Why Do People Stand In Line To Win Nothing?

That’s the question I asked myself last March. One of the top stories from every news outlet was the biggest lottery jackpot in history – $600+ million dollars. I agree it’s an incredibly large number but why would I or anyone else care? You don’t have to take my word for it – the lottery people will tell you that your chance of winning the PowerBall is 1 in 176,000,000.

Not going to happen.

One odds-maker framed it up nicely: “Imagine someone has laid down a strip of pennies along the 2,000 miles of highway from Los Angeles to Chicago, and put a secret “X” on just one of them. Take a road trip, stop randomly on the side of the road, and pick up a single penny. You are about as likely to find the “X” as you are to win the Mega Millions jackpot.”Like I said: Not going to happen.

But what really caught my attention was not the size of the jackpot but the long lines. Hundreds of people willing to wait in line at a convenience store, some traveling 70 miles to get there, and then wait for 4+ hours to potentially buy the golden ticket. Why not just wait in line for a chance to win a couple hundred million dollars if you could throw a baseball a half a mile or jump 20 feet in the air? It’s a waste of time. But these aren’t dumb people, I thought. I must be missing something. What are they really doing there?

Then it hit me.

They aren’t standing in line at a chance to win millions of dollars. They aren’t buying a worthless ticket. They are buying hope. For a buck and few hours of time, they purchased 3 or 4 days of playing the “what if” game – what if good things, really good things could happen to them? It’s a pretty damn good deal for a buck.

A lawyer from Lincoln, Nebraska captured it well when he described his reason for standing in line: “The Mega Millions ticket isn’t about the realistic opportunity to win. It’s the fact that for three days, the daydreaming time about what I would do if I won is great entertainment and, frankly, a very nice release from a normal day.”

So what’s the application to sales or to our ability to influence others? Well, it gives us a window into what we all really care about and what drives our decisions:

It boils down to emotions.

People make emotional decisions and support them with intellectual alibis. Facts (“There is no way in hell I will win this lottery”) don’t drive our decision’s – emotions do (“What if I won $600 million dollars!!!!”).

Several years ago I bought a brand new car, right off the lot. What were my intellectual alibis you ask? It was really safe – safest car on the road. That’s why I needed to increase my monthly auto budget by 40%! Because it had side airbags! The honest truth: I like the way I felt when I drove it. But “safety” is the story I tell to myself and others (which always elicits a few snickers) when I describe why I bought the car.

It also points out that emotional payoff is more important than logical payoff. Yes, people want a good deal. If I can get a lottery ticket for 80 cents, I’m in. But the discount is not why I am buying the ticket. What I am buying is far deeper than that.

You may be thinking. “I am a very logical person. I have a spreadsheet for everything.” Well, I’ve met many of you analytical types along the way. But at the end of the day after all the analysis is complete, I’d ask you this question, “Do you really make all your decisions based on what makes the most economic sense?”

That’s not the way people operate. If it were, we would all be driving the same car. And even if you do see yourself as always making the best possible financial decision, what’s the payoff you’re pursuing by loading your bank account? Most likely, it’s a FEELING: the FEELING of security. The financial return we seek allows us to purchase something else that meets an emotional need. And the emotional need doesn’t have to be for material gain or securing your future. Maybe you desire additional resources that can be leveraged to purchase the feeling of satisfaction and wellbeing that comes from helping others. Either way, unless we are starving, our greatest need is emotional.

The decisions we make are always deeper than the result of a cost-benefit analysis.

Think about your solution or your role as a manager. What are people really buying with their commissions? Are they buying hope? Are they buying identity? Are they buying peace? Are they buying joy? Are they buying time with their kids? Are they buying companionship? Security? They may even be buying revenge, by defeating a competitor –internally or externally. The financial payoff just affords the decision-maker the opportunity to buy what they really want. But how do you uncover this?

That’s the tricky part. You can’t ask the decision-maker: “Say Bob, you seem a little lonely and insecure. But if we implemented this solution and it went really well, don’t you think you would be really popular?”

The deeper emotional issues are only revealed by reading “between the lines.” Pay attention to what is not said, to the questions asked, to the why behind the need. Be a student of people. This isn’t a black and white world where all decisions are based on spreadsheets. Even if you are convinced that they are, I promise you the numbers that fill the cells of that spreadsheet come from an emotional decision. The reason that $1500 is in cell A4 is probably because they believed what someone told them about the long term cost of maintenance – which is an emotional decision.