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Think Executives Are Purely Rational? Think Again

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

A large number of companies try to sell their product or service to high-level executives. A myth has long swirled around the topic of executive decision-making, and it stems from the broad and untested perception that executives are strictly rational thinkers—logical and analytical in their approach to business decisions. Why? Because they tell you that, and they believe it themselves.

What if these executives were unconsciously lying to you? What if they weren’t as rational thinking as we believed? This is the hypothesis of Corporate Visions’ most recent research study.

Corporate Visions paired with Dr. Zakary Tormala, a social psychologist with expertise in messaging and persuasion to reveal that intuitions and emotions have far more sway over the executive decision-making process than many salespeople realize.

Tormala and his team surveyed 113 executive participants from a wide array of industries, and uncovered some unexpected findings. Once of which being the idea that you can provide executives with the exact same “math” with respect to a business proposition, but get significantly different results depending on how you frame the situation.

The study tested the principle of loss aversion which states that people are more willing to make a change to avoid a loss rather than acquiring a gain. In other words, a ‘risky choice’ becomes ‘less risky’ depending on the way that the scenario is framed.

Join Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer for Corporate Visions and Sales for Life’s Jamie Shanks for a 30-minute webinar that will take a deeper dive into the science that explains executive decision-making and its impact on your sales success.

Date: Thursday, August 18th, 2016

Time: 2 PM EST

Duration: 30 minutes

Price: FREE

**Sign up even if you can’t attend – we will send you the recording!

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