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Great Moments in Selling – Bangor Savings

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John Edwards, Chief Banking Officer of Bangor Savings Bank, tells the story of how Forge won the job to develop a new branding package for the bank.

“We needed to reposition the bank,” John said. “We did a good job of due diligence in seeking about for the best qualified, non-conflicted firms. We narrowed it down to three.”

“On the day of presentations, the first two did fine, competent jobs of presenting to us. Forge—the third to present—began with a similarly competent 10 minutes of opening. Then they switched gears.”

“Unbeknownst to us, they had spent time going around to several of our branches with a video camera—looking at and talking to employees, customers, and citizens, assessing the kinds of interactions they saw. And they brought the results to the presentation with us.

“’Here’s a taste of how we see the bank,’ they said by way of introduction. ‘This is our view of what you stand for, and the message you want to convey.’

“About ten minutes into the video, our CEO jumped up and said ‘Yes! That’s it! These people have got it right.”

“So we decided on Forge. They went about their work, and when they came back to present us with their work, I remembered that first meeting. They pretty much opened right up with their new tagline—You Matter More.”

“I remember thinking—‘wait, that’s it?! All these months and all we get is three words? But I remembered that first meeting, and said to myself, ‘hold on. These people totally got who we were; settle down, and trust that they’ve got something behind that slogan.

“Well, it became clear that they had a lot behind that slogan. We loved their ideas, and the slogan indeed fit the message perfectly.”

What Forge did here is a classic example of Selling by Doing, Not Selling by Telling (see the chapter in Trust-Based Selling by that name).

Buyers respond much more favorably to expertise that is delivered, not preached; skills that are deployed, not recited; examples that are based on us, not on others, and that are current, real-time, not after the fact.

But Forge did something else, too. They rediscovered a truth that Mark Twain exploited in Tom Sawyer. Tom and Huck and the boys had snuck off for a trip down the river, and everyone back in town assumed the worst when their lost raft was found with a smattering of clothes, but no boys.

The boys arrived back in town and discovered that everyone thought they were dead. They realized they could attend their own eulogy, and crept into the church choir loft to listen.

What Twain wrote about was the deliciousness of a socially acceptable mode of eavesdropping on others talking about us—and hearing only wonderful testimonials.

What Forge did, in part, was to hold up an ultra-realistic mirror to Bangor Savings Bank. Realistic, but idealistic as well, reflecting the best of the bank’s aspirations.

Trust-Based selling? You bet. Forge reached out in an intimate way to show they could appreciate the bank’s aspirations; and made evident their own skills not by reciting other banks’ dreams, but by crafting an image of Bangor Savings’ own dream.

Well done.

Competing With Your Supplier is Not a Best Practice

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Fortune’s Geoff Colvin writes in the July 21 edition about Gary Reiner, GE’s CIO, in Information Worth Billions: General Electric’s CIO Tells How He Makes Infotech Pay In a Big Way.

Reiner reports directly to Jeff Immelt, GE’s CEO. Immelt wants three things from him—one of which is sourcing. Says Reiner:

"…we were one of the first to do e-auctioning. Our job would be to commoditize the item as much as possible and then leverage IT to have our suppliers bid for the business.

Of course, Reiner says that though GE loves to buy through reverse auctions, it hates to sell that way.

"…the more commodity-like the part or service is, the easier it is to auction; and the more differentiated, the less easy it is to auction…we try to make more of our business portfolio be products and services that are non-commodity—that are differentiated. So we are not as auctioned on the sell side as we are on the buy side.

All well and good. And of course (insert here your favorite paragraph on the fabulous track record of GE, Jack Welch, etc.).

And yet, and yet…

I’m left with the inescapable feeling that Reiner—and Immelt, and GE—view business as being exclusively and exhaustively about competition. Including competing with your suppliers. And competing with your customers.

With suppliers, it’s about extracting the best price from an auction. With customers, it’s about extracting the best price by avoiding an auction.

In both cases, it’s about extracting maximum price in a zero-sum transaction whose boundaries are limited to product features, product quality, and price. What’s good for me is not good for you, and vice versa. We are inextricably opposed.

If that sounds perfectly obvious and normal to you, then think about what’s missing.

A relationship. An approach of collaboration. A view that this transaction isn’t a carefully negotiated one-night stand, but rather a joint journey. A view that gets beyond mere product characteristics and price. A sense of commitment to customers or suppliers. A feeling of responsibility for the health of both parties. A willingness to pool information, rather than use it as a wedge.

That’s some of what’s missing.

Let’s call GE’s view the “competition-centric” view. It was given intellectual expression and validity by Michael Porter in his 1978 classic Competitive Strategy. In that book, Porter laid out quite clearly the nature of business: it was to compete. And the nature of competition was equally clear. There were five competitive dynamics facing the firm: two of those five were the competitive struggle between the firm and its customers, and the firm and its suppliers.

In other words—business, by this view, is quite specifically about competing with your customers (and suppliers).

This view is not “wrong” per se. It helped a lot of companies—including GE—to survive and prosper.

But this is not your father’s business world. Nor Jack Welch’s. Not any longer.

Today’s "flat" business world—30 years after Porter—is about extended enterprises, not hard-walled corporations. It’s about supply chains, not about monolithic vertically integrated organizations. Best practices today are about collaboration, not competition; about influencing, not managing; about commercial relationships, not competitive ones. It’s about 1+1=3, not "do unto others before they do unto me."

Those who succeed today aren’t those who play “hardball,” but those who learned early on to play nicely in the sandbox with others. Because in today’s business world, there is no longer any separation worth the name; in a globally scaled world, everyone outsources pretty much everything. A competitor today is a collaborator tomorrow and a customer or supplier on alternate Tuesdays.

Exhibit 1: the auto industry. Toyota has a genuine cost advantage over Detroit because it has always treated its suppliers as an extended organization—not as enemies to be kept at bay and bled nearly dry. That collaborative advantage is the competitive truth—not the self-serving excuses (by Welch, among others) about health care and pension costs (which were after all freely signed into contracts by Detroit management without a gun to its head).

Yet the dominant business ideology in the West continues to be—competition. These antiquated belief systems are increasingly at direct odds with the horizontal, extended, diffuse, globally interdependent world we now live in.

And of course, that’s how it works. Beliefs die hard—well after the conditions that birthed them are long gone. Ideology is the last vestige of a changing world.

Competing with your customers? If that was ever a “best practice,” it should now be relegated to an increasingly bygone world. It’s not “bad” or “wrong”—it just doesn’t work as well anymore. And that trend is only increasing.

 

Great Resources for Improving Your Presentations

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Giving great speeches is all about combining form and content. All content and no form is boring. All form and no content is fluff.

Those who focus on form—the really good ones—respect this balance, and have created their own content around form. I’ve had the pleasure to know two: Sims Wyeth  and Patricia Fripp.  Let me introduce them to you.

Sims coaches presenters. He also sends out newsletters and articles about the craft of speaking–communiqués that are themselves little gems. They are short and to the point. But they are provocative. And they are elegant.  The messages themselves represent the marriage of form and content.  If you’re going to tell people how to communicate—then communicate that message well.

Here are two examples from Sims:

The DNA of all reasoning is the syllogism. Given A, and since B, therefore C. For instance, given "All men are mortal," and since "Socrates is a man," therefore "Socrates is mortal."

Can you use this as the structure for a presentation? I think so. You could say: Given the situation we find ourselves in (and here you describe it in detail), and since we agree that our goals are XYZ (and here you describe your goals), therefore, this is what we should do (and here you elaborate on your solution.)

See? Logic is the language of presenting.

And:

Variety is the difference between a river and a canal. The river offers a surprise around every bend–calm pools, sounding cataracts, deep gorges, spreading fields. A canal is straight, plodding, dull.

Good presentations are like rivers; bad ones like canals. Your listeners want variety–broad truths buttressed by homely examples. Solemn purpose marbled with wit.

Variety perks things up!

Years ago, Patricia Fripp gave me a speaking structure in two days that I’ve used ever since. We should all aspire to a page of testimonials like this one of hers.

She also respected my content.  She was fully capable of grasping my content; she offered her content expertise, in service to me, as a means to support my content. 

She had her own content too.  Like Sims, the subject of her content is form. How many of the “8 Mistakes Made Using Powerpoint”  do you commit? I reviewed them tonight and found three—and I’m pretty good at this stuff!

Fripp’s business is speaking, and training others to speak. Zero content stuff? No way! Her website is loaded with topical programs, discussions, articles, videos, insights.

One tiny example: if you were interested in booking Fripp herself as a speaker, eventually it would dawn on you that you’d want to promote the event. You’d want her bio. You’d want a suggested introduction. You’d want pithy quotes; a set of sample speech topics; a sample brochure for advance promotion. And of course—it’s all there, right on her website. Because Fripp is a content pro—about the content of form.

The people I’ve met who are worldclass in what they do–Sims and Patricia in speaking, for example–do not see a “form vs. content” issue. They find the two mutually reinforcing.
 

Self Help Con Jobs

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Would you like to be more trusting? Maybe you’d prefer to be more trusted?

Most of us would like to get better at both. But how does one get better—at anything?

Virginia Heffernan has done the heavy lifting for us in the NY Times Book Review section in Advice Squad, her just-slightly snarky look at the New York Times’s advice, how-to and miscellaneous best-seller list from March 9, 2008.

You’ll recognize every genre, if not every title.

For example, there’s the “buy up the Alabama rights for some 800-number fish lure that keeps showing up in obscure publication, then re-sell them via the internet to some other person looking to get rich quick” scheme.

There are the “serenity now” variations once satirized on Seinfeld.

There are variations on looking young, not looking old, great skin, less fat, you are what you eat, get skinny by cleaning your house.

I don’t know what you call Suze Ormon; like Dr. Ruth and Tony Robbins, she clearly knows her stuff, but it’s somehow more about the Suze show than the subject.

There’s a special circle of hell reserved for Deepak Chopra, who ages ago (another lifetime?) actually wrote intelligibly about things medical. Not any more.

But the quintessentially American number one best-selling self help book—for a long time running, I believe—is The Secret.

This book is the capsule story of all the other books—they all promise the One True Way, if you will just follow their advice.

It is also number one because it captures the true secret of a con job—bad logic applied to serious issues. Which results in some major tsouris.

What do I mean by bad logic? This.

Imagine all four variations of a syllogism:

  1. If you got B, you must have done A.
  2. If you do A, you’ll get B.
  3. If you don’t do A, you won’t get B.
  4. If you didn’t get B, it’s because you didn’t do A.

The trouble all begins with number 1:

“I never gave up the dream that I’d [make it in Hollywood, win American Idol, own the big house, win the SuperBowl, hit the lottery]. I never stopped believing I could do it. And today, here I stand—I did it!”

This is what logicians call a “necessary condition.” If you’re going to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket. To win American Idol, you’re going to have to stay positive. To play in the NBA, you gotta have some big ambition.

The biggest problem comes with shifting to number 2—believing that a necessary condition implies a sufficient condition.

A necessary condition means that if B is going to happen, you will have to do A. A sufficient condition means that if you do A, then B will happen. The shift from a necessary to a sufficient condition is the central con job of The Secret—and of most cults. From “all winners believe” to “all believers win.”

Such a small shift. Such a Big Lie.

In the particular case of the The Secret, the Big Lie is compounded, because it’s not about believing in a diet or a magic pill; it’s about believing in belief itself. You gotta believe! Anything is possible if you only believe! This is the stuff of Oprah’s evil twin; of snake oil salesmen.

If dreaming big were a sufficient condition, every dreamer would win the lottery. If mere willpower were enough to win American Idol, the parade of early season misfits would be in the finals. Simon Cowell’s role is to remind us all that talent and hard work matter too. We love to hate him because we want to believe those self help books are enough—if you just dream hard enough!

But no—just because the winner dreamed, doesn’t mean dreaming makes you a winner. Hope is not a strategy. Strategies require more than dreaming. The inner city is full of kids whose life’s hope is to play in the NBA—far too many for the NBA to accommodate. And they have no strategy to back up the hope.

That’s the con job. But the evil of The Secret lies in versions 3 and 4—especially 4.

Version 3 says, all those poor fools out there who aren’t winning; it’s because they don’t believe. I, of course, know better. I know the power of belief.

Then the clincher, version 4. If you didn’t get wealth fame and happiness, it’s not because The Secret is a lie—it’s because you didn’t believe strongly enough in The Secret; in belief itself.

When Dorothy and Toto say “you have to believe,” we call it entertainment. But Madison Avenue sells the same Secret, as George Carlin pointed out so brilliantly: If you don’t buy our product, you will emit sinister genital odors and everyone will know it’s you and shun you and it all will be your fault, because you were warned. So Buy Now.

The Secret is a closed system. You cannot argue with someone who believes both that A is necessary and sufficient for B, and that the absence of B is necessary and sufficient to infer the absence of A. Work that one out. Like any closed system, every attack on it is rejected as illogical. That’s why they call it a closed system; an objection is defined as wrong.

For True Believers, it doesn’t matter what A is—it’s the experience of having an Answer for Everything that seems so seductive.

Some of us suffer more than others from an inability to believe, particularly in ourselves. A shot of energy, a bit of belief itself, can be a bracing and positive thing; when coupled with a strategy, even life-transforming.

But an entire industry selling people the belief they can influence lotteries and believe BMWs into the front driveway—no. Some of those end up as the ones we laugh and cringe at in early American Idol episodes. Others just slink off in shame when they come to. But most just buy another self-help book, desperately secure in the belief that belief will be enough—this time.

How do you get better at trusting and being trusted? Don’t peddle snake-oil. And don’t buy it either. Belief is necessary; it is not sufficient.

 

From Financial Relationships to Financial Transactions, Losing Trust on the Way

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The New York Times this Sunday has initiated an ambitious and comprehensive look at the financial crisis facing us. Gretchen Morgenson, a crack business writer, has not only her normal Sunday business page lead, but also the entire issue’s Main Section Front Page lead.

And rightly so. Count me among those who believe this is no ordinary recession; we’ll live to live again, but there has been huge financial misbehavior by all of us for a very long time; we’re going to have to pay the piper for some time to come.

Morgenson points out we doubled our mortgage debt in 7 years as a country; our savings rate—at 8% in 1968—is now 0.4%. And the biggest scorecard of all is the fall of the dollar, already precipitous, and likely to get worse.

One of the patterns that emerges is the conflict we have created in the world economy in the last two decades between efficiency and trust. It’s a major trust issue—one of social and political structure.

Here’s the idea.

The global financial system has gotten far more efficient by applying business process thinking “best practices.” Define processes so they can be outsourced to others, the thinking goes, who can then do those processes at a global level of scale, more cheaply.

That logic is what drives the outsourcing of payroll and benefits processing. It’s the same logic that drives mortgage lenders to sell loans to banks, and banks to package them to asset packagers.

It has in many ways worked: more capital became more available in more places to more people more quickly and at lower costs than had been the case 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, there was a side effectT—the substitution of short-term transactional fee income for longer term relational income sources (like interest).  And fee income has turned out to be the crack cocaine of the financial industry.

It isn’t just mortgages. It shows up in banks every time you get hit for $2 to withdraw $100 from an ATM not your own. It shows up in credit cards—in late fees and over-limit penalties, in huge rates for cash withdrawals. And of course if you refinance a mortgage, fees abound—enough to become the primary source of profitability for the refinancing institution.

Who cares about your damn loan when they can make money off of the act of taking out the loan, and more money out of selling it to someone else. Give ‘em a ten-year balloon loan at teaser rates. On Wall Street, the moral decline was captured with the phrase, “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone—just do the deal.”  Gimme more crack—gimme the fee income, you can have the relationship and the loan.

So here’s the social trust issue.

One of the four Trust Principles (see my article “Trust: the Core Concepts” or my book Trust-based Selling) is the focus on relationships, not transactions; on the medium-to-long term, not just the short-term.

That idea is pretty simple and clear. Trust thrives in relationships, not in random encounters between strangers. Economic models that link entities—and people—allow trust to grow.

Economic models that structurally dissociate people—blind online bidding systems are an extreme case—are at best trust-neutral, and in many ways trust-destroying (in the case of blind online bidding, that is in fact the intent).

So we have a dilemma. The economics of outsourcing processes has indeed resulted in lower costs. It has also resulted in lower trust.

Can we have both? And if so, how?

I don’t have the full answer, of course. But I believe the answer is going to rely on two things:

  • The political will—in government and in business—to recognize that, in the long run and in the big picture, we are all inextricably linked, and we’d better behave as such. In other words, an ethos or common belief-set based not on competition, but on collaboration.
  • The insight that low cost alone does not drive value; that relationships, in fact, are the source of far greater value than the micro-process-here-now-self-aggrandizing instincts we have been propagating as “best practices.”

It ain’t going to be easy, though.

How Contracts Can Feed Trust Rather than Destroy It

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David Zechnich leads Deloitte’s Contract Risk and Compliance service, a unit within their internal audit group (I think I’ve got that right).

In speaking with him recently, he has given me a new angle on contracts, trust and relationships. In this blog I have decried the increasing tendency to rely on contracts instead of trust (see, for example, “How Too Many Legal Contracts are Costing Business” .

True enough, fair enough, and I don’t disavow any. But David reminds me of another truth:

In a business relationship, over time there will be hints and evidence of things that cause you to challenge trust; in a business relationship in general there will be many temptations to stray.

In a negotiation (which may start every minute of every day), every mistake you provide provides fodder for disbelief and mistrust. So, conversely, every discussion to clarify the facts increases the basis for trust.

Sharing data in contract negotiation turns out to be a great basis for trust.

Properly treated, contract discussions are not adversarial, or even impersonal. Properly treated, they are opportunities for transparency and mutual disclosure.

What’s at stake, as David points out in a brochure co-authored with Eric Hespenheide (More Than a Matter of Trust: Managing Risk in Extended Business Relationships), is the level of trust in what he calls the Extended Enterprise. (It’s what I mean when I talk about horizontal commercial interactions taking over vertical management structures—see for example "Trust is the New Leadership.")

In other words, transparency in contract negotiations is good business—in part because it feeds trust.

David might get hired by company A in advance of licensing contract renewal negotiations with licensee company B. Company A hires Deloitte to dig up the data.

But that’s not all. David lives the values. He tells both companies in advance that he’ll be sharing the findings with company B as well as company A. That cuts down on argument and friction, because he is providing unbiased facts. Unbiased, in part, because the fees to his client A are based on time and materials—not a percent of the “damages.”

He even tells A that part of his objective is to make B inclined to hire him down the road—because of his obvious integrity and transparency.

I’ll be more careful in future about my wording of the dangers of over-contracting. It depends a lot on how the contracts are developed. If developed as a source of transparent information-sharing, then the cause of trust is served, not hurt, by contracting.

July Carnival of Trust is Now Up!

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Carnival Banner

 

The July Carnival of Trust is most ably hosted by Andrea Howe of BossaNova Consulting.  And a tasty feast it is.

The Carnival of Trust is a  monthly collection of the Top Ten best blog postings on the internet related to the subject of trust, with selection and distinctive commentary added by the host.  Like movie reviews in the New Yorker, the Carnival is insightful and succinct in equal parts–a oncentrated dose of wisdom, perspective and humor, all in an easily digestible format.

Andrea’s selections this month include these provocative topics:

  • How to increase trust by violating the no-talking-politics rule with clients
  • What Tim Russert’s passing taught us about what we value
  • How meetings kill trust
  • Creating value before the sales call
  • A call to arms for lawyers–to increase trust in the profession

Andrea’s commentaries are worth the price of admission (actually much more, since admission is free), and click-through’s are easy. 

Drop by the July Carnival of Trust at Bossablog today.

 

Past Carnivals can be found here.  If you’d like to enter a blog posting for the next Carnival, click here.  The next Carnival of Trust will be held at the beginning of September.

 

 

 

Walking Away Equally Unhappy

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Ever hear the phrase “a good negotiation is one where both parties walk equally unhappy?”

I’ve heard it attributed to various negotiation programs, and always intuitively knew it felt wrong. Applied to the metaphor of relationships, which I feel is a better metaphor for matters of trust, it comes up wanting.

In the relationship metaphor world, “both parties walking away equally unhappy” is a recipe for divorce.

 

I figured that for a tidy little blog topic, so I googled the phrase “walk away equally unhappy”—but found only eleven instances in total.

Of the eleven, only three used the phrase approvingly: once by a divorce attorney, once by an estate lawyer, and once by an online commenter talking about buying used cars online. Hey, I just report the news.

Most uses of the phrase were said by way of disapproval—the bulk coming from Diane Levin. Diane is a lawyer by training, but a mediator by inclination. An early champion of ADR (alternative dispute resolution), it’s clear from her writings (I don’t know her personally beyond her “about me” section) she is well versed in and receptive to the idea that one plus one is very much what we make of it.
Whether the arena is corporate negotiations or divorce or contract disputes, her motto is “only connect,” which she does online as well as in real life. Negotiations need not be adversarial interactions; each such interaction is another opportunity to create unlimited value.

At the risk of appearing un-objective—she is completely right.

Yul Brynner reportedly said, “We come into this world alone, and we leave it the same way; if someone offers you friendship along the way, you don’t spit on it.” That’s the minimalist, barebones, ironic statement of the proposition. It’s true even said that way.

We have a choice about how to deal with others. We can take the risks of trusting, and of being trusted. Or we can shut down. If we do the former, sometimes we get burned. That’s life.

Butif we spend our lives, and build our institutions, and conduct our economies, so as to avoid getting burned, we end up losing our life too. Just a little more slowly, and qualitatively. But no less in the end.

Kudos to Diane, who won’t settled for people walking away equally unhappy. Good for you.

Top Ten Reasons Organizations Don’t Teach Trust

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This recently from Tom Hines of the Monitor Group.

"My question to you, Charlie, is simple, but something that I’ve been struggling with for some time now. If every CEO or other senior leader (or at least the great majority) seems to agree that success in selling is in some part attributable to trust based selling concepts, then why do they spend virtually all of their training $$ on sales process, closing techniques, etc. It seems like a dirty little secret that this is nothing but a waste of money."

"I have worked with literally hundreds of sales people over my career and no process, qualification questions or closing technique ever works without establishing trust as the foundation of any client relationship. So the question then is why don’t organizations prioritize and invest in helping their organization understand the dynamics of trust and use that as the foundation of any other program they try to implement? It seems to me that they spend a great deal of money on "quick fix" programs that do nothing to change behaviors and belief systems about the importance of trust and how it is the only way to improve performance."

Well, Tom, no surprise, you’re preaching to the choir. But I know you mean the question seriously too, and I too take it as a serious question.

Why is it that things are that way?

Here’s my Top Ten list for why organizations, especially sales organizations, don’t invest more in trust. 

10. Fear–of looking wussy, as in Real Men Don’t Play Trust Games.

9. Thinking that business is about competition. It’s not. It’s about commerce.

8. Fear—of someone taking advantage of us; hence do unto others before they do unto you.

7. Bad long-term logic. We are dominated by financial logic, internal rates of return and present-value discount rates. That belief outlaws any investment beyond about 25 years. The parent of a child operates on a longer timeframe, not to mention entire nations in Asia.

6. Inability to defer gratification.

5. A Hobbesian hangover. The continued belief, fostered by ideologue economists and politicians, that the world is an evil place—life is nasty, brutish and short–and therefore the best defense is a good offense. Even if the premise were true (I have no position on it), the conclusion certainly is not.

4. The cult of rationality. Belief that only “scientific” management works; forget passion, belief, relationships—and trust.

3. Over-emphasis on measurement. The belief that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Just think about that. False on the face of it.

2. The cult of short-termism. Here-now, bird-in-hand, payback time, fees-not-interest, outsource, monetize—it all adds up to transactions, not relationships. Not good for trust.

1. Fear—that someone will find out who you really are if you don’t manage your image. So tighten up, spin everything, and get out of Dodge before they can spot you for who you really are.

What’s your answer to Tom’s question?

Can You Tell the Truth About Being Self Interested?

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The other day I was teaching a seminar, and someone phrased the following question:

I understand your point that, in sales, we should pay attention to the other person, focus on their needs, subordinate our own ego, and so on. But I have a hard time squaring that with honesty. After all, I’m in business to make money. They know that as well as I do. Isn’t it disingenuous—even dishonest—for me to pretend I’m totally focused on them, and not on myself?

That’s a very relevant issue to lots of people, and very well stated.

The answer in many ways boils down to one word—timeframe.

If I’m in a romantic relationship for sex, I’d better plan on some dinners, flowers, conversations and companionship on the way there. (And vice versa, by the way).

If I’m going to rely on friendships, then I’d better be prepared to invest in them over time.

If I want to have high energy and good health, then I’d better be prepared to forego the chocolate cake cravings from time to time, and to exercise sometimes when I don’t feel like it.

In other words, the desire for immediate gratification is often the enemy of longer-term happiness. Sad but true. In one study (maybe a reader can help me remember where/when), five year-olds were analyzed according to their ability to defer gratification (“one cookie now, or two in an hour”). Their subsequent lives were then traced over decades. Those kids who chose more later were notably happier, more successful, more stable later in life.

So it is in sales.

If I insist on closing every deal; if I insist on metricizing every little aspect of my sales process and tying rewards to each part; if I am constantly evaluating the discounted present value of the next ten minutes of conversation so as to decide whether to qualify or flush the prospect—then I am not a deferred-gratification salesperson, I am that greedy kid saying “me want cookie now!”

And people react to us accordingly. People who expect sex too early in relationships tend not to get it. People who never invest in their friends lose them. People who can’t resist the extra piece of cake get fat.

Back to my student.

The apparent conflict between self-interest and customer orientation evaporates if we look at the right timeframe. If all I can see at any point in a sales conversation is the likelihood of closing, then I am a “me want cookie now” kind of salesperson.

But if I’m willing to invest in the relationship—to let go the incessant attachment to outcome, to enjoy the ride as well as the destination, to qualify leads occasionally as opposed to constantly, to drive my reward from the total package rather than the quarterly pieces, to live in the relationship not the transaction—then things get better.  In fact, all things get a lot better.

It’s a bit of a paradox: the best short-term results do NOT come from trying to manage the short-term, but from managing in the long term. Your own best sales results come not from trying to sell the other guy, but from helping him get what he wants.

Your own self-interest is truly served by serving the other. And that’s the honest truth–about which you can be honest.

The contradiction is only in how you phrase the problem. Phrase it in the longer term.