[FREE VIDEO LESSON] How the Brain Buys: Strategies to Find & Connect with Your REAL Buyer

Do you feel stuck with your brand building efforts? Do you struggle with attracting leads and converting them into paying clients? Is your struggle getting so bad that you are questioning if you have what it takes and thinking of giving up your dreams of making money doing what you love because you just need to live in the "real world"?

I've got great news with you. It isn't that you don't have the foundations of a great brand and marketing strategies. And it isn't that the techniques that you are using to figure this all are ineffective.

It's just that you have been given the HOW, without really understanding the WHY's behind your brand building and marketing efforts.

Most smart people try to sell their experience, methodologies and even tangible business results thinking that the rational logic is what closes the deal.

When in reality, those messages are not even getting close to the real buyer. In contrast to what you think, when you find your buyer, it is not simply about getting in front of person who has the authority to write a check for your services. It is about connecting your messages to the part of the brain of that person who actually makes the buying decisions (which has no ability to speak the language of those abstract concepts and idea.)

"The one single biggest irrationality in business decision-making comes back to the one underlying paradigm that is as common as it is incorrect – that the cognitive mind or the conscious mind determines what consumers do." Katharina Kuehn 

Let me explain.

THE TRIUNE HUMAN BRAIN

Back in the 1960’s, neuroscientist Paul MacClean developed a model of the brain that identifies three distinct parts or layers of the brain – the reptilian brain, the limbic system and the neocortex. While all three work together, they all have their specific functions and roles:

• The Neocortex or Rational Brain: Only humans and some primates have this brain and it is the most evolved part of the brain. It is responsible for logic, learning, language, conscious thoughts and our personalities.
• The Limbic or Emotional Brain: Only mammals have this brain and it is responsible for our emotions, moods, memory and hormones.
• The Reptile or Survival Brain: All living creates have this brain and controls our basic survival functions, such as hunger, breathing, flight-or-fight reactions and staying out of harm's way.

Most of us would like to think that we make buying decisions based on rational reasons, but it doesn’t work that way. Logic will take you only so far. Instead, it is essential create and implement a triune branding and marketing strategy that connects with the your ideal client’s TRIUNE brain.

THE TRIUNE VALUE PROPOSITION

When you create your brand and value proposition, make sure you hit all three parts of the brain. You do this by:

First, identify your ideal client as a person and their pain points. When you are able to create language that resonate with your client’s pain points, you are actually connecting to the reptile brain. You are showing that part of the brain that: a) you get them and its survival needs b) you can assuage its fear of loss and the unknown and c) recognize its need to avoid pain.

The two basic drivers of all behavior and decisions are: to seek pleasure and avoid pain. According to Kevin Hogan, Author of The Science of Influence, "Most people react to the fear of loss and the threat of pain in a much more profound way than they do for gain."

Second, articulate how you personally can solve their pain points and why they should trust you. You do have to include the rational brain in the decision-making process and you do this by sharing what you bring to the table that will logically address the pain points your ideal clients have.

Third, you close the deal not just with a list of typical results but the promised transformation that means something at a deep emotional level to the limbic brain. The real stuff the limbic brain cares about is desired emotions and the transformation of the unwanted feelings reflected in their pain points. This is where you bring in symbols, metaphors to explain how the solution will make your future clients FEEL when working with you and by virtue of working with you. If the sales process begins in the reptile brain and nurtured in the cognitive brain then the deal is closed in the limbic brain

TRIUNE MARKETING STRATEGIES

A triune marketing strategy has one key objective: Establish trust that you are someone that makes important promises that you can AND will deliver on. Here’s a few ideas to get you started: 

To reduce the initial “fight or flight” in the reptile brain:

• Make your website easy to navigate without any major errors (think of impact of a dirty bathroom in a restaurant and your brand perception.)
• Emphasize your understanding of your ideal client's pain points and needs.
• In your initial marketing materials, make benefits extremely tangible and avoid selling concepts such as “an integrated approach” or “comprehensive solution” until later in the sales process.
• Make ample use of social proof and testimonials.
• Write all marketing content in the 2nd person, directly to the person you are trying to help. Make what you do all about them and very little about you.

To engage cognitive brain:

• Make your expertise explicit and clear.
• Demonstrate how someone can access and leverage you and your expertise.
• Make it clear on what your solution offers.
• Establish your track record/expertise clear (specialized degrees, experience.)
• Offer white papers and articles on your website.

To close the deal with the limbic brain:

• Use your marketing efforts to create a relationship and establish “limbic resonance.”
• If you are a consultant, coach, counselor or advisor, name your business after yourself not to make your business about you, but to forge that connection.
• For the same reason, put a picture of yourself on the home page of your website.
• As much as you can, tell stories about yourself and why you are passionate about helping your ideal client.
• When you use stock images, select the ones that visually reflect transformation you are inviting people into.
• Your testimonials need to be less about how great you and more about the transformation your clients experience.
• Use storytelling in your case studies. Use them to help your clients FEEL what type of transformation they are about to engage in.

CONNECTING WITH YOUR CLIENTS...AS A WHOLE PERSON

If you have read this post to this point, I can tell you're in a unique position to recognize that when it comes to consulting, coaching and counseling, what we sell is not our knowledge or even our expertise. We sell ourselves and how we show up when serving our clients that is what creates the impact and positions us to be perceived as credible. The old adage is true, "people don't care what you know...until they know that you care." 

When you approach your brand building and marketing with this triune, whole brained perspective, you become a game changer. You complete shift how you see marketing from some dreaded activity as you have to get through in order to land the work to an act of service to your future clients that you just haven't met yet. You transform your sales process as having the goal of getting signature on the dotted line to creating a strategic and winning partnership. You completely change how you show up in the work because you recognize that when you encounter corporate politics and client resistance, it is not about you. It is about survival, reptile brains that are triggered and when you can see that, you can stay grounded and add dramatic value.

This perspective is a game changer when it comes to the level of differentiated results you can create...that your competition is probably not leveraging to the extent that you could.