4 Psychological Selling Traps to Avoid

Some Surprising Psychological Selling Traps to Avoid

When you’re working toward closing an important business sales opportunity that makes sense for you and your ideal target customer, don’t let some common psychological selling traps pressure you to to leap to the wrong conclusions. Especially when you are eager to close a big new deal faster, beware of letting unconscious biases lead you to inaccurate assumptions that will derail your success.

4 Psychological Selling Traps to Avoid

Whether we have been to solution selling training or not, experienced sales managers know that we are all unfortunately prone to making sales decisions based on gut feel, flawed input, or  prejudices. Make sure you are thinking clearly and are not being swayed by the following Psychological Selling Traps when selling solutions to your target clients.

• The Gambler’s Bias
  We all fall prey to this mindset at some point in our sales careers. If flipping a coin for instance you get “heads” three times in row, don’t you feel that you’ll get “tails” next time? Actually, there is no better chance statistically. It is still 50-50. For a salesperson, if you have lost the last three or four deals, you should not think your turn to win is due.

  You are most likely losing for a reason directly related to your sales strategy, unique value proposition, timing, approach, competition, etc. Review your recent customer interactions in detail to determine if you need to change your selling behavior or approach.

• The Bias toward Patterns
  Be wary of interpreting random sales or customer events as if they constitute a meaningful pattern that shoudl be acted upon. We all seek to make sense out of chaos. For example, have you ever started to think that your success in the last few sales meetings was because of the slides you chose for your sales presentation? Do not let your assumptions around slides become your “lucky rabbit’s foot.”

  Every customer is different and every sales presentation should take into account your customer’s unique situation and needs. Your approach should always be tailored to what matters most to each customer.

• The Bias toward Confirmation of Beliefs
  We all lean toward interpreting events in a way that confirms what we already believe to be true. If you have decided, for example, that millennials cannot manage their time well, you will look for (and find) examples of when millennials cannot finish their work on schedule. In selling, be sure you don’t ask the kind of leading question that simply confirms your previously held opinion. The answers could move you in the wrong direction. And you will most likely miss some key insights that could differentiate your approach.
• The Bias toward the Short-term
  We tend to place more importance on recent rather than distant-in-time events. But just because the last few customers were only interested in Solution A, it does not mean you should abandon Solution B. Take a look at a broader time-range data sample before you make any business decisions that could affect your long-term success.

Bottom Line
Biases affect our judgment and our decision-making process during selling situations. As a salesperson, don’t be blinded by potential biases that can skew how you interact with your customers. You need to think clearly as you assess what moves to make to differentiate yourself from the competition and to help your customers to succeed.

To learn more about the impact of psychological selling traps, download the 30 Most Effective Sales Questions that Matter Most