Mix the Positive & Negative

This week’s topic is about human motivation. You may be familiar with studies that show avoiding something negative is 2-3 times more motivating than having something positive happen. Protecting what we have drives us more than going after something we don’t have but want.

And I think that number is even higher in financial institutions and large companies.

So what does that mean if you’re selling tech solutions to FIs or other organizations?

It means when talking about the benefits of your solution, you should use a mix of both protecting/avoiding language and gain/achieve language. And, that mix should be 2:1 or even 3:1 negative over positive.

In our role, we tend to do the opposite. Salespeople, like entrepreneurs, tend to be more positive, more optimistic & more enthusiastic which leads to us selling positives more often.

And I’m not saying to not sell enthusiastically. I’m just recommending you give people the other side of the coin at least as often as the positive.

For example, something that increases accuracy also avoids mistakes or reduces errors. Something that increases throughput also avoids bottlenecks. An app that is easy to use also reduces the frustration of trying to use a more complex app. A single point of contact means not having to call multiple people. And so on.

Of course they’re all benefits. They’re just phrased differently.

An easy way to put this into practice is to start with a list of benefits for one of your products or services. However they’re currently phrased, add the positive or negative sounding counterpart. Now you have both ways of presenting the benefit. Practice using the ones you just added and try it out in your next presentation!