Whether you’re in a sales call, sales presentation or internal presentation, it’s critical to have a carefully reasoned and well supported message, but even that can fail to change someone’s mind if they’re not prepared to hear it.
In fact, your listeners will hear your message differently depending on what their initial attitude is to your position on the issue. They may have their own opinion about whether your solution is the best fit for their need, or even about whether the need is worth addressing.
According to social judgment theory, there is a range of possible attitudes a person can take on an issue. Roughly, they can reject, accept, or be neutral about the issue.
But these three terms don’t really describe positions; they are more like zones, because there are differences within the zones, as you can see in the figure below.[1]
The baseline is neutrality. Members of your audience may be indifferent or neutral for one of three reasons, apathy, ignorance or indecision.
Ignorance: they are not aware of the issue. This is often likely in consultative selling, which by my definition entails bringing fresh ideas—in effect, solutions to problems they don’t know they have.
Apathy: they know about the issue but don’t care about the outcome or decision. Maybe it does not affect their profit center, or they are not yet aware of the impact it might have on them.
Indecision: they know and care about the issue but don’t know which course of action is the best.
So, if you want to move them from neutrality, you must know why they are neutral. You must either inform them, show them why they should care, or make the case for your solution to the issue.
The “negative” attitudes as they relate to your proposal are:
Skepticism: they don’t support your idea but are not necessarily resisting. Maybe they don’t trust you or haven’t heard enough to make them feel comfortable with the idea.
Opposition: in this case they are actively pulling back from your idea, perhaps seeing disadvantages for themselves favoring a different approach.
Blocker: besides resisting your idea, they take an active role in fighting against the idea. Maybe they favor the competitor’s approach, or possibly they view your proposal as too risky or causing them too much work.
The “positive” attitudes are:
Ally: the other person goes along with your idea. They may say yes, or agree not to block your efforts.
Coach: the other person personally commits to seeing that the idea gets implemented. They take an emotional and personal interest in the idea and become enthusiastically committed to it. This is the difference between following the letter of your request and promoting the spirit as well.
Champion: others make the idea their own and take an active leadership role in promoting and extending it. They may have a vested interest in seeing your solution implemented, probably because it will help them solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.
When you closely examine the range of positions that someone in the decision-making process can take, several critical considerations emerge.
First, there is a “latitude of acceptance” that each person is comfortable with. In most cases, people can be moved slightly from their current positions. It’s reasonable and possible to move someone from opposition to skepticism or even possibly neutrality.
But if you try to move people outside their latitude of acceptance, it is very difficult to do in one shot. No matter how charismatic or persuasive you are, it’s unlikely that you will get someone to do something they are strongly opposed to just because of one presentation. With people like that, the phrase “You can’t get there from here” applies.
In fact, if what you’re selling is too far outside their latitude of acceptance, you run the very real risk of a “boomerang effect”, meaning that your message will have the unintended effect of strengthening their opposition. In some cases, that means that it’s better not to even try—or at least dial down your target and expectations.
Think of it like trying to pull a heavy weight with a string. If you pull too hard or too suddenly, the string will snap. But if you apply a bit of pressure and then patiently add to it, you have a chance.
Second, the listener’s initial position will determine how they perceive your message. If what you say falls within their latitude of acceptance, they will see your message as more similar to their position than it actually is. If it does not, they will perceive it as more different from their position than it actually is.
Third, it takes time to move people to the right. That’s why persuasion is a process and not an event. A sales presentation, for example, should be seen in the context of a complete sales campaign and not an end in itself. Don’t just show up and think you’re going to win everyone over with your force of personality and logic; socialize your ideas, find out where people stand and why, and do what you can to nudge them in the right direction.
Always be strategic!
[1] These labels are not the labels that psychologists use. They are labels used in sales strategy thinking.
Today is the shortest day of the year, so let’s take a quick look at brevity.
German designer Dieter Rams, who inspired Apple designer Jonathan Ive, believed in the idea of less but better. What works in the design of products can also apply to communication.
In today’s era of gnat-length attention spans, brevity is even more important than ever, but simply shortening your message without improving it will fail. (Sometimes less is less.) In telling stories, one vivid detail trumps a lot of boring detail. In selling, one unique differentiator that the customer values will trump a long list of features. One well-designed chart can replace several minutes of explanation.
Just a few words can pack a tremendous punch. Supposedly, Hemingway was at lunch with several writers and claimed he could write a short story in just six words. Bets were made, and Hemingway scrawled on a napkin:
“For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
Trust between individuals is one of the most essential and important ingredients of personal influence. If motivation is the fuel of persuasion, trust is its lubricant. Trust lowers risk; it opens communication; it makes decisions more efficient and effective.
Of course, you don’t need a book to tell you that. The critical point is that trust is also within your control, and this excellent book by Charles H. Green and Andrea P. Howe shows you how to establish, accelerate, and maintain it.
Whether or not you are in sales, you exert influence and make a difference in others’ lives when they take your advice—but even if you are always right it’s no guarantee that people will take you advice. (And you don’t have to have teenage kids for this to be true.) As the authors tell us, you have to earn the right to be right.
The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook shows you how by opening up the black box and exposing how the process works so that you can become more trustworthy to others. It then goes into specific practical detail on how to apply the trust principles in everyday situations, from different aspects of the sales cycle to personal and organizational relationships.
Most “how-to” books such as this provide value on three levels:
- Things you already “know” you should do but need reminding or prompting to do more of
- Things you kind of know how to do, but get expert instruction on how to do it better
- Things you thought you knew, but were wrong
The fieldbook has a lot of material in the first category, but to me the most important reminder is worth quoting at length:
“The goal of traditional selling is to convince the buyer to buy from you—the goal of trust-based selling is to help the buyer do what is right for him. The difference is a question of focus and motives. Helping, as distinct from closing, is other-focused, nonmanipulative and trust-enhancing.”
I believe this quote could encapsulate the entire book, and because one of my pet causes is the professionalization of selling, I urge any salesperson reading this article to print this and post it somewhere that you can see it before any communication with a client or prospect. Even if you’re not in sales, change the words slightly and they will apply equally to you.
In the second category, there are a number of specific situations, including presenting, selling to the C-Suite, and negotiating, where they give useful advice and excellent insights. Most importantly, the examples of the phrases they provide to illustrate their points ring true, and demonstrate that the authors have very deep experience in these areas.
As to the third category, I pride myself on being right, and this is awkward to admit, but I may have to reconsider my traditional advice to keep price out of the discussion until the end. The authors make a convincing case that this just adds to the tension and angers the potential buyer; it’s best to let the buyer control when the topic comes out in the discussion.
Finally, I like the format of the book. In the form of a fieldbook, it provides numerous questions, forms and suggestions to think further about how to apply their ideas to your own particular situation. The “list of lists” at the end is also helpful; I found it easier to read them before beginning a new chapter.
I trust you will get a lot of value out of this book.
I’ve just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, but this is not a traditional book review. Here’s the review part: the book is fascinating; read it.
What I found most fascinating about Jobs was how one person could simultaneously serve as a terrible and a great example for others. Steve Jobs was one of the great persuaders of the business world, which is all the more remarkable considering he consistently violated some of the most fundamental principles of influence and persuasion.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I strongly urge you to use outside-in thinking: the most effective way to persuade is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and try to see how you can help them get what they want. Well, Jobs didn’t do much of that. He could be incredibly self-centered and egotistical. When presented with a new idea, his default mode was to say, “That’s stupid.”
He did not believe that the customer was right. In his own words: “Some people say, ‘Give customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do… Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
He often let his personal needs override good business sense. In fact, a lot of what he did in business was actually against the customer’s interest. When he designed the Macintosh, he directed that the interior of the case be finished as beautifully as the exterior, even though no one except a technician would ever see it. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and held up production of NeXT computers because he insisted that the machines in the factory be painted and repainted in the colors he chose. Why is that against the customer’s interest? Because anything that adds costs but does not benefit the customer is waste.
He could be exquisitely sensitive to what made others tick, which is a wonderful talent for communication, except that Jobs would often use this ability to hurt people. As Isaacson said, he could deliver a “towel snap” at people and say just the right thing that would get under their skin.
He cared little for making others feel good. He fought his iPod team for months as they tried to convince him to license iTunes to Windows. When he finally agreed, instead of graciously conceding that they were right, his words were: “Screw it, I’m sick of listening to you assholes. Go do whatever the hell you want.”
He lied. He would often tell someone their idea was stupid, only to turn around a week later and claim it as his own.
How did he become so persuasive with all these faults?
The only reason Jobs could break all the rules of persuasive communication and succeed so spectacularly was because his faults were more than offset by towering strengths.
The reason Jobs could ignore market research and yet change entire industries was that he had the artistic sense and the taste to pull it off. Bill Gates said in a joint interview that he wished he had Steve’s taste.
The central principle of his taste was simplicity. Jobs was always looking for ways to simplify the look and the user experience of his products. Simplicity focuses your mind; it forces you to drill down to the essence of what you’re trying to communicate, and that adds power to messages just as it does to products. It’s not just “less is more”—I love the line in the book which quotes Dieter Rams, the designer for Braun: “Less but better.”
His vision of what he wanted was harnessed to a passion for perfection that drove the invention of beautiful, elegant products that are more than mere devices, that inspire love and loyalty from their owners. His quest for perfection would sometimes cause him to scrap months and millions of dollars worth of work because he did not see it going the right way, as he did with Pixar’s first cut of Toy Story.
His pure passion could be virulently contagious and inspire others to drop their reservations and follow his lead. When he was trying to court musicians to the iTunes model, he brought over Wynton Marsalis to his house to show off iTunes. Marsalis later said, “I don’t care much about computers, and kept telling him so, but he goes on for two hours. He was a man possessed. After a while, I started looking at him and not the computer, because I was so fascinated with his passion.”
His passion for perfection drove him to obsessively rehearse and refine his presentations so that they became hugely anticipated events. Although they looked effortless and natural, every detail was meticulously planned, staged, and practiced over and over.
His sensitivity that he often used to hurt people could also be turned to get people to do things they did not want to do. He knew how to get the best out of people by appealing to what mattered to them most. When John Sculley wavered in his decision about whether to leave Pepsi to run Apple, Jobs said, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
Extraordinary taste, simplicity, passion, preparation and sensitivity helped Jobs got away with all of his bad behavior. Except for taste, each of those is a skill that can be improved with awareness and practice. Pay attention to his faults as well, and stay as far away from them as possible. He never put a license plate on his car, either, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with it.
