6 minute read
What is SalesBrain?
JESSICA VAUGHAN
What is SalesBrain
The CCN Sales Process is becoming a SalesBrain-certified selling technique. What is SalesBrain and what does that mean?
SalesBrain bills itself as a neuromarketing agency. It was founded by Dr. Christophe Morin who has a Ph.D. in Marketing Psychology and Patrick Renvoisé, who started his career selling multi-million-dollar super-computers. They recognized there have been some major advances in neuroscience over the past decade, but those advances in persuasion weren't penetrating the business world. Now their mission is helping companies to make sure all sales teams are using ethically sound, sciencebased persuasion techniques. The science of neuromarketing started in the early 2000s when a researcher put subjects in an MRI machine and studied their brains as they drank Coke or Pepsi or an unidentified Cola. If they knew the brand, their brains lit up differently and they perceived taste differently. It was the launch of a multitude of studies that confirmed that our satisfaction, pleasure, and how we perceive information from our senses are deeply affected by what we know and believe. There's no such thing as objectivity. In other words, there’s a big difference between saying, “I choose that unidentified brown soda,” and saying, “I want a Coke.”
How can this be? How can what we think affects what we see, taste, touch, and enjoy?
Our brain is divided into several different lobes. The newest, most complex, and intelligent is our prefrontal cortex. SalesBrain calls this the rational brain. The subcortical lobes are much more ancient and simple. In general, they have two states: sympathetic which is activated to fly or fight and parasympathetic to relax, rest, and digest. SalesBrain calls this the Primal Brain. Over the years, the primal system has become slightly more sophisticated, but not by much. If you've ever seen
the Pixar movie Inside Out, you know the primary emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. There are two more: anticipation and surprise. But all of these emotions are still about two things: this thing is something good and I want to approach, or that thing is something bad and I want to get away. It's important to note the neuro-transmitters driving our feelings primarily come from our primal brain, not our rational brain. We think it's the other way around. We think we have a sophisticated thought in our prefrontal cortex, and then we have an emotion. The rational brain can definitely affect how we feel, or marketing wouldn't matter in the least, but for the most part, we feel and then we justify how we feel using our prefrontal cortex after the fact.
So what does that mean for your sales and marketing efforts?
It's your job to capture people's attention and persuade them to buy from you, whether using email, ads, or sales presentations. But if you are not speaking to your prospect’s primal brain, in a language it understands, your messages are doomed to fail.
SalesBrain argues most of your persuasion efforts need to be directed to the primal brain, which is primarily concerned with keeping people safe. If you're speaking to the rational brain, but the primal brain feels like buying is not a safe thing to do, there's nothing the rational brain can do about it. We can't override our own survival instincts.
So how do you persuade that primal brain?
A lot of this is going to feel familiar because the CCN sales process speaks to this method naturally. CCN Founder Richard Kaller intuited how to speak to the primal brain in the 1970s.
To persuade, you need to first diagnose their pains and fears.
The primal brain spends most of its time scanning for threats and eliminating worries. Unless you're offering solutions to directly address that struggle, it won’t hear you. SalesBrain asserts there are three primary types of pain in the modern world to address: financial pain, strategic pain, and personal pain. These correspond to material, emotional, and psychological needs.
The second step is to differentiate your claim.
Our brain is constantly scanning for the variance. If you don’t successfully tell your prospects how you're different, all the work you’re doing at the CCN Measure Call and Follow-up appointments is selling as much for your competitors as for your company. When you get done, there should be no more choice, and that comes from differentiation.
Next, you need to demonstrate the gain.
One of the CCN Wordtracks TM speaks to the heart of this: is this project an expense or an investment? The value of what they're getting needs to greatly outweigh the cost they're paying. But they don’t measure that objectively; what goods and services are worth is a collective agreement in our society. It's all about perception, not reality. Brands do a lot of research about where to position their products in the market and the smallest part of that equation is how much it actually costs to make. A much bigger deal is what they think customers will pay. The most important way to show proof of gain is to use thirdparty proof. Your answer book is the heart of the Follow-up presentation and is full of testimonials, contracts, and data to demonstrate proof of gain.
Finally, you need to deliver all of this to the primal brain.
How do you do this? The primal brain has six primary stimuli. Remember, it's far less sophisticated and intelligent than the prefrontal cortex. It has to be. It's concerned with keeping you alive, and it’s very fast and very good at it. You can't have a group discussion or a rational conversation if there's a lion after you, which is why this part of the brain is stronger than the rational brain. We're the ancestors of humans who were the best at this; the others didn’t last.
To persuade the primal brain you need to be:
Personal — How is this particular product going to help me survive threats? Our primal brain has no empathy for other people. Its single job is keeping itself alive. Contrastable — This choice is the only right one. All others are wrong. The promal brain doesn’t understand the abstract. Tangible — This isn't the part of the brain with an imagination. It’s scanning only for what's familiar, friendly, and concrete. Memorable — It can only process a limited amount of information so that information has to sparkle. Visual — Our eyes are our dominant sense particularly for scanning for threats. Emotional — If it doesn’t feel good, there’s no reason to do it. Fortunately, the CCN Sales Process 3.0 is designed to hit all of these buttons. And now we're partnering with guys who are keeping up on all of the latest neuroscience so we can stay on the cutting edge. The irony of course is that the cutting edge is about learning how to speak to the simplest, oldest, most instinctive part of our brain, so your messages keep getting simpler and more emotional.
Don’t leave sales on the table; learn neuroscience!
(Did you notice the persuasion in that sentence? Not selling is a huge pain and fear in a contracting business. Paying attention to neuroscience is a game changer.
