George Patton said, “Wars may be fought with weapons but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and the man who leads that gains victory.”4 Patton’s comment applies to sales just as much as it does to war. The spirit of the salesperson is far more important than the feature checklist of a product. Besides, most of the competing products in today’s marketplace are relatively equal in the customers’ eyes.

It would be a cliché to say you must be positive and enthusiastic while you explain your product’s features, benefits, and specifications to a customer. Since all your competitors are just as friendly and positive as you are, the spirit needed for victory requires something more.

Selling requires capturing the hearts and minds of customers based upon a strategy that takes into account the emotions of the decision maker as well as the logical reasons to buy. Customers aren’t completely logical decision makers in the real world. The final decision-making process is a blend of human nature and logical rationalization. At the foundation of all sales is a relationship between people. The interaction between these people, the intangible part of the sales process, is ultimately responsible for the decision being made. Logic and reason play secondary roles.

Customers do not establish vendor relationships based upon the best business judgment; rather, they judge vendors based upon who establishes the best business relationships. A customer I recently interviewed as part of a blind survey said it best: “We made it clear that we weren’t buying a brochure or data sheet. For that matter, we weren’t even buying a product. We were buying a long-term relationship with another company and, equally important, the team of people from that company who we would have to work with on a day-in, day-out basis.”

The grand strategy of selling your product is based upon the indirect strategy of selling to human nature. The figure below illustrates the three components of selling to human nature: customers’ psychological needs and customers’ opinions of you and your competitors.

On the left-hand side of the block are benefactions, the customers’ psychological needs. The term “benefaction” refers to the psychological benefits that determine a person’s actions. Customers purchase products that increase their happiness, esteem, power, or wealth. They rationalize these psychological decisions they with logic and facts. For example, a vice president of a manufacturing company may explain that he wants to buy a new conveyor system because it will save a million dollars a year when in reality, he is making the purchase to show the CEO that he is a prudent businessman and fiscally conservative. The desire to impress the CEO (the benefit) drives the conveyor system purchase (the action).

Four core psychological drives determine selection behavior. These four benefactions are physical well-being, pain avoidance, self-preservation, and self-gratification.

Physical well-being, the will to survive, is one of our strongest desires. It weighs heavily in the minds of both customers and competitors. Making customers feel their jobs are safe in your hands is a top priority. Ideally, you would like them to believe (whether it is true or not) that the competitive solutions are actually threats to their livelihood. Maneuvering the competitors into a life-threatening position in an account such that they are forced to make a direct attack on you will bolster your claims.

When something is hurting you badly, the desire to eliminate the source of pain can be all-consuming. Pain is one of the best purchase motivators because customers are forced to act quickly and decisively to eliminate it. Similarly, a salesperson who is being harangued by his boss about a longstanding account that won’t close is experiencing pain. You must exploit both of these pains, often by controlling the tempo of the sales cycle. Sometimes it makes sense to speed up the sales cycle, and at other times it is better to slow it down. For example, quickly assembling a “SWAT team” of personnel and showing how you can solve a customer’s distressing situation will lock out the competition. Conversely, slowing down the sales cycle can cause a frustrated opponent to make a rash mistake.

We naturally seek the approval of others. Self-preservation, the desire to be recognized for our unique talents while still belonging to a group, applies to customers and salespeople alike. Customers purchase items that they believe will enhance their stature and protect their group position. Salespeople want to be the pack leaders.

Everyone has a selfish ego, and self-gratification is our desire to put our own needs before everyone else’s. Customers will go to great lengths to purchase something that makes them feel better about themselves and superior to others. Egos drive the business world. Unfortunately, most salespeople are taught to sell solutions based upon customer pain when, in fact, ego and self-preservation are the real motivators behind large enterprise sales.