Sales psychology can get complicated really fast.
You can learn about loss aversion, reciprocity, social proof, anchoring, scarcity, framing, cognitive biases, and a hundred other ways people make decisions.
I think there’s a much simpler way to look at it.
Try to understand why the person in front of you is talking to you in the first place. Then help them make the best decision you can.
That’s basically it.
At least, that’s the way I’ve started thinking about sales psychology after spending years in B2B sales.
People Don’t Buy Things for No Reason
Think about the last thing you bought.
There was a reason behind it.
Maybe you were hungry. Maybe something broke. Maybe you wanted to save time. Maybe you wanted something better than what you already had.
B2B sales isn’t that different.
A company usually doesn’t wake up one morning and randomly decide it wants to spend $50,000 on a new piece of equipment, software, consulting, or some other solution.
Something caused them to start looking. There’s a problem they want to solve. There’s a result they want. There’s something about their current situation that they want to change.
And I think one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is jumping too quickly from “What do you need?” to “Here’s what we sell.”
The interesting part is everything in between.
- Why do they need it?
- Why now?
- What’s wrong with what they’re doing today?
- What happens if they don’t fix it?
- What does a good outcome actually look like?
That’s where sales psychology becomes useful.
Sales Psychology Isn’t Just the Psychology of Persuasion
When people hear “sales psychology,” they tend to think about persuasion.
How do I convince this person? How do I overcome their objection? How do I get them to say yes?
But I’ve started thinking about it differently.
Sales psychology is really about understanding how another person is making a decision.
That requires emotional intelligence more than it requires some clever closing technique. You have to be able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and see the decision from their side of the table.
There’s research behind that too. Research published in the Journal of Marketing has examined emotional intelligence in salespeople and its relationship with sales performance and customer retention.
Which makes sense.
The person buying something for a company didn’t suddenly stop being a human because they walked into work.
B2B Buyers Still Buy With Emotion
You’ve probably heard some version of: “People buy with emotion and justify with logic.”
I think that’s directionally right, but it’s also a little too simple.
It’s not like someone feels an emotion, makes a completely irrational $100,000 purchase, and then invents an ROI calculation afterward. Especially in B2B.
The better way to think about it is that logic and emotion are happening together.
Even something that sounds completely rational can have emotion underneath it.
A buyer might say, “I need to know this is going to work.”
Logically, they’re evaluating performance.
Emotionally, they’re looking for certainty.
They don’t want to make the wrong decision. They don’t want to waste the company’s money. They don’t want to recommend something internally and have it blow up in their face. They don’t want to explain to their boss why the thing they championed didn’t work.
This is part of why I think the human side of selling still matters so much, especially as AI handles more of the information-gathering side of sales. I wrote more about that in Will AI Replace Salespeople?
Trust Is More Than “Building a Relationship”
Every salesperson has heard: Build relationships. Build trust.
Okay.
But what does that actually mean?
I think trust starts forming when the customer realizes: This person is actually trying to help me make a good decision.
That’s different from simply being likable.
If I’m selling you Product A, but based on everything you’ve told me I genuinely believe Product B would solve your problem better, I have a choice.
I can use everything I know about sales psychology to push you toward Product A.
Or I can tell you the truth.
The second option might cost me a deal today. But it also tells you something important about me: I’m not going to recommend something just because it benefits me.
I’ve written about this idea from another angle in Why Salespeople Get a Bad Reputation. A lot of the stereotype around sales comes from the exact opposite behavior: putting the sale ahead of the customer.
Help Them Make the Smartest Decision
You don’t need to manipulate someone.
You don’t need a Jedi mind trick.
You need to understand their problem well enough to help them make a decision.
That might mean recommending your product. It might mean recommending a different version of your product. Sometimes it might even mean telling them you’re not the right fit.
That last one is hard because salespeople have quotas. I understand that.
But if you have to hide information, create false pressure, or convince someone to buy something you know isn’t right for them, you’re not really using sales psychology to help someone make a decision.
You’re using psychology to get the outcome you want.
That’s the line I try to draw between persuasion and manipulation.
Persuasion helps someone make a decision that’s good for them. Manipulation tries to make the decision for them because it’s good for you.
The psychology itself isn’t necessarily good or bad. It’s how you choose to use it.
Good Salespeople Reduce Uncertainty
This might be the simplest way I’ve found to think about the entire thing:
A good salesperson helps replace uncertainty with confidence.
The customer starts with a problem. They aren’t completely sure what to do about it.
You ask questions. You understand their situation. You help them understand their options. You explain the tradeoffs. You give them information they didn’t have before.
Eventually, they become more certain about what they should do.
If your solution happens to be the best answer, great.
Now you’re not convincing someone to buy something. You’re helping someone become confident enough to make a decision that makes sense.
There’s an important difference between certainty and pressure. Research summarized by the American Psychological Association found that people instructed to rely on their feelings reported greater certainty in their choices. That doesn’t mean emotion should replace evidence. It shows how closely feelings and confidence can be tied together in decision-making.
You can create pressure artificially: “Buy today.” “This offer disappears tomorrow.” “My manager says I can only give you this price right now.”
Or you can create certainty by helping someone understand that the decision you’re leading them towards will solve an important problem for them.
Put yourself in their shoes.
Those are two completely different ways of selling.
The Simplest Sales Psychology Strategy I Know
So if you’re looking for some complicated psychological framework to use on your next B2B sales call, I don’t really have one, but I would start with:
Being curious. Practice being curious. Being curious is a skill you can develop.
Figure out why they’re talking to you.
Understand the problem underneath what they’re asking for.
Put yourself in their position.
Help them understand their options.
Recommend what you genuinely believe will solve their problem.
And be willing to tell them when it isn’t you.
You still need to understand persuasion. You should understand how people make decisions. You should understand objections, risk, loss aversion, social proof, framing, and all the other psychology that influences buying behavior.
But knowing more about psychology also gives you more responsibility for how you use it.
You can use that knowledge to become better at manipulating people, or you can use it to become better at understanding them.
You get to choose.
– Croy