Neuroselling: how neuroscience is reshaping our understanding of purchasing decisions
Russo and Gabrielli’s book challenges the linear view of purchasing decisions, showing how choices emerge from rapid, fragmented and often unconscious processes
In my last two contributions to this column, I’ve talked about a couple of books on sales and negotiation that I’ve read recently, linked by a common thread that I’d call ‘don’t confuse’. The first, by Blount’s *Objections*, which is based on not confusing an objection with a rejection; the second by Chris Voss on negotiation, centred on not confusing negotiation with pressure. Today I’m focusing on not confusing a decision with the explanation of that decision, drawing inspiration from Neuroselling, by the two Italian authors Vincenzo Russo and Giorgio Gabrielli (published by Hoepli)
The term ‘neuroselling’ tends (at least for me, though I know I’m not the only one) to elicit two opposing reactions. On the one hand, there is the idea of sales ‘enhanced’ by neuroscience, almost a more sophisticated version of traditional persuasion. On the other, the suspicion that it is a reinterpretation – fascinating though it may be, but ultimately somewhat superficial – which adds little in practice to already familiar concepts of sales communication.
For me, approaching psychological issues from a background and experience in economics and sociology, the book *Neuroselling* occupies a more measured position than either of these interpretations. The point is not to equip the salesperson with new tools of influence, but to put into perspective one of the most deeply ingrained assumptions in sales: that people make decisions through a linear, fully conscious process, and that commercial communication can guide them in an orderly manner from start to finish. It is clear that, particularly in certain methodological and procedural aspects, this perspective is especially useful and systematic. At the same time, however, according to the book’s simple yet significant core argument, decisions do not unfold in accordance with the rational narrative we often attribute to them. The explanation often comes later, as a coherent reconstruction of a process that took shape through faster, more fragmented and not always fully conscious stages.
This is the basis for the whole concept of neuroselling. Not as a set of techniques, but as an attempt to realign the language of sales with the actual workings of decision-making processes.
From this perspective, one of the aspects of the book that struck me most – if only because it deals with subjects I am somewhat familiar with – is the dialogue, at times implicit and at times explicit, with certain classic works in the fields of cognitive psychology and persuasion.
