When people are proud of themselves, it is often for their minds. Those complex calculating machines that sit on our shoulders and turn everything in life into decision trees.

Is this good? Is it right? Is it fair?

Will it be good and right and fair months from now? Years? Days? The decision machine, the mind, keeps analyzing the variables. Looking for the perfect answer…in an imperfect world. How absurd. How naive and self-defeating: looking for the perfect in an imperfect world.

The heart, at the other side of the spectrum, keeps pumping out passion. Like a child untainted by rules of the system, it reacts to what it sees as good in life and what it wants to embrace, without a single caveat: it is true, spontaneous and alive. Unchecked, unfettered and unplugged.

This is the titanic struggle in life, in business, in love. As business people, we must all beware of this. And we must wonder as we approach our prospects, our markets, what will prevail: the mind or the heart. Will people like your products or services and buy them or will their minds squash the deal with concerns on price and practicality. Do I really need this? Is this priced well? I already have black shoes, what right do I have to buy more? Is that good use of my money? Am I being a responsible person? What will others think?

The Mind, you see, has no heart and in the worst cases, zillions of cases, it holds the heart hostage. And the prospect will not buy. Will not indulge in its dreams and will succumb to the “what if’s.”

But there is a way to reverse this and empower the heart to prevail. To buy what the prospect sees and likes and wants even though the heartless calculator of the mind finds endless reasons why this is not good or right or fair. That is how to transition prospects from like to love. In cases where the prospect, the customer, falls in love with what you are selling and how you are selling it, the heart will take over and the sale will be made regardless of the million and one reasons the mind will invent to deprive the soul of the joy of the expensive, the impractical, the unacceptable, the inappropriate. Standing in front of a beautiful new car that is slightly out of your reach, ignites the mind/heart battle. If the design and packaging makes you fall in love, you will buy and find a way to keep it. And love it. And live your life your way, with a wonderful sense of abandon.

People divide into these camps: those who lead with the heart and the others who are paralyzed by the mind. As a businessperson, your mission is to melt the mind and light the heart. If you don’t, they will walk away empty-handed. A sure sign that they liked but never loved. And as in human relations, a sure sign that they are deprived of each other. The mind thought the desire to death and killed it. No one buys jewelry, Prada, iPhones, vacations to St. Barts with their minds. They buy with their hearts. Find a way to show them the love when there is no glamour-the rustic appeal of LL Bean boots, the quiet charm of most anything that carries the Martha Stewart brand-and you will make the critical transition from like to love.

From the mind to the heart. And in those cases where you can’t walk away, there are prospects of passion just across the street.

Mark Stevens
CEO

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Business, Management, Sales, Small Business, Unconventional Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.