I hear all the time that if the customer were simply a, well-informed, and b, rational, a sale would be easy. Well, I'm here to tell you that these represent the two ways to make the sale, and both can be leveraged through effective marketing communication.
If your offering is indeed the smart choice for your customer, then by all means, help your customer get smarter. Educative sales, or consultative sales are effective in this vein, where your marketing communications are targeted toward speaking opportunities, bylines, blogs, and high-profile media relations efforts. This appeals to the educated, rational value buyer. Yer all rational buuyers have a streak of irrationality, so...
If your offer requires a change in impression, assumption, habit; or if you need to compete not on utility and value but on fashion and emotion (irrational) then by all means appeal to the emotions of the buyer - even in a business to business space - to drive out considerations on a strictly formal qualitative form. "Nobody ever got fired by buying IBM" isn't a commonly understood mantra because itt is rational, it is the result of the emotion of fear on the part of the buyer. Tap into fear, lust, comfort, or any of the other 14 or so emotional triggers and fill a need - albeit an emotional one.
Embrace the rational and irrational buying signals as opportunities, not barriers.
