Selling More by Gaining Trust

A study published by Wharton professor of operations and information management Maurice E. Schweitzer and PhD student Jennifer Dunn found most people are unaware of the irrelevant emotions that play a role in the business and social decisions they make.

The two researched the influence of emotions on trust in five separate experiments with randomly chosen participants who were given various written and oral exercises after being subjected to emotionally charged situations such as recalling personal experiences (i.e., an angry moment, a happy time, a sad time) and/or film clips with strong emotional appeal.

Of the three emotions considered in the first experiment, happiness, sadness, and anger, the pair found that when recalling a happy moment, the subject was more likely to trust an unfamiliar coworker than if they had just recalled a sad moment. And that an angry moment induced even more negative judgment than sadness did.

Pride and guilt had little effect on the subject’s ability to trust, according to the study, but those in a moment of gratitude were significantly more trusting than were participants in other conditions such as anger, guilt, pride.

How can a salesperson use this information to increase sales? By ensuring their client is in a good mood, of course.

“Good sales people tell jokes and funny stories; they bring little gifts,” Schweitzer reportedly said. “What they are trying to do is influence people’s emotional states.”

“In negotiation, we have always known that non-task communication — discussion that’s not directly relevant to the negotiation process — is important for closing a deal,” Schweitzer continued.

Schweitzer suggests focusing on positive, uplifting conversations and putting more thought into what types of stories and jokes to tell while also learning more about a client and their social background because it can influence the trust factor.

Although it’s unclear how long these feelings of trust can last, the researchers say that their study concludes “that you can shift people to think about happy things and make them — literally — happy.”

Additionally, the study pointed out that once the person is aware of how their irrelevant feelings might affect the outcome of their decision, they could control their response.