There are different incentives that you can provide at the closing stage to convince both logical and emotional people. The main differences are:

• Logical people will value more the numerical optimization of a proposal, while emotional people will value more the insertion of additional things into a bigger package;
  • If you’re selling a car, you have to improve the numbers for the logical person, but you can throw in additional services for the emotional one;
• Logical people are more easily persuaded by text in the long-term, while emotional people are more easily persuaded by image in the short-term;
  • If you’re selling a car, you should use textual presentations with facts for logical people, but you should use image in the short-term for emotional people;

In the streamlining technique, we covered concentrating your value proposition. In short, including mediocre bonuses with a quality offering should not be done, because they “average down” the value of the package.

• This technique represents the exception to that rule. People will average down in the long-term. However, emotional people can be converted in the short-term through this;
  • So, if you are trying to convince someone emotional in the short-term, you can use bonuses to create a bigger package to try and convince them. But otherwise, do not do this, as you are creating uncertainty and increasing mental effort for the target;

Underlying Psychology/Biases

This happens as logical and emotional people have different mental timeframes. The equivalent to System 1 and System 2 thinking in Kahneman and Tversky’s theory.

• Therefore, logical people are more oriented to details and will take their time, and will not be swayed by emotion or image;
• Emotional people, on the other hand, are more likely to be converted on impulse, and by effects that push them to make an emotional decision;

Sub-Techniques

Examples

• Gift immunity
  • These dynamics tell us why logical people are, in many cases, immune to gifts;
    • When you give multiple low-value gifts to someone emotional, they will love them;
    • When you give multiple low-value gifts to someone logical, they will ignore the quantity of gifts and appraise the actual value of them;
• Upsells
  • Upsells are great to convert emotional people;
  • What you’re doing is effectively saying, “Hey, for just a little bit more, you can have this much bigger package”;
• “Before you leave”
  • There are some software solutions that, when you try to delete your account, prompt you with a message saying, “If you don’t leave, we’ll take 10% off”, or similar;
  • This works very well for both cases. It increases the package for a lesser value for emotional people, and it optimizes the numbers for logical people;
• The cheerleader effect
  • The effect of appreciating a bigger offer of multiple things, even if none of them in particular is good can be considered a version of the so-called “cheerleader effect”;
  • The package seems good …at least, as a whole;

Commercial/Known Uses

Key Takeaways

• Logical and emotional people are converted in different ways:
  • Logical people prefer the optimization of numbers, while emotional people prefer more things in a bigger package;
  • Logical people prefer the use of image in the short-term, while logical people prefer the use of text in the long-term;