Joe PolishFounder of Genius Network and President of Piranha Marketing

How to Sell EMOTIONS, Not Products: The SECRET to Business Success

25 Mar 2023 · 1 min

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Joe Polish argues that businesses should sell emotions, not merely products—people buy how something makes them feel (e.g., cool, challenged, amused). He contrasts financial decisions as 'arithmetic' with most other business aspects as the 'feelings business' and gives examples (office decor, gyms) to show tailoring experience to desired emotions.

Chapters

You know, when I think easy, lucrative and fun. Make it fun, make it. If you walk around this, I mean, I know for some people, like what the hell is this weird ass office with all these statues and weird art? And to me it's funny, it's humorous. And I want to be the antithesis of like a corporate sort of sterile environment. And you want to feel cool. And so basically what we all sell is we sell feelings, you know, and if you can make people feel challenged or feel engaged or feel fun or feel humorous, that's what we're all selling. So whatever your thing is, when it comes to money, the business that we're all in is we're in the arithmetic business. When it comes to money, when it comes to other stuff, we're in the feelings business, you know, so how it makes people feel. So in some things you don't want people to feel. If you're going to go to a gym, you don't want people to feel comfortable, maybe you may want them to feel challenged.