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Trust, Sales and Getting Real: Interview with Author Mahan Khalsa

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Mahan Khalsa is one of the more respected names in the field of complex sales. When I set out to write Trust-based Selling, there were three books foremost in my mind; Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, Khalsa’s 1999 book, was one of them.

FranklinCovey bought his business, and he went on to head their Sales Performance Group. More recently, he has become the head of Ninety Five 5, which combines sales techniques with change management and the science of expert performance.

A Harvard MBA, he splits his time these days between Colorado and Hawaii.

CHG: First of all, Mahan, thank you very much for speaking with us here today. I have long admired your work from afar, and I’m personally delighted to make the connection.

I want to focus mainly on trust as it relates to sales and business change, but let’s start more broadly. I did not start off in sales, and neither did you, if I’m correct? How did you come to be involved in the field of selling?

MK: My first encounters with selling were painful. I was working my way through college and needed a job, and took a position as a door-to-door salesman. I’ve written about it at greater length but I’ll summarize it by saying one of the happiest days of my life was when I got a job in a factory. I promised myself that I’d never be involved in sales again.

What I had experienced was abusive to both buyer and seller. Both were sullied. I don’t project my personal history on others who have had great experience in sales right from the beginning – or overcame early negative experiences in route to great success. That was just my experience.

I actually made it through college, and found myself the director of a residential yoga and meditation community. We arose at 3:30 a.m. each day, took a cold shower, and did two-and-a-half hours of yoga and meditation. I would have been happy doing yoga and meditating all day long.

However, part of the lifestyle was to take what you gained from your morning discipline and apply it in the everyday world. We had a lot of energy and motivation but lacked knowledge of how to run businesses. To remedy that, I was fortunate enough to get accepted at Harvard Business School, which was nearby.

Following my MBA, I founded a computer systems company. When it came to the moment when we actually had to sell something, that was a crisis and a conundrum. On one hand, it was my company, I felt it was up to me to bring revenue in. On the other hand, my experience in sales had led me to believe that you could be either a salesperson or a spiritual person but not both.

The combination was tricky. There were times I felt very honorable—and failed miserably. There were times I was successful in getting immediate revenue—and compromised my values and probably my long-term relationship with the customer. There were times I thought I had it all together—and still fell flat on my face. Yet eventually, everything started to come together. Not only was I successful at that which I once feared and hated, it became what I most enjoyed.

I thought others might benefit from what I had learned. I designed and taught a course for Arthur Andersen partners, which was successful and over time became the firm’s worldwide model for face-to-face selling.

Luckily, one of my later clients was FranklinCovey. They valued what I brought to the table enough to purchase my company in 1999. It has been an excellent relationship for all concerned. My Sales Performance Group colleagues and I have worked with tens of thousands of salespeople and consultants from some of the world’s most successful companies. The Helping Clients Succeed coursework has been taught in over forty countries in nine different languages. We have coached and consulted on initiatives involving many billions of dollars of sales.

Despite our success something important was missing. Companies weren’t getting as much of the sustained improvement we all hoped for. As it turns out, training, by itself, no matter how good it is, starts fading the moment the trainer leaves. Several of us formed Ninety Five 5 LLC. Ninety Five 5 concentrates on execution and measurable results, using training as only one part of a systemic improvement initiative. We’ve been able to build on the well received content developed with FranklinCovey and produce impressive results with companies willing to move beyond sales training to get serious about real world sales transformation.

CHG: The subtitle of your book originally was, “The Demise of Dysfunctional Selling, and the Advent of Helping Clients Succeed.” What did you mean by ‘dysfunctional selling?’

MK:. I count as dysfunctional those actions and behaviors that ultimately serve neither seller nor buyer. Since most people are both sellers and buyers in their lives, most can fill in their stories of what this means. Put in all the things you hate when sellers try to manipulate rather than serve your interests. Put in all the things you hate when buyers ask you to do things that don’t seem to make sense to either party or that aren’t likely to result in them deciding in your favor or even deciding at all. Put in all the things that detract from rather than aid in producing both the results and relationships to which both parties aspire. Unfortunately, the lists can be long.

Most professional sellers have good intent. They know manipulation and deceit hurt rather than build long-term sales success. They know that building trust is essential to both creating and capturing value. So they eliminate a lot of what would otherwise be dysfunctional—no surprise there. Yet most also consistently engage in actions that are not value adding–for them or for their customers. Even when great intent is present, there is a lot of room for improvement in eliminating dysfunctional behaviors.

CHG: I notice your recent editions changed the subtitle to “Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship.” Anything noteworthy behind that change?

MK: The new title goes to the essence of what we are about – creating a substantial improvement in the mutual success and satisfaction of both buyers and sellers. We feel there are ways of interacting that better benefit both parties and that doing so is a good contribution to the kind of world we want to live in.

CHG: I asked Neil Rackham if there was one, over-arching biggest single problem in the field of selling, and he said yes—for him it was the tendency to jump to solutions before having completed the questioning process. Do you yourself find an over-arching ‘missing link’ in the field of sales?

MK: I would certainly rank “pre-mature solutions” at or near the top of my missing links list. Almost all of us have room for big improvements in our ability to “seek first to understand” before we “seek to be understood.” And the challenge is being able to gain access to and skillfully develop that understanding with the key decision makers and influencers, many of whom seem to be hidden away from those who are trying to understand them.

Looking a little more holistically we could say the missing link is the ability to successfully blend excellent inquiry with excellent advocacy – to do a superb job of matching our story to the client’s story. Good inquiry is essential and most often the more undeveloped portion of the balance – and it is still only part of the equation. I’ve seen people get good at inquiry and still not be able to convert on advocacy.

I’ve also changed my view a little bit on what the true missing link is. I now feel the biggest over-arching problem is that 80% or so of all salespeople fail to get substantially better, year after year. They may get more comfortable; they may make the minor improvements they need to make just to stay even. However, as Geoff Colvin states in Talent is Overrated,

“Extensive research in a wide range of fields shows that many people not only fail to become outstandingly good at what they do, no matter how many years they spend doing it, they frequently don’t even get any better than they were when they started.”

The need for growth in most companies never stops; unfortunately, the growth of sales people does. That creates a “growth gap” that most companies try to fill with quantity (more salespeople) rather than quality (better salespeople). The missing link is not more good stuff, it is getting good at good stuff.

CHG: A fascinating insight. To that point, you have talked about how you integrated sales with change management and the science of expert performance. How did you come to make that connection? And what is the link with sales and change management?

MK: We hold two beliefs that happen to be backed by considerable data, research, and direct experience:

1. Deliberate practice is the key to improvement.

2. A supportive environment is the key to deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice, while not a particularly sexy phrase, is the term commonly used in the science of expert performance to describe the single most common and powerful attribute of top-flight performance in almost any field. It contends that the quality and quantity of mindful practice and application is what separates star performers from the decent, average, and poor performers. (Geoff Colvin’s aforementioned Talent is Overrated is a good read on this topic).

Deliberate practice is not ordinary practice. As Edward Deming once said, “It is not enough to do your best. You need to know what to do and then do your best.” So the quality of the practice and application is as important as the quantity of practice – and the quantity is essential.

What I find liberating and motivating about the research is that everything, repeat everything, we need to do in order to get really good at sales is learnable – if we are willing to practice. It doesn’t have to do with our DNA, our native IQ, our personality type or social style, our years of experience. If we are willing to engage in a high number of repetitions of quality practice we can become as great as we want to be. That’s powerful.

CHG: That really is powerful. I’ve always felt that people’s capacity for change is grossly under-estimated, but I confess I like hearing your scientific tone in expressing that truth. Reminds me of Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule. How can companies encourage it?

MK: If an organization feels a strong need for its salespeople to keep growing their performance, and they see deliberate practice as a key lever to realizing that growth, the next issue is how to align the organization to make deliberate practice a way of life that is encouraged, expected, and rewarded.

That’s where the field of change management or “systemic alignment” comes into play. Leaders in organizations have many levers they can pull that will influence what behaviors their people adopt and apply. Coordinating how and when those levers are pulled is a key to moving a sales force rather than just the top 10 – 20% who will make sure they will grow no matter what is happening around them.

CHG: I like the idea that you focus heavily on beliefs: you highlight five (my favorites: ‘move off the solution,’ and ‘world-class inquiry precedes world-class advocacy’). This focus on beliefs, and on relationships—your subtitle is “Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship”—seems to me to have, for lack of a better term, a spiritual bent to it. Am I right?

MK: I would say the focus on beliefs is practical, powerful, sometimes transformational, and for most people, under developed. I might go as far to say that sales is the process of understanding and influencing beliefs, our own and those of others. I’ve not thought of it as spiritual per se, though depending on how someone defined “spiritual” it may have a fit.

Most of us have heard the phrase, ‘people buy based on emotion and justify with facts (or rationale).’ Various neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists have given scientific support for this conventional wisdom.

I would modify the statement a bit and say people decide based on beliefs – what they believe to be good or bad, right or wrong, useful or not, meaningful or not important, high ROI or low, and so on. How they see the world through their beliefs determines what they do–which in turn determines the results they get. Those beliefs could be emotional, or based on what a person believes to be fact – whether those beliefs are corroborated by empirical data or not.

For many people, the beliefs that underlie their actions and decisions are unconscious or at least not clearly articulated. And when selling to multiple people, the beliefs may be conflicting as well as unclear. So the better job we do of understanding, articulating the key beliefs the client needs to resolve, both intellectually and emotionally, the better job we are likely to do demonstrating how we and our solution can address those beliefs. Understanding and clarifying beliefs goes to the heart of inquiry and addressing them goes to the heart of advocacy.

Too often both our inquiry and advocacy deal with the so-called ‘facts.’ However, as a University of Michigan study claims, “facts often do not determine our beliefs, but rather our beliefs (usually non-rational beliefs) determine the facts that we accept.”

Or as Annette Simmons claims in The Story Factor, “People make their decisions based on what the facts mean to them–not on the facts themselves. The meaning they add to facts depends on their current story [their beliefs]. Facts don’t have the power to change someone’s story. Your goal is to introduce a new story that will let your facts in.”

So yes; I believe the focus on understanding and addressing key beliefs is critical to helping clients succeed.

CHG: Stephen MR Covey, Jr., author of The Speed of Trust, is a colleague of yours. What do you think is the most powerful point he makes about trust?

MK: I think his most powerful point is that trust can be built on purpose. It doesn’t have to be an accident of circumstance or personality mesh. Trust with others – and in ourselves, for that matter–can be exercised like a muscle. When you apply Deliberate Practice to consciously build trust, trust becomes a reality with more and more people in more and more situations – to the benefit of all concerned.

CHG: Let’s focus on trust. It’s easy to get lost in various permutations of trust, but how do you see trust’s role in selling? In change?

MK: It’s hard to come up with something more original than the obvious – when you have trust everything goes faster, costs less, and produces superior results (usually). Typically, we find that three things flow together, up or down: trust, value, and the flow of meaningful information. If you have two you can usually get the third. Trust is hard to measure, and value is a lagging indicator. However, the flow of meaningful information (beliefs and facts) from the right people (decision makers and influencers) is a good leading indicator of whether trust exists and value will follow.

CHG: Let me just interrupt there, sorry. In my jargon, what I hear you saying is that transparency is a driver for increasing the odds that a would-be trustor will perceive a would-be trustee as trustworthy—thus creating trust. Yes?

MK: A little complex, but yes. As you say, there are many definitions, permutations, elements to trust – it has multiple and complex equivalents. Your trustworthiness equation is certainly a good, well-tested definition. People have to trust that what you will do will really get them the results and relationships they want, they have to trust that you will actually do what you say you will do, and trust that what you do will be performed in their best interests – or that your best interests are best served by helping them get their best interest met, which indeed certainly seems to be the case. Blinding flash of the obvious – to gain trust, you have to be trustworthy.

I think that in inquiry, a key skill is to consciously, with our words and behavior, create a container of safety where people can freely express what they think, feel, believe to be true. And if the container is really strong and expansive, they will allow us to question, examine, and offer alternatives to those beliefs. Most only are willing to do that if they feel the information they share will be used for them rather than against them – they have to trust our intent, our purpose in asking questions.

I sometimes say intent is more important than technique – perhaps another way to express the old axiom that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The good news is that you can get crystal clear on your intent and how it is mutually beneficial, and you can practice becoming completely congruent with that intent before picking up the phone or walking into a room.

CHG: I find people first want to know the ‘magic phrases’ to use, and it’s really not a matter of words only.

MK: You can communicate your intent without even saying a word. When people can sense that your intent serves their best interests, they are willing to open the trust valve at least a little. If that little bit is rewarded, they can risk a little more, and so on. If the risk is continually rewarded, trust grows. Of course, as you well know, all the hard earned work can vanish suddenly if the bond is broken. So constant attention to language and behaviors is critical – and learnable, and improvable.

As far as the role of trust in change, I feel the key is that if everyone in the organization feels the best way of improving our numbers is to focus first on improving our client’s numbers, the basis of trust will be institutionalized. Jack Welch once said,

“One thing we’ve discovered with certainty is that anything we do that makes the customer more successful inevitably results in a financial return for us.”

To create a trust based organization everyone has to believe that our self-interests are served by helping our customers reach their self-interests. When that belief permeates an organization and is backed by action, process, and rewards–not just value statements–trust can become a competitive advantage.

Often, in large organizations, the further away executives are from the customers, the more they focus on salesperson activity or quantity based leading indicators (numbers of calls, number of proposals) versus quality based leading indicators (flow of meaningful information). Perhaps they don’t trust the quality can be improved and that pulling the quantity lever is their best choice. They concentrate on improving the seller’s numbers (high self-orientation) rather than the buyer’s numbers (high other-orientation) and they put into place reward and reinforcement systems to reflect that emphasis. As buyers we can feel where that focus is placed, and ironically, when it is on the seller’s numbers rather than our own, we are less likely to take action to improve their numbers.

Customer focus is not just a tag line. It is a passionate, all consuming orientation that can guide everything we do. Importantly, it helps us stay away from what I called “dysfunctional” selling and push back with both courage and consideration when customers ask us to do–or to not do–things which would help the client succeed.

CHG: You have the ear of a lot of people—some of whom even read this blog! What would you suggest are the top few things people can do as individuals to increase trust in the workplace?

MK: Well, of course before I’d want to give someone any advice, I’d want to make sure they wanted it and would want to understand their specific situation. And I’d want to make sure I was following my own advice before I’d advance it to others. So here are three things I tell myself – and we at Ninety Five 5 tell each other.

1. No Guessing. If people are going to trust you to help them get what they want, need, and value, you have the obligation and right to understand their beliefs as to what that really means. Remember, beliefs are often unclear or not well articulated. If you guess about what they want, don’t have mutual clarity on the outcomes and rewards, don’t understand what has or will stop them, don’t know how they will make a decision, or what resources they will apply to getting a solution that meets their needs, you will likely miss the (undefined) target and trust will suffer.

2. Say it, Do it. Build the power of your word. You don’t have to say, “I promise.” If you say it, it is your Word, and your Word is your bond. If you say it, do it. Period. If you find it is going to be a challenge to meet your word, communicate the difficulty to the other person. Let them agree to a change or say they need you to meet your word. If you need to meet your word, meet it. Period.

3. Be Clear. Be crystal clear on your intent and how it serves the interests of the other person(s)–even as it serves your own. Before any interaction, clear out any internal or external pressures that might cause you to be incongruent with that intent. Let your intent manifest with clarity and congruency through what you say, how you say it, what you look like, and what you do. Be so clear that it becomes easy and natural to be fearless, be flexible, and have fun.

Or maybe just be the kind of seller you would love to have if you were the buyer. One you could really trust.

CHG: A perfect note to end on. Thanks so much, Mahan, it’s been very enlightening.

Reduce Stress: Stop Selling. Start Helping.

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A lawyer I was coaching recently felt his sales performance was weak. He had a few prospective clients asking him about his services and “kicking tires” but not retaining him. After discussing the specifics of one such prospective client, I asked him: “what was your goal with this person?”

He responded: “To make him a client.” He told me that trying to convert the person from contact to client was uncomfortable for him. Worse still: it wasn’t working.

Is Turning a Contact Into a Client the Right Goal?

I frequently find lawyers, consultants and financial planners wanting to mine their relationships and turn the many contacts they have into clients. They are focused on business development and want to build relationships so they can get more business. That may sound like a good goal–but it’s the wrong one.

The goal should be to build relationships and help the other person. The more one tries to sell, the more the prospective client gets turned off. Just think of the times when you needed services or products. You probably just wanted to be guided and helped, not to be sold something.

This isn’t a new concept. There are many articles and blogs that give all the reasons to stop trying to sell. Just do a search on “stop selling.” You’ll be inundated with articles and blogs. Charlie Green published an article on this topic in 2006 called “Stop Trying to Close the Sale”.

Let Go of the Goal and Start Helping

The more you try to sell, the less the other person wants to buy. It’s one of the paradoxes of selling. So—don’t do that. Instead, really do let go of that goal. Of course you need more clients or customers–but that’s your problem, not your prospective client’s problem.

Trying too hard just doesn’t work. And, as my lawyer client said – it’s stressful. Let go of your goal along with the stress it engenders and try something else – like helping, in the context of building real relationships. Interestingly, the more you try to help, the more success you’ll have in selling. (As long as you don’t let short-term, gosh-I-hope-I-can-sell-this-one thinking reverse the means and the ends).

Helping means finding ways to assist the other person to identify, analyze and resolve his or her problem. If that process results in a need for your services, that outcome will emerge. If helping includes referring the person to someone else, perhaps even a competitor, so be it.

Helping rather than selling fits well into the Trust Principles. Helping is:

      It also reflects low self-orientation, and enhances credibility, both components of the Trust Equation.

      How Helping Reduces Stress

      Most Professionals with whom I work rarely got their JD, CPA or MBA because they wanted to sell. What they wanted to do was to practice their chosen profession and to help people. They create stress for themselves by feeling they have to sell when they don’t want to, a feeling that is compounded by then having to deal with rejection on top of it.

      This is an unnecessary, even painful, vicious circle. Change your mindset towards helping others. It will reduce your stress. And it may actually result in more business sold.

      Stop selling and start helping.

       

      Sample Selling Without Giving Away the Store

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      “I know you recommend sample selling for intangible services, Charlie,” the caller said, “but I have to tell you, I think that’s naïve.”

      “I followed your advice,” he continued, “I gave them a great idea; but I didn’t get the deal. Worse, they stole my idea; now they’re making it a practice area. You can’t trust everyone; you can’t give away the store.”

      The Three Myths of Giving Away Too Much

      My caller is not alone in his fear of being taken. And as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

      Yet he is the architect of his own misery. He has fallen prey to three mistaken beliefs. And while you can’t think your way out of all tough situations, this one you can.

      Myth 1: Ideas, Like Shoreline, are Limited. I’ve heard it said there are really only seven jokes—all others are variations. I have no doubt that’s true: but there is no end to standup comedians telling no end of those variations. Limited categories don’t preclude infinite instances.

      Myth 2: Ideas are the Scarce Resource. As a consultant, I originally bought into the idea that corporate strategies were invaluable; if discovered by competitors, they could bring the company down.

      This turned out to be a conceit. In truth, you could give an entire industry public access to each other’s written strategies, and due to a combination of hubris, incompetence and the inertia of culture, very little would change as a result.

      As the NRA might put it, “ideas don’t change businesses—people do.”

      Myth 3: They’re Out to Take My Stuff. Yeah, some are. And they are the people who believe that ideas are limited and that access to ideas alone is valuable. See myths 1 and 2 above.

      Those who are out to take your stuff are co-conspirators in a joint exercise of self-delusion. They’re like thieves bent on stealing counterfeit cash. Go find some fresh air to breathe.

      Sample Selling without Giving Away the Store

      Let me acknowledge that there are certain businesses where idea theft is quite real. Chemical formulae in the pharmaceutical industry, novels in the publishing industry, code in the software business—I’m not talking about these cases. They are covered by patent, trademark and copyright laws. There are still lawsuits, but by and large the rules and case law are very well developed.

      I’m talking about marketing, change management, business strategy, process change methodologies, sales processes, communications, systems implementation—the world of complex, intangible services. Like jokes, there may be a limited number of categories—but there is an unlimited number of applications.

      How do you avoid falling prey to the myths? How do you not give away the store? Here are three tips to remember.

      Sample Selling Tip 1: Present Ideas Collaboratively. The context in which you present an idea is critical. Don’t waltz in and dump an idea on your client’s desk; first they’ll reject it, then they’ll tweak it, then come to believe it’s theirs—leaving you to stew in your own juices. (That’s best case; most likely, they’ll ignore it.)

      Instead, go back three steps and engage your client in a general conversation; let the idea emerge in context, between the two of you. Don’t be obsessed with ‘ownership’ of the idea unless you already have a patent.

      You might say something like:

      “Susan, I was thinking about the XYZ problem we discussed Monday. Does that situation ever arise in other divisions? I’m wondering if it’s really a process problem, or a people problem; can we bounce this around for a while?”

      If you’re really smart—and evolved; see Tip 3 below—you’ll let your client discover the idea.

      Sample Selling Tip 2: The Real Sample is Problem Definition. The idea of ‘sample selling’ is a bit of a misnomer. The real sample you’re giving the client is not a sample answer, but a sampling of how it feels to work with you.

      You do this by continually asking—with the client—“what problem are we trying to solve?” You might say something like:

      “Joe, we’ve come up with some great ideas in the business process arena. As we’ve talked, some related issues have arisen in the talent side of the business. Could we schedule some time to work those issues together?”

      Then repeat Tip 1 above.

      Sample Selling Tip 3: Rebalance Humility and Confidence. You need humility. Not humility about your ability—humility about your uniqueness. You are not Einstein (unless you are); you aren’t the only one with ideas. And frankly, your ideas are probably not unique either.

      You need confidence. Not confidence in your ideas—confidence in your ability to spot an infinite number of problem areas in your client, and confidence in your ability to generate more ideas to address each problem. It starts simply with seeing opportunities for improvement.

      Above all, you are the one with the client relationship; in that, you are unique. So—go define problems, and generate ideas collaboratively.

      You’ll get credit—but more importantly, you’ll get repeat business.

      Handling Sales Rejection Without Becoming a Narcissist

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      It’s one of the hardest parts of selling—that knife edge space where company revenue stream meets interior personal psychology. It is business, and it is personal.

      Most solutions share one problem; they are narcissistic, leading the salesperson to believe it’s all about them.

      But it’s not all about you. And the sooner you build that insight into your selling, the better.

      This is a topic I wish I had written more about in Trust-based Selling, so I’m glad to amplify it here.

      Why Dealing with Rejection Messes You Up

      Let’s start with the obvious. If you’re not getting some rejections, you’re probably not taking enough risks. So if you avoid rejection, you’re avoiding risk; which means you’re losing sales.

      But that’s not all. If you’re avoiding rejection, on some level you know it. If you know you’re avoiding something, you know you’re not doing what you know you could do; you’re not living up to your own self-image. That soaks up a whole lot of energy; it makes you inward focused and unhappy. None of which helps you as a salesperson.

      So avoiding rejection hurts your business, and it makes you feel unhappy. Inability to handle rejection hurts you everywhere it counts.

      The Three Usual Solutions to Rejection—and Their Weaknesses

      There are three common approaches to dealing with rejection. I’ve given them each distinctive names. They are:

      1. Endure it. This approach suggests there is some natural relationship between the numbers of rejections you have to endure to get to the good stuff. If you spin the wheel long enough, your number will come up. Get out there and dial for dollars.

      The problem: it’s hard to treat prospects as people if you’re just counting their no’s.

      2. Shrink it. This approach says. “It’s not about you, it’s not personal, you shouldn’t feel hurt.” Bring in the shrinks; think your way into not feeling.

      The problem: it really is personal, it’s about as personal as it gets–and you know it.

      3. Motivate through it. This approach relies on getting you ‘motivated,’ which usually means pumped up, psyched, and able to just play through the pain.

      The problem: prospects don’t appreciate being bulldozed.

      Why “Handling Rejection” is Narcissistic

      All those solutions have one defect: they’re all about managing your psychological response to an issue called “rejection.” But rejection is an imaginary concept—a fiction, a figment of your imagination.

      “Rejection” is a belief that if something happened that affected you, then it must have happened to you—that it was about you, concerning you, because of you, etc. And that’s what I’ll refer to as narcissism—a tendency to view everything as being about you.

      (Not-so-ancient societies used to believe that the sun and the planets revolved around the earth. There’s a very natural human tendency to believe that we are at the center of our own anthropomorphic universe, our own private Idaho. Much of growing up is getting over this idea, and most of us are only partially successful at it).

      Instead of “dealing with rejection” let’s focus on what’s really going on in the real world—the world outside your head.

      Curiosity is the Real Antidote to Rejection

      Think of selling as a scavenger hunt. On a scavenger hunt, you go off into a relatively unstructured environment, looking for pre-defined items to collect. Of course, you’re interested in winning; but the game itself is fun as well.

      In the game, you decide how and where to spend your time. You set priorities, and notice how and what your competitors are doing. There is skill involved in collecting the items. And you often end up in blind alleys when a particular path didn’t pan out for you.

      What you don’t feel on a scavenger hunt is rejection. There simply is no such thing. It is not about you; it is just a process involving many people, of whom you are one.

      All you need on a scavenger hunt is curiosity. And curiosity is a perfect emotion to bring to sales. Curiosity means you don’t have to ignore your emotions, or play through them, or convince yourself you’re immune to them. Instead, you’re just paying attention to a different set of issues. Let’s call those issues ‘reality.’

      In the real world, nothing is being rejected; there are simply solutions and fits, or no-solutions and no-fits. It’s not a struggle–it’s a puzzle. If you’re a good solution to that puzzle and are curious enough, you might solve it. If you’re not a good solution for it, and/or aren’t curious, then you probably won’t.

      So where’s ‘rejection’ in all this? In your head. So just stop it.

      Three Steps You Can Take to Reject Rejection

      1. Make a list of questions you’d like to know about each of your key prospects. Real questions, things you’d really like to learn.

      2. Just as you would in a scavenger hunt, keep track of what you’ve learned at each blind alley. You don’t win scavenger hunts sitting back at the office; you learn it going out and finding blind ends.

      3. Be alive. Have fun. Keep your ears open. There’s no point in blinding your senses in a scavenger hunt; why blind your emotions in the sales hunt? Just use them to figure out the puzzle.

      Did the post-Copernican western world feel “rejected” by the sun when they found out it didn’t revolve around the earth? Of course not–though they probably did feel deflated. But that was just because they were cosmologically narcissistic. You don’t have to be that dumb or that narcissistic.

      Nobody can reject you without your complicity in defining ‘rejection.’ Any time you hear ‘handling rejection,’ learn to laugh at yourself for thinking it’s about you–and go back to being curious.

      Tell Your Customers Why They Don’t Need You

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      You probably want your customers to trust you. And you probably tell them the truth about why they should buy from you.

      You might think that’s enough for them to trust you, but of course it’s not. Oddly, what’s missing is telling them something about why they might not need you. Here’s why.

      Consider these two sentences:

      1. If you’re serious about wealth management, then you should consider whole life insurance as part of your portfolio.

      2. If you distinctly need insurance coverage in addition to an investment product, then you should consider whole life insurance as part of your portfolio.

      The first paragraph is a form of manipulative selling–like the assumptive close (“OK, shall we start on Monday or on Wednesday?”), or inducing a series of ‘yes’ answers (“Now, I assume you want your children to be taken care of, right?”).

      Most people get annoyed when asked a question to which there’s only one reasonable answer. And most of us consider being asked that question a reason not to buy from the asker. So–don’t do that.

      Instead, ask a question that allows reasonable people to answer differently.

      Ask Questions that Allow Buyers to Self-Select

      The second sentence is different. It provides information by distinguishing between people who might find value in the product and those who might not. Phrased that way, it not only educates the customer, it allows the customer to make a decision to opt-in or opt-out.

      Most salespeople get nervous about questions that allow customers to opt out. Not, however, salespeople who understand the power of trust.

      By giving a customer knowledge that permits opting out, a salesperson is putting him—or herself at risk. But without risk, there can be no trust—only control and the illusion of choice.

      The reason trust works in sales is because human beings reciprocate when they are trusted. They appreciate being treated as adults, they appreciate not being manipulated and they appreciate being given choices that help them make intelligent decisions.

      And they show their appreciation by buying, disproportionately, from those who treat them that way.

      Let your customers know why they might not need you.

      Are You Just Selling a For Sale Sign?

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      For sale by OwnerKierkegaard described philosophy as, “You see a sale sign in a store window. You go in, but find it is only the sign that is for sale.”

      I sometimes feel that way in our increasingly online world.

      I got a notification that I had a new twitter follower—let’s just call him Mr. X. I usually give those notices a quick glance. In this case, the person is “following” 11,844 others, and has 13,253 “followers.” (For comparison, my numbers are each under 2,000).

      Punch line: he has written a grand total of one tweet, made back on August 28 (thanking Nattisco Artists for all their hard work). That tweet was then re-tweeted by 8 others whose ability to perceive value clearly exceeds mine.

      Now, I’m an active twitter fan: I use twitter to point my readers to trust-related content I think is interesting, and to follow similar ideas from others. But this is different.

      One might ask what he’s doing “following” 11,844 people; a much better question is, “what do 13,253 people think they’re doing ‘following’ him?” Not to mention the eight re-tweeters.

      On the TweetLevel rating service, this makes Mr. X (a self-described actor in Sydney) even more popular than Tony Iannarino, who just won the Annual Top Sales Awards for best sales blog (congrats, btw, Tony!).

      In fairness, TweetLevel rates Mr. X far lower in effectiveness and trust—as one would hope. But–then again, the highest-trust-rated twitter users on TweetLevel are Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian (sis Khloe lags at number 3). That’s not TweetLevel’s definition of popularity: that’s their definition of trust in an online world.

      The Kardashians are the modern-day equivalents of Zsa Zsa Gabor, the first one I think of as having been “famous for being famous.” They’re selling For Sale signs and calling it sales. You too can be like them. Just Do It. (And stop asking what ‘it’ is, it’s not important).
      “For Sale” Signs Abound

      Enough shooting fish in a barrel: Twitter, much though I love it, is fully of quirky adolescent silliness like that. But the Kierkegaard critique doesn’t just apply to Twitter.

      The logic of social media is simply mimicking the recent logic of business—the gospel of first-mover advantage. Don’t worry about what you’re selling—get the For Sale sign out there. You can pick up the expertise after you’ve been labeled an expert. Ready, Fire, Aim is too damn slow. Just Fire.

      It was 1968—ancient history—when Andy Warhol first said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Later, that concept came to be known as “so 5 minutes ago.” Oops, I’m dating myself.

      The sales vs. For Sale issue is most notable in the media. It wasn’t that long ago that newspapers published what were meaningfully called “letters to the editor.” At some point, I suppose they worried about whether to print emailed letters before snail-mail letters had had chance to arrive. In any case, they were carefully written, and then they were vetted by real ‘editors.’

      Today’s NY Times has an interesting piece from the Public Editor about what it’s like to keep up with the tsunami of commentary that comes in online these days. And the Times’ letters are nothing compared to the instant psychic-dumping that fills so many megabytes on so many news-and-commentary websites these days.

      For Sale signs are all over the place: the logic and thought and reasoning behind what is being sold—not so much.

      The publishing industry is about to undergo what the newspaper industry is already feeling—a meltdown of the curating function that institutions used to play. When “publishers” and “books” lose the social arbiters of how we define such terms, the first thing to happen is grade inflation.
      Everyone becomes an author. Everyone can write a book. There’s a book out now on how you can write a book in a weekend. The For Sale signs are out all over. There’s just nothing being sold.

      Grade inflation confuses the thing being measured with the measurement itself. For years now, the website TheWiseMarketer.com has un-self-consciously documented the slide of “loyalty” marketing from something vaguely resembling an emotion to an entire industry based on behavioral price-driven statistics. “Loyalty” itself is no longer being sold: it’s been inundated with For Sale signs.

      David Brooks cites this work:

      In 1950, thousands of teenagers were asked if they considered themselves an “important person.” Twelve percent said yes. In the late 1980s, another few thousand were asked. This time, 80 percent of girls and 77 percent of boys said yes.

      The great thing about empowerment is that you free a lot of good people who have great ideas to tell and to sell.

      The bad thing about empowerment is that you free a great deal more fools who think they’re selling when all they’re doing is holding For Sale signs.

      And Good Luck trying to explain the difference to them.

      Upcoming Events and Appearances: Trusted Advisor Associates

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      Join us at one or more upcoming Trusted Advisor Associates events. In January we’ll be hosting or participating in events in Fairfield, New Jersey; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon and through the globally accessed radio show "Trust Across America."

      Also, a few words about the new Trusted Advisor Mastery Program, and an offer to vote in this year’s Annual Top Sales Awards. 

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      Wed. Jan. 12th        Global/Radio         Charles H. Green

      Charles H. Green will be guest-hosting the Trust Across America Radio show, interviewing David Gebler on trust and ethics in business. 

      Thurs. Jan. 20th          Fairfield, NJ     Charles H. Green  

      Charlie is speaking, hosted by Wharton Alumni Club of New Jersey on Trust, Influence and Advising. Club Cucina Calandra, Fairfield NJ, 6PM.  Open to public: Sign up through January 12, $59.  From January 13 – 19, $79. 


      Wed. Jan. 24th            Seattle, WA       Charles H. Green

      University of Washington, evening:  Details/venue to be announced: email us at [email protected] to be notified of details when finalized.


      Mon. Jan. 25th            Portland, OR     Charles H. Green

      Charlie is luncheon speaker at the CFA Society of Portland luncheon; subject Building and Maintaining Trust with Clients and Prospects. Open to the public, click to register here. 

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      The current edition of the Trusted Advisor Mastery Program is entering its fourth week. Members are sharing, experiences, generating insights.   Some perspectives: 62 Tips for Selling in a Recession.

      Don’t miss being notified about the next Trusted Advisor Mastery Program, write to: [email protected]

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      Vote for your favorite Sales Blog at The Annual Top Sales Awards.  

      RainToday: Top Sales Awards

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      RainToday.com is one of the best sites on the web for learning how to grow your service business. I have been a Contributing Editor with them for several years now. 

      What impresses me most about them is the consistently high quality and professionalism of the writers they have gathered together, and of the programs they have designed.  If you are involved in the marketing and sales of any kind of professional services, you need to know RainToday.com.

      With that as background, it’s not surprising that three of my fellow RainToday contributors have been nominated for recognition by The Annual Top Sales Awards, celebrating excellence in the global sales community:

      ·    Jill Konrath, for Top Sales Blog, Top Sales Book, and Top Sales Personality;

      ·    Kendra Lee, for Top Sales Article;

      ·    Wendy Weiss, for Top Sales Blog.

      This blog, Trust Matters, has also been nominated in the Top Sales Blog category, and I have to tell you, it’s a real honor to find myself in the company of people who have given so much to the professional sales community.

      If you’d like to encourage and applaud their outstanding contributions to the field of professional sales, please click on the award category links above to cast your vote. It’s free, it doesn’t require registration, and it only takes a few seconds, and you can cast a new vote (legally!) every day until the polls close on December 13.

      And if you’d like to expand your own knowledge base about professional sales and succeeding with a service business, do yourself a favor, too, and visit Jill, Kendra and Wendy‘s sites, and the other Top Sales Awards nominees.

      Sales Training: By Good, or by Bad, Example?

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      I was recently chatting with Mahan Khalsa, as part of an upcoming Trust Quotes Series interview I’m doing with him. I’m excited about it, because his Let’s Get Real Or Let’s Not Play was one of the three Great Sales Books I considered when writing my own. Stay tuned for that interview sometime this winter.

      While we were talking, he asked me an interesting question.

      “Why,” he said, “did you place the S factor in the trust equation into the denominator as a negative item?”

      Here’s what he meant. We could have defined the trust equation as:

      (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy + Other-Orientation)

      Instead, we chose:

      (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy)

                  Self-Orientation

      I had to think about that, including after our phone call. Here’s what I came up with.

      I thought a+b+c+d was inherently boring. It raises the question, “why not e, and f, and g?” That kind of model just looks to me like one long string of positive attributes.

      But by changing other-orientation—a positive attribute—into self-orientation (a negative one), and flipping it into the denominator, I think we made it far more human. And by human, I mean—we do dumb things. We screw up. In fact, that’s what makes us human, one could argue. (Man is the only animal who blushes. Or has cause to.  Mark Twain.)

      So by enshrining that little negative component and very clearly making it a limiting factor on our potential for being trusted, I felt we mirrored something human. There are the good things we have to do—and then there’s the bad things we have to watch out for.

      What a Contrarian View Means for Sales Training

      I don’t know if Mahan thinks this way, but the natural instinct of a great many trainers is to focus on the positive: to show the model of how things should be done. 

      You describe the model; you show how it makes sense; you demonstrate it, you practice it, you focus on refining the essence of it, and you gradually get better and better at it.

      I have always felt a little squirmy about that. I just have a predilection to want to know how things fall off the rails, how they go wrong. I’m interested in the psychology behind how we are our own worst enemies, how we sabotage ourselves. This comes, I’m quite clear, from my own inner struggles at how to think and feel about selling.

      My first major sales article, Selling Professional Services, was written this way. I just felt that if I couldn’t come to grips with the fears in my own head, I would never be at ease with selling, nor would or should any client be at ease with me. So I wrote about my own fears, assuming others felt them as well.

      Enough people clearly did, and that article was the beginning of what became, with much more material, the book Trust-based Selling four years later.

      In the sales training work I do, I still reflect this bias. I prefer role-play examples that tend toward the train wreck, because I believe we can all nod knowingly down that path—and when we see how we went wrong, we can conquer that fear.

      I prefer sales discussions that focus not on great elevator pitches, but on why elevator pitches make us feel smarmy; that focus not on great objection-handling, but rather on shared objectives. Years ago Thomas Harris wrote “I’m OK, You’re OK.” One of these days I intend to write I’m an Idiot, You’re an Idiot: Let’s Just Get On With It. 

      I believe this parallels William James’ views in Varieties of Religious Experience. He described the “once-born” and the “twice-born.” The once-born come into the world religiously, live religious lives of peace and happiness, and die at peace with their god and their religion. 

      The twice-born, by contrast, have been to hell and back—and know the difference. Their religion is constantly informed by a sense of grace, because they know how thin is the line that separates sanity and insanity, rich and poor, lucky and unlucky. In case you didn’t gather, I identify more with these guys.

      And how about you? How do you like to learn, or teach, sales?  Does it work better for you to focus on the good, the right way to do things, the model of success? Or do you like shining the light under the bed to scare away the sales monsters?  

      TrustedAdvisor Associates Workshops & Events, Fall 2010

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      Join us this Fall at one or more of our 2010 TrustedAdvisor Associates events through globally accessed programs and webinars.

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      Mon. Nov. 15th        Global          Charles H. Green & Stewart Hirsch

      A new Trusted Advisor Mastery Program group began this week.  This session is full, but you can send an email to [email protected] to be notified when we begin another.

      The group is getting acquainted on the proprietary forum bulletin board, downloading customized audio-video content on building trust and relationships, and beginning to work their individual specific client and customer relationship issues in one-on-one personal coaching sessions.

      We described the program in a blogpost last week.  Contact us at [email protected] to get on the notification list for the next session.

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       Next Thursday marks the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope they enjoy the holiday well past the stuffing and cranberry sauce. We warn you though, tryptophan does set in! Enjoy the time off with family and friends, as we will be doing the same!