How to Sell More Cars During a Pandemic, or Neurobiology at the Service of an Auto Marketer

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As part of the online conference CoMagic "MarTech.Auto: digital acceleration" Irina Khomutova shared advice for auto marketers: how to sell more during a pandemic, developing emotional intelligence and using behavioral marketing. Irina's lecture was so interesting, and the tools were applicable in almost all areas of business, that we simply could not help but share her report on our blog. Let's go!


Irina Khomutova, co-owner of HMS Brands and founder of the School of Marketing

A practicing marketer and business consultant, co-owner of the taiwanese telegram HMS Brands communications agency, founder of the School of Marketing and speaker at major conferences. For about 17 years, Irina has been working with brands from a variety of fields, such as FMG, medicine, retail, auto, etc. Her arsenal includes neurobiology, a science that studies the brain and human behavior.

COVID-hypochondria and economic instability - the fight for the buyer is getting tougher!
What impact has the pandemic had on us all? Of course, it has adjusted our mentality. The consumer has become different. This is also the psychological pressure associated with COVID hypochondria: we are afraid of people, public places, we shake hands less often and hug even less often. This is reflected in consumer behavior. The way we communicate with each other has changed, and especially how we deal with new people.


The economic situation has also seriously shaken a number of areas, especially those not included in the zone of essential needs. People are cutting their expenses. Even if they have money, they spend it more consciously, as they think about tomorrow, which does not promise to be stable. In this regard, the fight for the buyer becomes even more fierce and at the same time — interesting.

How to succeed in this fight?

Identify points of loss (or points of growth)
As an expert and auditor in a large number of different enterprises, from small regional to federal, I always see the same story: we are looking for money from outside. We invest huge resources - both mental and financial - in external marketing, which is certainly correct. But at the end point of sale, we often lose colossal amounts of money.

Everyone who comes to your showroom or contacts you online is already your client. And if after talking to the manager and viewing the car he simply leaves, this is the very point of loss. But it is also a point of growth for you.

When we start working on a customer journey map , we find not just holes, but huge opportunities to earn more on the flow of customers that already exists. Even in those companies where everything seems to be fine: all the necessary standards have been implemented, analytics are being conducted stably, etc. — we can increase conversion several times. After audits and implementation of our recommendations, we see sales growth from 10 to 30%.

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Communication Basics and Empathy Mapping
You constantly invest in training managers, implement more and more new sales scripts, but the situation does not change significantly and the conversion remains low? The whole point is that the manager, who does not know the basics of communication "person to person", gets lost in all the variety of presets that are given to him. As a result, in a crisis moment, when a client argues with him, he cannot object, and we lose the buyer. How to fix the situation?

Empathic mapping will help - creating customer avatars and working through their value system. As part of this work, the most frequent customer objections are analyzed. The questions are explored: what are they willing to pay for, what are they likely to refuse, in what case will they go to a competitor or change their mind about making a purchase at all.

It is important to understand: empathy mapping is the work of a marketer, while a manager receives ready-made solutions that he can apply in his work.

Based on our experience, a salesperson armed with basic knowledge in neuropsychology experiences a sales increase of at least 10% from the very next day of work. And all because he understood what actually happens during communication with a client.

The Trinity of the Brain and the Chemistry of Emotions
We have three basic decision-making lobes in our brains. They are autonomous, but together they give us the big picture.


The seller's main ally and communicator is the client's reptilian brain. This is the part of the brain that stimulates the production of neurotransmitters, biologically active substances that shape a person's state. These can be: tears, laughter, pleasure, hunger, enjoyment, sexual attraction, satisfaction from a purchase, hatred of an opponent, etc.


All the basic instincts are also located here - that which determines personality by 90%.

The midbrain is the limbic system. These are the areas of the brain responsible for sensations. These are vision, hearing, tactile sensations. By influencing these parts of the brain through managing a person's state, we can create a comfortable peace in him. We can also remove the client's pain from the upcoming expenditure of a significant amount. The midbrain together with the reptilian brain make up the primitive brain, which we will talk about a little later.

The last thing a salesperson should communicate with is the client's neocortex. The neocortex is the area of ​​the brain responsible for logical thinking. It is a "calculator" - what creates the main barriers and doubts, it is a counter. It is the neocortex that tells the client that the deal is unreasonable. It says: "Now is not the best time for such expenses." It says that you need to save, think, analyze, go to 5-6 more places and weigh everything. It suggests that the discount is not motivating enough and the salesperson is not interested enough. Therefore, it is better not to go into the area of ​​numbers and logic - there can always be competitors who offer something much more attractive.

What to teach sales managers?
Buying a car is not rational. It goes far beyond the wallet. As a rule, it is 80% emotions and 20% logic in decision making. It is a motivation that concerns the deep layers of our consciousness. The settings are very subtle, which, however, we can control.


Communication is an emotional story. How the manager feels, how prepared he is, what the atmosphere is like around the client - all directly affect whether there will be a deal or not.

1. Empathy and emotional intelligence
The number one task is to be able to read a person, the second task is to understand the structure of your product.

Empathy is the ability to "integrate" into the client, understand their motivation and, based on this, select arguments. Understand what a person is afraid of, wants, what their ultimate goal is, etc. Moreover, a person may not realize this and be deceived, but the manager needs to figure this out. It sounds scary, but in fact, this often fits into 10 basic scenarios of behavior, basic states and motivations of clients, on which a variety of developments are strung. To begin with, it is worth understanding the typical reactions and incentives that are inherent in almost everyone, regardless of the psychographic characteristics of the client and the cost of his purchase.

We are stereotypical creatures. Why do I love cognitive psychology? About 180 cognitive distortions explain almost all of our behavior. If you learn to recognize them and use them to your advantage, then life as a whole becomes understandable, simple and manageable. Manageable for yourself, others, family, colleagues and, of course, for clients.

Empathy is a fairly new story for Russian business, which is the basis of the emotional intelligence of employees and forms the emotional capital of the company as a whole. This is the developing area in which leading companies are now actively investing, aimed at effective and long-term communications with clients, moving away from scripts and banal, flat, artificial solutions. Communications are becoming more complex, the client is overloaded with spam and the same type of sentences, phrases, memorized forms, and the level of reaction and trust is decreasing catastrophically quickly. Therefore, now the emotional interaction "manager - client" comes to the forefront, the ability of a specialist to "integrate" into a person, to consider his emotions, values, barriers and adapt them to his behavior. You can practice this on everyone and every day - in any communication: be it communication with family, friends, colleagues and, of course, with clients.

2. More confidence
When a client contacts a manager, from the first second he reads about 150 elements that form his overall impression of your employee. A person can always be frightened or "under-impressed", and then his puzzled state will lead to a physical postponement of the purchase.

In the first split second, the client gets an impression: is the manager confident or not. The manager's confidence is his confidence in the product. If the manager is not qualified enough or is simply unwell, this immediately affects his sales for the day.

3. We remove the concept of “stingy client”
"A stingy client" is a client who has no money. This concept is not applicable to the car market. A person who comes into the showroom is already a real buyer who definitely has the opportunity to buy a car.

The decision to buy a car is not made spontaneously. It is not a curious, idle walk around the showrooms with the aim of having a good time. It is always a purposeful, conscious decision. Either the buyer has already read a lot, analyzed and has already come up with a specific decision. Or he is directly in the process of choosing now, but the decision to buy as such, as a rule, has already been made - there is a general understanding of one's own needs, preferences and conditional budget (the boundaries of which can change depending on motivation).

4. We reduce the client's pain threshold
It doesn't matter what stage of communication we are at now: at the beginning of the path or at the end. When a client makes a purchase, he experiences pain.

Neuroscientists have defined the structure of human spending as a process that can be characterized by a simple principle: "spend until it hurts." The restraining reason that stops a person from making a purchase is the anxiety that the buyer experiences when parting with money, and not the lack of funds and opportunities. With a reduced level of anxiety, a person is ready to spend without restrictions, otherwise, even with significant savings, he will deny himself everything. Why do shopaholics spend money so actively? For the simple reason that they can bear this expense easier.


The harder it is for a person who came to our salon to part with money, the more we must work with their fundamental motivation. Through communications, neuromarketing techniques and by working in the field of positive emotions, we can reduce this pain threshold and strengthen their desire to make a purchase from us.

5. Encourage purchase at the last point of contact
Depending on how the autonomic nervous system reacts to external circumstances, a person produces one or another neurotransmitter. Our main friends and helpers are the so-called "happiness hormones":

Serotonin - a feeling of happiness, wakefulness.
Dopamine - adaptation and satisfaction.
Endorphin - euphoria, reward.
Oxytocin - love, affection, trust.