The Psychology Of Selling: Finding Motivation And Deflecting Rejection

CHICAGO - Dan Seidman has a degree in psychology, and it factors into many of the sales principles he's spent decades crafting.

Take the idea of gain vs. pain. It's one of the core messages in Seidman's book, "The Ultimate Guide to Sales Training."

The basic idea is simple: people are not simply motivated, they are almost always motivated for or against something. It must be in one direction or another.

In selling, that translates to either a positive pitch -- think an SUV commercial showing an outdoor adventure -- or a negative one.

This is described in the Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology as the foundation of understanding what motivates people to get their classwork done, to obtain their degrees, to work hard at sports.

Roger Bailey turned his research on pain and gain into a successful consulting assignment for Southwest Airlines. He transformed the airlines' hiring process around these concepts, Seidman explained to InsuranceNewsNet in a 2016 interview.

"Anyone who’s flown Southwest knows how unique the staff is, and Bailey’s work was a significant contributor to how the airline grew," he said.

Seidman will be sharing these and other sales techniques today at the InsuranceNewsNet 2018 Superconference outside Chicago.

Coping With Rejection

One topic Seidman spends a lot of time talking about is how to handle rejection. It is something every salesperson has to face and deflect early on if they are going to be successful.

"Eliminate the choke points that end the sales conversation, and smoothly work through objections," he told Publisher Paul Feldman. "Then you’ll move further down the path toward a close."

Seidman recalls building an "objection-handling tool" for a company, merely language to respond to a variety of rejections.

"On the first night, the vice president of sales got a detailed email from each of the five kids basically saying, 'Oh, my gosh, everything people said when they told me they weren’t interested was something you prepared me for,'" Seidman said. "He was shocked.

"But think about it — when you sell, you get the angst in your gut, the acidy feeling because somebody’s rejecting you, your product and service."

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton has covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @INNJohnH.

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