Nine Words Nearly Double Results

A few years after college, I took a position as a sales engineer. After one customer visit with no result, my boss queried, “Did you ask for the order?” In fact, just about every sales coaching book reminds new salespeople of the importance of asking for the order when the time is right. Similarly, solicitors [...]

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Lunch: Your Secret Weapon

Top salespeople have often used lunch as a way to help bond with a customer and close a deal. Getting the customer out of the office allows for relaxed conversation and freedom from ringing phones and similar interruptions. Going beyond those obvious benefits, though, there’s research that shows messages are more persuasive when accompanied by [...]

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Sales Secret: The Best Time to Close

Want to close a sale? When choosing a time to meet with your customer, don’t just take the first appointment time offered to you. A recent study looked at decisions by judges, and revealed startling differences in outcomes at different times of day. Researchers at Columbia University and Ben Gurion University examined the decisions made [...]

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What’s Better Than an Excited Customer?

Think the way to sell more is to have a frenetic pitchman whip customers into a buying frenzy? Actually, relaxed customers are bigger spenders. A new study that will appear in the Journal of Marketing Research found that relaxed subjects would pay about 15% more for a variety of goods and services than less-relaxed subjects. [...]

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Selling to the Sleepy

Late-night infomercials and commercials often promote subjects like buying real-estate with no money down and other get-rich quick schemes. While these promotions are broadcast in the wee hours because air time is cheaper and more readily available, it turns out there’s solid science behind this timing. In a new study, Duke university researchers found significant [...]

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What Color Makes The Most Green?

Could wearing a particular color influence the results obtained by a salesperson? If that salesperson is selling to a buyer of the opposite gender, the answer may be, “Yes!”

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Time to Get Touchy?

If you are in sales, do you touch your customers? In these litigious days, perhaps not. But there’s research that shows a woman’s light touch on a subject’s shoulder caused a change in risk-taking behavior. (Sorry, guys, it only worked for female touchers.) Research by Jonathan Levav of Columbia University and Jennifer Argo of the [...]

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Stories Synchronize Brains

An ongoing story (so to speak) here at Neuromarketing is the power of stories to engage readers and listeners. Now, there’s new brain scan evidence that shows a startling phenomenon: when one person tells a story and the other actively listens, their brains actually begin to synchronize. A new study from Princeton University reports that [...]

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Singing for Sales

Every experienced sales manager has a trick or two when it comes to hiring the best candidate for an open sales position. After a candidate passes the initial resume screening process, one manager might check out the applicant’s shoes. Another might pay close attention to how well the individual responds to an unexpected question. Here’s [...]

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Confidence Beats Competence

What are the ideal characteristics for a person in a sales position? Great people skills? Strong product knowledge? Add confidence to the list. Continuing a discussion started in Convince With Confidence, there’s more evidence that the average person finds a confident demeanor persuasive, even when the confidence may mask a lower level of competence.

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