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October 3 - October 20, 2018
we’re devoting upward of 40 percent of our time on the job to moving others.
One of the most effective ways of moving others is to uncover challenges they may not know they have.
The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness.
To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.
“It’s about leading with my ears instead of my mouth,” Ferlazzo says. “It means trying to elicit from people what their goals are for themselves and having the flexibility to frame what we do in that context.”
Start your encounters with the assumption that you’re in a position of lower power.
Perspective-taking is a cognitive capacity; it’s mostly about thinking. Empathy is an emotional response; it’s mostly about feeling. Both are crucial.
Pushing too hard is counterproductive, especially in a world of caveat venditor. But feeling too deeply isn’t necessarily the answer either—because you might submerge your own interests. Perspective-taking seems to enable the proper calibration between the two poles, allowing us to adjust and attune ourselves in ways that leave both sides better off.
“Chameleons Bake Bigger Pies and Take Bigger Pieces.”
The notion that extraverts are the finest salespeople is so obvious that we’ve overlooked one teensy flaw. There’s almost no evidence that it’s actually true.
the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.
Mere affirmation feels good and that helps. But it doesn’t prompt you to summon the resources and strategies to actually accomplish the task.
people are more likely to act, and to perform well, when the motivations come from intrinsic choices rather than from extrinsic pressures.
Once positive emotions outnumbered negative emotions by 3 to 1—that is, for every three instances of feeling gratitude, interest, or contentment, they experienced only one instance of anger, guilt, or embarrassment—people generally flourished.
Optimism, it turns out, isn’t a hollow sentiment. It’s a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stoke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.
The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity.
“To people estranged from their future selves, saving is like a choice between spending money today and giving it to a stranger years from now.”6
clarity—the capacity to help others see their situations in fresh and more revealing ways and to identify problems they didn’t realize they had.
the ability to move others hinges less on problem solving than on problem finding.
“It 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.”
If I know my problem, I can likely solve it. If I don’t know my problem, I might need some help finding it.
a few years ago, the Conference Board, the well-regarded U.S. business group, gave 155 public school superintendents and eighty-nine private employers a list of cognitive capacities and asked their respondents to rate these capacities according to which are most important in today’s workforce. The superintendents ranked “problem solving” number one. But the employers ranked it number eight. Their top-ranked ability: “problem identification.”10
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.
in the past, the best salespeople were skilled at answering questions (in part because they had information their prospects lacked). Today, they must be good at asking questions—uncovering possibilities, surfacing latent issues, and finding unexpected problems. And
We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.
the most essential question you can ask is this: Compared to what?
framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business. So if you’re selling a car, go easy on emphasizing the rich Corinthian leather on the seats. Instead, point out what the car will allow the buyer to do—see new places, visit old friends, and add to a book of memories.
Being honest about the existence of a small blemish can enhance your offering’s true beauty.
What we really should do, they say, is emphasize our potential.
“the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing.”19 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.
The lesson: Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.
“I’ve learned that rational questions are ineffective for motivating resistant people. Instead I’ve found that irrational questions actually motivate people better,”
In the new world of sales, being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than producing the right answers.
http://www.rightquestion.org.
The purpose of a pitch isn’t necessarily to move others immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you.
Pitches that rhyme are more sublime.
Listening without some degree of intimacy isn’t really listening. It’s passive and transactional rather than active and engaged.
the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
Taking it slower can take you further.
“There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes,’ and there are people who prefer to say ‘No,’” Keith Johnstone writes. “Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”
“service” isn’t just smiling at customers when they enter your boutique or delivering a pizza in thirty minutes or less, though both are important in the commercial realm. Instead, it’s a broader, deeper, and more transcendent definition of service—improving others’ lives
In both traditional sales and non-sales selling, we do better when we move beyond solving a puzzle to serving a person.
Raising the salience of purpose is one of the most potent—and most overlooked—methods of moving others.
Making it personal works better when we also make it purposeful.
If the person you’re selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve?
Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead.
Don’t try to increase what they can do for you. Elevate what you can do for them.
“Salespeople are no different from engineers, architects, or accountants. Really good salespeople want to solve problems and serve customers. They want to be part of something larger than themselves.”
If the person you’re selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you’re doing something wrong.
