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How to tap emotional triggers to get the sale

Drive more B2B and medtech sales by applying the psychology of emotions

Chris Temperante
Chris Temperante
CEO / Partner

Your pipeline is filled with quality leads. Now, it’s time for your sales team to take over and focus on what they do best—transform these leads into paying customers.

While every member of your sales team may have a different approach, one strategy that works consistently is to tap into your prospects’ emotional triggers. The key is to create an authentic, emotion-based narrative that will resonate with your prospective medtech or B2B buyer.

The goal is to determine which emotions are driving prospects to consider your products or services in the first place. This will help you uncover the unmet needs where emotions lie, then build solid relationship that will eventually lead to the sale. Studies show that as much as 95 percent of our decision-making process relies on emotions, making it critical for B2B and medtech sales professionals to move beyond mere facts and figures.

Here’s a look at how you can increase sales by tapping into emotional triggers:

 

Know your audience

What drives your target audience to buy? Getting to know what makes them tick before interacting with them will help you unlock their desires when you talk. Here’s a look at some of the emotions that could drive your audience:

  • Fear. Fear often drives a prospect to act so that they don’t miss out. For example, B2B prospects may want to capitalize on special offers before they expire, as is the case with a sale. Fear of failure is another opportunity. A medtech buyer, for example, may invest in a new solution out of fear of a regulatory compliance issue.
  • Empathy. When a prospect faces a challenge, it is comforting to know that someone understands them. Trained sales professionals convey this using vocal cues and specific language; it’s an art that’s vital to the sales process. For empathy to work, it must be genuine.
  • Belonging. It is human nature to want to be part of something greater than ourselves. Many modern consumer brands tap this emotion in their marketing and sales processes through clearly defined brand values, such as sustainability, authenticity and environmentalism; B2B and medtech brands can learn from their examples. This is the emotion that gets triggered in a way that inspires brand loyalty. Show customers what you stand for and if they agree, they’ll want to be part of it.
  • Pride. A complex medtech or B2B sale typically involves many people. Big-ticket items can solve complicated problems and are often highly visible across the organization. The internal champion and the final decision-maker often take great pride in transforming their operations or accomplishing the final purchase. Showing how you will help further these individuals’ goals and make them successful can help you close the deal.

 

Leverage psychology

At its core, success in sales is driven by one thing–an innate understanding of human psychology. Ultimately, you would need to understand how your ideal customer thinks in order to tap into the emotions that will get them to buy.

From there, you can utilize principals of psychology to incent purchasing. Three key principles are:

  • Reciprocity: giving back, such as with help, expertise, guidance, or even a free gift
  • Likability: sharing your brand’s story
  • Authority: sharing your expertise in order to get them to buy

Marketing and sales can work together to identify key messages and offers that support these three psychological tenets.

Build trust

Trust between your brand and B2B or medtech customers must be earned. However, once you develop it, you turn your audience into fans and advocates. Tapping trust as an emotion is powerful, and should be carefully guarded.

Here, it’s important to show that you are genuine in your desire to understand what they really want and need. After they trust that you want to understand them, they will reveal the key emotions that will trigger them into making a purchase.

Two-way conversation—rather than one-sided digital tools—create this opportunity. There’s simply no substitute when it comes to tapping emotions during the sales process. See how Volkart May leverages emotion in our outbound calling services.

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