The Anxiety Gap

The Anxiety Gap is the most important phenomenon in the sales process. If the anxiety gap is not bridged by the salesperson, any attempts at selling will simply make the gap between buyer and seller wider.

The Anxiety Gap may be defined as: the emotional distance between the prospect and the salesperson. This anxiety gap is present almost every time a prospect drives on the lot or walks in the showroom. Until this gap is bridged, attempts at selling are harmful, dangerous to the sale, and will result in prospects who leave without buying.

The Anxiety Gap is emotional. It is filled with doubt, distrust, fear, worry, hate, dislike, and all the other bad things that many buyers think about when shopping for a vehicle. This gap, being emotional, cannot be bridged with product knowledge, or selling techniques. Those things make the gap wider, because the gap is emotional.

the psychological aspect of anxiety

A common complaint to psychologists from patients is about anxiety. This psychological anxiety comes in three flavors: emotional, physical and mental.

Emotional: the emotional aspect of anxiety manifests itself in the painfully urgent emotion of fear. Fear, as in lack of trust; fear of being taken advantage of; fear of spending too much and getting too little; fear of making a mistake, fear of taking a risk, pick one, we see as many of them as do the psychologists.

Mental: the mental symptom of anxiety deals with the fact that the mind can only focus on the cause of the anxiety. There is a significant blocking of normal thought patterns and the normal thought process becomes almost impossible. (It is almost a psychologically impossibility for a prospect to decide to purchase a car when all they can focus on is resisting the efforts of the salesperson.)

Physical: the physical symptoms are nervousness, shortness of breath, increased heart rate, sweating and other unsettling feelings, many of which we notice every day in the business of selling cars.

The normal human reaction to emotional, mental and physical anxiety is……FLIGHT. But in the car business, we don’t refer to it as a psychological process, we just call it, “be backs.” And the national average is that 4 out of 5 leave without buying.

Friends of automotive psychology, that is not some flaky coincidence. It is not a fluke, it is not some phenomenon from outer space, and it is not psychological mish-mash.

The truth is, we are causing the flight of prospects from our lot and our showroom by the anxiety we create, in what we stubbornly refer to as “the selling process.” Dear friends in the automotive world, any selling process which turns off 80 per cent of prospects is wrong, and should be abolished immediately. (Repeat after me, change is good, change is good.)

Prospects already have too much anxiety in their lives. They do not need more anxiety when they want to buy a car.

Dealing With the Prospect’s Anxiety

To bridge the emotional gap, we must build trust. That trust must come FROM the prospect, and flow TO the salesperson.

Trust is a must, and it must be in the form of voluntary, sincere belief in the salesperson. That sort of trust must be earned the old fashioned way, one prospect at a time, with honesty, sincerity and integrity. Trust is not built by selling technique, product knowledge, or a tour of the dealership. Trust is built by honest, interested, sincere listening to the wants, needs and budget of the prospect.

To bridge the mental aspect of the prospect’s anxiety, we simply must focus on the focus of the prospect.

Psychologically speaking, the human mind can focus effectively on only one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is possible, but the level of effectiveness drops with each new task. One task, 100% focus; two tasks, 50% focus; three tasks, 33% effective focus. Attempting too many tasks will simply ruin effectiveness. And for those who are attempting ten or fifteen things at once, now you know why your level of effectiveness is not what it should be.

A prospect is focused on buying a car. It is the one task at which they can be effective, if they are allowed to focus on buying that car. What do we do? WE RUIN THEIR FOCUS. We try too hard to sell a car. When we try to sell, they try to keep from buying. Now they have two things to focus on, buying the car of their dreams, and resisting the salesperson’s selling techniques. One task = 100% effectiveness. Two tasks = 50% effectiveness.

What we have done by simply doing what we have been taught to do is to RUIN THE EFFECTIVE FOCUS OF THE BUYER. Simply by trying to sell before bridging the anxiety gap we have cut the success rate of the buyer in half.

So, how about we get our manager involved? Having done that, we now have three tasks for the prospect: buying a car; resisting the salesperson’s techniques; and resisting the manager’s techniques. It does not matter how well intended the manager and salesperson are, the effective focus of the prospect is now at about 30%. AND IT IS OUR FAULT.

If there is a husband and wife, a salesperson and a manager, and three vehicles under consideration, the effective focus is now down to about 15%, and friends, it is difficult, if not impossible to sell anything when you have 15% of the prospect’s focus.

How to solve the focus issue? Easy, forget about selling pressure and tactics, forget about getting a sale, forget about getting a second person involved, just find out what the prospect wants, needs and is willing to pay for - - then help them get it. Focus on the focus of the prospect.

Allow the prospect to focus on the car, and simply focus on the prospect’s focus. It is the focus of the prospect, not the focus of the salesperson which determines whether or not they are going to buy.

If the focus of the salesperson determined the sale, we would all be selling everyone in sight.

Please, pretty please, let them focus on what they want, need and will pay for. Focus on helping them get that, and the sale will take care of itself. If the dealership, manager and salesperson simply listened, understood and focused on the focus of the prospect, the sold ratio will go up, and the be-back ratio will go down. Listen, understand, focus.

John Brentlinger

Author of The Little Blue Book of Selling