Buying Patterns When you talk to people about something they bought, they will come up with very good reasons for buying it. Here is the little known secret as to what really drives buying decisions. The initial decision to buy a car or choose a car mechanic is completely sub conscious. And they will be habitual about it as well. They will get better at the post buy decision making process, but what actually led to the sale will pretty much be the same for a product or service. If you buy a car before, the way you chose it will be the same the next time. Or if you choose a Car mechanic to work on that car, it too will be choosing him the same way again. You can learn about the process that went into that decision. The algorythm exists, and if you pay attention to their language preference when they answer you can figure it out. So if you ask the woman "What is it about that car which led to you wanting to buy it?". If you notice the phrasing, you can tell its binary. You want that person to tap their own internal, without just mirroring you. So if she says "The car just spoke to me, and I felt we were made for each other.". She told you that the input which triggered her emotional kinesthetic response was auditory. If you asked the guy "What was it about that Car mechanic that got your business?", and he comes back with "I saw that he knew what he was doing and I trusted him". He just told you that the feeling of trust came from a visual stimulus. More often than not, people wont tell you why they really made a purchase decisions. And oftentimes they actually don't know it themselves. This is where eye cues come into play. If someone gives you their language style, and their eye movements are incongruent. You need to get multiple passes at it to nail it. So as an example, If someone said "That car spoke to me." and their eyes moved upwards. Which is the eye cue for visual process, you don't have a solid determiniation for their preference. You can ask a series of questions which may seem designed to ask for specifics. But in point of fact you are trying to calibrate for their preferred language. So back to the car example. You can say, "OK if you could think about the last car you bought". Once again your question is phrased in binary to avoid a mirror. Right before her answer her eyes pop up and to the right, and she replied "I liked the looks". OK Pretty easy to see the Visual language. And her eye cue was congruent with her statement. You follow up with "What was the second thing that made you want it?". And she quickly said "price", as her eyes moved down and to my left which showed me a Kinesthetic trigger. And a follow up question of "What cinched the decision for you?". And she said "The finance terms were good" and her eyes went up and to my right, which is of course a visual eye cue. With three questions you will be able to nail down which sense will trigger the emotional buying response. So your follow up could be something like, "Lets take a look at a car which will fit you like a glove and youll look great in". So in this statement you opened and closed with a visual stimulus and tied it to a kinesthetic sensation. So what is important to note. This formula is able to be used where buying a car is concerned. But this is just for a car. Their decision for choosing a mechanic to care for their new baby will be a totally different process. People will more often than not like to talk about their past. So its not too hard to get them to revisit specifics. So long as you are asking in such a way that they are tapping their own memory and not parroting back responses. When you are writing copy for broadcast ads. you do not have the luxury of calibrating to a particular persons preferred sense. So it is imperative that your copy be peppered with all three sensory inputs.

• published: 14 May 2014
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