7 Science-Backed Ways to Be a More Memorable Seller

Buyers rarely choose a solution in the room with you. They compare options, revisit the problem later, and explain the decision to other stakeholders.

If you want buyers to choose your solution, they need to remember it. Most sellers assume the key points about their solution will stick if the conversation goes well. But buyers are busy and may not be paying close attention throughout the meeting, especially in a digital setting.

So how do you make sure your solution is the one your buyers recall when their decision takes shape?

Make Your Message Stick Beyond the Conversation

Memory fuels decisions. Buyers revisit the conversation later, often without you there to explain it. If they don’t remember why your solution matters, they can’t carry that message into the next stage of the decision, repeat it to other stakeholders, or ultimately keep your solution in consideration.

The seven tips below show you how to make your message easier for your buyers to remember.

1. Decide What Your Buyers Should Remember

Neuroscience research shows that after 48 hours, buyers forget about 90 percent of what you communicate. The fragments they retain can have little to do with the decision you want them to make.

To keep the right idea from getting lost, focus on the core message you want your buyers to remember. You can do this by building a 10% message—a short, action-oriented statement that captures the takeaway you want buyers to remember and act on. Use it to ground the conversation in one clear idea, supported by three or four points that connect your solution to a business outcome buyers care about.

With a strong 10% message, sellers can explain the main points of their solution, why it matters, and what should happen next. It should be simple enough for buyers to repeat accurately and connect to the business outcome at stake.

To deploy it, you need to return to your 10% message throughout the conversation. Make it the anchor for your agenda, then build each part of the presentation around it. Research found how effective this approach is. In one Emblaze study researchers asked three different groups of participants to view a 20-minute presentation. In one version, the 10% message was repeated six times. A second version repeated it 12 times. And the third version repeated the 10% message 20 times. More repetition helped participants remember the message with greater clarity. Forty-six percent of people who saw the main message repeated 20 times remembered it with precision, which was the highest of any of the groups.

Without having your 10% message as an anchor, buyers can leave remembering a clever example, a product detail, or a passing comment that has little to do with the decision. Identify the takeaway first, then give every part of the conversation a job in reinforcing it.

2. Use Sequence to Shape Memory

Buyers need to see what your solution lets them do, why that matters, and which capabilities make it possible. The order in which you explain these things affects what buyers remember.

In an Emblaze neuroscience study of complex B2B content, researchers tested six ways to order those elements. The strongest sequence started with what buyers could do, connected those applications to business outcomes, and then explained the capabilities behind them. This Do–Means–Is sequence produced the highest memory score 48 hours later and the strongest synchronization across buyers. The study tested the order of these solution elements within the presentation, not the structure of the entire presentation.

When you introduce the main features of a complex solution, lead with what buyers can do, connect it to the outcomes they care about, then explain the capabilities that make those outcomes possible.

Here’s how to use that sequence in your sales:

3. Make the Value of Change Concrete

Clear information isn’t automatically memorable. Buyers hold on to ideas that give them a reason to care and a way to imagine the consequences.

Research from Daniel Kahneman shows that buyers often use intuition and emotion to shape a decision, then use logic to justify it. Facts can support that decision, but facts alone are difficult to remember. Connect the facts to a risk, consequence, motivation, or visible change in the buyer’s situation. Buyers can then see why the issue matters, what happens if nothing changes, and what outcome the solution makes possible.

Memorable sellers make the stakes visible by showing buyers the consequences of continuing with the current approach and the outcomes a change could produce. See an example here:

Use the same approach with abstract claims. “Our solution drives transformation” gives buyers little to picture. A customer story or a specific before-and-after moment shows what the concept looks like in practice, so buyers can understand it and explain it later.

4. Embrace Complexity

Sellers often treat a buyer’s short attention span as a reason to flatten their message. But even though buyers face more competition for their attention, simple content rarely earns it.

You don’t need to reduce a substantive idea to something thin and forgettable. You need to direct attention deliberately.

Research supports this. In one study, buyers who saw a more complex presentation remembered the main message with 15 percent more precision 48 hours later and retained 33 percent more concepts overall.

The study also examined how people from different countries handled complexity. When the presentation was in participants’ native language, native speakers remembered more from the complex version, while non-native speakers showed no negative memory effect.

So, avoid the instinct to simplify everything. Buyers can handle, and remember, complex information.

See some practical guidelines from presenting complex information here: