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THIS WEEK
How To Help People Make Decisions
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
How to Help People Make Decisions
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The human brain is one of the world's last true mysteries. We think it should be easy to persuade people to make positive decisions about our product or service, but it is not as simple as it sounds.
When people make decisions, many factors go through their mind. There are logical questions such as is the price within their budget, does it have the features that they are looking for, have other people tried it and liked it and will the product or service do what they need it to do.
There are also emotional factors that have an impact, such as how the product will make them feel, will it increase their status in the eyes of their friends, if they "like" the colour or design or is it solving an emotional hunger or need?
There are brain-wiring factors such as the neural pathways that are laid down in each of us as we do something repeatedly. When we make a decision, the "decision" neural pathway is fired off – and we run through our pattern of making decisions, unless something happens to radically change our pathways. These are "whack on the side of the head" or "aha" moments where, as the result of some new information, you jump the neural tracks and lay down a new decision pathway.
 But how do we get inside people's brains? A number of neuroscientists and neuromarketers are currently studying brain activity patterns to try to work out how different decisions show up in brain activity.
Behaviouralists create elegant studies to work out, based on directly observable behaviour, how decisions are made.
NLP practitioners theorise that everyone prefers processing information visually, auditory, or kinaesthetically. While one preference is dominant in much the same way that we prefer our right or left hand, we still use the different preferences. When we make a decision, we may cycle through our unique combination of visual - auditory - kinaesthetic processes.
These combinations are as unique as our fingerprint, yet these decision pathways can be "mapped" and if a person is skilled enough, they can play back in real time that individual's decision process in order to get them to agree to do something else. (I have only met one person at that level of skill in all my decades of experience, and that person works in a clinical psychotherapy practice and not in sales).
If you want to improve the decisions that people make about your product or service, you need to:
- Provide logical reasons why people should buy.
- Provide emotional reasons why people should buy.
- Create the conditions for an "aha" moment to occur – to see your product in a new light.
- Apply neuromarketing techniques including using trigger words such as "free".
- Keep your message clear and consistent and tell people what you want them to do.
All of these will certainly increase sales of your product or service. But ... for all of this theorising and research, we are still unsure what causes one person to finally say yes and another to say no. And that is one of the great things about HR & marketing. We are constantly exploring what makes people tick.
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| HR Tip of the Week: Performance Reviews are Biased |
Performance reviews are, by their very nature, a biased process. One person gives their opinion of another - but this opinion is filtered through the person's inherent biases, what they value and their emotions at the time.
Yes, you need to be aware of your inherent bias. Yes, you need to take steps to reduce it by looking at directly observable behaviours and documentation and by allowing at least 24 hours gap between doing the rating and delivering it so you can check that you "feel" the same way. And yes, you can extend the reviewing pool so that more than one person rates each employee.
But to argue that your performance review process is a logical and bias free process is a fallacy akin to pigs flying.
So are they useless? No. Performance reviews are still a critical tool for managers and employees provided that they have an in depth discussion about the ratings and what behaviours and actions may have given rise to the results.
As long as you use the performance review tools as the basis for discussion, exploration and clarification they are invaluable. If you use them merely to deliver your side of the story they are demotivating and a waste of time. Work out what you want to achieve first and then use your tools to help you achieve it.
| Book of the Week: Predictably Irrational |
If ever you believe that the decisions you make are logical and rational, after reading Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dan Ariely you will start to question yourself. And that is the whole point of his book.
Dan is a behavioural economist that looks at the wonderfully quirky nature of our brain - and answers questions such as why you need to pay the right wages to get the right productivity, why people will willingly do some things for free; why honest people steal office supplies and why a more expensive painkiller works more effectively than a cheap one (even if they are the same product).
If you ever you wanted to improve the quality of your decision making, or just wanted to know why people do the things they do, this is a must read book.
Dan Ariely is a very engaging speaker and this video of his talk at TED highlights a number of his key concepts around the myth of rational decision making. Definitely worth taking the time to view.
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog included a video post about "What is Neuro-Marketing - Check out this Rap ".
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it.
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