I’m sure you’ve heard of the “Golden Rule” Treat people the way you want to be treated. It’s a great rule for life in general, but in my opinion it’s not the whole story.
Why? Because we’re all individuals and how I want to be treated is not necessarily how you want to be treated. So applying my standards of treatment to you, thinking you’ll be grateful might completely miss the mark. Especially when it comes to persuasion.
Here’s an example – yes, it’s a bit silly, but it illustrates the point well.
Bob and Jane are a newly married couple.
As children, whenever Bob was sick, his mother always lovingly fed him tomato soup. Jane’s mother always gave her chicken soup. Jane loved these times as she felt really close to her Mum.
Fast forward to their newly married life. Bob gets sick, and Jane (you guessed it) brings him chicken soup. After all, this shows she loves him.
Bob’s hurt as he now thinks Jane doesn’t love him. If she loved him, she’d have brought him tomato soup. And naturally the reverse is true too. Bob bringing Jane tomato instead of chicken soup would put a strain on their relationship.
Of course all of this could have been avoided if Bob and Jane talked about their feelings and what made them feel loved – but that’s a story for another day.
But it does illustrate the pitfalls of assumption in communication and influence.
The simple rule is do not assume the other person is like you.
So how does this translate into sales?
At its heart, sales is about influencing your buyer to come with you on a journey where you walk together to solve their pressing issues.
While inexperienced salespeople try to ram their point across, flip the script.
“Seek first to understand, then be understood.”
Put another way, nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
The point here is you must get into your prospect’s world. Deeply understand what their issues are and more importantly, the root causes of those issues.
Only once they feel you understand them will they open up and let you into their world.
Now you can have a collaborative conversation where both of you walk together towards a mutually beneficial solution that they will implement.
Now obviously there’s much more to this than meets the eye.
We work with our clients to enable them to improve their influencing skills. Drilling down into issues their prospects face. Mapping out the steps individual prospects take towards a buying decision and ensuring all the stakeholders are on board.
As such, we invite you to work with us to improve your sales and persuasion skills so you meet your growth targets. We offer a number of programs ranging from sales boot camps to bespoke training and coaching tailored to your organisation’s requirements. Contact me at RevealedResources.com for more details.
