What Makes People BUY Things (Sales Psychology Explained)

People don't buy products anymore. They don't buy the best offer, and they don't buy because you convince them. So if you're still trying to sell with logic, you're fighting a losing battle. Now, I've taken over 7,000 sales calls and closed over $8 million in high-ticket deals. And here's what's crazy. I've lost a ton of deals where I said the right things, and I closed deals where I barely talked about the product at all. And that used to confuse me until I figured out what was actually happening when somebody decides to buy. And by the end of this video, you'll understand why your prospects stall, why objections really happen, and why some people buy even when the logic says that they shouldn't. So the first thing that we have to really dive into is understanding just the moment before somebody decides to buy. I'm sure you can think about in your own life, there's been tons of times where you weren't planning on buying something, but then you ended up pulling out your credit card. Or there have been a ton of examples when somebody's hopped on a sales call with me. They're very guarded. They're saying like, hey, I just want to see what you have. I'm not going to buy anything for 3, 6 months, a year. And by the end, they're going ahead and they're signing up and they're thanking me for helping them sign up and really short circuit what their plan is. And I can think about this for myself, right? One of the biggest pivotal moments that I had in my sales career was deciding to go ahead and move from my dad's trailer in Kansas, pack up all of my shit, and then move to Miami Beach into a small studio apartment. Now, I could— I'll dive into like why that was such a big shift for me. But understand, the way that I did it was so far away from my plan. Logically, I had this plan. I had just gotten this sales job. COVID world entirely shutting down. I'm a young kid. I just graduated from college. I had barely any savings. So I was just going to stay at home with my dad, save up for 6 months, and then move down to Miami Beach and just have some money saved up in case anything went wrong. This is very logical, right? This is very logical. That did not end up happening. Ended up moving down there after a week of having this sales job, right? Like, I packed up all my stuff and then I just went. And why did that happen? I ended up just searching on Airbnb for places to stay, and then I just kept picturing myself being down there and everything that would come with it. And it wasn't a logical-based decision. The logical-based decision would have been just, hey, staying in Kansas for another 6 months, save up my money, just be smart, make smart decisions. But I didn't do that, and I'm glad going to do that. But that's what this whole video is going to be about— what actually causes somebody to make uncharacteristic decisions, right? If they just made characteristic decisions, decisions they've always made, they're going to get the same result. But you're trying to help somebody make uncharacteristic decisions where it comes to they do something they've never done before. And in order to really understand how do you get somebody to make uncharacteristic decisions, you have to actually understand what goes through the mind of somebody before they actually buy, right? Like, we understand the moment. Now we need to understand what actually goes through their mind. So Section 2 is what's actually going through people's brain before they go ahead and make the decision. So understand, people are not sitting there and looking at all the specs and evaluating the product. They're more evaluating themselves. They're asking themselves, not consciously, but often subconsciously, of, do I actually see myself using this? Will this help me become the person who I want to be? It's not so much about the product. It's about what the product helps you become. And does it help you become the person who you want to be in the time frame that you want to be it, right? So I can talk to myself, right? Like the decision of leaving 6 months earlier with absolutely no safety net, going to Miami. Why did I make that decision? And this is something to where if you're introspective and you understand what convinced you, what, what made you make decisions, then you're in a much better position to understand other people because believe it or not, you're a fucking person too, right? So if you understand how you make decisions, you'll understand how other people make decisions. So I really just, I've sat and I thought about this. The biggest thing that really propelled me and propels me quite a bit is I am deathly scared of just being average, being the same. And the pain of that is so much greater in my mind than the pain of uncertainty, the pain of failure. So when I was sitting and I was thinking like, oh, play the safe route, because like this is always just shit that's put in your head of like, hey, just play the safe route. That pain of not playing the safe route and just failing wasn't that much for me because I'm like, I'm 21. I was 21 years old when I decided to do this. And I knew if I failed, it wouldn't be that bad because I'd keep trying. But the pain of spending another 6 months and living with my dad— and I love my dad— but living in a fucking trailer park in Kansas was astronomical. Like, I saw a way out. And if I didn't take that way out, like, I knew it would fucking gnaw at me of just staying the exact same of who I was for another 6 months when there was an option where I didn't have to. And this is a big thing you have to understand is somebody who actually sees an option out, they actually see a viable way out versus somebody who doesn't see a viable way out. The person who sees a viable way out is going to be so much more motivated. And we'll talk about what actually motivates people later. But for me, because now that I saw this, I couldn't unsee it. I became obsessed with it. And once I became obsessed with it, it really just took maybe a few days for me to actually convince myself, book the Airbnb, and then I just packed up everything and I took off. I didn't really consult my girlfriend at the time. I didn't take her with me and I just went. and I have no regrets. I, I'm absolutely grateful that I went and it completely changed my life because it also allowed me to step into being a different person. You tend to stay the person who you are in the same environment. So if you want to change the person who you are and have different things, oftentimes changing your environment will help. And that's really what it comes down to. Like, people are not buying the offer. They're not buying what you're selling. They're buying who they become once they get your offer. If I'm thinking about this as an offer, Okay, I bought Miami Beach, right? Because of like who I'll become in Miami Beach, being by the beach, having the sun, and being around a bunch of people who are looking to make more money versus who I was in Kansas, right? Not being around any of that environment. So you can think about this for what you're selling. You're not selling the offer. You're selling like who they become once they get the transformation. Once they get the offer, it needs to be a bridge that helps them become the identity of who they truly want to be. Because you have to understand, there are 5 hidden drivers that is going to propel anybody to go ahead and move forward. And after talking to over 7,000 people, closing $8 million in deals, this is the pattern that I've found. And it doesn't matter if you're selling B2C, B2B, you're talking to people at the end of the day and they all have the same drivers. And depending on who you're talking to, one driver might be more important than the other, but they all have these drivers. So driver number 1 that we have to understand is escaping from pain. Now I'm not talking about like surface level pain of like, oh, I'm just a bit overweight and I don't like it. I'm talking about deep-seated, ideally identity-level pain. For example, if somebody's overweight, the real identity-level pain is I'm not the father who I need to be to be the example to my kids so they live a healthy life. That is pain that somebody needs to run away from and understand the offer that you're selling. It's not Oh, I'm going to help you do something. It— for these types of people who are primarily focused on escaping their pain, it's basically an escape hatch for their pain. You're really helping them get rid of a really bad feeling that they don't like. But in order to help them, in order to position your offer as helping them get rid of a really bad feeling that they don't like, you need to actually understand what that really bad feeling is. And the only way you can truly understand what that really bad feeling is, is you have to actually Number 1, just listen to your prospect. And number 2, you don't want to assume or allow the person who you're talking to to make the conversation that you guys are having come across as obvious. I can speak for an example with one of my clients who I helped within like a month go from $5K to $10K per month. Owen, it's on my YouTube channel. And one of the big breakthroughs that allowed him to make, you know, double his income in a very short period of time was understanding this concept of every single person you talk to is going to be fairly unique. And the issue with most people, especially when you're diving into pain and understanding like what their pain is and what they're trying to escape, is they're very comfortable dealing with and probing into certain types of pain. Okay, so you push people into a certain type of pain rather than just listening to the person and feeding off of what they're actually telling you. He sold a biz op, right? So he helped people make more money in real estate. And once he started to not push people into conversations and actually just started having the conversations that he was having rather than what he wanted to have, one of the conversations that really sparked this in his head is this guy that he had talked to. His main pain was the fact that he wasn't making enough money that he could donate like $100,000 per month to like feed homeless children. It was something that was so out of the blue that he would have never thought about. And for this person, who was an older gentleman, it brought him to tears the fact that he wasn't able to do this. Like, he felt like he had a calling from God to really take care of other people, and he was falling short from that. And if Owen just would have tried to push people into the problems and pain that he was used to dealing with, right— oh, I just want to make more money to have a nice lifestyle— just some bullshit surface-level stuff— if he would have done that, that guy probably wouldn't have made the change, and that guy wouldn't have actually fulfilled the purpose that he truly wanted. So when you're diving into pain, you have understand that the people you're talking to are unique individuals, so you cannot push them into the problems that you're just comfortable dealing with. Actually listen to their answers and dig into the answers. Ask open-ended questions to get them to expand on what's actually going on in their mind and why it's important to them. Now, driver number 2 is them becoming a future version of themselves. So understand, generally speaking, you're not selling outcomes, you're selling identity, like the person who they'll become once they have whatever it is the outcomes that you're giving them. If you're going to help them make more money, like, who do they become when they make more money? Do they become a better father? Do they become more present? Do they become the, like, the guy who travels a lot and has more freedom, financial freedom? Whatever it is, there's an identity that they are chasing. Like, for me, for an example, like, what continues to drive me? Because this is probably the biggest one that drives me now. Like, earlier on in my career and just my life, a lot of it was pain and running away from things. But now it's like driving towards things. Like, I just had a child, I'm married, and, you know, getting a lot more into just like my faith and my future. I'm really focusing on the person who I need to be and like, what do I need to be making? Who do I need to become? And what type of actions do I need to have in order to achieve these things that I want to where, you know, when my daughter's growing up, she never has to worry about money and being the father that can go ahead and just make sure that that is reality, because I know if I don't make sure that happens, nobody's going to do that for us. So there is a vision of my future self that I am constantly striving towards. And you'll understand if people are mainly driven by this, by how they speak. So understand the way that somebody talks to you as a salesperson when you're on a sales call. It's a way that they also talk to themselves. So if they're just forward focus, forward focus, forward focus. Hey, I want to do this. I want to have that. I want to do this. I want to have that. They're telling you that there's a future version of themselves that they are striving for. They're very forward focused, forward focused, forward focused. So what you need to do is you need to help them make that very, very crystal clear. And when I say crystal clear, it's because if that future version of themselves, if it's very vivid, if it's very clear on what that future version is and what that future outcome is, then the actions that are required to get there are so much more straightforward. It's very hard to run away from it. And you can think about this in your own life too. If you're not very clear on the outcomes that you want in life, your future version, like who you want to be and like what you're striving towards, the outcomes or the decisions that you're trying to make become so much more cloudy because again, we don't really know where we're aiming. But if you sat down and like— and I highly recommend anybody do this, right? It doesn't matter where you're at in your sales career, like sit down and really try to understand where do you want to be 6 months from now in detail, a year from now in detail, 5 years from now in detail. The decisions you make are so much clearer because again, there's only a limited amount of options that are going to get you to where you need to be once you understand where you need to be. Same thing with your prospects. If you make it to where it's very clear, okay, this is where they want to be, the decision like is they need to do something that they haven't done before in order to get what they haven't gotten before. Right. So it becomes so much more clear in their mind and obviously in your mind as a salesperson on what they actually need to do. And when you actually find this and you make this future identity version of themselves crystal clear, you don't really have to fight with objections, right? It's very, very easy, very, very simple at the very end of the call. And they will just go ahead and close without having any issues. And when you go ahead and you find this, you know, future identity that they're really looking to become and you find this future that they really want to strive towards, if you make it crystal clear at the end of the call, like they're not giving you objections. If they truly want that stuff and you make it to where they truly want it, it's crystal clear in their head. They can visualize it, which means they want to push forward towards it more. They're going to sell themselves. And if they sell themselves, that makes your job a lot easier. And driver number 3 is Permission. Now, this one surprises a lot of people. I hear people talking about, okay, pain, and then, you know, the future pace, all that stuff. But what people generally don't talk about is there is a large subset of people that are really hopping on sales calls and buying courses, programs, getting help because they really just want permission to be the person who they want to be. And you'll hear things like, hey, I've been needing to do something for months. I know I need to make a decision. And they know and they've already sold themselves. There is just something that is causing them to be uncertain or causing them to be guilty about actually taking the chance on themselves and like diving front end. And you can think about this in like your life. Has there ever been a time where you wanted to do something right? But because of the programming, how you're raised, whatever it is, like there's just like something that's more internal That's just holding you back. Like, why is that? And what people do is they'll reach out to other people who have done what they wanted to do and basically they'll spend their money to just pay for permission. They don't even really even go through the stuff. But because I paid money, therefore now I have permission to go after my dreams, my goals, my aspirations. And really with these people, you just have to let them know like, hey, it's okay to actually be the person who you want to be. It's okay to invest in yourself and you should invest in yourself. And permission. A lot of people that you hop on the call with, yes, they're going to have pain and they're going to have the future version of themselves they want to be. But a lot of times they're also buying permission to step into that future version of themselves. Okay. Driver number 4 is the fear of staying the same. People in general, they can tolerate a lot of pain. They can get accustomed to whatever situation that they're currently in. But if they actually think about them staying in their current situation, this causes so much more urgency. And I'm sure you can think about this on some sales calls that you've hopped on when somebody has been in a very painful situation for like the past 3 years and that painful situation has not been painful enough up until that point to where they've actually taken any action. But if you sit there and you talk to them like, hey, what if a year from now you're in that exact same situation then you're going to have a lot more urgency to get that person to move. And I can think about this for myself personally, right? I have had fairly chronic neck issues for the past like 5 years. Okay. And I've spent over $50,000 like on my neck, different type of injections, chiropractors, coaching, like a ton of things and nothing really has ever fixed it. And once I moved to Vietnam, I can't really see any specialist here and I just got accustomed to just living my life and structuring my life around my neck issues to where it's like, hey, I don't sit up for that long. I just— I live my life where I don't go out that much to where I don't have to stand up, sit up, to where I can, I can just deal with my neck issues and I can be accustomed to that level of pain. It wasn't until I got this here, which is a Whoop. And what the Whoop does for you is it gives you all your numbers. And one of the big numbers that I looked into was HRV, heart rate variability. Now, for somebody who is my age, who works out as much as I do, like I go on walks every single day, my HRV on the low end should be around 60 to 70. My HRV sits right now between 20 to 35 on any given day, just depending on how, how well my body is actually recuperating. And once I actually looked into it in terms of what low HRV rates actually do long term, and the health issues you can fall into long term. It wasn't until then that it finally clicked in my brain that, yeah, I mean, I've been trying to solve this for the past 5 years, but taking my foot off this— taking my foot off the gas these past 6 months has been detrimental. Now, again, I'm going back to the US. I'm flying out in a few days and I'm going to be throwing everything I can at my neck because I know the pain. If this thing stays the same, I'm going to die, probably die young and not be there for my daughter, for my wife the way I need to. Like, my wife is Asian. She's going to live until she's 100 years old at least. Like, I got to keep up with her a little bit. I can't be like, you know, the average tall white guy who's like dying at like 65. I have to live to my 80s plus, right? So it wasn't until I actually mapped out like what it would be like in the future if I actually didn't change this. A year goes by. If this continues, if this problem gets worse, that I really like fucking kicked myself into gear on. Like, okay, I need to throw the kitchen sink at this and I'm not going to stop until it's actually solved and my health improves the way that it needs to. And driver number 5 is going to be belonging. So understand, humans are tribal beings. Like, we like to be a part of a tribe. Like, we like to be a part of things where we see other people are doing the things that we want to do. So this one is going to be big, especially if you're selling to like younger demographics or anything like that, but even older demographics of like showing testimonials. This is something that you really need to make sure you're doing before the call, but you just want to show that there are people who are like them that are doing the things that you're trying to sell them. And this will also help somebody hop on the call, be a lot more open to what you have to say. This more has to do with pre-call process and just making sure that, you know, you're sending the right information. I always call it indoctrination material. You should be trying to indoctrinate every single person you talk to to be as much of a laydown as possible. And the number one thing you can do to do that is you want to lead into belonging. You want to lead into the tribe. They're going to buy being part of a tribe, being part of becoming a person. And in order for them to do that, they just need to see that other people have followed this path. They are not alone. They want to follow a path that is proven. If you can show that, then you'll get a lot of people to buy. So when you understand these 5 drivers, that's when you start to understand that logic and just selling based off of logic doesn't work. Just going over like the ROI, the features, the benefits. Yes, you do need to have some of that to go ahead and back up whatever emotional driver that they are trying to solve by hopping on the call. But the main driver, the first driver that always needs to be hit is going to be one of those emotional drivers. Okay. At least one. Oftentimes it's going to be multiple. And how do we know which emotional driver that we really need to lean into? It's just going to be based off of what are they actually saying. Believe it or not, listen to your prospects. The way somebody talks to you is the way they talk to themselves. And what somebody chooses to focus on is going to tell you a lot about what's important to them. So, for example, if they focus a lot on their pain of their current situation, lean into the pain of their current situation. Cause them to expand on it. Cause them to talk about the actual specifics of the pain. When does it show up? Can you give me an example? When you talk about future, them becoming something, understand why is that important to them? What would they actually do differently then than they can't do now? Okay. How would it feel for them to actually have everything they want? You want to lean into more of the future. If you're talking about, okay, the fear of staying the same, you want to lean into consequences. What happens If you're this person for the rest of your life, what happens if you never actually get out of your situation? You want to lean into these things. So it just depends on what they focus on is what you're going to focus on in terms of the emotional triggers you want to go ahead and pull on. Then once you pull on those emotional triggers, yes, you do need to then go ahead and back up things with logic. But most people get it backwards. They try to push and just sell logically, and then maybe it tick a couple of emotional things here and there, but it's like, no, it's like it needs to primarily 90%, 95% of your focus needs to be on the emotional triggers, 5%, 10% on the actual logic, how it actually works. And if you do this, I promise your sales rate is going to skyrocket. And you have to understand, this is the shift that changes everything because how does this— when you really think about it, how does this actually change the way that you should be selling? This is a big problem that I see a lot of people doing is when they're on sales calls, they do way too much fucking work. They're trying so much. They're pushing. Hey, we got this, we got that, we got this. And they're pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. And when you really think about it, if you're sitting and you're talking to somebody and they're constantly pushing, they're coming across like they need something from you. And naturally, when somebody needs something from you, you don't want to give it to them. You don't even know why, but there's just a natural just like revulsion to like, oh, why does this person need something? Versus on the other end, when you're really just sitting there to understand, hey, what are their actual emotional drivers and what is this and what is pushing this person forward or pushing this person to actually change? Once you actually understand that, you basically, you just lean back and you ask more open-ended questions to get them to actually be open about what their emotions are and you allow them to do all the fucking work. I'm lazy as shit on my sales call, right? I know exactly where I'm going, but I'm not doing any of the work for the prospect. I'm not giving them answers. I'm not feeding them answers. I'm not really making it easy for them. I'm getting them to actually think and I'm getting them to actually speak. The issue is with most people is they've never actually sat and they've thought about their problems. They've never actually sat and thought about the future, the consequences, whatever it is. And if they've never sat and they've never thought about it, then at the end they're not going to be thinking about actually changing because they never thought about it. And people think by talking. So if you get somebody to actually talk about this stuff and you don't allow them to get out of it and you just do it in a way where you're very curious and you just do it in a way that makes it very easy for them to open up, by the end they've talked to themselves and they became so much more crystal clear on what needs to happen. That's why sales at the end become very easy. And I get this quite a bit when somebody will like watch some of my calls or different things on those lines. It's like, hey man, all these guys seem like laydowns. Well, yeah, they're laydowns after I very strategically get them to be open about all their problems. Like, after they're open about all their problems, they should be fucking laydowns. If you're getting to the end of your call and you're always having to fight people, then you're not doing a good job of actually understanding where people are coming from. So if a majority of your prospects in the objection handling are not laydowns, then you're not pre-handling objections. You're not really understanding where they're coming from. And you're pushing, pushing, pushing, which is just naturally going to cause people to want to push back on you. And you never want to be in that position. And when you actually understand why people are buying, you stop selling them. You actually start guiding them to get everything that they want. Okay? That's what you're there for. Not only will you sell more people, they'll also get better results and they'll thank you for selling them. And that's what we're looking for. And there is one question that reveals absolutely everything in terms of their motivation and what emotional driver they actually have. Because if you're having a hard time identifying what their emotional driver is, again, you're going to have a hard time in the conversation, especially at the end when you get objections. You don't know what buttons to press. You don't know what buttons to push. So a question that you can always ask, and I highly recommend you ask this on every single sales call, is, hey, why do this now? Why not 6 months ago? Why not 6 months from now? And the reason why that's going to work is you're causing them to justify why they're actually looking to do this. And what somebody focuses on is what's important to them. So whatever they use to justify is going to be probably the first thing that's in their mind, and they're going to tell you why they actually want to do this. So they could be focusing on pain. Hey, my current situation is absolutely shit. I don't like my job. I don't have time with my kids. Pain. They're very pain-focused. We can talk about the other one, future-focused. Oh, I want to be able to travel and have financial freedom. Like, again, they're focusing on the future. That's what's important important to them. They could be talking about belonging, of like, why do this now? It's like, oh, I really feel like I want to be a part of a community and just be surrounded by like-minded individuals. They could be talking about fear of staying the same. They could talk about if things get worse, like, hey, if I don't change something, I might die, right? Or it's like, I might not get what I want, or the situation with my children is going to get worse, whatever it is. Or they might tell you, hey, I've been thinking about this a while and I just feel like now is the time. They're looking more for permission. So just based off of what they say, they're going to give you the insight on what their emotional triggers are and what triggers you need to understand more in your discovery. And if we get any objections, what triggers to go ahead and push to actually get them across the line. Because if we don't have these triggers and you're just trying to sell logically, you're just fighting against the brain and how it actually works. Now, hopefully that's been helpful. And understanding these frameworks is one thing. Actually Actually applying it in real life sales calls is another. So if you want help from me to work one-on-one with you, to give you the exact structures that I use, the exact mental frameworks, actually break down your real life calls and tell you what's going on psychologically, and the same structure that I've used to help clients hit 50, 60, and 70+ percent close rate, check out the first link in the description. If not, leave a comment on your biggest takeaway and I'll see you guys next time.