Katherine Peil and Scott Syverson, author of Sales Psychology 101, have worked together for the last twenty years to not only bring this new science to scientists in many, many fields studying various forms of human behavior and development, but also to commerce and politics. Peil is the research scientist and her model is called the Emotional Feedback System (EFS). Syverson’s role is that of an application engineer -to take the raw science and convert it to useful and practical applications. His model, Paradaptive Intelligence, contains the EFS model in its entirety and adds an additional brain subsystem not initially contemplated in Peil’s EFS model to present a more rounded and useful model for commerce and politics. This partnership, Peil and Syverson, research and application, has matured into the model of brain functionality being presented in Sales Psychology 101: Paradaptive Intelligence ~ The Grand Unifying Theory of Adaptation, Consumer Behavior and Sales. The reason this is a grand unifying theory is because through the models of EFS and Paradaptive Intelligence it was discovered that decision making of any sort from consumer behavior, sales, what clothes to wear, or how to build a space shuttle all use the same mental mechanisms in the same way. This has created a common architecture and mechanism to understand all human decision making and the process of implementing those goals, motivations and decisions.

What do emotions have to do with sales? Everything, as any practicing salesperson will tell you. But where confusion about emotions in the sales cycle has reigned, Sales Psychology 101 now brings clarity.

How? By presenting a new model of human adaptational behavior call Paradaptive Intelligence. Paradaptive Intelligence models six sub-systems that organize the primary function of the brain and work collectively to control every human action. Every decision a human makes is an adaptive behavior. Not only does the Paradaptive Intelligence Network implement decisions, it also regulates behavior to ensure that the goals and motivations conjured up by the brain reach the highest level of implementation possible. It uses emotions in both the self-development and regulatory phases of adaptation. The self-development phase is a series of unique and specifically sequenced emotions that ensures motivation and goals are pursued and it delivers internal measures of joy as humans complete each emotion in the sequence.

Humans have two types of these self-development adaptational behaviors – pursuing adaptation singularly or collectively through relationships. These sequences that control both relationships and adaptation are called emotional algorithms because at a deeper level, emotions have an arithmetic language and base. The second function of emotions is regulatory. In this mode, the brain speaks to the other subsystems of the brain in the language of emotions to let it know when our actions are off course from achieving a motivation or goal. Not only will our brains tell us through regulatory emotions that we are off course, they will tell us how to get back on course.

The practical effect of this new science is that Sales Psychology 101 provides a road map for how every sale will occur. This road map allows you to work within the foundation, principles, and constructs of the human mind and not fight it as most classical sales training methods wrongly instruct professionals to do. This dynamic of fighting nature’s basic human programming in sales has occurred for many reasons. The most significant has been the two pronged approach seen in the some 1,600 books published each year on the topic of sales. One approach has been the scientific method to statistically analyze human behaviors. This method of scientific inquiry occurs when causality is not known which then makes the objective to catalog and categorize. The second prong of publishing in sales has been to publish “mimic me” books. These are generally written by really good salespeople who are fantastic at selling in a particular industry and try to teach others by showing them what they do that has lead to their success. The goal of this type of book is in pursuit of the hope that you will find something to copy in the author’s actions or advice that will be useful in your sales efforts. In neither approach can the causality of the behaviors be described. And this is what makes Sales Psychology 101 so ground breaking. Sales Psychology 101 will provide the reader the ability to understand and adapt to every emotional turn that your prospects take.

But Sales Psychology 101 isn’t just for salespeople. It is required reading for every manager from C-level on down that makes decisions that impact the sales cycle, directly or indirectly. The most critical and the most basic business activity is a transaction between your company and the client’s. There is nothing more important. Yet until now, there was nothing to guide business policy makers in how to maximize successful transactions based on good science. Sales Psychology 101 is able to refute and turn aside the voodoo and partially formed concepts that convinced CEOs on down that the sales function is invulnerable to disruptive or deleterious management from on high and all that is needed is the proper incentive. In addition to laying out the application of the Paradaptive Intelligence model to sales management, Sales Psychology 101 also explores the science behind illegitimate persuasion and how conmen use the mind against a mark.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Syverson holds a B.A. in Business Administration with a major in Marketing from Eastern Washington University, and an M.B.A. from Washington State University. His career has vacillated between the computer industry in the 80’s to wholesale foods and goods, private sector marketing to government sector marketing in such activities of product management, new product development, sales, key account management, and marketing manager for Fortune 500 firms to start-ups.