The Two Motivations: Promotion and Protection
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When a buying choice is to be made, there are only two motivations that people use to guide the decision. They are simply: to promote something they value, or to protect something they value.
What does this mean, and why is it important?
Our decisions that we make are always made with respect to those things that we value. Say for example, you’re a parent, and you value your child. You will make decisions with your child in mind, because they are important to you.
This seems obvious, right? But don’t overlook its importance. We ONLY make decisions based on what we VALUE. We don’t make decisions based on things we DON’T value. So in our example, we DON’T make decisions based on an unknown child that lives in your neighborhood. Why? Because we don’t value that child like we value our own child. That other child is less important to us, compared to our own children.
Those things we “value” are what we make decisions for. This is the fundamental concept that most salespeople gloss over, because it seems so intuitive.
But now it is time for your customer to make a decision about something they value. What will that decision be?
There are only two motivations that are going through the customer’s mind. They are going to promote that thing they value, or protect it.
“Promotion,” in this context, is to take something they value and make it bigger and more important in the future. This is why parents will send money to buy school supplies for their child. They want the thing they value – the child – to be more important in the future. School supplies are something that they believe will help them achieve that goal of promoting what they value.
Another example of promotion is an “accessory.” When people accessorize something they already own, they are promoting it — making it more important in the future.
“Protection” is a bit easier to understand. People want to keep those things they already value from deteriorating. This is why a parent will have their child vaccinated. It protects them from getting a sickness that could cause serious consequences in the future.
Why is knowing this secret of promotion and protection as the two motivators of decision making so important to us as salespeople?
The reason is that it helps us to work out a step-by-step strategy for selling to customers. When something is step-by-step, it can be automated and predictable. Who wouldn’t want that in sales? Right?
Here is the sequence:
Step 1: Determine what a prospect “values.” What is important to them?
Step 2: Decide how your product/service will either promote what they value, or will protect that value.
You can pick either option — they will both work. You can help the prospect promote what they feel is important and make it more important in the future, or help them protect it from deteriorating in the future.
Step 3: Reveal to them how what you sell will promote or protect that value. Most of the time, prospects don’t understand the connection between what you sell and how it promotes or protects what they already value. As a salesperson, it is our job to make that connection for them.
That is a pretty simple sequence. The secret we talked about today, dealt with the second and third steps. The harder part is determining what they value. Fortunately, that information is now known because of Customer Secret #1, and we can simply look up their values from a chart once we’ve typed their personality temperament. Get that free chart which links each of the four personality temperaments with their common values.