16

How the Buyer Decides

IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, I TAUGHT YOU ABOUT THE INTERNAL FRAMES OF reference that cause people to
analyze your proposal in different ways. Now that you know this, lets say that you have skillfully
determined their internal reference points and made your presentation in such a way that it has
maximum appeal to their way of thinking. Great!
Now were down to the actual point where the buyer makes a decision to go with your proposal or
reject it. In this chapter Ill teach you some of the processes that buyers go through before they decide
whether or not to be persuaded.

Assertive Versus Unassertive

Assertive people tend to make decisions quickly. They take a look at your proposal and either go
for it or dont go for it. Less assertive people need time to make up their minds.
This facet is very important when youre trying to persuade someone to buy. If you dont ask the
assertive person to buy, he or she will think something is wrong. This person may ask why you dont
feel strong enough to push for an approval. Conversely, if you push an unassertive buyer for a
decision before he or she is ready to make it, youre creating a problem. This person will either resist
what is seen as a high-pressure tactic, or think youre trying to push the sale before half the needed
information is given to make the right move.
So, its very important to know if the person with whom youre dealing is assertive or not.
Fortunately, its not hard to tell. It is simple as this: An assertive person will greet you with a firm
handshake, and get down to business with a minimum of formalities. This person needs enough
information to make a decision, but not too much. If you overload them with information, theyll
think, Oh come on! Dont give me all this flimflam! Who are you trying to con? Just give me the
facts.
Conversely, an unassertive person will greet you tentatively and want to spend time getting to
know you before he or she gets down to business. This persons approach will be more like this: Oh
hi. Its nice to see you again, come on in. Can I get you some coffee? Hows the children?
First, you must analyze if the buyer youre trying to persuade is assertive or unassertive. If the
buyer is assertive, go for the close. Give the facts and ask to go for your proposal. If he or she is
unassertive, take your time. Give all the information wanted, be sure the buyer feels comfortable with
you, and then gently nudge toward a decision.

Emotional Versus Unemotional

The next dimension to consider is whether your buyer is emotional or not. You can tell this by the
way you are greeted and the way things are reacted to. The emotional buyer will greet you with either
warmth or excitement and react with attentive enthusiasm to your appeal. The unemotional person
will greet you in a businesslike manner, which may even appear cold to you. If, for example, youre
having breakfast meeting with both an emotional and an unemotional person, youll easily spot the
differences. The emotional person will be friendly toward the waitress, call her by name, and ask how
she is and what she recommends. The unemotional person will ignore the waitress unless he needs
something and then make brief, businesslike requests. He may not even want to see the menu.
The way a buyer will react to your persuasion proposal depends on the level of emotion,
combined with the level of assertiveness. Heres how the four possible combinations of these two

factors will react:

Emotional/Assertive: Lets run with it. Sounds like a terrific idea to me. How fast can we put it
into effect? or Sounds like a crazy idea to me. Too crazy for us. What else do you have?
Emotional/Unassertive: I really appreciate you bringing this to me. I like the idea, but I
wouldnt feel comfortable going ahead without talking to the employees about it first. I hope
you understand. or I just dont think this would fit in with what we do here. We dont like to
rock the boat with a lot of new ideas.
Unemotional/Assertive: Im only going to go with this if it makes us money. Show me itll do
that and Ill give you the go-ahead today. or Weve tried that before. Sounds like a good idea,
but it wont work. Trust me.
Unemotional/Unassertive: I can see youve really done your homework on this. Subject to our
verifying the results of your research, Id like to give you a tentative go-ahead. or I wouldnt
feel comfortable jumping into something like this. Wed have to do some thorough research
before we could consider it, and were so backlogged, I dont know when wed ever be able to
get around to it.
The emotional, assertiveness ratings of the people with whom youre dealing have a lot to do with
the way you go about getting a decision. In order to pigeonhole them into the correct one of the four
categories, be sure to evaluate their assertiveness rating first, and then their emotional rating. Its
much harder to do the other way around.
Now lets move to how the buyer reacts to your proposal. There are basically two steps that the
buyer will go through as you try to persuade her. She will listen to what you have to say, and then they
will process that information with either conscious or unconscious thought.

Open- or Closed-Minded
Lets consider the first step: listening to what you have to say. People listen with either an open or a
closed mind.
Open-minded people evaluate what you have to say based on what they hear or observe. They
make up their minds based on what you have to tell or show them.
Closed-minded people evaluate what you have to say as it relates to what they already know. These
are the people who believe that Japanese cars are better made and will not listen to any evidence to the
contrary. Its the buyer who is happy with his present supplier and wont take the time to listen to your
proposal.
Obviously, a closed-minded person is harder to persuade. With open-minded people, you may be
able to persuade them by talking about what you or your product can do or by letting them read about
it. With a closed-minded person, your persuasion must include letting them see a demonstration or,
better yet, getting them to take part in a hands-on demonstration.
Open-minded: Show and tell.
Closed-minded: See and do.
When its not obvious, how do you tell whether a buyer is open- or closed-minded? For the sake of
example, lets say that you sell glass bottles and youre trying to get a spaghetti sauce company to

switch to you as its packing supplier. You might say to the buyer, You tell me that your present
supplier is the best in the business, but how do you know that?
If the buyer says, I never hear any complaints from our production department, or I read the
quality control reports, youre probably dealing with someone who is open-minded. Lucky you!
However, if this person says, I personally inspect the rejects every week, and its never more than
one-tenth of one percent, or I spent five days at their plant in Pacoima. Nobody can touch their
quality control, then youve probably got a closed-minded person on your hands. You have to get
this person to see what you can do.

Conscious or Unconscious Thought Processors

The first step to their decision-making process is how they listen to your proposalbe it with an
open or closed mind. The second step involves how they process the information you give them. Lets
say that youve gotten past the resistance of a closed-minded person and been able to lay your story
on her. Now you have an additional factor to consider: Does she process the information youve
given her consciously or unconsciously?
Conscious thinkers process the information with their five senses. Unconscious thinkers go with
their intuitive feel about your presentation.
Lets recap the five senses, so you get an idea of the process that conscious thinkers use:

Youre not likely to run into many people whose primary sense is tactile (touch), gustatory (taste),
or olfactory (smell). You will be primarily concerned with distinguishing between auditory and visual
people. So, heres a quick test to see which you are: Close your eyes and think of the house in which
you lived when you were 10 years old. Hold that thought for 15 seconds, then open your eyes and
continue reading.
When you did that exercise, did you primarily see the house in your mind, or did you mainly hear
things (such as the laughter of children or your mother working in the kitchen). As I told you in the
earlier chapter on credibility, most people are visual. They believe more what they see than what they
hear.
The point Im making here is not that you should be able to analyze which of their five senses
dominates. I want you to realize that some people are persuaded by what their five senses tell them.
Some people are dominated by their sixth sense, intuition. However, it is interesting to note that you
can tell whether people are visual or auditory by the expressions of speech they use. Here are some
comparisons:

If you determine that the person youre trying to persuade is primarily using his five senses to
analyze your presentation (a conscious thinker) you will know that you must be concrete in your
appeal. He needs to see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it in order to be convinced. Do everything
you can to let him experience your product or service sensually. For food or drink, tasting and
smelling will be important as well.
Conversely, some people dont interpret your presentation with their five senses at all. They react
more by gut instinct or intuition. These people are called kinesthetic (feeling) people. When we add
kinesthetic language to the chart, we get a new feel for whats going on!

When dealing with kinesthetic people (unconscious thinkers) its less important that you let them
see, hear, touch, taste, or smell your product or service. The way to persuade them is to paint vivid
mental pictures of how its going to feel to be doing business with you.
(What Ive covered in this chapter is based on the work of famed psychologist Carl Jung, and I
cover it in more detail in my tape program Confident Decision Making, which is available by calling
my office at (800)-Y-DAWSON.)

Key Points From This Chapter:

1. Assertive people make decisions quickly. Unassertive people are slow decision-makers.
2. How quickly you push for a decision must be based on their level of assertiveness.
3. Next, determine their emotional level. From this you develop four different persuasion appeals:
Emotional/Assertive: Razzle-dazzle them with how exciting the project will be, and how they have to
jump on the opportunity before it passes them by.
Emotional/Unassertive: Warm them up slowly to the idea. Tell them how good everybodys going to
feel.
Unemotional/Assertive: Tell them the bottom line benefits, and push for a fast decision.
Unemotional/Unassertive: Give them lots of precise detail, because they make a decision based on
facts, but they need an overload of information.

4. Next, determine if the buyer is open- or closed-minded. You can persuade the open-minded
buyer with show and tell, but the closed-minded buyer must see and do.
5. Next, does the buyer process the information youve given her with conscious or unconscious
thought? Conscious thinkers process the information with their five senses. Unconscious
thinkers go with their intuitive feeling about your persuasion presentation. So with conscious
thinkers, you must let them see, hear, and touch your product or service. With unconscious
thinkers, its more important to romance their imaginations.