Buying is emotional! People AND companies buy for different reasons. Don’t confuse motives, for buying, with emotions. The motives can be financial, political, and personal. Underneath these motives is an emotional connection to each. The emotional thrill of beating out the competition and getting a promotion (political), the emotional warmth of buying a second home on the beach, where the family builds great memories (personal), the emotional sense of accomplishment of an additional $25 million dollars for your division by implementing a new solution.(financial), all these emotions drive the motives.

Don Drapper, from Mad Men captures it best here. In the video Draper talks about a “deeper bond with the product” in this case nostalgia. Nostalgia is the motive, but emotion is the driver. Bonds are emotional. They are created through emotion. A product or service makes us feel a certain way. That feeling drives us to buy.

Get to the emotion. Understand what the emotional impact is and play it. Don’t confuse feeling good with emotion. Emotion is pain and pleasure. Decisions will be made to avoid emotion as much as to be emotional.

To sell with emotion you have to use vision. You need to build a vision your buyer can see as if it were real. Know what motivates your buyers. Then move them emotionally. Create excitement around decisions that will drive financial rewards, or beat the competition. Leverage fear around decisions that could lose to the competition, increase loss, or fail.

Leverage your knowledge to drive the sale. Identify the opportunities, target the motives, and then tap into the emotion.

Business is emotional, if anyone tells you different they’re full of shit.