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The Paradox of Selling, Simple and In Your Face

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rantRantmaster (among other titles) Jack Hubbard , over at St. Meyer & Hubbard, has a lovely little blog piece whose simple charm belies the depth of its message.

Seems Jack’s wife got laid up due to a fall. So Jack had to curtail his travel schedule.

This meant two things. First, an exploratory trip to a piano store to satisfy a long-lasting desire by Jack which would keep him (and his wife) entertained for the weeks of enforced home time.

Second, a call from American Airlines Platinum asking Jack if his many cancellations meant they’d done anything wrong.

The details are worth reading, but basically, the piano guy kept calling with harassing product-based demands for Jack to buy a piano. And the American Airlines guy called back just to see how Jack’s wife was doing.

Small difference? Big difference, as Jack explains well.

Buyers Are Happy to Buy, They Just Don’t Want to be Sold

The paradox of selling, put as simply as I can, is that if you are willing to give up your attachment to the sale, you are more likely to get the sale. And that is counter to almost every sales program you’ll read, which all teach you—in the latest and greatest neuro-behavioral-process language–precisely how to get the sale. Now, that’s attachment.

The real answer of how to get the sale is: stop trying to get the sale.

You do not increase sales by concentrating all your energy and attention on getting the sale: paradoxically that just broadcasts how selfish you are.

Instead, you do what the American Airlines guy did: you focus on the customer’s needs—even if those needs don’t immediately have to do with your product.

Does that mean the American Air guy didn’t want to sell? That he had no quota, or interest, or that he was giving away free product? Heck no. He just saw the bigger picture.

Stop Trying the Close the Sale

It’s accepted wisdom in most parts that you should pretty much always be trying to get, and to close, the sale. Well, not so fast.

The bigger picture is, people buy from those who actually seem to give a damn, to actually care about their customers. Customers know the deal, they know how you get paid and that you’re in business to make sales. They just don’t want you shoving it up their nose at every turn.

The paradox is: if you’re willing to help people and not turn every interaction into a “closing moment,” ironically people become more willing to buy from you. It’s not a trick, it’s not a gimmick: people genuinely prefer to deal with people who behave generously toward them.

Does it work? Of course it does. The amazing thing is, it’s so simple. Be decent to people–people prefer to buy from decent people. Why haven’t sales authors and sales trainers picked up on this non-secret?

Here’s Jack’s take-away:

Mrs. Hubbard? She is fine now, thanks. And she is much more likely to step onto an American Airlines plane in the future than to ever step foot back in that piano store.

‘Nuff said. Thanks, Jack.

Dogs’ Best Friend Builds Trust the Old-Fashioned Way

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PatchesA couple of months ago I gave a donation to Best Friends in memory of a friend’s husband. I got my tax receipt/thank you note and even the magazine that described this organization’s work in saving homeless pets.

Last week I got the call – you know – the one where they ask for an additional donation. Except that’s not what happened. The caller was Gabriel, a founder of that organization.

He just called to say thank you for my donation. Then he asked about my family and our pets. He was genuinely curious, and caring. At the end of the conversation, I complimented him for not asking for another donation. He just calls because he wants to. And, of course, he didn’t have to ask.

By having no agenda, other than caring, he earned my trust. And he’s earned another donation. Without asking for it. What a great way to sell.

Institutionalizing Trustworthy Social Behavior

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I am an occasional correspondent with Jim Peterson.

Jim’s resume is built for perspective. He is American, but has worked in Europe for many years; he is a lawyer, but also was 20 years in-house with the CPA’s at a Big 4 Accounting firm.

Finally, for many years he wrote a column for the International Herald Tribune. These days he writes a blog, Re:Balance. One of his enjoyable posts suggested all you needed to know about Bernie Madoff was that Donald Trump suggested he (Madoff) habitually cheated at golf.

Jim has well thought out and well backed-up opinions about many of the issues of our times: Madoff, accounting scandals, international relations.

I asked him the other day if he’d be willing to pontificate at a very high level How To Fix The World. Well, anyway, the world of perfidy, scandal and untrustworthiness in business. Here’s his response:

Of course, that’s difficult — especially when talking more broadly about basic principles on which societies regulate themselves. Your partner Stewart’s piece on school-kids the other day resounds — and causes me to mention the book "Nudge,” by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, two really smart guys from the University of Chicago. There is discussion there that compares the results of coercive, top-down law enforcement with the setting of normative behavior by broadly-achieved social consensus, and where to draw the line on the tolerance level for deviant behavior.

My own examples and contexts would include, for example, the complex issue of drinking age rules on college campuses, the neighborhood decisions on cleaning up after dogs, and (as I remember) the de facto legalization of marijuana use in Central Park back in my early New York days.

As put in "Nudge," pedestrians don’t stop at cross walks because it’s illegal to jay-walk, in other words, but because it’s the social convention that cars generally won’t run you down (but there’s always the possibility).

In the corporate world I put weight on these principles:

– Law enforcement will always be reactive, behind the social curve and typically not effective as a deterrent.

– The American reliance on good quality disclosure and investor responsibility has generally served well, and better than most other systems, but requires serious re-calibrating.

– "Tone at the top" by way of management quality is of paramount importance, trumps almost everything else in the areas of ethics trainability, and can be observed and measured from the outside if investors and other users are only willing to do the work. (And per contra, Madoff and others demonstrate that sub-standard behavior is observable and measurable.)

That’s at least what comes top of mind to me.

What comes top of mind to you?
 

Selling Without Making the Buyer Feel Sold (Part 2 of 2)

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(This post was originally published in RainToday.com).

In yesterday’s post, I suggested that most salespeople feel a tension between the felt need to sell, and the desire not to make buyers feel like they were being sold. There is a solution, I suggested, which parallels some characteristics of gifts. They create an obligation to buy, but not in the tight, transactional, market-based way we think of as selling. Instead, they create a friendly, bonding form of loose-obligation. Selling based on that approach–being willing to give freely of sample advice for a period of time to a select group of candidate firms, ends up being highly profitable. Today: Why it’s hard to do, how to do it, and thoughts on the paradox of selling this way.

Why This is So Hard to Practice

The best salespeople practice this technique already: they freely give of their expertise—a tiny bit to everyone, and a lot more to a select group of people.

They don’t expect sales from any particular person at any point—yet they definitely expect an aggregate amount of sales from an aggregate amount of leads. They just don’t know from whom or when. But as long as the return rate remains high, they are quite happy not to be more controlling with any one lead.

Unfortunately, this line of thinking is the opposite of what passes for Received Wisdom in sales these days. Tools like Salesforce.com reinforce the idea of more control, smaller time increments, and more metrics. The dominant theme in improving sales is about efficiency, not effectiveness.

Every transaction is treated not only in isolation from others but is broken down even more finely. Behaviors are sliced and diced, incentives more finely tuned. Qualifying the lead happens more frequently and at shorter time intervals. The net effect on customers is to feel more mechanically processed. They will resent the actions and will push back.

How to Do It

It takes a strong personality to not give in to the general business demand for short-term and impersonal sales techniques. But the rewards of staying the course are great. The way to think about it mainly comes down to two changes: less control in timing and in metrics.

Timing: Take a longer view of the desirability of a particular lead. It’s the ability to show a sustained, genuine interest that offers the chance of a relationship. This doesn’t mean you don’t screen and exclude buyers; it means you do it more definitively and less frequently.

Metrics: In a longer timeframe, decision metrics become far simpler, and selling can focus on relationships, not evaluating transactions. Are you being invited in? Are they returning calls? Is there a real project being discussed? If yes, keep it up. If not, stop it.

The Paradox of Selling

Yes, you still want to sell what you sell. And yes, they still don’t want you to control them.

Don’t choose one or another, and don’t sub-optimize. By lengthening your timeframe and reducing the precision and number of metrics, you open up space for natural human instincts to work. In that context, you can intelligently give the gift of sample selling, and you can reduce the need to control that gift. That way people can feel the natural inclination to reciprocate rather than the resentful guilt or rejection that short-term control induces.

Selling Without Making Buyers Feel Sold (Part 1 of 2)

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(This post was originally published in RainToday.com).

One obvious purpose of selling is to persuade buyers to buy what you are selling. Most people have no trouble agreeing to that proposition.

Yet the harder you try to get people to do what you want them to do, the more likely they are to push back, resist, and generally behave contrarily.

Again, I think most people would agree.

Put those two statements together, and we can easily see selling as an ongoing struggle to get people to do what we want without making them feel that we are trying to get them to do what we want. Selling has at its heart a struggle to reconcile these two truths. You want to sell. They don’t want to be sold.

When two truths collide, one tends to lose, or they both tend to get watered down. But the way out is not to give up one goal (to sell) or the other (to not cause the feeling of being sold); it is to fully recognize both and transcend the apparent paradox.

It can be done. Here’s how.

The Tension Between Sellers and Customers

This paradox is hardly new. Sellers have palpably felt since time immemorial the tension to selling. Most sellers resolve the tension by one of three strategies:

  1. Defaulting to Truth One: hard selling 24-7 to anyone who comes within feeding range
  2. Defaulting to Truth Two: being nice and giving away money, relying on the hope that guilt will induce a sale
  3. Living With It: internalizing some form of denial, schizophrenia, or multiple personalities.

But there is another way.

The Other Way to Sell: Time, Gifts, and Trust

People resist being sold. But people love receiving gifts. In fact, receiving a gift induces a sense of obligation on the part of the recipient. Which suggests a strategy of "feels like" gift-giving might be the best form of selling.

For services businesses, there is an analogue to gifts—it’s what’s called sample selling in product businesses. Sample selling in the services might mean brainstorming, a small project, a "lunch and learn," a webinar, a series of articles, a series of conversations for which you don’t bill time, or sharing of some previous work.

Sample selling works even better in intangible services than in businesses that have "hard" products. The best way for a client to learn how to work with you is to let the client work with you. Create a sample experience.

But that’s only half the problem. The other half: if you set out to give a gift with the express intent of inducing guilt-based buying, you’ll get the reverse—outraged backlash at what is perceived as bait and switch, duplicity, two-facedness.

A gift has two features: it is open-ended, and it implies an ongoing relationship. (Think of Don Corleone in the movie The Godfather: "Perhaps, sometime in the future, and that time may never come, I will call upon you for a favor.") It is non-specific. It is not legally or logically binding, but it carries huge emotional obligation.

When we try to use the language of the market: "If you give me this, I will give you that" or "If you do this for me, I will do that for you," things change. That is the language of a contract, of money, of transactions.
The trick is for the seller to give up attachment to the specific short-term outcome of a particular gift to a particular buyer in a particular timeframe. The seller needs to give a sample as a gift, a generally social-obligating offer, not as a hard-obligating transaction.

Applied to selling, this means a strategy of loosely controlled sample selling is far more powerful than a tightly controlled strategy of transactions.

In simple terms, if you’re generous as a policy to a sensible group of people in the short term, many of them will buy in the long term.

Part 2, tomorrow: Why this kind of selling is so hard; how to do it; the paradox of great selling.

The Thin Line Between Trusting and Self-Delusion

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Chris Brogan is, if not a new media god, then assuredly a prince-in-waiting. Unpretentious and wildly prolific, there may be higher quality bloggers out there—but they put out one-tenth of what he does, and his quality:volume ratio is good enough that I nearly always read him.

So what if a popular blogger like Chris puts out a spoof—an April Fool’s day blog—and no one picks up on it?

That’s what happened, twice in a row. First, he posted “Get More Twitter Followers—Today!” an infomercial-type get rich quick genre spoof. In case anyone didn’t get it, he followed up with 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert!

And—you guessed it—apparently these two posts were huge hits. Chris is partly bemused and partly seriously wondering why. (Now, Chris is no dummy—of course he knows why. He’d just like to see fellow-bloggers like me spell it out in various ways. OK Chris, here’s my take).

Are People Deceived? Or Are They Delusional?

On the face of it, there are two theories why people would over-react to these blog titles.

Theory 1. People trust Chris Brogan and, holy cow, if he says so, it must be true!
Theory 2. People trust anyone who’ll promise them get-rich-quick schemes—they are sadly self-deluding.

The truth is, as usual, all the above, and a few more. You can chalk it up to naievete, or the triumph of hope over experience, or the enduring ego-centric belief that god is uniquely talking to us and us alone in providing these windows to opportunity—I’m not sure the reason matters.

The point is: it’s a thin line from trust to self-delusion.

Is the Decline of Trust Vastly Over-reported?

Hearing of an obituary having been published about him, Mark Twain famously wrote that “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” I wonder if the same may not be true of trust?

We’re all familiar with the headlines of declines in trust among professions, government, business and other institutions. I don’t disbelieve them; but at the same time:

  • Are you using your credit card more online these days to purchase goods? Someone is. Has their level of trust in online commerce gone up?
  • Are states gaining more revenue from lotteries than they were four years ago? (I can’t find data more recent than 2007—someone else?). If so, does that mean we trust state government more these days?
  • If Chris Brogan’s blog stats go up when he promises instant karma, does that mean we’re now in a post-Madoff economy and more easily trust online promises of fame and fortune?

I guess what I’m getting at in juxtaposing these data is that first, measuring trust is a bit like weighing fog. You know there’s something there, but by the time you get your hands around it, much of it has burned off in the sunlight or condensed on the measurement instrument. Measuring longitudinal trust on the same question with the same audience seems to work; beyond that, I find it hard to draw many conclusions from comparative studies except at the grossest levels.

Secondly, the human capacity to BS ourselves is quite remarkable. We’re all quick to decry others’ obsession with get rich quick schemes. But there are an awful lot of “others” out there, and some of them look a lot like us.

And it’s hard to tell the difference between sensible trusting and insensible self-delusion.

Me, I clicked on Chris’s first link. There, I said it. And I’m still not clear why I did it. Do I trust Chris Brogan? Or am I a self-deluding fool?

Don’t forget about answer "d. all the above."

August Carnival of Trust is Up

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Back by popular acclaim, David Donoghue reprises his Carnival host-ship of last year in this month’s Carnival of Trust. 

For those who don’t know, the Carnival of Trust is hosted on a rotating basis by excellent bloggers, who themselves select what they consider to be the leading posts of the past month.  The host–not me–selects from submitted posts and those of their own searching; they choose how many, and from what walks of life, the posts represent. The only requirements are that the posts be good, the host be scintillating, and the subject has something to do with trust.

David’s blog–the Chicago IP Litigation Blog–of course brings a legal perspective.  But he hasn’t let that restrain him.  In this month’s Carnival, he has selected some excellent posts ranging from leadership (in the US Patent office) to restoring corporate trust, to Walter Cronkite, to an Amazon response to a crisis.

Rich and varied stuff, the food of good thought.  Many thanks to David. 

Blog-jog on over to David’s site to savor this month’s Carnival of Trust.

 

 

When Arrogance Feigns Humility

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At my seminars, one of the actions I suggest to increase perceived trustworthiness is to speak truthfully.

Sounds great in principle, until you get into just which truths you discuss.

Speaking conventional, obvious truths (“how ‘bout them Bulls”)  doesn’t do much to create either distinction or deeper trust. Hence the usefulness of talking about things that don’t get said by others (“Joe, I’m sensing some hesitation here—is that right?”).

At this point, attendees often raise the issue of propriety, as in, “Some things should best be left unsaid—you don’t want to embarrass people or make them uncomfortable.  And if people feel uncomfortable or embarrassed, they’re not likely to trust you anyway.”

I tell them my experience is that most businesspeople don’t suffer from telling too much truth, but from telling too little. And so on. We generally have good discussions about the issue.

But occasionally that discussion goes to a higher plane. So it was recently, when an attendee and I talked at a break:

“I buy what you’re saying about our general hesitation to take personal risks in the workplace,” she said, “and you’re right—we’re making the client take the hit for our own insecurities.”

“But what about those cases where it’s actually true? Where to hear something really would be upsetting to the client, even if it’s true, and potentially important for them. Maybe it’s an issue I’m not totally sure of.  Maybe it’s a situation where I can get by with just saying most of the truth; or maybe the risk of embarrassment to me truly does exceed the benefit of truth-telling to the client. Aren’t you really helping the client by taking into account what you know of their reactions and ability to hear tough truths, and packaging them accordingly?”

I thought to myself, “Those are good questions: and we do have an obligation to our clients to say important things in ways they can hear them. But we have another obligation, to figure out how to say those tough truths, rather than deep-six them.”

Yet, how to say that to this thoughtful and insightful person?

I suddenly remembered a wonderful quote from Martha Graham: 

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open."

I said to the participant, “I’m sure you don’t think of it this way, but is it conceivable that your genuinely good intentions and insights are nonetheless making you behave arrogantly? In the sense that you are depriving your client of the right to make this decision for him- or herself? And if you don’t trust your client to handle the truth–doesn’t that ultimately degrade their trust in you as well?”

I didn’t need to elaborate.  She reacted immediately with shock at the suggestion that she, a most pleasant person, could conceivably be thought arrogant; but in half a second I saw quickly saw in her eyes that she ‘got’ it, and understood the meaning, and the truth, of the question.

Then, I think, she smiled a bit. Which, I suspect, Martha Graham would have appreciated.
 

If We’re So Rational, How Come We Don’t Believe It?

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From Australia’s news.com comes the story of how positive thinking can make things worse.   

REPEATING positive statements such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed" makes some people feel worse about themselves instead of raising their self-esteem, a study says.

Positive self-statements make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better, according to the study conducted by psychologists Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick.

For the study, the psychologists asked people with low self-esteem and people with high self-esteem to repeat the phrase: "I am a lovable person," and then measured participants’ moods and feelings about themselves. What they found is that individuals who started out with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement.

Hmm.  So much for mantras, affirmations, cognitive therapy and NLP?  Now now, don’t bother writing in, the research also says those things can work in the context of a larger program.  But that just means it’s a helluva job to change our beliefs, no matter how irrationally we got there.  The head is a weak instrument with which to heal the heart.  Syllogisms are powerful only in computer programs.

Dan Ariely’s excellent book Predictably Irrational  uses an opening story/example  involving a nursing practice to show how people behave irrationally. 

Curiously, when he explained the irrationality of the practice to the nurses themselves, they agreed about the irrationality.  And then kept on doing it.

In the “same only different” vein, we have Tim Harford’s Logic of Life.  An economist, his purpose is similar to Ariely’s—to show that apparently emotionally driven patterns in life actually demonstrate very rational behavior, meaning they make perfect sense when explained in terms of the pursuit of self-interest.

Harford has his own curious moment.  He shows how juvenile delinquents’ criminal behavior demonstrate rational decision-making based on the relative severity of juvenile vs. adult laws.  So much for adolescent impulsive crime, he says.  Higher penalties actually do deter criminals.  The data show it.

As Harford puts it, “the policy recommendations that emerged from…the theory and data are strikingly clear and precise…Unfortunately, politicians prefer simple ideological answers.”

Well, duh!

I think both these books are superb—great reads, and very insightful.  I’m not making a fundamental critique of them at all, I agree with them.  I’m just high-spotting a side moment in each book.

But what moments!  Here are two deservedly respected experts on the subject of how apparently irrational behavior actually makes sense.  Yet each of them is flummoxed when faced with people who nod their heads at the experts’ logic—and then proceed to completely ignore it!

Hey guys–aren’t those the folks you wrote the books about?  So–why are you flummoxed?  And where’s the explanation?

I think Ariely and Harford are quite right—as far as they go.  But I think there’s also something still out there, beyond explaining the perversely expressed logic of self-interest.

It’s the reason it takes a couple of generations to work out family neuroses. It’s the reason dieting is so hard, prejudice is so persistent, and why more people trusted Madoff than the IRS.

And it’s the reason mere affirmations can backfire.  Maturity comes upon us at the pace of molasses.  Change is a bitch.
 

Soul Trust

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From Reuters, a most curious story.
Would you pledge your soul as loan collateral?

RIGA (Reuters) – Ready to give your soul for a loan in these difficult economic times? In Latvia, where the crisis has raged more than in the rest of the European Union, you can.  Such a deal is being offered by the Kontora loan company, whose public face is Viktor Mirosiichenko, 34.

Clients have to sign a contract, with the words "Agreement" in bold letters at the top. The client agrees to the collateral, "that is, my immortal soul."

Mirosiichenko said his company would not employ debt collectors to get its money back if people refused to repay, and promised no physical violence. Signatories only have to give their first name and do not show any documents.

"If they don’t give it back, what can you do? They won’t have a soul, that’s all," he told Reuters in a basement office, with one desk, a computer and three chairs.

Think of all the literary touchstones this story elicits.  Gogol’s Dead Souls?  No, these souls are living.

How about the Robert Johnson Mississippi Delta myth of selling one’s soul at the crossroads; which led to Clapton’s Cream mega-hit Crossroad (and the comically serious Hollywood version, with Ralph (Karate Kid) Macchia doing the Robert Johnson role, with Ry Cooder standing in for Johnson/Macchia, and monster guitarist Steve Vai frankly blowing them all away as the devil).

Apparently, Mirosiichenko is not kidding. 

Mirosiichenko said his company was basically trusting people to repay the small amounts they borrowed, which has so far been up to 250 lats ($500) for between 1 and 90 days at a hefty interest rate.

He said about 200 people had taken out loans over the two months the business was in operation.

What does this say about trust?  The lender isn’t accepting collateral in the traditional sense (unless a rebuyer of souls, a la Gogol’s plotline, shows up).  Rather, he’s betting on the meaning of the oath to those who take it. 

Soul-pledging: the antithesis of asset-based lending.

Does this amount to a fear-based manipulation of primitives?  Or is it a sophisticated form of appeal to a character-based sense of honor?

Somewhat less seriously, what would Wall Street add to the question?

•    Are some souls more bankable than others?  Can a fair virginal maiden of 18 pull down a bigger loan than an aging prostitute?  
•    Are soul contracts assignable?
•    What’s the value of a tranche of securitized soul contracts?
•    Can you short soul contracts?  (Unfortunately, as of yesterday, naked shorts are now illegal).  
•    Is the soul sufficient consideration for a loan?
•    How do you foreclose on a soul?
•    What happens if the market value of a soul drops to the point where you’re underwater vis a vis the loan?  Can you go soul-bankrupt?
•    What if you commit a mortal sin after you sign the contract, thereby reducing the value of the collateral?

(co-author credits on this blogpost go to Susan Kleiner and Stewart Hirsch, specialists in soul law).