Unleash your Sales Potential: Simple Marketing Rule – Part 2

In Part 1, I shared a marketing rule I learned from one of my mentors, Chris Marlow, for increasing product sales to customers:

If you’re selling Business to Customer (B2C), begin your sales copy with an EMOTIONAL appeal and close with a LOGICAL argument.

For example, when marketers promoted Tang in tandem with the U.S. Space programs, they tied the orange drink mix to the Romance, Adventure, and Excitement of space travel.

Americans everywhere could drink the drink of astronauts … [EMOTION]

And every glass contained Vitamin C. [LOGIC]

Sales skyrocketed. ?

Now for the second part: Business to Business (B2B) …

What Works in B2B Marketing? Emotion or Logic?

When you offer a high-value product or service, the logical argument is critical … your prospects want to reduce risk. They need to know they’ll see real benefits in return for their investment.

Whether you’re offering digital products, manufactured goods, or a consulting service, buyers want proof to support complex decision-making.

However, surprising research has shown emotion-based marketing is essential for closing complex sales.

In an article published in the Harvard Business Review, Michael Harris, CEO of Insight Demand, shares this rule:

“Sell to Mr. Rational for simple sales, and Mr. Intuitive for complex sales.”

Harris bases his conclusions on scientific studies, including a 2011 study in which undergraduates were asked to select the best used car from a group.

Each car was rated in four separate categories (such as gas mileage). But one car clearly had the best attributes. In this simplified scenario limited to four variables, the conscious deciders were 15% better at choosing the best car than the unconscious deciders.

When the researchers made the decision more complex – ratcheting the number of variables up to 12 — unconscious deciders were 42% better than conscious deciders at selecting the best car.

Essential to Making Decisions

Antonio Damasio, Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Southern California and the Salk Institute, also found emotions and feelings are essential to decision-making. They are not impediments to making a choice, as previously thought by Cartesian philosophers.

In Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Damasio recounts the story of Elliot, a patient who became incapable of experiencing normal emotions after his prefrontal cortex was damaged by brain cancer and surgery.

Dawson saw a trend in similar studies and historical accounts. When a patient with a damaged prefrontal cortex failed to experience emotions, decision-making became more difficult.

“The powers of reason and the experience of emotion decline together, and their impairment stands out in a neurological profile within which basic attention, memory, intelligence, and language appear so intact that they could never be invoked to explain the patients’ failure in judgement.” – Damasio

This is exciting news for B2B marketers and business owners who have limited themselves to logical sales arguments.

They now have untapped potential to dramatically increase sales with emotionally persuasive content – after showing the logic.

Because the second part of Marlow’s simple marketing rule is this:

If you want more Business to Business (B2B) sales, begin your sales copy with a LOGICAL argument and close with an EMOTIONAL appeal.

Judy Olbrych serves growing business who want to attract more leads and sales with high-response sales copy.  Learn more at https://www.judyolbrych.com/ or get in touch on beBee.