Injecting Psychology into the Sales Process with Alex Schlinsky

People want the freedom of choice, right? And it's really important, especially in the United States, like patriots and like the, you know, the amendments. And it's really important, like, people want the freedom of choice. They want the right to choose. The crazy thing is, though, they don't want the burden of choice. Think about what I just said. They want freedom of choice, but not the burden of choice. They will still have freedom of choice if you tell them to work with you, because they still have the freedom to say no. But by giving them the burden of choice, you're doing them and yourself a disservice. Because now you're basically asking them, hey, babe, where you want to go to dinner? And they're like, I don't know, where do you want to go to dinner? Why don't you tell me where you want to go? What are the things that you learned, you know, in psychology that you now leverage in the sales process? Like, what are some of the things that you've learned about how we make decisions and why we do what we do that have made you a better salesperson? It's such a great question. There's so many that I can, that I can use. If we're Talking about the 8020 principle of sales and psychology, I'll break down two kind of psychological principles and then explain what I think is the single most important thing that you can do in sales moving forward. That's very contrary to popular opinion, especially like the Sandler method and like standard sales processes that you see, it's understanding how humans make decisions. So there's two things to understand. One is priming. Priming is like a very common psychological technique. Most people understand this. It's just the idea of getting someone to get one step closer to saying the response that you want, prepping them or priming them to have that answer. So the more times you can have seed planting, yes, I want this. Yes, I want to work together. Yes, I think this is valuable. Yes, I want results like this person. The closer they'll get to saying yes. Priming is not any sort of, like, factual, you know, scientific based method. It's simply just a psychological element of how human beings decide upon things. And this is now the next step, which is called a heuristic. So the idea behind a heuristic is basically a mental shortcut to getting to your brain working faster. A great example would be if someone asks you, what's your favorite color? If you have been primed that day that you've seen blue way more than you've seen Any other color and you don't have a very strong answer right off the bat, you're more than likely going to say blue. Is that the case every time? Of course not. But this is what we call a representative heuristic, like the available. It's what is representative of what you have seen today is the answer that you're going to have. Right. There's also this idea of biases, right? Like the idea of what's available to you on a heuristic. And also like your decision making bias, your self fulfilling prophecy. All those things we can get into at a different time. But those things are really important as well in terms of urgency, which we can dive into if you like. But specifically on the heuristic side, the reason why I like focusing on heuristics and priming is because heuristics are a mental shortcut that allow people to solve problems and make decisions efficiently. The human brain has so many things firing at all at once. And especially in the day and age we live right now where essentially you have an entire computer in your pocket and you're in the information age, where you can find anything at any time to be distracted for any amount of time, whether it's a YouTube short video that's 25 seconds long or a two and a half hour lecture from a Harvard professor, you can literally find anything to disrupt your day at any point. And so making decisions has become significantly more challenging in our day and age, which is already a proven challenge for human beings because of the availability of so many options. Right? So what you want to do to simplify your sales process is a few things. Number one, make one offer, not multiple offers. This is contrary to popular belief where there's like you can have the gold package or the silver package or the bronze package. Every offer that you make ends up allowing someone to have three potential responses. Now, the most common response response in sales is maybe. Now, maybe doesn't just mean they say maybe. It's like, hey Katie, I like this. I just need to talk to my partner about it. Hey kd, I need to move money around and we'll chat about this. Hey kd, I really like this. I just need to think a little bit more about it. Anything that's not a yes or a no is a maybe. Most common response in sales is maybe the most uncommon response in sales is no, not yes. Most people don't have the audacity to say no because they like KD or they like Alex or they like the person they're speaking to. So Instead, they're like, it's a lot easier to say maybe, even though I know I want say no. And then I'll just ghost them after the fact because that's simpler and easier. Unfortunately, that is true. I have done this myself, so I don't want to put myself on a pedestal and say, I've never done it. I definitely have. I've spoken to someone that I really like and I'm like, I don't want to say no. And then eventually I'll let them down by messaging them, because it's easier to do that than saying it face to face. Just don't ghost your salespeople is my thing. Anyways. Point being, understanding this framework is how you can simplify your sales process. When you get to a position of saying, we have this package, do you want it? It's a yes or no decision. And of course, maybe is available. When you say, do you want this package or this package? What ends up happening is you're giving them six decisions to make. They could say yes, nor maybe to package one. Yes. Or maybe to package two. And most commonly, you'll see three packages offered, right? You'll be like, this is the best deal. And then there's these other two packages. Now they have nine potential decisions. And you wonder why they don't make decisions. Because there's so many options available to them to consider, plus the unspoken options, which is someone that runs an exactly similar company to you that has a completely different offer with a different price that they need to go consider now. So what we want to do is use heuristics and priming to our advantage and using heuristics ultimately, is how you can ethically help people make decisions and do one call closes. And the biggest thing that you can do, besides for limiting your options to just one option, is telling them they should buy from you. Not asking so many people, Katie and calls being like, so, Kevin, like, do you want to do this? Like, are you ready to go? Like, is this a good fit for you? What do you think? Like, they'll ask a question instead of directly selling. And I think it comes to the place of, like, being concerned about being too aggressive. Or maybe they want, like, a question so I can be directly answered instead of a statement. But the reality is sales is all about convincing through confidence, right? Ethical convincing through confidence. By, hey, you have a problem, I have a solution. I can help you bridge that gap if you let me by offering them a question of what they think at the end of the call, you're Providing them an option to say no, when really you already know the answer, which is if you're an ethical salesperson, you'd only get to this position if there was only one solid answer they should have, which is yes. So at the end of the call when you say, hey, Kevin, this is a no brainer decision. It's why you got on this call. It's $3,500 to achieve this result. This is exactly why you're here. You need to do this. And then you stop talking. It gives them the reality of saying, I've just been sold. Now you sold them. Now you did your job by shortcutting them on a priming scenario where now their brain is thinking, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Instead of having to overanalyze. When you give them the option of saying, what do you think, Kevin? Now they have to think, well, what do I think? Right? It's very rare for most people to be like, yes, right off the rip, because most people are not like that for decision making. It's why every human being resonates with this comment, right? It's like, okay, hey, babe, what do you want to do for dinner tonight? I don't know. What do you want to do for dinner? Why does every human being laugh at that? It's because everyone has that conversation. And then there's that one exception to the rule, like when you're in a group of 10 people, which makes decisions way harder, like, what do you guys want to do for dinner? And one person, person's like, let's go get sushi. Half the people hate sushi. But they all go because they're like, someone made a decision. It's great. This is the crazy thing about psychology and human beings in general. People want the freedom of choice, right? They. And it's really important, especially in the United States, like patriots and like the, you know, the amendments. And it's really important. Like, people want the freedom of choice. They want the right to choose. The crazy thing is, though, they don't want the burden of choice. Think about what I just said. They want freedom of choice, but not the burden of choice. They will still have freedom of choice if you tell them to work with you because they still have their freedom to say no. But by giving them the burden of choice, you're doing them and yourself a disservice because now you're basically asking them, hey, babe, where you want to go to dinner? And they're like, I don't know, where do you want to go to dinner? Why don't you tell me where you want to go. So telling someone to work with you is infinitely more impactful. And there's no script or method that you're supposed to do that's like some Harry Potter abracadabra magic that's going to force them to pay you on your credit card. The real thing is being convicted, like, really believing in your product. And last thing I'll say in this, that I think is key because it's specific to understanding, like, how human psychology works, is the reason why a lot of people, when I say this, they'll listen to me. Kevin. They'll listen to me. Kd they'll listen to the idea of saying, we should, like, tell the prospect to do this. And then on the very next call, they do the same thing they've always done, which is, okay, Michelle, like, what do you think? And they know it. They hear me in their head, and they still don't do it. And the reason why is because they're uncomfortable. They're afraid that if they go to the point of saying, you should do this with conviction, that they're going to come off too aggressive. And what ends up happening is you've created, like, this weird machination in your mind that sales is a bad word, that telling someone to do something with conviction is a bad thing. It's like, that's the end. The antithesis of sales, right? You want to believe your product so much that you tell them what to do because it's beneficial for them. And this is why it's so key. Now, a couple bad apples, like charlatans that sell snake oil have made a bad experience for people that don't sell snake oil. But when you try to think in your mind that you have control of the perception of the other person, you're misreading and misunderstanding how human beings think. Why is politics so incredibly divisive if one person speaks right? If the president United States does a speech, okay, the State of the Union, it's not edited. It's not changed in any way. There's an entire group of people that say, that was an amazing speech. And there's another entire group of people that say, this guy is the worst person in the world. The speech is not edited. There's no differences. It's the same exact speech. The reality is, is because you don't control the perception of how someone took it. So while you're toeing the battle in your mind of, like, am I coming off too aggressive or am I coming off too cocky? Am I coming off arrogant or am I coming off confident? Right. The only thing you're doing is seeding doubt in your mind, which comes from the inflection in your voice. The confidence in which you express it and then ends up happening is like. Doubt is like blood in the water to a shark. Your prospect can sense that you're doubtful. They can see it, they can feel it, because you're not convicted. So instead of worrying about whether you're coming off as confident or cocky, just simply be confident with your intention. If someone says that you're coming off cocky or. Or arrogant, that's on them, that's not on you.