rather the perception of power, has a huge bearing on negotiation
success. Invariably the people who perceive that they are in the more powerful
position will get the better deal. Even with a ‘win/win’ approach it does not
mean that everything is divided equally or fairly. It is a win/win result if both
parties leave the negotiation feeling comfortable or at least with an acceptable
deal. The challenge is to conclude a win/win deal with the balance of the win
tipped in your favour! Therefore it is important that you are communicating your
power effectively so that the other party perceives you as being the more
powerful party. Much of this perception will be unconscious and therefore will
be based upon what the reptilian and emotional brains are exposed to.

On the other hand we also need to continue to keep the customer’s brain feeling
as comfortable as possible. The negotiation stage is likely to be potentially the
most uncomfortable or threatening stage for the customer’s brain.

If we are not careful we can all too easily trigger a threat response in customers’
brains, with the resulting reaction, which may hamper our ability to negotiate
successfully with them. You will recall that if customers’ reptilian and emotional
brains become over-stimulated this will prevent the prefrontal cortex from
functioning fully, interfering with a more rational approach to negotiation and
decision making.

If this happens customers will have more difficulty accessing long-term

If this happens customers will have more difficulty accessing long-term
memory, they will find it more difficult to remember what has been said, their
ability to judge will diminish, their ability to solve problems will be impaired,
they will be more sensitive to any perceived threats and they are more likely to
react negatively.
Therefore we will be looking to achieve a delicate balance between radiating
power and confidence and taking actions to maximize comfort for the
customer’s brain.

Comfort builders
To build comfort, continue to adapt your behavioural style to best suit that of the
customer. The notes above on how to negotiate with each of the four behavioural
styles need to be incorporated into what you have learned about them already.

Avoid any language, behaviour or actions that could irritate or stimulate the
customer’s reptilian or emotional brain. Things to avoid include:

interrupting;
talking over the other person;
not listening to what the other person is saying;
being confrontational:
– ‘Take it or leave it!’
scoring ego points:
– ‘So I’m right then?’
being dismissive:
– ‘That’ll never work!’
– ‘That’s a stupid idea!’
being sarcastic:
– ‘Wow, I bet that took a lot of doing!’
being provocative:
 – ‘That is a very generous offer!’
– ‘What you fail to realize is…’;
using dismissive language:
– ‘That’s no good to us!’
– ‘I hear what you are saying but…’;
using phrases repetitively:
– ‘With respect…’;
finger pointing;
gesturing quickly and excessively;
raising your voice;
excessive staring;
moving too close to the other person and invading personal space or
‘territory’;
becoming emotional (think of the impact on the customer’s mirror
neurons!).

If one or more of the above behaviours are displayed by one side in the
negotiation then there is always the danger that the other side will counter back.
When humans are psychologically ‘pushed’ they will often ‘push’ back. It only
takes three or so of these psychological pushes before we are in an attack-and-
defend-style loop, with the behaviour of one negotiator provoking the other
negotiator, who in turn provokes back and away we go. The reptilian and limbic
systems respond to the threat response, and the negotiation rapidly spirals
downwards as the cortex loses its somewhat delicate hold over the proceedings.
It takes human beings about three or so pushes before the situation degenerates
into a squabble or fight. If this happens, call a timeout so both sides can calm
down, take a break, take some deep breaths and get the cortex back in control.
A better way is to avoid such instances occurring by focusing on comfort-
building behaviours. Things you can do to increase comfort during the
negotiation include:
 listening fully and attentively to what the other person says;
using positive and encouraging language:
– ‘I would be happy to explore…’
– ‘Let us discuss how we could move this forward’
– ‘My intention is to fully understand your position on this’
– ‘I am committed to doing all I can to make this positive for both of us’;
making steady but comfortable eye contact;
smiling when appropriate;
sitting in a relaxed, upright and open body posture, uncrossing your arms
and legs;
nodding when the other person makes a point that you agree with;
rewarding flexibility on the other person’s part:
– ‘Thank you for that consideration’;
building on the other person’s suggestions:
– ‘That’s a good idea and we could add to that by…’;
maintaining an even and calm voice modulation;
speaking at a steady pace.

What follow are some power principles that may be used on you or that you may
choose to use to build the customer’s perception of your power.

Power builders
One principle that can be very effective is what is called ‘power posing’. This is
based upon research carried out by Amy Cuddy, an assistant professor at
Harvard Business School (Carney, Cuddy and Yap, 2010; Cuddy, Wilmuth and
Carney, 2012). As described in Chapter 14 our non-verbal communication
reflects how we are feeling. If people are feeling powerful they will often adopt
what Cuddy called ‘high-power poses’ – open, expansive postures and gestures.
For example, you will see the hands-and-arms-outstretched victory gesture when
sportspeople triumph during a sporting event, or powerful businesspeople may
lean back in their chair, put their arms behind their head and put their feet up on
their desk (see Figure 15.3). When people feel powerful they become bigger by
expanding the space their body occupies by wide-spaced limbs and spreading
out. This reflects and communicates the power they feel.

FIGURE 15.3 High-power pose 1

One very powerful non-verbal display of power is to stand with your hands on
your hips with your elbows out (see Figure 15.4). When combined with a wide
stance (the more space between our legs the stronger we appear), this is a very
commanding and territorial display. You will see this posture adopted by people
in leadership and authority positions such as army drill sergeants and police
officers. A variation that can be seen displayed by members of the British royal
family is where the arms are placed behind the back and the hands are held
together.

FIGURE 15.4 High-power pose 2

By contrast when people are feeling less confident and powerful they use ‘low-
power poses’, which are more closed, contractive postures, folding their arms,
hunching their shoulders, making themselves appear smaller by collapsing the
body inwards (see Figures 15.5 and 15.6).

FIGURE 15.5 Low-power pose 1

FIGURE 15.6 Low-power pose 2

This behaviour is not confined to the human animal. Across the animal kingdom
alpha male primates bulge their chest, the male peacock spreads his colourful tail
or the submissive dog shrinks down towards the floor in deference to the more
powerful dog. From a hormonal point of view alpha male animals have higher
levels of testosterone (what Cuddy describes as ‘the dominance hormone’) and
lower levels of cortisol (the ‘stress hormone’). When an animal first occupies
alpha status its testosterone levels rise and its cortisol levels fall. If it loses its
alpha status its testosterone levels fall and its cortisol levels rise.
So it would appear that leaders tend to have relatively high testosterone levels
and relatively low cortisol levels. These would be the calm and confident people
who can go into a potentially stressful situation and not react adversely to the
stress.
A calm and confident state strikes the ideal balance between comfort and power.
It is a calm, authoritative power in oneself that is not likely to provoke an
adverse reaction in the customer’s reptilian and emotional brain.

Cuddy and her team noted that power poses were displayed when people were
feeling powerful as a reflection of that feeling, but were fascinated to know
whether adopting the power poses in advance helped people to feel powerful. In
a series of fascinating experiments the researchers took saliva samples from test
subjects (both men and women) to measure their testosterone and cortisol levels.
Some test subjects were asked to adopt ‘high-power poses’ and some were asked
to adopt ‘low-power poses’. Each test subject adopted the relevant poses for two
minutes. After some additional exercises a second saliva sample was taken and
the results compared with the first. High-power poses caused an increase in
testosterone of about 19 per cent and a decrease in cortisol levels of about 25 per
cent. Low-power poses caused a decrease in testosterone and an increase in
cortisol. In short, the high-power poses made people feel more powerful, and
their hormone levels proved it.

So let us look at how to apply this and several other power principles:

Adopt a power pose for at least two minutes before going into negotiations.
Perhaps the easiest one to adopt is the hands on hips posture illustrated in
Figure 15.4. This can also be adopted whilst waiting in the customer’s foyer
or lobby prior to the meeting.
Do not sit down whilst waiting to be collected from the customer’s foyer or
lobby or waiting for the negotiation to commence. Stay standing up in your
power pose. Standing up also keeps your energy levels higher and means
that when the customer meets you for the first time you are at eye level.
In the animal kingdom the alpha male tends to sit or lie on higher ground
than the more subordinate members of the pack. Standing up when greeted
means that you are not ‘lower’ than the customer when you first meet. Also
watch out for the old buyer’s trick of putting salespeople into a low chair so
that the buyer towers over them!
Some people may try to ‘power handshake’ you by turning the palm of their
hand downwards when offering you their hand. The only way to initially
take their hand is by turning your hand palm upwards into what is believed
to be a submissive hand gesture. Should this be done to you, the counter is
to initially take the hand and then on the first downward handshake turn the
other person’s hand back sharply to the more normal vertical position.
Control the other person’s time. Keeping people waiting is a classic power
play. The message is clear – ‘I will see you when I am ready to see you
because I am in charge.’ If this is done to you either occupy yourself with
an important task (a phone call, for example) while you are waiting and
then keep the other person waiting while you finish off or call the person’s
bluff and say that you have another meeting to attend and offer to
reschedule.
Control the other person – make the appointment on a day and at a time that
suits your diary and not any date option the other person offers (even if it
suits you). When showing the person into the meeting room issue a series of
seemingly polite requests in order to get the person to comply with you, for
example ‘Please take a seat’ (and gesture to a specific seat), ‘Make yourself
comfortable – take off your jacket’ or ‘Please pass me the water.’ All of
these actions are starting to exert subtle control over the other person.
When in the negotiation continue to sit in an open and expansive manner.
Drape your arm over the chair next to you, or stand and lean an arm on the
flip chart or whiteboard if you are using one. Lean back slightly in your
chair and use a ‘steepling’ gesture. Steepling involves touching the spread
fingertips of both hands together without the palms touching (see Figure
15.7). It is called steepling because the shape the hand makes resembles a
 church steeple. Steepling signifies that you are feeling confident. It shows
you have confidence in and are comfortable with what you are saying. It
has been observed that high-status people in society often steeple.
Slow down your body movements and gestures. Appear unhurried and in
control.
Use a steady voice speed and tone. If you use more downward voice
inflections your voice will appear more commanding. An upward voice
inflection indicates a question. A downward voice inflection indicates a
command.
As described in Chapter 14, open palm gestures are indicative of openness
and honesty, and gestures made with the palms downward are perceived to
be more commanding and domineering. So when making statements or
proposals during negotiation there may be times that a downward palm
gesture will help to drive your point home. You can combine the downward
palm gesture with a downwards voice inflection for maximum impact!
Apply time pressure. Usually the person with the most urgency to do the
deal (for example, the salesperson who needs to hit this month’s sales
target) has the least power. If you suspect that the other person has a
deadline you could propose slowing things down to see if there is a
reaction.
Watch out for good cop/bad cop. One negotiator plays the role of good cop
and is nice, pleasant, welcoming and friendly. Another negotiator plays the
role of bad cop and is mean, unpleasant, demanding and hostile. This plays
on the hard-wired ‘stay away from pain’ and ‘towards reward’ circuits.
They will bounce you backwards and forwards between good cop and bad
cop. After a while good cop will make you an offer that seems attractive
because it seems preferable to another encounter with bad cop. In reality
they are working together to play you! Recognize it, and perhaps even ask
them: ‘Hey, come on, are you guys playing good cop/bad cop?’

FIGURE 15.7 Steepling

By monitoring the power/comfort balance carefully (by using the ‘stay away’
and ‘towards reward’ non-verbal indicators discussed in Chapter 14) you can
make adjustments as you go through to negotiate a good deal.

Is the customer lying?

When I am speaking on the subject of negotiation, or running seminars on the
subject, I am often asked if it is possible to spot verbal or non-verbal signs that
indicate that the person you are negotiating with is lying.

Despite what you may have heard, the truth of the matter is that foolproof non-
verbal indicators of lying have not yet been discovered. In addition, we need to
draw a distinction between outright deceit and being careful and considered
about what information we reveal and when during a negotiation. Although the
more open you are able to be, the easier it is to build trust in a negotiation, there
are times when it is wise to play one’s cards close to one’s chest in a negotiation
and consider when to reveal certain pieces of information. Therefore it is
possible to misinterpret prudent commercial caution as deceit.
That being said, here are some possible indicators that might provide you with
an indication that the other person is not telling the whole truth:
an indication that the other person is not telling the whole truth:

Voice pitch. People who are lying will speak with a higher voice pitch than
truth tellers.
Voice speed. Liars will speak more slowly than truth tellers.
Duration of message. Liars’ answers to questions will be shorter than truth
tellers’ and there will be a lack of detail. They will tend to give general
rather than specific answers.
Language. Liars’ language will seem more negative than truth tellers’.
Self/other references. Liars use fewer references to themselves and others
than truth tellers.
Response time. Liars take longer to respond to a question than truth tellers.
Hesitation. Liars hesitate when speaking more than truth tellers.
Speech errors. Liars’ speech contains more errors and is less fluent than
truth tellers’.
Non-verbal incongruence. Liars leak non-verbal incongruence, such as
making a micro-nod when making a negative statement or a micro-head
shake when making a positive statement.
Eye contact. Liars blink more often and have more dilated pupils than truth
tellers. Many people believe that a lack of eye contact is a sign of deceit.
This is very well known, and liars will go to extra lengths to make steady
eye contact.
Gestures. Liars tend to gesture less, touch less and move their arms and legs
less than truth tellers.

Please remember, as mentioned in Chapter 14 on non-verbal communication, to

keep your eyes and ears open for clusters of the behaviours described above.
One indicator is unlikely to mean that the other person is being untruthful. If you
pick up a cluster of them, however, then you might want to take extra care!
To close this chapter here are a few brain-friendly negotiation tips that you can
take and apply:
Set your objectives, be confident and aim on the high side. Work out your
‘like’, ‘intend’ and ‘must’ and anticipate those of the other party.
Be firm and flexible. Be persistent in pursuing your objectives but not rigid
in pursuing any particular solution. Good negotiators are flexible
negotiators. There may be a way to give them what they need but package it
in a way that works for you.
Listen more than you speak. Give them a good listening to! Being listened
to is comforting, as it shows you are paying attention to them.
Ask lots of direct questions and listen carefully to the answers. Gather more
information than you give, although be as open and honest as is
commercially prudent to increase trust and comfort levels.
Focus on the needs that underlie the positions people take in the
negotiation. Go looking for needs, ask questions about why they are
important and then see if you can structure the deal to meet both party’s
needs.
Summarize on a regular basis to clarify what has been discussed to give a
sense of progress and to subtly exert your power over the negotiation. The
person who summarizes more often usually has more control over the
negotiation.
If things get heated or confusing call a break. Take time out. Get some fresh
air, take some deep breaths and give your brain a break.
Give nothing away free. Always give to get. Get something of equal or
greater value for any concession you make. Make your proposals
conditional, using the ‘If you… then I…’ format: ‘If you give me the five
years’ free warranty and servicing and the metallic paint then I will buy the
car.’ The person has to give what you have asked for to get the concession.
Trade things that are low-cost to you but valued highly by the other party
and vice versa. What has the other party got that won’t cost that party much
but would be very valuable to you?
Establish the principle that ‘Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.’ It
 is only once every element of the deal has been agreed that you will agree.
This prevents other parties ‘cherry-picking’ the elements they like and
avoiding the areas they don’t like.

Once you have reached agreement, confirm everything verbally and check for
understanding. Then confirm everything in writing and check that both parties
agree with the written agreement. Then you have made a deal! Now all you have
to do is to make sure that you and the other party deliver on the deal.

Executing what you said you would do and doing it rapidly and professionally
will continue to build the customer’s confidence in you and comfort with you.
Over time, as you continue to build the customer’s confidence and comfort
levels, you begin to build a ‘defensive wall’ of positive ‘towards reward’ feeling
towards you around the customer’s business. The positive feelings that the
customer gets from working with you will help to protect your customer from
attack from your competitors.

As any sales professional knows, selling to and trying to steal a happy, satisfied,
well-serviced customer is one of the toughest sales jobs around, so make life as
difficult as you can for your competitors by making sure your customers feel
very comfortable and confident in their relationship with you.
 16
Conclusion

SoNeuro-Sell.
here we are at the end of the book! I hope you have enjoyed reading
However, what is far more important than the reading of this
book is for you to apply what you have learned. It is only through action and the
application of the powerful principles outlined in this book that you will improve
your sales performance.

Please treat this book as a practical tool to be used. Take one area of your sales
process that you think needs the most improvement and start making changes
there first. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It is only through the
application and practice of what you have learned in this book that you will be
able to make significant positive changes in your sales performance.

Most of this book has been focused on your customer’s brain. As we conclude,
let us spend a little time considering your own brain. Your brain is constantly
changing, rewiring and making new connections between the billions of neurons
it contains. This is called ‘neuroplasticity’, which refers to changes in neural
pathways and synapses. These occur as a result of changes in your environment
but more importantly through changes in your behaviour and neural processes,
for example your thinking, learning and actions. You can choose to allow
neuroplasticity to happen by chance, or you can take a choice to direct the
changes consciously. Dr Jeffrey M Schwartz, a psychiatrist at the UCLA School
of Medicine, calls this ‘self-directed neuroplasticity’ (Schwartz and Begley,
2003). When we are changing our brains on purpose we are employing self-
directed neuroplasticity.

So my challenge to you, over the next few days, weeks and months, is to make a
consistent and concerted effort to apply the principles in this book. Keep this
book with you, refer to it, apply what you have learned and you will see the
difference in your sales performance. Engage in self-directed neuroplasticity to
develop and fine-tune your brain to be a highly effective sales instrument by
continued application of the principles and practices in this book.

With the knowledge you now possess about PRISM Brain Mapping, study your
profile (if you have not already done so please visit www.neuro-sell.com to
download your free PRISM Brain Mapping profile) and consider the stronger
preferences you have and how you can leverage these more fully. Consider areas
that are lower preferences for you and ensure you are aware of these and manage
them carefully. In addition to your free PRISM Brain Mapping profile,
www.neuro-sell.com gives you access to a variety of other resources and
downloads you can use to maximize your sales performance with neuroscience.

I would love to hear about your successes. Nothing gives me greater pleasure
than hearing from fellow sales professionals about how they have applied what
they have learned and the success this has brought them.

If you are interested in booking me to speak at your conference or event, or

would like me to provide consultancy services and/or train your sales leadership
or sales force, or if you are interested in licensing my ‘brain-friendly selling’
process for your organization to use then I look forward to speaking with you. I
promise to give you a good listening to!
You can contact me directly at [email protected]. If I can be of any
assistance to you on your journey to sales mastery then please do get in touch.

Good luck and good neuro-selling!

Simon Hazeldine
www.simonhazeldine.com
www.neuro-sell.com
Twitter: @simonhazeldine
References

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44
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Blakeslee, S (2006) Cells that read minds, New York Times, 10 January
Carney, DR, Cuddy, AJC and Yap, AJ (2010) Power posing: brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine
levels and risk tolerance, Psychological Science, 21 (10), pp 1363–68
Cialdini, RB (1993) Influence: Science and practice, HarperCollins College Publishers, New York
Condon, WS and Ogston, WD (1966) Sound-film analysis of normal and pathological behaviour patterns,
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Cowan, N (2001) The magical number 4 in short term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage
capacity, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 24 (1), February, pp 87–114
Cuddy, AJC, Wilmuth, CA and Carney, DR (2012) Preparatory power posing affects performance
outcomes in social evaluations, Working paper 13-027, Harvard Business School
Dijksterhuis, A et al (1998) Seeing one thing and doing another: contrast effects in automatic behaviour,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, pp 862–71
Dunbar, R (1998) Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA
Gobet, F and Clarkson, G (2004) Chunks in expert memory: evidence for the magical number four… or is it
two?, Memory, 12 (6), November, 732–47
Goleman, D (1989) Brain’s design emerges as a key to emotions, New York Times, 15 August
Gordon, E (2000) Integrative Neuroscience: Bringing together biological, psychological, and clinical
models of the human brain, Harwood Academic Publishers, Singapore
Hall, ET (1998) The Hidden Dimension, Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York
Hazeldine, S (2011a) Bare Knuckle Negotiating: Knockout negotiation tactics they don’t teach you in
business school, Bookshaker, Great Yarmouth
Hazeldine, S (2011b) Bare Knuckle Selling: Knockout sales tactics they don’t teach you in business school,
Bookshaker, Great Yarmouth
Hazeldine, S (2012) The Inner Winner: Performance psychology tactics that give you an unfair advantage,
Bookshaker, Great Yarmouth
Hazeldine, S and Norton, C (2012) Bare Knuckle Customer Service: How to deliver a knockout customer
experience every time, Bookshaker, Great Yarmouth
Iyengar, SS and Lepper, MR (2000) When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a good
thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79 (6), pp 995–1006
Kahneman, D, Slovic, P and Tversky, A (1982) Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and biases,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Kendon, A (1970) Movement coordination in social interaction, Acta Psychologica, 32, pp 100–25
Knight, S (2008) The heart of selling, Financial Times, 13 September
Lakhani, D (2005) Persuasion: The art of getting what you want, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Lehrer, J (2009) The Decisive Moment: How the brain makes up its mind, Canongate, Edinburgh
Macrae, CN and Johnston, L (1998) Help, I need somebody: automatic action and inaction, Social
Cognition, 16, pp 400–17
Maxham, JG, III (1997) The role of adaptive selling in sales training: a salesperson perspective, in
Advances in Marketing, ed JA Young, DL Varble and FW Gilbert, pp 195–203, Southwestern Marketing
Association, Terre Haute, IN
Morris, D (1978) Manwatching, Grafton, London
Navarro, J (2009) The Power of Body Language, Nightingale Conant, Wheeling, IL
Nunes, JC and Dreze, X (2006) The endowed progress effect: how artificial advancement increases effort,
Journal of Consumer Research, 32, pp 504–12
PBS (2005) NOVA scienceNOW, Television programme, Season 1, Programme 1, 25 January
Pradeep, AK (2010) The Buying Brain, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Sanitioso, R, Kunda, Z and Fong, GT (1990) Motivated recruitment of autobiographical memories, Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, pp 229–41
Schumpeter, J (1950) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Harper, New York
Schwartz, JM and Begley, S (2003) The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the power of mental
force, Regan Books, Los Angeles
Szegedy-Maszak, M (2005) Your unconscious is making your everyday decisions, US and New World
Report, http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/050228/28think_2.htm
Than, K (2005) Scientists say everyone can read minds, LiveScience, 27 April
Zaltman, G (2003) How Customers Think: Essential insights into the mind of the market, Harvard Business
School Press, Boston, MA
Further reading

Carter, R (1998) Mapping the Mind, Orion, London Collett, P (2003) The Book of Tells, Doubleday,
London Condon, WS and Ogston, WD (1966) Sound-film analysis of normal and pathological behaviour
patterns, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 143, pp 338–47
Cutmore, TRH et al (1997) Imagery in human classical conditioning, Psychological Bulletin, 122, pp 89–
103
Damasio, A (2006) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, reason and the human brain, Vintage, London Dijksterhuis,
A et al (1998) Seeing one thing and doing another: contrast effects in automatic behaviour, Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 75, pp 862–71
Dunbar, RIM, Duncan, NDC and Marriott, A (1997) Human conversational behavior, Human Nature, 8,
231–46
Fine, C (2006) A Mind of Its Own: How your brain distorts and deceives, Icon Books, Cambridge Gengler,
CE, Howard, Daniel J and Zolner, K (1995) A personal construct analysis of adaptive selling and sales
experience, Psychology and Marketing, 12, July, pp 287–304
Goleman, D (1996) Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, Bloomsbury, London Gordon,
E et al (2008) An ‘integrative neuroscience’ platform: application to profiles of negativity and positivity
bias, Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 7 (3), pp 345–66
Green, M and Brock, TC (2000) The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, pp 701–21
Harish, S and Weitz, B (1986) The effects of level and type of effort on salesperson performance, Working
paper, Pennsylvania State University Heath, C and Heath, D (2008) Made to Stick, Random House,
London Hsu, J (2008) The secrets of storytelling: why we love a good yarn, Scientific American,
September Iacoboni, M (2009) Mirroring People: The science of empathy and how we connect with
others, Picador, New York Kendon, A (1970) Movement coordination in social interaction, Acta
Psychologica, 32, pp 100–25
Klaff, O (2011) Pitch Anything, McGraw-Hill, New York Knowles, PA, Grove, SJ and Keck, K (1994)
Signal detection theory and sales effectiveness, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 14,
Spring, pp 1–14
LeDoux, J (1999) The Emotional Brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life, Phoenix, London
Lehrer, J (2009) The Decisive Moment: How the brain makes up its mind, Canongate, Edinburgh Levy,
M and Sharma, A (1994) Adaptive selling: the role of gender, age, sales experience and education,
Journal of Business Research, 31, pp 39–47
Lindstrom, M (2009) Buyology, Random House, London McKee, R (1999) Story: Substance, structure,
style and the principles of screenwriting, Methuen, York Miller, GA (1956) The magical number seven,
plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information, Psychological Review, 63, pp
81–97
Navarro, J (2008) What Every Body Is Saying: An ex-FBI agent’s guide to speed-reading people,
HarperCollins, London Navarro, J (2009) The body language of the eyes: the eyes reveal what the heart
conceals, Psychology Today, December Nierenberg, GI and Calero, HH (2001) How to Read a Person
like a Book, Metro Books, New York Pease, A and Pease, B (2006) The Definitive Book of Body
 Language, Orion, London Pinker, S (1997) How the Mind Works, Penguin, London Schwartz, B (2004)
The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less, HarperCollins, London Spiro, RL and Weitz, BA (1990)
Adaptive selling: conceptualization, measurement, and nomological validity, Journal of Marketing
Research, 27, February, pp 61–69
Stephens, GA, Silbert, LJ and Hasson, U (2010) Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful
communication, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107
(32), pp 24–30
Tobias, RB (1993) 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, Writers Digest Books, Cincinnati, OH
Weinschenk, SM (2009) Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?, New Riders, Berkeley, CA Wilson,
TD (2002) Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA Woodside, AG and Wilson, EJ (2000) Constructing thick descriptions of marketers’ and
buyers’ decision processes in business-to-business relationships, Journal of Business and Industrial
Marketing, 15 (5), pp 354–69
Index

NB: page numbers in italic indicate figures or tables adaptive selling (i)
definition of (i)
nature of situation
customer interests and needs (i)
industry or sector (i)
personality and buying style (i)
stage of buying process (i)
and neuroscience (i)
push vs pull selling (i)
see also PRISM Brain Mapping Aesop (i)
Bannatyne, Duncan (i)
Bare Knuckle Customer Service (i), (ii)
Bare Knuckle Negotiating (i)
Bare Knuckle Selling (i)
Bargh, John, Chen, Mark and Burrows, Lara (i)
Baron-Cohen, Simon (i)
BBC (i)
Blakeslee, Sandra (i)
‘blue’ customers (i)
likes, dislikes and motivations (i)
as negotiators (i)
phrases to use (i)
questions to ask (i)
body language (i)
arms and hands (i), (ii)
chest (i)
chin (i), (ii)
definition of (i)
eyebrows (i)
eyes (i)
feet (i), (ii)
furrowed forehead (i), (ii)
head angle (i)
hips (i)
key principles (i)
legs (i), (ii), (iii)
lying, indicators of (i)
mouth (i), (ii)
neck (i), (ii)
nose (i), (ii)
of the salesperson (i)
 smile (i)
brain physiology (i), (ii)
brain-friendly selling (i)
attention, keeping (i)
completion, customer desire for
action summary (i), (ii)
plan vs proposal (i)
memorable, being (i)
differentiating yourself (i)
primacy and recency (i)
metaphors (i)
simplicity (i)
smell and taste (i)
spatial association (i), (ii)
Stage 1: Consider (i)
contact information (i)
customer information (i)
goals for meetings (i)
industry information (i)
premises clues (i)
products and services information (i)
Stage 2: Comfort part 1: connect (i)
calming behaviours (i)
personal space (i)
Stage 3: Comfort part 2: chameleon (i)
postural echoing (i)
Stage 4: Comfort part 3: control (i)
certainty (i)
scarcity (i)
status (i)
Stage 5: Context and catalyse (i)
‘chunking-down’ (i)
current situation (i)
goal (i)
impact of problem / pain (i)
impact of solution (i)
past (i)
priming (i)
problem / pain (i)
question types (i), (ii)
questioning map (i), (ii)
solution positioning (i)
Stage 6: Check (i)
Stage 7: Convince (i)
certainty and credibility (i)
chunking (i)
clarity (i)
concrete (i)
contrast (i)
curiosity (i)
 ‘story-selling’ (i), (ii)
‘three brains’, the (i)
Stage 8: Confirm and conclude (i)
closing question (i)
limiting choice (i)
testing questions (i)
trial closing questions (i)
tactile materials (i)
visuals (i)
voice (i)
brainwave frequencies (i)
buying process, the (i)
buying brain, the
neuron physiology (i), (ii)
neuronal maps (i), (ii)
risk vs reward (i)
unconscious areas of brain (i)
early involvement, importance of (i)
eliciting the process (i)
stages in buying process (i), (ii)
stages in formal procurement process (i), (ii)
‘buying signals’ (i)

Carney, Dana, Cuddy, Amy and Yap, Andy (i)

case studies (i)
Cialdini, Robert (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
closed questions (i)
Condon, W S and Ogston, W D (i)
conscious vs unconscious mind (i), (ii), (iii)
Cowan, Nelson (i)
Cuddy, Amy, Wilmuth, Caroline and Carney, Dana (i), (ii)

‘database brain’ (i), (ii), (iii)

Dell, Michael (i)
Dijksterhuis, Ap et al (i)
dopamine (i), (ii)
Dragons’ Den (i)
Dunbar, Robin (i)

Einstein, Albert (i)

electroencephalography (EEG) (i)
emotional brain (limbic system) (i), (ii), (iii)
body language (i)
‘fear system’ (i)
influence on rational brain (i), (ii)
role of (i)
ethics (i)
persuasion vs manipulation (i)
executive buyers (i), (ii)
fight/flight/freeze response (i)
frontal lobe (i)
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (i), (ii), (iii)

Gobet, Fernand and Clarkson, Gary (i)

‘gold’ customers (i)
likes, dislikes and motivations (i)
as negotiators (i)
phrases to use (i)
questions to ask (i)
Goldberg, Elkhonen (i)
Goleman, Daniel (i)
Gordon, Evian (i)
‘green’ customers (i)
likes, dislikes and motivations (i)
as negotiators (i)
phrases to use (i)
questions to ask (i)
guarantees (i)

Hall, Edward (i)

Hasson, Uri (i)

Iacoboni, Marco (i), (ii)

Influence (i)
Inner Winner, The (i)
‘isopraxis’ (i)
Iyengar, Sheena and Lepper, Mark (i)

Jesson, Phil (i)

Kahneman, Daniel, Slovic, Paul and Tversky, Amos (i)

Kendon, Adam (i)
Keynote (i)
Knight, Sam (i)
Krulwich, Robert (i)

Lakhani, Dave (i)

LeDoux, Joseph (i), (ii), (iii)
legal buyers (i), (ii)
Lehrer, Jonah (i)
limbic system see emotional brain (limbic system) ‘loss aversion’ (i)
Macrae, Neil and Johnston, Lucy (i)
Manwatching (i)
Maxham, James (i)
memorable, being (i)
differentiating yourself (i)
primacy and recency (i)
‘message house’, the (i), (ii)
metaphors (i)
mirror neurons (i), (ii)
Morris, Desmond (i)

Navarro, Joe (i)

neuronal maps (i), (ii)
neuro-negotiating (i)
automatic response to threat, understanding your (i)
‘blue’ negotiators (i)
comfort building behaviours (i)
control, exerting (i)
discomfort, use of (i)
‘gold’ negotiators (i)
good cop/bad cop (i)
‘green’ negotiators (i)
lying, indicators of (i)
negotiation styles (i)
negotiation, skills involved in (i)
planning and preparation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
‘power handshake’ (i)
‘power posing’ (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
power/comfort balance (i)
‘red’ negotiators (i)
relative height, using (i)
stages of negotiation (i)
‘steepling’ (i), (ii)
time pressure, using (i)
neuroplasticity (i), (ii)
neuroscience, overview of (i)
brain physiology (i), (ii)
conscious vs unconscious mind (i), (ii), (iii)
and decision making (i)
emotions (i)
nervous system physiology (i)
recent acceleration of (i)
non-verbal communication see body language noradrenaline (i)
Norton, Chris (i), (ii)
NOVA scienceNOW (i)
Nunes, Joseph and Dreze, Xavier (i), (ii)

occipital lobe (i)

oestrogen (i)
open questions (i)
operational buyers (i), (ii)

parietal lobe (i)

Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want (i)
PowerPoint (i), (ii)
Pradeep, A K (i)
PRISM Brain Mapping (i), (ii), (iii)
behavioural profiles
‘blue’ customers (i)
 ‘gold’ customers (i)
‘green’ customers (i)
‘red’ customers (i)
brain chemicals
dopamine (i), (ii)
noradrenaline (i)
oestrogen (i)
serotonin (i)
testosterone (i)
four quadrants of the brain (i), (ii)
blue quadrant (i), (ii)
gold quadrant (i), (ii)
green quadrant (i), (ii)
red quadrant (i), (ii)
history of (i)
principles of theory (i)
uses of (i)
probing questions (i)
procurement buyers (i), (ii)
‘proximics’ (i)

question types (i), (ii)

questioning map (i), (ii)

rational brain (i), (ii), (iii)

front vs back (i)
hemispheric functioning (i), (ii)
lobes (i)
pre-frontal cortex (i)
role of (i)
reading your customer (i)
adapt (i)
being yourself (i)
‘blue’ customers (i), (ii)
‘gold’ customers (i), (ii)
‘green’ customers (i), (ii)
‘red’ customers (i), (ii)
classify (i)
observe (i)
behavioural cues (i), (ii)
early interactions (i)
language cues (i), (ii)
online research (i)
‘red’ customers (i)
likes, dislikes and motivations (i)
as negotiators (i)
phrases to use (i)
questions to ask (i)
reptilian brain (i), (ii), (iii)
fight/flight/freeze response (i)
 role of (i)
risk vs reward (i)
Ritter, Simone (i)
Rizzolati, Giacomo (i), (ii)
sales challenges (i)

Sanitioso, Rasyid, Kunda, Ziva and Fong, Geoffrey T (i)

Schumpeter, Joseph (i)
Schwartz, Jeffrey and Begley, Sharon (i)
serotonin (i)
‘social proof’ (i)
spatial association (i), (ii)
‘story-selling’ (i), (ii)
example story (i)
story-selling map (i), (ii)
structuring your story (i), (ii)
synchronization of brain activity (i)
strategic bridges framework (i), (ii)
summarizing questions (i)
Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne (i)

technical buyers (i), (ii)

temporal lobe (i)
testimonials (i)
testosterone (i)
Than, Ker (i)
‘three brains’, the (i), (ii)
emotional brain (limbic system) (i), (ii), (iii)
body language (i)
‘fear system’ (i)
influence on rational brain (i), (ii)
role of (i)
mirror neurons (i), (ii)
rational brain (i), (ii), (iii)
front vs back (i)
hemispheric functioning (i), (ii)
lobes (i)
pre-frontal cortex (i)
role of (i)
reptilian brain (i), (ii), (iii)
fight/flight/freeze response (i)
role of (i)
Tsu, Lao (i)

‘ventral display’ (i)

Viki, Tenday (i)

Wallace, Colin (i)

Watson, Lyall (i)
Whelan, Paul (i)
Zaltman, Gerald (i), (ii)
Ziglar, Zig (i)
‘zygomatic smile’ (i)