The Sixth Sense: The One That Actually Closes
There are five senses in the room.
The sixth one closes.
Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Most sales training stops there. The reps who consistently win have figured out how to reach something deeper. Call it the heart. It's the only sense that makes a buyer come back.
You've walked into a restaurant where the food was mediocre and gone back anyway. You've stayed loyal to a brand that isn't objectively the cheapest or the fastest. You've bought something you didn't strictly need because the experience of buying it felt good. None of that is irrational. It's the sixth sense at work, the emotional layer of every purchase decision that logic alone doesn't explain and data alone can't predict.
In sales, most training focuses on the first five. How does the product look in a demo? How does the pitch sound? What tactile experience does the collateral create? These things matter and the reps who build lasting books of business have figured out how to get to the sixth. They understand that a buyer's emotional experience of a sales conversation, how it made them feel, whether they felt heard, whether they laughed, whether they left the meeting feeling better than when they walked in, is often the deciding variable.
Disney understood this before most companies had a sales playbook. Every employee is a cast member. Every guest interaction is part of a show. The goal isn't a transaction. It's an experience so emotionally resonant that guests pay to repeat it. The mechanism isn't magic. It's intentionally designed around how people feel at every touchpoint, from the parking lot to the parade to the goodbye at the gate. That same intentionality is available to any sales professional willing to apply it.
Chick-fil-A does it with consistency and warmth. Southwest Airlines does it with humor, turning the discomfort of air travel into something people actually look forward to. Brands that market to the heart don't just earn customers. They earn advocates. People who tell the story for you, unprompted, because the emotional experience was worth sharing. That's a different outcome than a satisfied buyer, and it starts with a sales rep who understands that the feeling is the product.
"The sixth sense is the heart. That's where true salespeople understand the real sale is made."
You don't need a theme park budget or a fast food empire to apply this. You need one thing: the intention to make your buyer feel something worth remembering. A moment of genuine humor. A question that shows you were actually listening. A follow-up that arrives before they expected it. Small moves. Big emotional residue. That's how the sixth sense works in a sales conversation.
Three things worth thinking about:
How does a buyer feel after a conversation with you?
Not what they think. What they feel. Energized, heard, understood, lighter than before? Or processed, pitched at, and slightly relieved it's over? The emotional aftertaste of a sales meeting is what drives the next call. Most reps optimize for what they say. The best ones optimize for what their buyer feels when they hang up.
What emotional experience does your brand create at every touchpoint?
It's not just the pitch meeting. It's the email before it. The follow-up after. The proposal design. The voicemail tone. Every touchpoint sends an emotional signal. Brands like Disney and Southwest have mapped all of them intentionally. Most sales reps haven't thought about a single one. Start with the touchpoint you control most and ask: what do I want this person to feel?
When did you last make a buyer laugh?
Humor is underrated as a sales tool. Not forced humor, not a rehearsed opener, but a genuine moment of lightness that signals: I'm a real person and this doesn't have to be stiff. Laughter releases tension, builds rapport faster than almost any other mechanism, and creates a memory anchor. If you can't remember the last time a buyer laughed in a conversation with you, that's worth paying attention to.
The five senses get a buyer to the table. The sixth one keeps them there. Market to all of them, but never forget which one actually makes the decision.
This idea came up in a conversation with Jason Mages of Vital Signs Media on The Traveling Saleslady podcast. Give it a listen.
𝙅𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙮 𝙊𝙣,
♛𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀𝗹𝗮𝗱𝘆♛
