Your success as a persuasive communicator depends on both your message and you as the messenger. Of those two, Aristotle told us that the most important is ethos, or how others perceive you. In effect, recipients of your message are asking three questions: do you have good will, good sense and good character?
So, as long as you are an honest, thoughtful and competent person who only has the best interests of others in mind when you’re trying to persuade them, selling and influencing others should be a breeze, right?
Unfortunately, Virginia, now that you’re grown up it’s time to break the news that there is no Santa Claus. Just because you think you have those qualities does not mean that you actually do (at least to the extent that you think), and even if you’re right there is no guarantee that others will see you in the same light. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who don’t have those qualities but are still effective persuaders, because they’ve convinced others that they do. As the old joke goes, sincerity is your best asset—and once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
Let me be clear: I am totally in favor of having good will, good sense, and good character, but just having them is not enough unless others see those qualities in you. And according to Heidi Grant Halvorson’s new book, No One Understands You and What to Do About It
So, what can you do about it? You first have to figure out how others see you, and then make changes as necessary to adjust their perceptions.
To figure out how others see you, there are several things you can do.
- Ask a trusted colleague or two
- Get 360° feedback
- Video yourself
- Get a coach
- Run for president
If you see the need to change, Halvorson provides three useful “lenses” through which others view you:
The Trust lens. The first determination that people make about you is whether they can feel secure around you: what are your intentions (warmth) and can you act on those intentions (competence)? Halvorson suggests that you can increase the perception of your warmth by smiling, listening and in general taking a more active interest in the other person. If you need to kick up your perceived competence, look at people more directly, have a more upright posture, and in general act more confidently.
The Power lens. Power relationships affect how people view others, but it’s generally one-way: people in a one-up position tend to have a skewed view of the less powerful because they seem them primarily in terms of their instrumentality, or their usefulness to themselves; if you’re on the lower end you may not even get noticed enough too favorably impress them unless you can show them what you can do for them. For more on this, here’s an article I wrote recently on Selling Upward.
The Ego lens. The downside of projecting competence is that it can be a threat to the other person’s self-esteem. You can guard against this by being more self-deprecating; not necessarily by toning down your expertise or accomplishments, but by being more open about other weaknesses that you might have. You can also look for ways to praise the other person‘s accomplishment or abilities—as long as it’s credible. Finally, you can stress commonalities between the two of you, so that your abilities reflect favorably on the in-group to which you both belong.
No One Understands You is a good read, especially if you are new to these topics. However, the trust lens is the most powerful and the most practical of the three lenses, and there’s a lot more to it than is covered in this book. For more depth, I would suggest picking up two books: Compelling People and The Trusted Advisor.
If Alen Mayer had written this book about twenty-five years ago, it would have saved me a lot of time and trouble. That’s because, while I make a pretty good living by meeting new people and speaking to groups for hours at a time, I’m also an introvert. It has not always been an easy journey, as I’ve learned through trial and error how to suppress some tendencies on the one hand, and how to take full advantage of some strengths on the other. Introverts in Business: Being Quietly Successful
It may seem unfair, but our business culture favors extroverts: you only need to look at qualities asked for in job descriptions, such as “team player, dynamic, people-oriented”, or track who gets all the air time in meetings. But your natural introversion does not have to be a handicap.
If you’re an introvert just starting in business, or a single contributor moving to a role that requires more teamwork, or are rising to a management role, this book can help you.
How can it help? First, it dispels myths that others—or you—may have about introverts, and that may be holding you back, such as the idea that introverted means being shy, or that introverts can’t succeed in professions such as sales that place a premium on relationship building.
That’s because some of your natural tendencies can actually be strengths. In sales, for example, the prototypical talkative, slap-them-on-the back-and tell-a-joke, professional “friend” is at a loss in many of today’s complex system sales, which require asking questions and listening, and thoughtful analysis about customer needs—both of which favor introverts. In fact, introverts excel at developing deeper relationships which helps with the patient building of influence in complicated decision processes over long sales cycles. By exploiting your strengths, you can “make your quiet presence felt, if not heard.”
That said, sometimes you do need to be heard: there are situations where it pays to step out of your comfort zone and act extroverted, to interrupt, socialize more, or to blow your own horn. Mayer provides useful ideas about how to fake it ‘til you make it in Chapter 3.
Finally, you can read the very detailed and specific suggestions that apply in your role as you move up the corporate ladder, whether you are a team member, manager, senior leader, or entrepreneur. This is where Mayer’s book excels. I’ve written before about Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, which is also excellent. At only 88 pages, Introverts in Business is a quick read, but it’s more of a field guide or handbook, so it’s much more applicable to specific situations you might face.
By the way, if you’re an extrovert, you probably haven’t read this far—but just in case—you can also profit from reading this book, particularly if you’re a manager who wants to get the most out of a mixed team.
I strongly recommend that anyone in B2B sales read Andy Paul’s book, Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers to Make Fast, Favorable Decisions
Instead, I will focus on and develop one of his fundamental principles that I personally found to be a compelling and different angle, one which I plan to pursue in my own sales efforts.
In a nutshell, Paul’s key theme is that how you sell is more important than what you sell, and how is based on three principles:
- Make selling simple
- Be super-responsive
- Maximize selling time
I was especially intrigued by his emphasis on responsiveness; while I certainly won’t do justice to it here I will inject my own interpretation.
Nathan Bedford Forrest once said that the key to military tactics was to get there first with the most, and Andy Paul follows squarely in that tradition. Responsiveness is information + speed, and it’s important because selling is about answering the questions and providing the information the customer needs throughout their buying cycle to make their decision. The salesperson who supports the buying process by helping them make the right decision in the shortest time possible will win. This requires a prompt response to requests for information.
What does prompt mean? I personally would have thought same day would be fine, but Paul suggests within a half hour if possible. The reasoning is that customers need a certain amount of information in a certain order to make the right decision, and they have different needs depending on where they are in their buying cycle, so the best time to add value is when they ask the question or request the information. At the very least, you differentiate yourself from the overwhelming majority who won’t respond as fast as you will, and that sends a powerful message about how you will handle their business if you win it.
There’s a much more powerful yet subtle reason why responsiveness works, which Andy demonstrates through a series of graphs which depict the amount of value being delivered to the customer throughout the sales process. At each point, such as initial contact, discovery and presentation, the buyer has a need for some information which they will then digest prior to the next point in their buying process. For big B2B sales, it’s not realistic that the customer will identify a problem, gather all the information they need to solve it, evaluate alternatives and make the best decision at one time. It’s a process that takes time, and information gathered at each stage is used to shape the next set of questions and necessary information. The real power in responsiveness is that if you are the first to respond, you may have already changed the information they need by the time your competitor responds, so that they are playing catchup. By the time they respond, their response is not as valuable to the customer as it would have been; it may even be irrelevant.
Although he doesn’t call it that, Andy is describing John Boyd’s idea of the OODA loop, which was initially applied to air-to-air combat. OODA stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action. The competitor who gets inside the other’s OODA loop dictates the fight, because by reacting faster the first time he’s in a better position to react even faster the second time, and the cumulative effect can be transformative.
It’s important to keep in mind that responsiveness does not mean simply reacting to customers’ requests for information—at every stage you have the option and ability to ask your own questions or provide different insights in order to reshape their buying vision. If there is a shortcoming to the book, it’s that, although he touched on it at several points, Paul could have emphasized this more.
I also would have liked to see more citations. Andy mentions several articles and studies which add credibility, but it would have been helpful to know how to find those for further reading. This is probably just me, because I study this stuff; if you simply want good solid sales advice you probably can take it at face value and not worry about it.
There’s much more to Amp Up Your Sales than what I’ve covered here, of course, but just that alone would make it worth reading the entire book. I urge you to respond quickly and read it as soon as possible—unless you’re one of my competitors.
Based mostly on my own reading over the past 12 months, here is a list of books that would make great gifts for the special someone who could use the gift of persuasiveness and personal effectiveness (even if the giftee is yourself):
How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where and Why It Happens, by Benedict Carey.
In a rapidly changing world, personal success and well-being depends not only on being able to keep learning, but to get better at it—but much of what you learned about learning in school is wrong. I personally picked up a lot of good ideas from this book, and I put it first because it will help you get more out of the other books.
Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, by Ian Leslie.
I reviewed this book at length in an earlier post, but the thumbnail is that that there are three forms of curiosity, two of which are good for you and one which is bad. Empathic curiosity makes you dig deeper into understanding others, which is extremely useful in any persuasive communication context, and epistemic curiosity compels you to learn for learning’s sake. If you suffer from the bad form—diversive curiosity—this next book can help.
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload, by Daniel J. Levitin.
We put a lot of stuff into our brains every day, but taking out what you need when you need it is the real challenge. Levitin shows you how to organize yourself, your social life, and your business life to bring some sanity to your world and maybe even get more done.
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century!, by Steven Pinker.
Pinker is an accomplished linguist who has turned his talents to popular writing, which is our gain. In this book, he takes on outmoded advice about writing and backs up his ideas with modern science. For example, you’ll be happy to know that it’s not a felony to end a sentence with a preposition. This book will help you sound like an intelligent, reasonable human being.
The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase, by Mark Forsyth.
Most business and personal communication works perfectly well if you stick to plain, short, direct language, but if you like to have fun with words, maybe show off a little now and then, and hope people will repeat what you said, study this book closely. I just reviewed this book at length, if you’d like to learn more.
The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman.
Many extremely competent women are held back in their careers because they either lack confidence or are reluctant to show it to the extent that men do. Kay and Shipman explain why this is so and what you can do about it. It should also be required reading for men in positions to decide who gets promoted to plum positions.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.
If being a woman can hold you back in business, so can being too introverted, in a society that is biased in favor of extraverts. Give this book to an introvert so they can learn how to apply their strengths to succeed, or to an extravert to show them how to better appreciate the introverts around them.
Strategic Sales Presentations, by Jack Malcolm.
OK, I’m biased, but it’s my blog. This timeless classic will put money into the pocket of the salesperson in your life, and even if they don’t read the whole thing, it will look good on their shelf, so I recommend that you buy one for their home and one for their office.
