There are tons of books about decision-making and I’m not going to suggest this is going to be comprehensive.
How we make decisions.
You are not as logical as you think.
Sorry, didn’t want to hit you right off the bat there but it’s true. Your clients aren’t either. So stop expecting it.
I’ve covered Decision Fatigue and Choice Paradox to help give you a head start on understanding some influences on decisions.
We make decisions based on emotions and back-fill with logic.
The best example I have of that is we had to move clocks ahead an hour for Daylight Savings Time. It was 5 pm and my wife said, “I’m really hungry but it’s only 5 pm.” She looked at the clock, “Oh, yeah, we changed the clocks. It’s really 6 pm. That makes sense.”
I replied, “No, it’s actually 4 pm since we moved the clocks forward.” She looked at me, looked at the clock, and then back at me trying to make it all makes sense, “I’m just hungry!” She really wanted a logical reason but it didn’t exist and I was happy to have a new story to prove a point. LOL
I use The Mighty script because it gets to people’s emotions and inner motivators. As much as I love data as a high C personality, it’s not enough, even for me sometimes. Some researchers did an experiment where they solicited for donations. In the first group, they crafted a beautiful story about the little girl that would receive the donations. The second group just heard a name and then was given a bunch of statistics and facts about the girl. The third group got a combo of both the story and the facts. Story beat facts and the mixture beat them both. They were given the logical reason to justify their emotional thoughts in the third group.
Don’t have clients make decisions when they are mad. No one makes good decisions like that. Time heals a lot of situations just because they fall out of that emotional state.
Hit on the emotions that play into their decision. They will lay that all out to you during The Mighty Script. When the logic of the payment hits them or the reality of all of the work to move, reminding them of the emotional side will help them stay focused on the goal.
Unless they are an investor or super high C personality, if you haven’t hit on the emotion of the client, you’re not in as much control as you think.
Now to through a wrench in it all, the gut is that catch-all. “It didn’t feel right?” We don’t know why we make a lot of the decisions we do make. It’s a hunch, a feeling, a sense. A lot of decisions happen on a subconscious level that we don’t understand. I have a script to help you with those people.
“On your drive home, don’t be surprised if the decision just pops into your mind. I find it happens quite often.”
The emotion they are feeling as “it’s time to decide” is stress. I gave them social proof that others have this same experience. I gave them permission to wait. I also gave them permission to have a decision pop into their mind.
Letting people know that they aren’t the only ones to have to make this decision helps them as well. We often think we are the only ones this happens to. Remove that emotion for them.
Exercise: Think of a time when you or your client made a decision and back-filled with logic and write it down. Bonus if it’s your story and it creates an a-ha!
Do the work, get the results.
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