A prospect's mind is an intimate place where something I call The Inner Score Keeping System dwells.

Simply put, it's a fundamental model that you can use as a metaphor to help explain the way prospects govern their inner decision-making.

It's true that a potential buyer will profile several things in the background while evaluating an offer. Many little decisions are made along the way that lead up to the BIG yes or no final decision.

Some of these are subconscious thoughts while other times one may even notice their own mind chatter. However, in any case, a decision process is in action.

In the situation where a prospect is evaluating a sales offer, here is an overview of events going on deep inside the prospect's mind.

While responding to the offer, the prospect instinctively invokes a scoring system, which helps in evaluating the offer.

We ALL have this judgment system inside of us that we respond with.

This Inner Score Keeping System occurs mostly behind the scenes as we don't focus on the inner process. Although it is transparent to us, it's still there.

It deals with the balancing scale of acceptance and rejection. When we buy, it assists us in weighing our decisions based on emotions and logic.

When positive emotions are triggered in a sales offer, they theoretically score acceptance points, which are intended to collectively add-up over rejection. Rejection points always lean toward discouraging the buy.

Thus, in this virtual score-keeping setting, points equal positive or negative measurements of emotions (or logic) in proportion to the sales offer. This inner-judgment that we invisibly process, determines the outcome of the offers we evaluate.

We, as the prospective buyer, keep calculating this inner score in the background. The sales copy attempts to win us over by scoring maximum acceptance points, provoking the action to buy.

You know when you get a gut feeling 'to buy or not to buy', this is our inner score keeping system I am talking about. It regulates our buying behaviors and helps us make buying decisions.

Thus, when a prospect interfaces with a sales letter offer, it instinctively prompts this decision making process. It all comes down to a final response to the offer.

Ultimately, the prospect will either accept the offer to buy... or reject the offer and leave.

Hence: The Inner Score Keeping System.

The overall message I am suggesting here is to learn to think like a buyer if you want to get on the other side of the sale... the selling side.

Of course we all have plenty of buying experience. But, since we do no not usually think about the process when we buy, we miss the boat on knowing what actually makes us buy.

In other words, when we buy, we are not considering all of the elements that add up to the final buying decision. We just buy or pass on the offer.

However, there is much to be learned from this and thinking like a buyer is by far the best way to unlock your prospect's mind to make the sale!

(c) Michael Nicholas, 2004