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October 6 - October 6, 2019
The services of others are far more valuable when I’m mistaken, confused, or completely clueless about my true problem. In those situations, the ability to move others hinges less on problem solving than on problem finding.
was trying to solve a problem: How can I produce a good drawing? The second was trying to find a problem: What good drawing can I produce?
the experts deemed the problem finders’ works far more creative than the problem solvers’.
is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field.”8
These people sort through vast amounts of information and inputs, often from multiple disciplines; experiment with a variety of different
approaches; are willing to switch directions in the course of a project; and often take longer than their counterparts to complete their work.
Today, both sales and non-sales selling depend more on the creative, heuristic, problem-finding skills of artists than on the reductive, algorithmic, problem-solving skills of technicians.
also reshaping what buyers can do for themselves and therefore what sellers must do to avoid irrelevance.
in the past, the best salespeople were adept at accessing information. Today, they must be skilled at curating it—sorting through the massive troves of data and presenting to others the most relevant and clarifying pieces. Second, in the past, the best salespeople were skilled at answering questions
Today, they must be good at asking questions—
“unique selling proposition,”
television spots for American presidential campaigns—
Clarity depends on contrast. In
the begging man’s sign moved people in the park to empathize with him by starkly comparing their reality with his.
That’s why the most essential question you can ask is this: Compared to what?
The less frame
reducing consumers’ options from twenty-four choices to six resulted in a tenfold increase in sales.
Less is more.
The experience frame
Several researchers have shown that people derive much greater
satisfaction from purchasing experiences than they do from purchasing goods.
framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business.
The label frame
The blemished frame
the people who’d gotten that small dose of negative information were more likely to purchase the boots than those who’d received the exclusively positive information.
the people processing the information must be in what the researchers call a “low effort” state.
Second, the negative information must follow the positive information, not the reverse.
The potential frame
Norton of the Harvard Business School suggest a different approach. What we really should do, they say, is emphasize our potential.
People often find potential more interesting than accomplishment because it’s more uncertain, the researchers argue. That uncertainty can lead people to think more deeply about the person they’re evaluating—and the more intensive processing that requires can lead to generating more and better reasons why the person is a good choice. So next time you’re selling yourself, don’t fixate only on what you achieved yesterday. Also emphasize the promise of what you could accomplish tomorrow.
of action.20 The lesson: Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.
“motivational interviewing.”
says. “I’ve learned that rational questions are ineffective for motivating resistant people. Instead I’ve found that irrational questions actually motivate people better,” he has written.
If your prospect has even a faint desire to move, Pantalon says, asking her to locate herself on that 1-to-10 scale can expose an apparent “No” as an actual “Maybe.”
Try a jolt of the unfamiliar.
Mini Jolt:
Become a curator.
Seek.
put together a list of the best sources of information. Then set aside time to scan those sources regularly. Kanter recommends at least fifteen minutes, two times a day.
Sense.
regularly maintaining your own blog.
Share.
Produce your questions.
Improve your questions.
Prioritize your questions.
Read these books.
Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
When you want to figure out what kind of problem someone has, ask a “Why?” question. Then, in response to the answer, ask another “Why?” And again and again, for a total of five whys.
