Practical Eloquence Blog

When presenting your point of view, should you adduce only the arguments in your favor, or those opposed as well?

There are several good reasons for presenting a one-sided argument. The first reason is focus; it’s so hard enough to maintain attention for very long in these distracted times, so you want to make your point quickly and then offer only the information you need to bring the point home. Why confuse matters by bringing in contradictory information? In this way, you have the best chance to maintain clarity and conciseness, which are both important factors in credibility. Second, if you’re selling something, it’s your professional obligation to represent your idea in the best possible light – let your competitors make their own argument. Third, why risk educating your listeners about alternatives they may not have considered?

While these are powerful arguments for leaving out contradictory information, they all have weaknesses when examined more closely. Showcasing alternatives can actually clarify matters and shorten your argument, because facts and evidence make most sense when seen in comparison to existing information. Besides, while clarity and conciseness are important to credibility, confidence tends to trump both, and what shows more confidence than not being afraid to discuss alternatives? Second, your competitors will make their best possible argument – when you’re not there to refute it. By bringing up their points before they do, and then refuting them, you can steal their thunder. It works just like an inoculation: by exposing them to a weaker version now you make them more resistant to the later hard-sell. Professionalism also implies objectivity in service of the end client, in this case your listeners. Finally, if your listeners are smart and truly care about the decision they are going to make, they will seek out every possible alternative they can anyway.

But the best reason to use a two-sided argument is that it has been shown in many studies to be the most effective for an educated and involved audience, if done right. A 1991 paper by Mike Allen analyzed the results of 26 studies that compared the effects on attitude change of three different approaches:

• One-sided arguments
• Two-sided arguments, in which counterarguments were listed
• Two-sided arguments, in which counterarguments were listed and refuted

They found that the least persuasive messages were two-sided with no refutations. Second were one-sided arguments. The most persuasive were those in which the speaker listed counterarguments and then refuted them. As the authors say, “Empirically, the order of the most effective messages should be two-sided with refutation, one-sided, and two-sided with no refutation.”

Think about what that means for a minute. When you’re trying the hardest to get your message across by focusing only on the strengths of your own arguments, when you’re most passionate and enthusiastic about your own position, you are not as persuasive as when you give some air time to the other side. How could that be?

Put yourself into the audience’s perspective for a moment. You are an intelligent, well-informed individual who has sat through hundreds of persuasive presentations. There are two dynamics at work when you’re listening to someone trying to influence your decision. First, your BS detector is fully armed and active, so whenever someone tries to sell you, your mind automatically pushes back, searching for its own counterarguments if none are given. Second, one-sided, “no-brainer” arguments subtly imply that there is no decision to be made, which robs you of your power to choose.

So, it’s generally good practice to include contradictory information in your communications, but there is a step missing from what we’ve discussed so far. I don’t believe it’s enough to simply list and then refute counterarguments – that’s a negative argument at best. You have to bring your point home with positive arguments in favor of your position. That’s when you can pull out all stops, speak with enthusiasm, conviction, and even passion about what you see as the way forward.

By doing this, you come across as someone who not only cares deeply about what you believe in, but as someone who has achieved that caring through fair-minded and intelligent consideration of the facts. What can be better for credibility than that?

I’m sure you’ve had this experience: after talking to a client, you are able to tell them exactly what they need to do to improve their situation, they agree you’re right – and nothing happens after that.

It may have been because there’s a difference between being right and being helpful.

Selling is fundamentally about helping others: helping them to improve their situation in some way by solving their problems, or enabling them to take advantage of opportunities. Yet, it can frustrate salespeople sometimes when they know they have something that will clearly help their clients, and they might even have agreement on this from the client, yet nothing seems to happen.

When that happens, we generally ascribe the problem to status quo bias, selling to the wrong person, or not having done a good enough job in selling the value of our solution. Yet, there may be another dynamic at work: how the helping process is conducted.

I’ve just finished a fascinating book, Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, by Edgar Schein, and I’d like to explore some of its lessons to see if they apply to sales conversations.

According to Schein, the way in which help is offered has an important effect on whether the client acts on the help. For help to actually be helpful, being right is not enough – the client must trust and own the advice that is given. Trust and ownership depend on adherence to two important dynamics: social economics and roles.

Social economics has to do with the attention we pay to our relative status. Accepting or asking for help puts us in a “one-down” position (which is why we men never like to ask for directions), and offering help puts us “one-up”. No one likes to lose face and go one-down, so there is a tendency to reduce the imbalance through mistrust or defensiveness.

The other dynamic at work is that we all play roles in our relations with others; we are usually more deferential to the boss than to subordinates, for example. Violations of the expected roles are easily recognized and swiftly punished, perhaps by ignoring the person or even lashing out.

In a helping situation, there are three possible roles:

Expert. In this role, the helper has superior knowledge or skill that applies to the client’s problem, and dispenses information the client needs to hear. That’s the essence of insight selling, so what could be wrong with that?

There are two possible drawbacks. Besides putting the helper in a dominant role, the usefulness of the information also depends on sufficient upfront knowledge about the situation, including whether the client has accurately diagnosed and described the problem, whether the client can actually make the recommended changes, or whether all relevant factors are known. Of course, the sooner the salesperson launches into the expert role, the greater the chances that important information will be missed.

Doctor. This is an extension of the expert role, in that the salesperson also takes the responsibility of diagnosing the client’s needs before prescribing and dispensing the expert advice.

But anyone who has ever been to a doctor or an auto mechanic knows how disempowering it can feel to be in the client role in this situation. And, although taking the time to make a diagnosis should provide more useful information to ensure the prescription is the right one, you still run the risk that the client has not fully or accurately described the situation (possibly through a shortage of initial trust), or that the helper may jump to conclusions based on surface similarities to situations they’ve seen before.

Process consultant. This role has been defined by Schein as one in which the helper focuses initially on the communication process itself. The goal is to create a climate of equal status and trust so that the client will reveal more information. In this role, the process consultant also pays close attention to the conversation so that the client remains very proactive in the process of identifying the problems, diagnosing the causes, and planning the prescriptions. As Schein says, “…only they own the problems identified, only they know the true complexity of their situation, and only they know what will work for them in the culture in which they live.”

The key point in all of this is not that the expert or doctor roles are wrong; there is definitely a time and place for them. But the time and place for them is only after the helper has established a climate of equal status, trust, and ownership of the problem.

In part 2 of this article, we will see how to establish that climate through a process called humble inquiry.

Bluto: Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Otter: [whispering] Germans?

Boon: Forget it, he’s rolling.

In that scene from the classic management film, Animal House, Boon could have let Otter correct Bluto’s mistake, but he wisely kept his eyes on the bigger picture and let it slide. He was exhibiting the kind of behavior that many more experienced executives would do well to emulate.

One of the major obstacles to personal influence and persuasive communication is the need to win, and its close counterpart, the need to be right. I see it often in my coaching engagements, and Marshall Goldsmith says it is the number one obstacle that he encounters among successful people.

It’s certainly not surprising. People who rise to higher levels are generally those with strong wills and ambition; their drive to win is a major factor that propels them up the ladder. Plus, the higher they rise, they tend to be “right” more often, so they become uncomfortable with letting others win.

The need to win is not always as overt as the person who can’t stand to lose an argument. It can be far more subtle. For example, I just had a reminder myself a few minutes ago. I asked a friend to recommend a few books on a particular topic I’m working on; one book that he recommended, I told him I already read it. What I should have just said, was “thank you”.

While it may be tremendously ego-affirming, there is always a price to be paid to always be right or to always be the smartest person in the room. Others may concede your point, but are far less likely to walk away from the conversation with an enthusiastic commitment to your idea. Or, they may simply pretend to agree just to get out of there, after which they will do whatever they wanted anyway. Or, even supposing you give them a brilliant solution to their problem, it’s like giving them the answer key when they try to solve a math problem; they won’t truly learn the lesson unless they work it out themselves.

The cure is not to try to stamp out the need to win; it’s too much a part of who you are. The best way to handle it is to continue winning, but to change your definition of what winning is. Do you want to win the conversation, or win something bigger? The bigger wins are usually better relationships, more effective learning, and real commitment. What’s the bigger win?

• If you don’t win the conversation, but gain committed and enthusiastic agreement to the right plan, that’s a bigger win.
• If you don’t win the conversation, but you help someone grow and learn, that’s a bigger win.
• If you don’t win the conversation, but gain a happy customer, that’s a bigger win.
• If the other person walks out of the conversation feeling good about themselves, that’s a bigger win.

By keeping your eye on the bigger win, you can still “win” the conversation, because everything you concede in the short run is an investment in the long run.

So, before you let that automatic comment slip out, ask yourself, what’s the bigger win, and will this comment help?