Felix Cao is the founder of Happy Buying Brain where he combines a background in biological science, psychology, and 15+ years of marketing experience to deliver business transforming strategies that speak to the primal part of buyers’ brains.
In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Felix shares how we can sell directly into the primal brain and the benefits of doing so.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Felix on Linkedin
- HappyBuyingBrain.com
Transcript
Felix Cao:
The brain is actually described as a cognitive miser. So in other words, it really has three main roles. It’s for speed, energy efficiency, and for threat detection. He is a Harvard professor by the name of Gerald Zaltman. So he estimates and a lot of people have quoted to that up to 95% of our daily activities are actually… Operate below the level of consciousness, but our decision-making is highly influenced by your subconscious mind.
Will Barron:
Hello, Sales nation. I’m Will Barron, host of the Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. If you haven’t already, make sure to click subscribe, and on today’s episode, we have the legend is Felix Cao. He is the founder of Happybuyingbrain.com. That’s exactly what we’re getting into in this episode. We’re getting into the primal brain and how and why you need to target it with your messaging, your selling, your marketing, and your conversations if you’re going to get deals done during this current phase, this current time of economic upset and unrest that we’re all selling through.
Which Parts of the Brain Control Buying Emotions? · [01:08]
Will Barron:
Everything we talked about in this episode is available in the show notes over at salesman.org, and so with that, let’s jump right into it. What parts of the brain are involved as a whole in the buying process? And then we’ll narrow it down to the primal brain, specifically.
Felix Cao:
Yeah, absolutely. So when you look at the whole brain itself, it’s really split up to three parts. So there’s model that was introduced by Paul MacLean, which is a neuroscientist in the 1960s and he called it the triune brain. So he used the words tri as in three parts. So that’s how we explained the model. So the starting at the base of the model or the base of the brain right here is that you would have the reptilian brain, so that more like your physical brain. That’s more automatic, fast reflexive, and that’s definitely involved in the fight or flight response.
Felix Cao:
Then if you sent upwards from there, you have the midbrain which deals primarily with emotions and social situations. So those two components together would comprise of the primal brain, and then so what sits on top of that is the all familiar neurotech cortex, which is your logical brain. So when you look at the structures, those are the three main parts. But to simplify that, you got your reptilian brain, which is at the base or the brain stem, and then when you combine that with your midbrain, those two parts are what you’re considering when you’re talking about the primal brain.
The Human Brain and the Decision-Making Process · [02:32]
Will Barron:
As a human, I guess we’re kind of looking inwards at ourselves. We don’t think in three different stages typically or our consciousness doesn’t… It might be in three different stages, but our consciousness doesn’t perceive it as that. So how are these parts of the brain interacting with each other? Does it start at one end and flow to the other or do they get to negotiate? How does a decision get made?
“There is a lot of back and forth that goes on, but a lot of the decision-making actually happens at the primal level, and the reason why is because the brain is actually described as a cognitive miser. So in other words, it really has three main roles. It’s for speed, energy efficiency, and for threat detection.” – Felix Cao · [02:52]
Felix Cao:
Sure. So there is a lot of back and forth that goes on, but a lot of the decision-making actually happens at the primal level, and the reason why is because the brain is actually described as a cognitive miser. So in other words, it really has three main roles. It’s for speed, energy efficiency, and for threat detection. So the primal brain… So what ends up happening is the logical brain, even though it’s a small part of the brain, it consumes a huge amount of energy, and also, if every stimuli entered the logical part of the brain, which the neocortex, then it would totally shut down. It would just be overwhelmed.
Felix Cao:
So it needs to, in a sense, that the primal brain acts as a gatekeeper. So what it does is when it looks at, let’s say, a new stimuli entering in, its first task is to assess whether this new stimuli is going to increase the survival or the success in terms of the survival reproductive success of the individual. So, for example, if you come across, let’s say a new food source, the prime brain automatically kicks in and reevaluate say, “Is this something that’s going to help with our survival?”
Felix Cao:
Maybe if you meet a potential mate, that’s obviously going to add to your chance of reproductive success, and also it looks at potential threat at the same time. So if you’re walking down the street and you happen to see a line in the middle of the city, then it’s probably a good time to move away from that. So what ends up happening with that is… So when information actually flows in, it actually physically enters the primal brain because there’s a lot of pre-processing that happens.
“Let’s say that you walk outside and you see like a garden hose and then your heart starts to beat really, really fast. So, that’s the pre-processing part, but then when you actually step back for half a second and you actually identify that as only this a hose rather than a snake, then that delay in terms of the interaction shows you the flow of information that travels from the primal brain into the logical brain.” – Felix Cao · [04:35]
Felix Cao:
An example of that is let’s say that you walk outside and you see like a garden hose and then your heart starts to beat really, really fast. So before, that’s the pre-processing part, but then when you actually step back for half a second and you actually identify that as only this a hose rather than a snake, then that delay in terms of the interaction shows you the flow of the information from that travels from the primal brain into the logical brain. So a lot of people, especially in the marketing and sales world, what we see is a lot of marketing message at our target towards the logical part of the brain.
Felix Cao:
That’s actually the last part of the brain that receives the information. So just from the example with the hose, that was clearly shows that people have a visceral reaction first before the information enters a logical brain where they’re able to identify that as something that’s non-threatening and it’s really not a snake and just a garden hose. So that’s important in terms of constructing the core messaging and the use of visuals in terms like marketing materials and convincing yours customers to buy from your company versus your competitors.
Will Barron:
So we’ll drag it back to messaging and branding in a second because that’s where…
Felix Cao:
Sure.
The Power of the Subconscious Brain · [05:56]
Will Barron:
… The value of this episode probably lies for our audience and myself of sales people. But without going too far down into the rabbit hole of free will, of consciousness, of all this side of things, how much of our emotions and our automatic responses from the midbrain or triune brain is being held back from us by this filter or this as the kind of gatekeeper between our actions and our kind of neocortex and logical side of our brain? How much of the world are we just not seeing each day? And how much time are we spending each day just automatically plotting along and not actually being in as much control as what we think we are?
“In 2003, there’s a Harvard professor by the name of Gerald Zaltman, and he estimates and a lot of people have quoted too, that up to 95% of our daily activities actually operate below the level of consciousness, but our decision-making is highly influenced by our subconscious mind. So in a sense, we are working on an automated basis here.” – Felix Cao · [06:34]
Felix Cao:
It’s actually a huge amount. So there’s actually in 2003, there’s a Harvard professor by the name of Gerald Zaltman. So He estimates and a lot of people have quoted to that up to 95% of our daily activities are actually… Operate below the level of consciousness, but our decision- making is highly influenced by our subconscious mind. So in a sense, we are working on a automated basis here. So that’s the importance of the primal brain in terms of its influence on everybody’s daily activities and also on the consumers purchasing decisions as well.
Neuroscience and Ethical Marketing · [07:08]
Will Barron:
Again, a slightly off-topic question here, but does that scare you, Felix? Because that number makes me feel a little bit awkward and confused to think that 95% of the things that I’m doing each day, even if it’s as low level as brushing my teeth, I’m not actually in control of that when it happens and I’m only consciously in control of it, perhaps, midway through.
Felix Cao:
Right. You know what? That’s the thing with the neurosciences, neuromarketing, there’s always been talks about how do you incorporate the advantage of neuroscience within the boundaries of ethical marketing. Once again, neuromarketing is simply a tool, and with any tool, you could use it for good or you could use it in the other direction. So as long as, let’s say, businesses and sales people, they use it to actually enhance the lives of their consumers, and help them achieve a better version of themselves, and provide tonnes of value in terms of solving their pain points, and I think, that’s the direction that you want to be using in neuromarketing. Also, it’s a complex issue with a lot of different variables.
Felix Cao:
For example, you have the brands and they want to provide the best services and products to their consumers, and if they don’t use, let’s say, the knowledge that that comes from neuromarketing and neurosciences, now, are they doing a disservice to the consumers by providing inferior products or maybe eliminating the choice or the loss of freedom of choice in terms of creating variety of products that their consumers may want? From a consumer point of view, you have it from the point of view that they’re always looking for the best thing as well.
Felix Cao:
So you have that pairing, and then on a marketplace, how do businesses gain a competitive advantage within their industry? So you have all those different variables working together and something like this as a work in progress. So moving forward and as we continue going forward, is that it’s more important to find the common ground between the interests of, let’s say, the brands and the consumers in the marketplace all in relation to issues that involve transparency, privacy, and ethics.
Felix Cao:
But once again, it always ties back to what’s the mission of the business. So if that’s their mission to truly help make people’s lives better, then neuromarketing is certainly something that’s very powerful to enable companies to do that.
How Brands Seduce the Buyer’s Mind Using Subconscious Influencing · [09:40]
Will Barron:
Cool. Right. So I want to get into how we can leverage this, practical ways we can implement it in a second, but one final layer before we get to that. How much of this is perceived as in we see a number on a screen that ends in a 9, or a 7, or a 5 rather than a whole number, how much of it is perceived and then acted on, which clearly that is psychology works with pricing? But if we logically thought about it, we’d know that it’s only $1, $2 different. How much of all this is perceived versus actually has to be real? If that makes sense.
“Every form of marketing is actually a form of subconscious influencing.” – Felix Cao · [10:16]
Felix Cao:
Yeah. So that makes sense. So here’s the thing. It’s that every form of marketing is actually a form of subconscious influencing. Let me give example as you mentioned, so priming. So priming is us being exposed to a stimulus, right? So such as a word or an image that will influence how somebody responds to identical or similar stimulus in the future. So once again, through all the repetitions or what we call it neuromarketing, the mirror exposure effects so the more times that someone sees it, then they’re more likely to draw an association with that concept or that brand in terms of solving a particular problem.
Felix Cao:
So even though they would happen to come across that, let’s say something that’s symbolic of that brand today, something later on like environmental key would actually trigger it in the future, and that’s something that would increase the chances of them taking action to make the purchase, for example, or take the desired call to action. So I think in terms of perception and what’s real, I think they’re not two separate entities and you can’t really bucket the two. They’re more tied into each other because there’s a lot of mechanisms that actually cross-reference in terms of how the entire kind of ecosystem works.
Leveraging the Primal Brain’s Six Primitive Instincts to Help the Buyer Make Quicker Decisions · [11:28]
Will Barron:
Okay. So how do we start to use this then? So you mentioned priming and you mentioned messaging earlier on for individual salespeople. We can come into marketers, and sales leaders, and leadership in a second, but individual salespeople, is there anything that they should be doing to implement some of this neural marketing to get their potential customers to make decisions quicker or to better educate them on a decision, perhaps?
Felix Cao:
Sounds good. Yeah, absolutely. So let’s look at the primal brain right now. So the primal brain, the role of it is to ensure the survival and reproductive success of the individual, right? So the primal brain is actually guided by six main primitive instincts. So that’s survival, reproduction, safety, security, sustenance, and status. So there’s certain factors that help a individual actually fulfil those primitive instincts, and those could conclude the role that emotions play in the decision-making process, environmental cues, rewards, and a really strong one is actually the rich neural networks of association of thoughts, impressions, ideas, memories that are actually are related to a brand.
Felix Cao:
All of this actually happens so quick that the conscious mind doesn’t become aware of it, and what that leads to what we call cognitive biases, which are just logical or systematic errors in logical thinking and heuristics, which are mental shortcuts in decision-making. So with the salesperson, if they know these are the subconscious drivers, which are rooted or hardwired into those six primitive instincts, they could start to now prioritise which ones are the most important ones that I should focus on. So let’s say today, out of the six three of them would be probably the top, which is survival, security, and safety, because right now, if you look at status, it’s probably not very high up there.
Felix Cao:
Reproduction, it could be but compared to the other ones. It’s probably… It doesn’t rank as a priority. Sustenance, generally, people still have access to food and stuff like that. So that’s probably something that ranks below that. So if you could focus on those three, now, you could actually craft your marketing stimuli to actually fulfil those primitive instincts. So right now, because there’s a lot of imbalances in terms of security, and safety, and survival, their emotional state is really… Or the primal brain is really in a hyperactive state right now.
“A lot of people are experiencing high levels of anxiety, fear, scarcity, loss of control. And so the way to look at it as a salesperson is that you’re a brand, so now, your job is to come in there, find the proper marketing stimuli in order to bring your consumers from that heightened primal anxious state of mind and bring them back to pretty much a calmer and certain emotional state.” – Felix Cao · [14:02]
Felix Cao:
So that means that a lot of people are experiencing high levels of anxiety, fear, scarcity as well, loss of control, and so the way to look at it as a salesperson is that you’re a brand and a brand’s a verb or an emotional state, so now, your job is to come in there, find the proper marketing stimuli in order to bring them or your consumers from that heightened primal anxious state of mind and bring them back to pretty much a more calmer and certain emotional state.
“What the primal brain’s really receptive to is in terms of the way that it wants information presented to it. There’s seven ways that have been found very effective, which are presenting your information in a novel way, in a visual way, in a safe way, in a simple way, fast way, tangible way, and from a high-status position.” – Felix Cao · [14:40]
Felix Cao:
So some of the ways that you could do that is what the primal brain’s really receptive of is in terms of the way that I want information presented to it, there’s seven ways that have been found very effective, which is presenting your information in a novel way, in a visual way, in a safe way, in a simple way, fast way, tangible way, and from a high status position. So that’s almost like you’re key, so to speak, to get through to the gatekeeper if you want to put it that way.
Felix Cao:
So I’ll give you an example. So let’s say you’re a toy company or, say, you’re a salesman, and you own, let’s say, your own toy company, but you’re a one-person company. So right now, number one priority, everybody would agree with this. It would be safety. So to present your toy, for example, one way to be is to include, let’s say, hand sanitizer so that when your consumers receive it, then they don’t have to worry about how many people have touched along the way from the factory to get to your house, for example. So you want to definitely check mark that box off.
Felix Cao:
One of the big things right now is resilience because relationship are getting tested in this new type of environment. So now, how do you build your relationship, let’s say, with your children? So this is an innovative approach that toy companies could take by maybe branding their toy as something, maybe like a Lego type of idea where now the mother or father can now use that time to spend with their kids and, and have playtime together in order to establish that relationship. So those are some ways in terms of how to fulfil and enhance those primitive instincts in order to restore that balance back in people’s lives, but it’s certainly missing right now.
Will Barron:
So our audience is a B2B sales audience. So let me give you an example of something that I have in the highlights of our conversation so far, Felix. Doing a terrible job of and then you can hopefully give us…
Felix Cao:
Oh, you’re doing an excellent job.
Will Barron:
… You can give us a few pointers on this particular example. So we have pivoted some of our messaging over at salesman.org, which is a sales training platform to not just talk about you can increase your chances of reaching high levels of commission, but also if you can… We’ve got this calculation on the platform that tells you how good you are at sales essentially are broken down with all the marketing gobbledygook removed from it. So if you can increase that number over time, especially if you’re working from home right now and perhaps your market isn’t buying, if you can increase that number of time, you can then report that back to your boss and say, “Hey, look, I’m still trying. I’m still training. I’m not just sat here on my house doing nothing at home.”
Will Barron:
And so that is an element of increasing your job security because, clearly, the sales manager is going to… If he has to let two people go from the team, he’s going to let the people go who haven’t done any work, made no sales, and done nothing over the last three to six weeks, whatever it is. Now, we’ve done this and tried to communicate this by putting bullet points on a screen. As we’re discussing this neuromarketing, Felix, it seems like that’s more of a logical way of describing it rather than tapping into the primal side of the brain.
How Salespeople Can Leverage Neuromarketing to Target the Primal Side of the Buyer’s Brain and Better Communicate to Potential Customers · [17:48]
Will Barron:
So for someone who’s, perhaps, in our position who’s slightly shifting their marketing messaging or their sales messaging at the moment, how could we better communicate that with our potential customers, the audience ever listening right now? How can we better communicate that with them to target the primal side of the brain?
Felix Cao:
Sure. So right now, are you using visuals or is this just bullet points with words?
Will Barron:
It’s literally just a bullet point in a list on a few pages and include on their own page.
“The primal brain doesn’t do a good job in terms of processing abstract concepts. So words are actually an abstract concept, and that’s something that the logical brain does very, very well. The primal brain actually responds primarily to visuals. So once again, as we mentioned at the very beginning, that’s why you want your marketing or your core messaging to have a lot of visuals in there because that’s actually one of the ways that the primal brain responds.” – Felix Cao · [18:16]
Felix Cao:
The primal brain, it doesn’t do a good job in terms of processing abstract concepts. So words is actually an abstract concept, and that’s something that the logical brain does very, very well. The primal brain actually responds primarily to visuals. So once again, as we mentioned at the very beginning, that’s why you want your marketing or your core messaging to have a lot of visuals in there because that’s actually one of the ways that the primal brain responds.
“In terms of how fast the primal brain could process, let’s say, visuals, versus words, for example, it’s up to 60,000 times faster.” – Felix Cao · [18:44]
Felix Cao:
In fact, in terms of how fast the primal a brain could process, let’s say, visuals, versus words, for example, it’s up to 60,000 times faster. So that’s why when you look at it, you want it to be as easy as possible for the primal brain to understand what’s going on because throughout evolution, we’ve always been conditioned to understand concepts in the world around us in terms of visuals. So that’s why just changing just the format instead of bullet points into more visuals that are emotionally engaging, and by tangible, you probably want to add a tangible aspect of it, which means to in engage the five main senses in the visual.
Felix Cao:
That way, because the brain at the very base of the primal brain, it’s a physical brain. So physical as in touch, right? So that’s why tangibility matters a lot to it. So pictures that would want someone to physically engage with that process would definitely be helpful in terms of influencing the primal brain to take action.
Why Salespeople Need to Use Tangible Images to Target the Primal Brain During Sales Presentations · [19:57]
Will Barron:
How… Because this reminds me now of presentations, most presentations are crappy bulleted lists and then an occasional big stock image of some woman in a dress running across a field, which means nothing, right? So should we be doing the same thing in our sales presentations as well as just kind of more formal marketing?
Felix Cao:
Well, that’s a good question. Generally, what ends up happening if you present too much information, then you go or have something called cognitive overload. So the opposite of that is actually the processing fluency. So that’s just the degree at which something, a concept, is easy to grasp and understand. So with that in mind when creating presentations, you definitely want to keep that probably as a top priority. That way, you would keep the attention of the audience because it’s very easy for the audience to look somewhere else, and everybody has a phone nowadays, so you could check your phone.
Felix Cao:
So having an image and even having as few words because the audience tends to read a lot of words and they could read a lot faster than the presenter can speak, and now, you’re going to have a disconnect between the information that the presenter wants to share versus the slide in terms of how it’s conveying the information.
How to Effectively Use Words to Trigger Primal Senses · [21:20]
Will Barron:
How does this then finally try… Because, again, kind of going down the funnel here of marketing to a sales presentation then, perhaps, to conversations, can we use this via language as opposed to being a visual or more visceral? Can you pull on the same primal influencing points with your words or are words just totally abstract and missed by this field all together?
Felix Cao:
Absolutely. So it does respond to anything that it perceives as a threat, for example. So let’s say that you want to increase your click-through rates, for example, and you want to rank higher, let’s say on your search engine results page, one of the ways that you could do that in your title, in your meta description is use words such as avoid, or protect, or danger, for example. Those words will trigger the primal brain to pay more closer attention to those words, because now, it’s actually a potential threat to it even though it’s words on the screen, but that’s how the primal brain would perceive it because it doesn’t really know what’s real or what’s not real, right? But it does understand the concept of staying safe.
Will Barron:
We’ll do that for this episode, Felix. The title of this episode will be Danger! and then the title of the show. The episodes typically get between 13, 50,000 downloads, but depending on the week and what’s going on, on the audio side of things, they’re relatively similar. There’s not too much of a gap between them. So I’ll see if that makes a difference, I guess.
Felix Cao:
Yeah. Give it a try because when we look at it, it’s always like biohazard, and if look at all the symbols, they’re put in a way where it immediately lets the person know to stay away from this. So it’s this better way to use language to trigger those primal senses.
The Effects of Neuromarketing in Buyer Behavior · [23:28]
Will Barron:
I guess if we did this every episode, people would realise that, logically then, it’s not legitimate. So is there a risk to using your neuromarketing and, I guess, neuro selling, if that’s a term as well, that we can almost become The Boy Who Cried Wolf of constantly bombarding the primal side of the brain and then it becomes numb to us.
Felix Cao:
Well, that’s the thing with the introduction of novelty. So that’s where the creative side comes into play. So an example of the… So the Energizer Bunny. So the Energizer Bunny, which the huge battery company. I think every buddy knows them. So Energizer, the battery company. That bunny or that pink bunny has been around for 30 years. So they were wanting to keep it still fresh and innovative. So how do you do that when a concept has been around for 30 years, right?
Felix Cao:
That’s a really, really difficult thing to do especially when the same… All it does is just beat to a drum in the commercial. So how do you keep people now captivated during that time? So what they’re able to do is, now, they have the saying of it keeps going, and going, and going. So during that commercial, what it does is actually it actually pauses very briefly, and then the bunny returns to face the camera and he goes the longer lasting batteries with the help of carrots, and that’s when the bunny is actually holding a carrot and is using that to bang on the drum.
“Things that are novel, surprising, and spark curiosity actually trigger the release of dopamine in the brain and it keeps people’s attention.” – Felix Cao · [24:58]
Felix Cao:
So that was something that was novel and unique, and things that are novel, surprising, and spark curiosity, it actually triggers the release of dopamine in the brain and it keeps people attention during that time as well. So that’s a good example of how you could have this old concept, but still be very innovative in terms of creating a lot of novel aspects to in order to grab and keep the attention of the audience.
Examples of Novel and Interesting Buyer-Seller Communication Techniques · [25:22]
Will Barron:
What would be an example for an individual salesperson to do that? Because I know the opposite of that is what I get every day, which is, “Hey, Will, just checking in to see if you’re ready to do the deal.” There’s nothing novel or interesting about that whatsoever. So if that’s on one end of the scale, what could be, perhaps, an example of… Even if we have to brainstorm it now, but what would be, perhaps, an example of a real novel way of reaching out and communicating with a potential buyer?
Felix Cao:
Well, right now, we’re kind of in a novel state of being right now in terms of our health and economic crisis. So I think one of the main transitions going to happen is that as… In marketing and sales, you’re seen, as I said, their trusted advisor, but now, whenever there’s a kind of like a low point here, people are going to look for more reasons to want to trust you. So there’s going to have to be a transition from even to trusted advisor to maybe even to like a trusted friend in order to move that process along a lot quicker or more efficiently, so to speak.
Felix Cao:
In that respect, so now, you have to show yourself as a friend and you have to talk to them as though how would a friend talk to another friend in terms of checking up rather than the relationship of how does say a salesperson talk to their consumer. So it’s just a kind of like a shift in thinking, kind of seeing things from a different angle simply because of the new reality we’re living in and how everybody wants to be safe and not make decisions where they’re going to regret or feel any sense of shame and so forth.
Parting Thoughts · [26:58]
Will Barron:
That makes total sense. Well, with that, Felix, we’ll wrap up AMA. Tell us where we can find that more about you and everything that you’re up to.
Felix Cao:
Yeah, absolutely. So there’s three ways to get in touch with me. The first one is I’m active on LinkedIn so if you search for Felix Cao in the search box, I’m more than happy to connect with people on there. The second way is you could contact me directly through email at felix@happybuyingbrain.com, and then the third way is you can check out my website, happybuyingbrain.com. I have a blog there as well so feel free to subscribe, and learn and keep up to date on the newest happenings in the neuromarketing world, and also, if you get to send a message through the contact form and I’ll be more than happy to reply to you as well.
Will Barron:
Great stuff. Well, I’ll link to all that in the show note to this episode over at salesman.org, and with that, Felix, I want to thank you for your time, your insights on this, which really fascinated me. I appreciate it, and for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.
Felix Cao:
Thank you, Will. This is awesome. Thank you so much. It was a delight to be on here. I appreciate it.
