How to Know Your Client’s Motivations and Emotional Desires (and Sell with Ease!)

No business is able to grow and thrive without a thorough understanding of their clients and their ideal customers.

Developing your knowledge of what your customers want, their motivations, and their pain points will ensure that you can tailor your product or service to meet their needs. This will give you an increased chance at securing their business. 

In our last article, we detailed the importance of nailing down your client “why” – and the next step is to tie it down with motivations and emotional appeal. 

Understanding your client’s motivation allows you to match your product or service to your client’s emotions and position your solution to fit with their motivations and emotional desires. 

By using emotions and motivations in communicating your client why, you will immediately pique your client’s interest.

Client Motivations

So, you’ve identified why your client needs your product or service. Now add in their motivation. Motivation is the key reason why any of us do anything, and this is how you will position your solution to fit their desires.

IMPORTANT: Motivations differ between B2B and B2C clients. B2B companies sell their products or services to other businesses, while business to customer companies sell to individual consumers.

There are a lot of different types of motivations and a lot of different types of sales. Ask yourself: How does the problem you solve or solution you deliver appeal to your buyer’s motivation? You might have heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: You need food and shelter before you need health and employment, family and friends before status and freedom, and all of those before you can fulfill self-actualization. Take a similar perspective when considering your buyer’s motivations. You need to establish credibility so your prospect or client can be confident in you.

So what is motivating your prospects? Is it belonging? Prestige? Pleasure? 

7 Core Buyer Motivations

Generally, these are the 7 Core Buyer Motivations:

1. Comfort/Pleasure
2. Avoidance of Pain
3. Profit/Gain
4. Preventing Loss
5. Belonging
6. Cause Affiliation
7. Pride/Prestige

B2B buyers are typically motivated by some combination of Profit/Gain, Preventing Loss, and, surprisingly, Cause Affiliation – if you have a client who is highly motivated on a specific cause, that carries through their company culture as a motivation.

B2C prospects, on the other hand, can be motivated by any combination of the 7 Core Buyer Motivations.

To captivate your clients, you must frame your solution as answering both their “why” and motivation. Answer the problem you will solve and identify their motivations. Now ask, Do these motivations have emotional appeal? Tapping into the emotions of your clients will set your company apart from the competition. Harnessing happiness, sadness, anger, or fear will get your prospects to notice – and remember – you and your product or service. 

Emotional Triggers

Knowing the top ten common and effective emotional triggers will help you appeal to your prospect emotions and move them to take action. As you read through these, think about when emotions have been affected by buying decisions. 

You want to appeal to your customer’s emotions and make them act on those feelings.

1. Fear: “Don’t get caught with too little insurance!”
2. Guilt: “Don’t let these animals suffer.”
3. Belonging: “You are part of our family.”
4. Trust: “No hidden fees.”
5. Value:  “If you find a better price, we’ll match it.”
6. Competition: “Make your rivals green with envy.”
7. Trend-setting: “All the cool kids are doing it.”
8. Leadership: “Be the first on your block.”
9. Instant Gratification: “In your hands within 24 hours!”
10. Time: “Cut the time it takes to vacuum your house in half!”

Although these are the top ten emotions and emotional triggers, there are many more emotional triggers that evoke feelings among your target audience that will move them to action. What more can you think of? Remember, your goal is to give your ideal clients a reason to connect with you by making them feel something when they see, hear, or read your content.

A great resource is Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. This is a great visualization of the wide range of human emotions. It can help you identify the emotions that will best appeal to your prospects and lead them to your product or service.

Emotional Appeal

So, does your buyer motivation have an emotional appeal? Which emotions? How can you incorporate emotional triggers into your sales?

Identify the tone and language you should use to communicate and create emotion. Choose images that reflect these feelings: A picture is worth a thousand words and more likely to be remembered than words!

The bottom line is that people experience emotions, and your prospects are people. Help your prospects and clients decide with their hearts and boost sales. Use emotions and motivations in communicating your client “why” to immediately pique their interest and secure their attention. It’s an effective way to break down barriers to attract and connect with your ideal clients.

The best way to attract, connect with, and covert clients is to be able to step into their mindsets. 

Start developing your client perspective by thinking about your niche audience and the things they want, need, or lack. Understand your client “why” and how your solution will help them accomplish their goals. Zero in on their motivations and emotions to best present your product or service as being useful to them. 

The Solution They Need

By focusing on your client’s motivations and desires, you will make the decision to engage your service or buy your product clear and compelling – you offer the solution they need.

You’re here to help and serve your clients, so you have to show them how you will do that. Demonstrate you are worthy of their business and trust.

Unsure of your sales strategy and how to secure high-ticket clients without the overwhelm or sales chaos? Reach out to our team for more information or to schedule your sales session.