The Psychology of Selling Art For Lunatics
What is the pschology of selling I hear you ask. We’ll get to that shortly but let’s start by getting a few things out there on the table. Gather round and empty your pockets boys!
Psychology has always been something of a mystery for most people. With it’s terminology and grandiloquent language it’s often masked from the
Will you make or break your next sale?
common man or woman and only revealed as sound bites when the media choose to unveil the latest gruesome details of some mass murderer from Idaho who has chosen to eat the family dog, cat, cow and several of the children for dinner. The truth is that with a little insight we can all understand and benefit from a little lay-man’s psychology and if you’re in the business of selling then I’d argue this is a must.
Whether you like it or not, there is always a major motivator at work when you sell a piece of art and you need to understand what that motivator is in order to sell your work online and build it into your sales and marketing plan; it’s called the pleasure principle. People are motivated to act in two ways; we move away from pain or towards pleasure. The pleasure principle is a psychoanalytic concept originated by Sigmund Freud and one which he argues motivates all of our actions. The pleasure principle states that people seek pleasure when they chose a specific course of action or do so to avoid pain, i.e. people seek to satisfy biological and psychological needs because they are programmed to do so. We have no choice in Freud’s world other than to act out our pre-programmed instincts. Get this right and it can mean the difference between making a sale and falling flat on your marketing behind.
When we sell, we tap into the desire to take our customer away from pain and towards pleasure. Art fulfils a need and desire for something valuable, beautiful and pleasurable in our lives and by creating exclusivity and future value in the investment we build in the promise of acquiring something others are unable to attain; an asset. We have a desire for gain and fear of loss, so we must incorporate this into the sales process in order that it will become consistently more successful.
But here’s the tough part. How do you get a buyer to come to the conclusion that life is not complete without purchasing your art? Learn to tap into desires and needs; think of your own desires and needs when you think about buying art or if you were going to buy a piece of artwork and how the desire is only satisfied with the purchase.
All art is a luxury item; which often strengthens the desire to purchase work. We are often led to believe that luxury items become less of a consideration when people consider their needs; luxury actually becomes more significant to a persons needs as it taps into the higher levels of the conscious and sub-conscious that we cannot actually connect to a need and yet the desire is a need and just as viable.
If you look at anything with a designer name on it then you expect to pay more. In fact, you would be suspicious if the item was cheap. You would wonder if it was a copy of the genuine article. But when people pay more they are paying not just for better quality but choosing to buy into a lifestyle they desire and the product suggests this lifestyle. They buy part of a dream; you are the conduit to the dream and you create it in the art and the art should hold the dream and the desire.
So, now you understand the psychology of selling art from self knowledge to pure pleasure!
