Apply Neuroscience to Sell More
- How does Neuroscience increase your sales?
- How do you help your customers decide?
If you are selling canned tomatoes, which price option allows you to sell more: 5 for $5 or $1 each? Mathematically, both options have the exact same price. However, if you choose the first option, you can sell 30-40% more.

Power Your Sales with Neuroscience
Numerous sales books have been written. Thousands of sales training programs have been created. Countless sales speakers want to tell you the ultimate secrets. Why are companies spending billions of dollars training their salespeople, but seeing little results?
Every sale involves decisions. Getting people to decide to buy is the job of the salesperson. Traditional sales training is built on the assumption that people buy based on careful evaluation of facts and analysis of benefits. That’s just not true. The reality is far different. Neuroscience Sales tactics are science-based, not based on guesswork.
- Emotional Responses Drive Purchase Decisions – A research study conducted in a wine shop was designed to see whether music influenced shoppers. At various times, pop music or classical music was played in the shop. Neither affected the number of bottles of wine sold. But, when classical music was played, customers bought more expensive wines. People’s choices are based on emotions, not reasoning. Hearing different types of music triggers different emotional responses.Understanding how unconscious decision-making works and what influences it can have a large impact on your sales.
- Neuroscience Is Exploring How the Brain Decides – Neuroscientists have been studying what happens in the brain during decision-making for only 2-3 decades. Using the latest brain-imaging technology, they can watch what parts of the brain are active when people make decisions.What they discovered is that almost 95% of purchase decisions are made by the emotional areas of the brain, rather than by the analytical, reasoning parts.
- Without Emotions, We Can’t Decide Anything – Research with people who have injuries or tumors in the brain’s emotional response areas reinforces the importance of emotions. If a stroke, for example, damages areas in the parts of the brain that are responsible for emotions, the patient will suffer both the lack of emotion and inability to make decisions.Even the simplest decisions, like choosing what shirt to wear or what cereal to buy for breakfast, can take a patient a very long time to decide.
- Every Sale Involves Multiple Emotional Decisions
Everyone in sales understands that making a sale is a process. Before pulling the trigger, customers ask internal questions like: Which brand should I buy? Can I trust this company and salesperson? Is this price good? Should I buy now or wait for a better deal? Do I have enough information?Affecting a customer’s emotions during this process makes a big difference.
- Customers Use Unconscious Shortcuts to Decide – Our brains are lazy. Whenever possible, the brain takes shortcuts in decision-making. Those shortcuts are called cognitive biases. There are about 200 of them. Each helps us decide, based on emotional responses, rather than reasoning.The anchoring bias, for example, plays a big role in price comparisons. The bandwagon bias explains why reviews and other social proofs help people decide. The loss aversion bias clarifies why the fear of losing out causes fast decisions. The conservatism bias affects brand loyalty. Understanding these and other mental shortcuts is a powerful key to better salesmanship.
Sell More Through Applied Neuroscience
Dr. Terry Wu earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. In 2003, he began applying his knowledge of how the brain decides to help companies grow their revenues through Neuroscience-based sales and marketing. By providing his expertise to a wide range of firms, he has helped his clients increase sales from 5 to 10 times. Now, as a highly rated speaker, and sales and marketing consultant, he is helping even more people understand the insights available from Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics.
