The power of visualization and why you should activate it

With both my colleagues and students I often discuss about the best ways to help prospects/customers focus not only on the present (so the current needs and problems) but also on the future state.

In other words, we often talk about how important is to help the buyer to visualise what will happen after the purchase – so how he, she or her company will benefit from the decision made.

 

The reason why in my training sessions, I dedicate space and time to this topic is clear: helping prospects and customers to visualise what happens after the purchase has positive effects on your commercial success.

But… why is visualising the future state so important?

The reason is emotional and lies in our brain, let me explain you why.

In order to do this, I suggest to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and perhaps to remember a recent time when you bought something you needed.

I bet that before the purchase you imagined yourself using the product/service you bought and focused on how you’ll have felt: by doing so, you made up a future image and anchored a positive feeling to it.

So, what happens to you as a consumer also happens to your prospects or customers, no matter how big or complex the purchase is.

In sales (whether B2C or B2B), helping prospects and customers focus on a future image allows them to visualise in advance how they’ll achieve certain goals they consider important.

At that moment, the prospect/customer will anchor the emotion of achieving a relevant outcome to that image and will experience the positive feeling associated with it.

This feeling will help you increase the effectiveness of your sale and put you ahead of your competitors who (almost certainly) didn’t focus on this other element of the commercial discovery.

 

Regarding how to do this, I’m sure it will be better to write something in the next weeks: the topic is broad so let’s avoid any risk of confusion.