David Hoffeld > Quotes

“The peripheral route of influence refers to factors that are outside of the message itself, but still have considerable sway on how we make decisions. It includes essential elements of selling such as building rapport, compellingly presenting a product or service, and enhancing trust. This method of influence is made up of a series of mental reflexes, known as “heuristics.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“A meta-analysis that analyzed fifty years of research found that expertise is a primary component of trust.17 Cognitive psychologist R. Glen Hass maintains that when the brain recognizes that someone is an expert, it is far more likely to comply with that person’s suggestions.18”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“3 STEPS FOR APPLYING DISTINCT VALUE Step 1: Understand what matters to your buyers. Step 2: Identify something about your company, product, or service that competitors cannot match. Step 3: Convey steps 1 and 2 to buyers and ask for their buy-in to the value you have presented.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“CREDIBILITY STATEMENT EXERCISE Take a moment to think of one credibility statement you can incorporate into your sales approach. Make sure it clearly and convincingly communicates how you or your company is an expert in an area that will provide meaningful value to your potential customers. Once you create it, begin to use it when selling and you’ll see how the statement will increase buyer receptiveness.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“it’s crucial to make buyers feel the negative impact their issues are producing. The more pain potential customers associate with their issues, the more urgency there will be to solve them, which is where you can help. Ask buyers questions that guide them into disclosing the detrimental outcomes their problems are generating.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“When potential customers were agonizing between two choices, the salesperson would introduce another option that was similar but inferior to one of the selections. The buyers would quickly say that the new option was not right for them and then more often than not choose in favor of the one it was dominated by. Why? For the brain to discard the new option it would compare it to the one that it was most similar to. This win made the option seem like a safer choice than its alternative and, as a result, significantly increased the likelihood that it would be chosen overall.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“One cannot explain things to unfriendly people.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“To identify buyers’ problems, challenge the status quo with insights that compel your buyers to think about how they can improve themselves or their business.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“Positive emotional states can even raise your average sale price. That is what an experiment led by social psychologists Karen O’Quin and Joel Aronoff found when they had sellers joke, “I will throw in my pet frog,” when disclosing the price of a piece of art.9 The amusing quip disrupted the tension and injected buyers with positive emotions, which caused them to agree to a higher price for the art than those who had not heard the remark.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“When you utilize social proof successfully, you convey to potential customers that buying your product or service is the safe thing to do.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“To activate social proof, you can reference your past customers by using phrases such as “so many people . . . ,” “most businesses in your situation,” or by offering customers’ names or organizations.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“until you know what your message should contain, you cannot know which activities and behaviors you should use when selling because you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“It is helpful to think of trust and risk as opposite ends of a seesaw. When trust goes up, the perception of risk is reduced. When the estimation of risk is high, then trust is always lacking.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“After a problem has been found, you must now assist your buyer in acquiring an accurate awareness of its cause (why is it happening) and scope (who and what is being affected). Look at it from your potential customers’ perspective; until they fully know what their problems look like, they will not be able to know what a solution looks like.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“The peripheral route of influence refers to factors that are outside of the message itself, but still have considerable sway on how we make decisions. It includes essential elements of selling such as building rapport, compellingly presenting a product or service, and enhancing trust.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“BD = f (SW, ES) The sales equation states that a buying decision (BD) is a function (f) of the Six Whys® (SW) (which we’ll get to in a minute) and the buyer’s emotional state (ES). This means that if you are selling to a qualified buyer who has the financial means and authority to purchase your product or service, and you guide that buyer into committing to each of the Six Whys®, and the buyer has a positive emotional state (the collection of emotions he is experiencing at a given time), you will always be able to earn the deal. Here’s another way of saying this.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“The best way to answer and gain commitment to Why Change? is to help buyers fully understand the problems that make change a necessity.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“New”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“This innovation is a substantial breakthrough in the field of sales, because equipped with this knowledge you will be able to judge the effectiveness of any sales process by analyzing how it guides buyers through their mental journey and into a positive buying decision. This will eliminate the need to try out a sales process to see if it works. From now on you will know if it will help you sell more—prior to engaging in it—since you will have an objective, evidence-based standard to compare it to. But now it is time to learn how to sell via the central route by learning the mental steps that comprise a positive buying decision.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“Feature dumps: I dislike them and so do buyers, but without an ample grasp of the problems your buyers face you will fall into this inept selling practice. Feature dumping is when salespeople blindly list the various features and benefits of their product or service in the hope that one may pique their potential customer’s curiosity. This does more harm than good, because even if one feature or benefit does kindle interest, the salesperson has also given the buyer numerous other reasons why his product or service is not a good fit.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“For our brains to make a positive buying decision, we must commit to acting now. If we don’t, our brains will naturally procrastinate.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“The biggest surprise was that those who were neither introverts nor extraverts, but exactly in between—referred to as ambiverts—had the highest hourly revenue of $208.34!”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“Despite the tremendous contributions of information and communications technology, selling is still largely a function of interpersonal relations, which are guided by the artful ability to recognize motivations, needs, and perceptions.”6”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“A straightforward way to show buyers that you genuinely like them is to identify something about them that you sincerely appreciate. This could be anything from attire, business acumen, work performance, ideas, or character qualities. Once you have put your finger on something that you honestly admire, focus on it and then communicate it to that person. People can tell when you like them, and when they do they will instinctively respond in kind.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“research has proven that likability improves influence and the likelihood of the sale. But if it is the main method of influence you use, remember that it exerts a strong but temporary sway on your buyers. Once the memory of their interaction with you fades, so will their commitment to you, your company, and the product or service.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“Herein lies the power of heuristics; they are the rules of influence. Once you know what they are and you begin to sell in accordance with them, your ability to influence others will be enhanced. Why? Because you are behaving in ways that are aligned with how the brain constructs choices.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“the research revealed that in larger, sophisticated sales, buyers were more likely to vigorously contemplate each component of the decision, but the buying progression remained unchanged. This is because the internal decision-making process is derived solely from how the brain makes a purchasing choice, not the scope or intricacy of the sale.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“brain perceives influence in two different ways, the peripheral route (influencers outside of the message) and the central route (the influence of the message). These mental pathways are interconnected as they occur simultaneously, which scientists refer to as parallel processing.3”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“some of the most commonly taught sales ideas on topics such as prospecting, asking questions, presenting value, creating urgency, justifying cost, negotiating, and closing, all conflict with science. This is a serious concern, because science discloses reality. When salespeople sell against science they are inadvertently selling in ways that decrease their effectiveness.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

“The other important insight my research revealed was that the buyer’s decision to purchase is not made in response to the salesperson’s message after he has completed it, but rather throughout the salesperson’s message.”
― David Hoffeld, The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal