This morning at my church, we had a guest speaker.  Our pastor is out of town, and we have known this for several weeks.  Last week, we even got a little video preview of who the speaker is and what he preaches about.

After our singing time, the Worship Pastor introduced the guest speaker and mentioned what his area of focus is.  I thought that our church did a very good job of prepping us of what he was going to speak on.

The guest speaker came up to the platform with his Bible and 3 other books in his hand.   When some of the ushers went to move a pulpit to the platform for him to use, he declined and said he would rather not use it.  The ushers sat down.

The first thing the speaker did was show us some of the books he was holding.  He had either authored or co-authored them all.  He said they would be available after the service in the back at $10 each or 3 for $25.  Then his assistant exchanged those 3 books for 3 other books.  Again, he explained what the books were about and said they would be available after the service in the back at the same cost.

The message the speaker gave was very good.  He was a gifted, experienced speaker.  He had been a pastor previously for 25 years or so, and I anticipated a very good message.

On the drive home, I asked my fiancee’, Carrie, what she though of the guest speaker.  She said she was COMPLETELY turned off by him, and that she didn’t listen to at all, except for a few moments.  I asked her why, and she explained that she was turned off by the fact that the first thing the speaker did when he got on the platform, was to give a sales pitch about his books!

He could have given his presentation and made mention of his books during his sermon.  Yes, he was given a very good introduction by the church, both last week and this week.  We understood that he had a great background in his area of expertise.  But when he gave a sales pitch as the introduction to his sermon, he lost credibility.

All of it.

This reminded me of a principle in influencing other people.  Most people make judgements of others based on first impressions.  You have about 7 seconds to make that impression on people. 

You can have a great resume and cover letter for a job, but if you mess up that first 7 seconds of an interview, you lose!  

In sales, you have to build a relationship if you expect to make sales long-term.  We all know that it is easier to make a sale with people that you have a relationship with rather than cold-calling all the time.  Repeat sales are the life-blood of a business.

Starting with the very first encounter…the very first handshake…the very first contact of any kind, you need to work on building a relationship.  And in building a relationship, always remember:

It’s Not About YOU!

If you are trying to build a relationship, don’t talk about yourself in the beginning like that speaker did.  Talk about the OTHER person.  ASK them questions about themself.  Keep the focus on them.

People will like you more if you ask them about themselves and get them talking about themselves.  If you are in sales, find out what your customer’s interests are.  Get to know them personally.  Ask them what they need.  They probably already know that you are in sales and at SOME point you will be able to talk to them about your product.

If you start out talking about yourself, you severely limit your ability to influence others.  So don’t do it.

After all…It’s Not About YOU!

More another time,

Tim

Word Count: 645

At the time I am writing this, I am watching game 1 of the 2008 World Series.  Earlier this evening, I had the game on and was talking to my fiancee, and muted the volume of the TV so I could focus my attention on her.  After our conversation, she went downstairs and I stayed to watch the game, but I was also poking around the internet, so I kept the TV muted.

At one point, I looked up at the TV and saw that the game was still going on.  I was watching the game but not listening to it, because I still have it muted even as I write this. 

Watching the TV with it muted reminded me of some body language study you can do to practice your skills at reading the body language of others.

Have you ever been in a public place and just watched people from a distance?   Watched their interactions, their gestures, their stance and so on?  Have you ever watched TV with the sound muted and tried to figure out what is going on?  Or have you watched the TV evening news with the sound muted?

Studying people’s body language is CRUCIAL to your ability to influence and persuade other people.  If you cannot, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, discern what others are telling you non-verbally, you will have difficulty with your ability to really understand what the other person is thinking. 

For example, consider the following scene:

You are in a public place and see two people, one woman and one man, off in the distance.  They are standing and facing each other while talking.  Suddenly, the woman’s posture changes, with her hands moving to her hips.  At this point, she appears to be tensing up in her face and speaking at a very rapid rate.  The man moves one of his hands to the back of his neck and appears to be rubbing it.  He moves it to his forehead and rubs that.  Then he begins to respond to her verbally with his hands moving in the air while she moves her hands from her hips to crossing her arms in front of her.  One foot is pointed towards him while the other foot is pointed 90 degrees apart from the other foot.  She backs up a step and pulls her head and chest away from him while he seems to move in closer to her.  She also starts nervously playing with her necklace and actually takes a step back from him.  Then he confidently steps towards her as she turns her body away from him, but keeps her head in his direction.

You can just imagine what is going on in this discussion.  Perhaps she begins the conversation by confronting him on some issue, and it makes him uncomfortable.  She says something that triggers his anger and he lashes back and makes her suddenly nervous.  He sees this, and persues the issue further, which makes her want to turn away and leave, but she feels an obligation to continue listening to him.  All of these things and probably much more was easily discerned because we all have a basic knowledge of the body language of others.

There are also several subtle things that you can pick up if you watch for them.  Next time, I will share with you what I have learned is the best area of a person to watch when trying to discern what the other person it really thinking.  It may indeed surprise you.

More another time,

Tim

Word Count: 593

Does this sound familiar?

• You use a keychain that has the name of a business
• You wear a tee shirt that advertises a business or some organization
• You go to a convention and collect a bunch of stuff from the vendors
• You buy a product because it is sold as “Buy one, get one free” even though you don’t need the free one

How about this?  What is the common idea here?

• If you are one of the first 500 callers, you will also receive…..
• And in our deluxe package, you get unlimited….
• And that’s our gift to you if you call now…..
• Unlimited cable, internet, and telephone for one low price….

It throws our decision-making ability out the window.

It makes us greedy.

It’s the word FREE!

And not just FREE!  ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Let me ask you…how many gifts have you received that you PAID for?  None?  If so, then why do marketers call it a FREE gift?  Because there is something about that word FREE that just makes us lose all ability to reason properly.

I have been reading Predictably Irrational for the past week, and I am absolutely FASCINATED by what the author, Dan Ariely, has to say.  His basic premise is that we as humans make some very irrational decisions and can behave very irrationally, and that sometimes it is very predictable.

One experiment he talks about was when he set up a table with a PhD student and a university professor at a large public building and offered 2 types of chocolates – Lindt truffles and Hershey’s Kisses.  They sold the truffles at $.15 a piece and the Kisses at $.01 a piece with a limit of 1 per person.  The Lindt truffles, from the way he describes it, are quite an excellent little chocolate.  The customers did not see the offerings and prices until they approached the table.  What they found was that 73 percent of the customers bought the $.15 truffle and 27 percent bought the $.01 Kiss.  On another day, they lowered each item by $.01.  The truffle became $.14 and the Kiss became FREE!  Did they have the same results?  Nope!  Now the FREE! item was given out 69 percent of the time while only 31 percent paid the $.14 for the truffle.  Other experiments tried different price points, with similar results.  They tried raising the price of the truffle to $.27, then $.26 and finally $.25 while pricing the Kisses at $.02, then $.01 and finally FREE!  They sold more truffles when the prices were $.27 vs. $.02 and $.26 vs $.01, but when the truffles were $.25 and the Kisses were FREE!, the Kisses overwhelmingly did better than the truffles.

Ariely details other examples of the power of FREE! (by the way, in this chapter, he consistently capitalizes the word FREE! and always adds the exclamation mark).  It is almost as though FREE! is in a category by itself.  We seem to lose all reason when there is an opportunity for FREE!  We will take a FREE! promotional tee shirt even though we would never use it.  We will go to a convention and collect a bunch of free samples, then go home and throw them all away.  My fiancee’ likes to recycle church bulletins at the end of each service.  “Why take it with us just so we can throw it away when we get home?” she asks me.  Needless to say, I have started to change some of my habits about collecting souveniers and other FREE! stuff when I go places. 

From a marketing and sales standpoint, this is obviously a powerful psychological trigger to getting more sales.  Always offer FREE! stuff to your customers.  But from an influence and persuasion standpoint, this is one of those things that you need to know about so that you don’t allow people to use the reciprocation principle on you.  Taking the FREE! sample gives us a powerful feeling like we need to return the favor, even though we are not required to do so.  Upgrading to a large drink so that you can get the plastic cup instead of the paper cup is a profit builder for businesses.  I am sure you could think of many other instances where FREE! was used on you to manipulate you into feeling obligated to “return the favor”. 

FREE! is a powerful little word.  Proceed with caution….

More next time,

Tim

Word Count: 719