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In over a quarter-century of training salespeople, I’ve run across an elite few who exemplify what it means to be a true sales professional. Here’s what it takes, and why it matters.
This podcast is based on a series I’ve previously written about sales professionalism. Here are the links to those posts.
The Four PROs of Sales Professionalism
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If you follow the advice so far in this series, you will definitely be the most credible person in the room, no matter where you are. And that is a huge asset. Like any asset, it needs to be protected, maintained, and cultivated.
- Cultivating your credibility starts with accurate self-knowledge. How credible do you find yourself, and how accurate is your assessment?
- Next, we discuss the importance of constantly increasing and refreshing your knowledge base and expertise.
- From that solid foundation, we proceed to taking stock of how others perceive us
- Then look at ways that we can manage the impressions others have.
CALIBRATION
I want to start this section with a strange question: how many possible answers are there to a yes/no question? Will it rain tomorrow? Will the Democrats win the House in the midterm election? Will that big deal you’re working on close by the end of the quarter? When you consider those questions, the obvious answer is that there are many ways to answer a yes/no question, when it deals with uncertainty. So, most people pick a number to estimate the probability.
What’s your track record in picking those numbers? In the long run, are you overconfident, underconfident, or right in the middle?
Calibration is a measure of how closely your level of certainty accords to the true facts. If you are generally accurate, you’re said to be well-calibrated. If you’re over- or under-confident in your certainty, you are poorly calibrated. The problem is—by definition—you almost always don’t know. If you’re overconfident, you’re going to overestimate how accurate you are. Most people are overconfident; one study that gave a quiz to over 2000 people found that fewer than 1% were not overconfident.[1]
In fact, studies have shown that the people with the least competence are the most likely to overestimate their actual knowledge. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect[2].
Overconfidence is not all bad – it encourages difficult efforts and can help you sell your ideas. It will tend to increase your credibility in a single situation, because listeners will take cues from your perceived confidence. Your level of certainty about what you’re saying will affect the confidence with which you express it, which will in turn affect how much listeners believe you.
But excessive overconfidence can definitely hurt your credibility by increasing the odds that you will be shown to be wrong. We all know people who are often wrong, but never in doubt – just watch any of the early stages of American Idol to see this overestimation displayed to a painful degree.
Some very few people are underconfident in their estimate of certainty.[3] They are less sure of their knowledge, which certainly lowers the risk of being proven wrong, but also limits their influence. Their uncertainty may show through in their expression, or they may be less apt to speak up on behalf of their position or interests.
If you’re well-calibrated, you are less likely to run ahead of your facts and get yourself into trouble, which is a good thing for long-term credibility.
But there’s also an external aspect, which is others’ perceptions of how well-calibrated you are. Some people are automatically discounted; does your sales manager automatically cut your forecast by 50%? That would be a sign that she doesn’t think you’re too well-calibrated. Others may develop a reputation for understatement, and their listeners may take what they say to the bank.
So, being well-calibrated will improve your credibility in two ways. First, it will help you avoid the extremes of over- and underconfidence. Second, by being perceived to be well-calibrated, or self-aware, you can be more credible to your listeners.
How to improve your calibration
Calibration can be improved through training and experience. It begins with awareness of the problem and acceptance of the fact that you are probably susceptible to it. Here are a half-dozen ways to get better.
Test your calibration. ProjectionPoint has a test on their website that allows you to test your calibration. Simply seeing the results, if they are bad, will make you aware of the need to improve your calibration.
Separate fact from opinion. As Richard Feynman said, “The most important thing is not to fool yourself. And you’re the easiest person to fool.” Make sure you tell people when it’s your opinion and not a settled fact.
Keep track. Experience tends to reduce overconfidence and improve calibration, as long as you learn from that experience. It’s no accident that two of the best-calibrated professions are bookies and meteorologists. This is because they get rapid feedback on their decisions, and are held accountable for being wrong.
Practice productive paranoia. When you’re very confident and it’s important, try extra hard to find holes in your idea. Individually, you can take the time to list reasons why you might be wrong.
If you follow these practices, I’m 90% confident that your calibration will improve, and 75% confident that your personal credibility will also.
LIFELONG LEARNING
If you’re perfectly calibrated and you’re the top expert in your field, you will probably have Max Cred—for a while.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen well-educated people make is to coast on their learning. They’ve spent so much time at school that they think they’ve got it made—and they stay stuck…
That’s dangerous because knowledge advances so rapidly in so many domains, that you must continually update and refresh what you know if you want to maintain credibility.
According to a Deloitte study, “skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate. Software engineers must now redevelop skills every 12–18 months.7 Professionals in marketing, sales, manufacturing, law, accounting, and finance report similar demands.”[4] And, not to scare you, but there is evidence from the medical field that patients of older physicians have a higher mortality rate than those of their younger colleagues.[5]
If even doctors, with all their years of schooling and their impressive credentials, can become obsolete, you must definitely keep learning throughout your life.
That’s why this quote from Michael Roberto is especially apt:
“You must have a restless mind, one that is never satisfied with its understanding of a topic—no matter how much expertise and experience you have accumulated on the subject.”[6]
Besides preserving your ability to constantly learn, you must also realize that the ability to unlearn is at least as important.
When things are stable, it is a virtue to learn something once and for all. A skill that becomes routine saves time and effort, freeing our mind for other things. And experts develop excellent intuition through the ability to unconsciously recognize patterns, which is why they can make swift, effective choices when needed.
But when that routine or that knowledge no longer fits the facts, predictions and choices can go awry. I saw a vivid and important demonstration of this in the late 80s, when I was studying for a graduate degree in Soviet Studies. When Mikhail Gorbachev came on the scene, with his ideas of glasnost and perestroika, the Soviet experts who were my professors were confused about how to interpret his words and actions. Drawing on their 40+ years of study, they interpreted Gorbachev through the lens of what they had seen before: it was another underhanded Soviet ploy to trick the West, or to make Reagan look bad.
Sometimes you learn things too well, making it nearly impossible to unlearn; military planners are famous for preparing for the last war. (Which reminds me of Mark Twain’s observation that, “the cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.”)
Lifelong learning – be more foxy
But it’s what you learn that also matters. If you want to develop maximum credibility, is it better to be a hedgehog or a fox?
According to parable the hedgehog knows one thing very well, and the fox knows a lot of things.
For developing credibility, there is a lot to be said for being a hedgehog. By concentrating on one area, you can focus your learning and develop deep expertise which can differentiate you from others and establish your reputation.
Hedgehogs tend to be more credible: they are listened to more and are more believable when they speak, because of their confidence and conviction.
But could there be a downside to single-minded concentration on one big thing? Philip Tetlock thinks so. Tetlock studied the track records of political commentators over 15 years, those folks you see on the Sunday talk shows who get paid to make predictions about what will happen during political crises and trends. He found that hedgehogs were not only wrong more often than foxes, but that they were less likely to recognize or admit that they were wrong when events did not match their predictions.
The advantage that foxes have is that they are more likely to seek out new information from a broader range of sources, and are comfortable with uncertainty and new information. They are also better calibrated, meaning that they have a clearer estimation of what they know and don’t know. When something happens that contradicts their view of the world, they treat it as new information, not as an aberration or an exception.
So, which is better?
In focusing on what to study and learn, there is no question that you should be a hedgehog early in your career, so that you can establish solid credentials and expertise in one particular area.
Yet, as you get promoted to positions of higher responsibility, you’re going to find yourself dealing with more and more situations that your expertise has not prepared you for. In order to avoid Peter Principle, you have to become more of a fox; get curious about the wider world, broaden your knowledge, and learn to blend in different perspectives. Make your knowledge more three-dimensional, as I covered in the podcast about content: deepen your anchor in your particular discipline, but also go broader and higher.
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
Calibration and lifelong learning will take care of the internal aspect of your cred, but sometimes even that isn’t going to be enough. Credibility is an impression, and impressions can be fragile. You need to monitor, protect, and grow your cred over time.
How well do others know you?
It’s critical to have good sense, good character, and goodwill, but just having them is not enough unless others see those qualities in you. And according to Heidi Grant Halvorson’s book, No One Understands You and What to Do About It, the odds are that they don’t see you the way you see yourself.
She cites a study of 400 college roommates which found that it took an average of nine months living together for your roommate to begin to see you as you see yourself, and even then, the correlation was very low.[7]
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
Protect and extend Your Credibility
I won’t spend too much time on company politics, but obviously it does exist, and sometimes people have bad intentions toward you, no matter, how honest, smart and likeable you are. People may whisper behind your back, misrepresent what you’ve said or done, or take credit for your ideas. You need to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on inside, cultivate allies, and actively and directly counter misinformation about you. As Plato said, One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
You also need to help your own cred along a bit. When it comes to your own reputation, you need to forget the better mousetrap myth: the one that says if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Sometimes the smartest people get outshone by others who are more gifted at touting their own accomplishments and knowledge. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor who writes about power in organizations, cites one study that showed that people who worked on creating favorable impressions received higher performance ratings than those who performed better but weren’t as good at managing their impressions.
Network – Max Cred is a team sport
Know who knows
Tap into your existing knowledge network; associate with credible people. Financial advisers often advise to use OPM, or other peoples’ money. It also applies to Cred: use OPC. A lot of the knowledge and information you need in order to be credible resides in the minds of others, so it behooves you to know who knows, and to be very discriminating in your sources.
That’s why one side benefit of knowing the factors of Max Cred is that you can become more judicious in assessing the cred of others.
Nourish your network
Become a source for others. If you use your knowledge and credibility to help others succeed, you tap into the power of reciprocity. You also develop a reputation as an expert which can become self-reinforcing.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the Max Cred series. Let me quickly recap the central message of this series:
Credibility is your most precious personal asset in an organization, and if you want to have Max Cred, you must build a solid base of credentials and expertise, express it confidently and candidly, win respect by connecting with others and committing to something important, and cultivate your asset over time.
[1] Russo and Schoemaker 1992.
[2] Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.
[3] Russo and Schoemaker say that public accountants are slightly underconfident.
[4] https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/learning-in-the-digital-age.html
Accessed 7/27/18.
[5] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2017/05/18/nice-older-doctor-you-go-well-turns-out-you-might-live-longer-younger-one/101822418/
[6] Michael A. Roberto, Know What You Don’t Know, p. 186.
[7] No One Understand You and What to Do about It, p. 17.
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On March 15, 1783, General Washington attended a meeting of mutinous officers in Newburgh NY who were angry about not being paid by the Continental Congress and who were agitating for a march on Philadelphia to take over the government. If this happened, the ideals for which they had fought in order to earn their independence from Great Britain would probably have died and the United States as we know it would probably never have come into existence.
Washington was there to try to talk them out of it, and how he did it is one of the most dramatic stories of persuasion that most people have not heard of.
When Americans think of George Washington today, most of us see the marble demi-god, and not the real man behind the myth. It’s easy to think that he accomplished everything he did through his position and authority as the commander in chief who could summon up his armies to back up his will. In fact, Washington had very little real power to get things done. Partly this was because he did not want it: he was acutely conscious of the need for civilian control, even when this meant that things would not get done, taxes would not be collected, and his army would not be fed. Washington bent over backwards to influence rather than to coerce.
He relied more on personal credibility than on authority, and he had earned that credibility through his steadfast commitment to the cause. He had earned it through leading from the front in spite of severe personal danger often being at the front in battle after battle; he refused a salary during the war, even though his treasured Mount Vernon was being mismanaged and run into debt.
So, by the time Washington appeared in front of his officers, he had earned their trust, respect and veneration. But they had heard many empty promises and so were suspicious even of him.
And his speech was well-crafted and masterfully delivered. Washington began by scolding the anonymous authors for their actions, then softened his tone and reminded the officers that he had been with them from the beginning, suffering the same sacrifices and exulting in their common triumphs. He next appealed to their patriotism and then closed with a vision of the glorious example they could set for all mankind.
Yet in spite of this his speech did not go well. As he concluded, he noticed they still seemed uncertain, not sure how to react. Quite possibly, the fate of the young republic was balanced on a knife edge.
Washington’s heroic stature had brought him this far, but it was a small gesture that tipped the balance. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter from Congressman Joseph Jones of Virginia, to show the officers that Congress meant to act on their concerns. He looked at the letter but did not speak. The men wondered what was wrong. Then, he took a pair of reading glasses from his pocket, which he had never worn in public. Putting them on, he said, “Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”
These words electrified his audience. Witnesses said many were in tears as they listened. Finishing the letter, Washington did not say another word, but turned and left the hall. The officers unanimously approved a resolution affirming their appreciation for their commander in chief and pledging their loyalty to Congress, and the nascent republic was saved.
This story points out the incredible power of commitment, and how a speaker can demonstrate it.
What is commitment?
Commitment is involvement so deep that you can’t help but become an expert in your area.
Commitment is courage to stand by your cause and your beliefs even when it becomes difficult, costly, or risky.
Commitment is contribution to a cause, a team, an idea, a project; it’s about doing the work that others won’t.
Commitment is consistency in your work, your message, and your goal.
How does commitment contribute to Max Cred?
Let’s use our by-now tried and true gauge for credibility; how does commitment contribute to good character, good sense, and goodwill?
Good character
Commitment gives you moral ascendancy which others admire and defer to. We admire people who throw themselves into a worthy cause and go to great lengths to promote it. Have you ever had the experience of reading a news story about someone who is deeply committed to helping others, and felt a twinge of guilt? It’s perfectly natural, because you know their cause is just and you support it but you would never do it yourself. Certainly if they came to your town to speak about it, you would feel compelled to believe their words.
Good sense
There’s a magical thing that happens when you get fully committed into a cause, a project or topic. You get so absorbed into it, that you don’t even feel the effort it takes to learn so much about it, and to soak in detailed knowledge. It may be difficult at first to get your bearings around a topic, but as you gradually learn more, it becomes easier and easier to learn even more, and before you know it, you’re an expert.
I had a vivid demonstration of this myself recently when I attended a neighborhood meeting, in which the principal topic was a nearby development project that I’ve been heavily committed to oppose. Our City commissioner was there, and as he fielded questions, I occasionally added to, or corrected some details in what he said. Within a few minutes, he was asking me if I had anything to add to his answers. Afterward, a lawyer in the audience came up to me and asked if I was a lawyer or worked in the planning and zoning field.
The other magical thing that happens is that when people recognize your commitment to something that they also care about, they are much more forthcoming in volunteering information, so you tend to accumulate private information that is not publicly available, and that can lead to a virtuous circle, where more knowledge produces more inputs which produces yet more knowledge.
Goodwill
Others see your goodwill demonstrated in two ways: your contribution and your familiarity. Committed people are the major contributors to the group because they do the work and take the risks that others won’t. That contribution is admired and usually reciprocated in the form of deference to their opinions.
Commitment is about showing up; people who are committed come to all the meetings and are always around. We like familiar things. Merely being exposed to something can increase our liking for it. In one experiment, researchers flashed photos of faces on a screen so fast that observers could not recall seeing them, but afterwards they showed a preference for those faces.
How do you demonstrate it?
Commitment is the hardest of all Max Cred factors to fake, especially over time. In fact, one of the most visible ways that others have to gauge your commitment is that you put in the time, you do the work, and you show up often and consistently.
But on the other hand, just because you put in long hours working on your idea doesn’t automatically mean that others can see it, especially if they don’t know you, so do:
- Have others toot your horn for you.
- Refer to it once in a while. Even Washington, whose commitment was unquestioned even by his bitterest opponents, had to make a point of demonstrating it again. Some historians think his gesture was premeditated. If so, it was a masterful display of persuasion. Was it manipulation? Not according to my definition, because he had his followers’ best interests at heart…
- Take a public stand; let others see your sacrifice
But it’s also possible to overdo it, so don’t:
- Be tiresome. If that’s all you ever talk about, you will get old fast.
- Brag. Let your actions speak for you.
- Be arrogant or condescending to others less committed.
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Some people you have to believe; some you want to believe. So far, we have covered the elements that compel credibility. With a sufficient combination of credentials, content, candor and confidence, people almost have to believe you, even if they would prefer not to. Even if they don’t like you, those three elements will give you a powerful engine to sail against the current of animosity.
On the other hand, it’s always more efficient, and more pleasant, to sail with the current; if people connect with you on a personal level, they are going to be predisposed to believe you and trust you—or at least give you the benefit of the doubt. Think of it as attracting credibility. Especially if what you’re asking is not that big a deal to them, so they don’t care too strongly either way, they are more apt to give it to someone they like and whom they feel likes them.
There’s a reason that one of the best-selling self-help books of all time was called How To Win Friends and Influence People. Credibility is about influencing the beliefs of others, and winning friends is a clear path to influence.
This article is about connecting with other people on a personal level—winning friends, if you will. To use more modern terminology, it’s about displaying warmth as well as competence.
Competence v. Warmth
Our brains have evolved an amazing capacity to form snap judgments about other people, because our ancestors who were good at it tended to be the ones who survived to pass on their genes. Suppose you’re walking down a lonely street and see a stranger approaching. It’s completely natural—actually inevitable—that you will make a rapid and mostly unconscious calculation about that person, assessing two questions: What are their intentions, and can they act on those intentions? In effect, we want to assess whether they mean us harm and if they do, how much power do they have? These two questions boil down to two dimensions called warmth and competence.
How do the factors we’ve discussed so far fit into these two universal dimensions? The Max Cred factors of Credentials, Content and Confidence fit squarely into the competence dimension. Candor shades into both dimensions: transparency shows strength while its openness about motives and concern with ensuring the other person gets your meaning exudes goodwill. Connection is squarely within the warmth dimension.
Connection is especially important because warmth is actually the first judgment the brain makes—within a tenth of a second of spotting a new face.[1] You can usually tell very quickly when someone has warm intentions, but it can take much longer to accurately judge their competence. It gives scientific backing to the saying: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Better to be liked, or respected?
So that brings us to a question: is it better to be liked or respected? It’s an age-old conundrum that goes back at least to Machiavelli, who addressed the question of whether it’s better for a prince to be loved or feared. Even Machiavelli said “One should wish to be both”, but that’s the easy answer. And the easy answer is not so simple, because the relationship between liking and respect is complicated, and because a lot depends on the situation and context.
The relationship is complicated because, while some aspects of competence and warmth can coexist and even reinforce each other, some aspects of each are contradictory.
Let’s start with the case for competence over warmth.
Why did baseball manager Leo Durocher say that nice guys finish last?[2] Is there something about being nice that can actually harm your credibility? Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School says that people who come across as nice may actually be seen as less intelligent.[3] Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor of management, says likeability is overrated—that appearing tough or even mean can improve your perceived competence.
Even in a field like sales, where many people believe it’s all about relationships, there is clear evidence that competence can trump warmth. Adam Grant wrote Give and Take, which is all about the virtues of being a giving person, so you would expect he would come down firmly on the side of EQ over IQ. But after he ran two tests with hundreds of salespeople, he concluded that, “Cognitive ability was more than five times more powerful than emotional intelligence.”[4]
So, if even in a field like sales, brains are more important than social and emotional skills, it would seem that competence beats warmth. If you have to choose, you would probably be better off being a competent jerk than an amiable dummy.
Now, let’s examine the case for warmth
And yet, there is also plenty of evidence—not to mention common sense—in favor of warmth. Common sense tells us that we’re more apt to listen to and give the benefit of the doubt to people who are pleasant.
Besides common sense, there is some good evidence that being seen as likeable can make you more persuasive. Studies that have examined the credibility of witnesses in mock courtroom trials have found that more likeable witnesses were seen as more credible[5], although the effect was more pronounced for women. Robert Cialdini, the godfather of influence studies, includes liking as one his top influence factors.
Doctors who have a warmer bedside manner are more likely to have their instructions followed and less likely to be sued for malpractice. And it works in the other direction: one study found that patients who were perceived as more likeable got more time from doctors and more education from their staffs.[6]
One final point: because people infer warmth much faster than competence, it makes sense to lead with it, which also increases your chances that people will listen to you long enough to discover your competence. You can be the smartest person in the room, but if no one wants to listen, then you’re as relevant as a tree falling in the forest with no one around.
So, being nice clearly pays off. The bottom line is, likeability is not the active ingredient of credibility, but it definitely makes the medicine easier to swallow. It’s nice to be smart, but it’s also smart to be nice!
How to Connect
There are two parallel routes you can take, one internal and one external. The internal path—caring—is all about changing your focus and attitude, and the external—connecting—is about changing your outward behaviors.
Caring: Empathy Is a choice
“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” Abraham Lincoln
I once sat across a desk from a cancer specialist in Miami, as he explained to my friend what would happen during and after his upcoming surgery to remove a cancerous bladder. He was dispassionately and even robotically describing the planned surgery, the difficulties to be expected, and the prognosis. He was very downbeat and pessimistic and was emphasizing the difficulties and the downsides. He was certainly exhibiting the Max Cred factor of candor, but I sensed something was missing, so I said, “Andy is not your typical patient. He’s a former world champion athlete.” The doctor asked which sport, and when I said it was swimming, his demeanor totally changed, as he told Andy about his own attempts at Masters Swimming and then proceeded to treat him as a human being.
That story demonstrates that empathy can actually be a choice you make. Jamil Zaki, who studies empathy as a Stanford professor, says “We often make an implicit or explicit decision as to whether we want to engage with someone’s emotions or not, based on the motives we might have for doing so.”[7]
As further evidence that empathy is a choice, there are studies showing that lack of empathy can be induced in people by priming their economic schemas, which is a fancy way of saying that you get them to focus on profit and efficiency.[8]
Connection: Empathy is a skill
Besides being a choice, empathy is also a skill that can be learned, practiced and strengthened. According to a 2015 article in The Atlantic, “While some people are naturally better at being empathic, said Mohammadreza Hojat, a research professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, empathy can be taught.” The article goes on to describe several courses at various medical centers and touts the improvements that have been realized in patient satisfaction and trust.
To be more likeable, here are a few reminders:
- Listen more. It is the best compliment you can give another, and the best way to make them feel important.
- Ask questions. Get to know them as real people.
- Be upbeat. According on one HBR article, “Optimism is also helpful during the interview process, making candidates appear more likeable and capable”.
- Give compliments. Flattery works, even when the recipient knows there’s an ulterior motive.
- Body language. Smile more, make consistent eye contact, and keep an open posture.
- Be expressive. Be yourself, let your emotions show, and don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.
- Use informal speech. Especially when presenting upward, don’t try to puff up your language.
- Be humble. Dial down your confidence a bit.
- Play up similarities and common ground. Like likes like.
[1] John Neffinger, Matthew Kohutt, Compelling People, p. 12.
[2] Actually, what he said was “The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.”
[3] http://hbr.org/web/2009/hbr-list/because-i-am-nice-dont-assume-i-am-dumb
[4] http://www.giveandtake.com/Home/Blog
[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20019000
[6] Axis of Influence, p. 8.
[7] https://www.edge.org/conversation/jamil_zaki-choosing-empathy
[8] The bedside manner of homo economicus: How and why priming an economic schema reduces compassion. Molinsky, Grant Margolis 2012.
