influence

Most business people will tell you that selling is not their favorite activity. Let’s explore a way to look at the process of sales a bit more favorably.

Whether we like it or not—”we’re all in sales”. Most of us have an internal dialogue about both selling and closing that is less than positive. Most of us approach the sales portion of our business hoping we’re not “coming off like a salesman”.

Most of us hate to be sold to. Most of us have to sell to live. Most of us realize that in order to keep our business afloat, we need to sell. I suggest that you give up that need to sell. Please notice that I didn’t ask you to give up the commitment to sell but rather the need.

The hardest time to do anything is when you need to. In the revised edition of his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, the noted psychiatrist and author Victor Frankl coined the term “Paradoxical Intentionality”. He defines “Paradoxical Intentionality” as “The twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible that which one wishes.”

In other words, if you need to do something it makes the task much more difficult. Frankl’s thesis can best be illustrated by an example with which we all can identify:

The last time you needed to get to sleep because you had something important to do the next morning how easy was it to get to sleep? The last time you needed to stay awake for the end of a film how easy was it to stay awake?

So I repeat give up the need to sell. Be committed 150% to making the sale but avoid becoming tied to the “outcome” of making the sale.
This is contrary to what many of us have been taught. However, if you view yourself as a “problem solver” rather than a “maker of sales” this concept will make much greater sense.

I define a problem as, “something that exists when there is a difference between what you have and what you want.” My definition of business is, “The ability to solve other people’s problems and get compensated for it”.
Closing is “the ability to create an environment in which the prospect comes to the conclusion that our product or service will solve his/her problem.”

Based on these definitions our job becomes a process in which we first uncover whether the prospect has the type of problems our business solves. Next we have to find out if the prospect truly believes that a problem exists (and it’s important to let the prospect be the judge.) If the prospect believes that there is a problem and that the problem is likely to cause monetary or emotional sacrifices, he or she will be open to having someone who can be trusted help solve the problem. In other words, the prospect begins to close the deal.

Your prospect will begin to convince and influence you that there is a need for your help. He or she will become the source of the sales presentation and the close. As backwards sounding as this may seem it’s really the way it works.

Because the responsibility of convincing and influencing is assumed willingly by the prospect nearly all of the stress and negativity we associate with selling literally disappears.

Use this approach to selling and you’ll see a big difference. Instead of a day filled with trying to sell things to people, you will get to solve people’s problems. This is a much more enjoyable way to approach the selling part of your business.

In summary give up the need to sell and think of yourself as a magical problem solver.

Ike Krieger is the founder of BusinessSuccessBuilder.com. He is a nationally known business language expert, mentor, speaker, radio and TV talk show host, educator and author. He is a former communications instructor at Ohio State University.

He has served as business makeover specialist for the LA Times and writes for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He is the current Chairman of the Board of the North San Fernando Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce. Ike’s business success builder programs have helped thousands of entrepreneurs, executives, salespeople, consultants and professionals get an even bettershot at networking, selling and business success.

Ike can be reached at 800-700-4334 or by e-mail at ike@businesssuccessbuilder.com.

BusinessSuccessBuilder.com. Build it Big, Build it Bigger!

http://www.businesssuccessbuilder.com

818-997-7575 - 800-700-4334

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“Your face is my map to your life.” - Houdini, magician

We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced. To learn more about how you present
yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to
look yourself in the face. What to get out a mirror now, before you read further?
Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?

You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face.
Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain
helps to explain why this is so. The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected
by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of
how you feel.

In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body — -the left and
the right — are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion. Look at yourself in
the mirror — full-face and full length — to see the differences.

In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.

Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.

The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the
more “public” side of your face. The left often looks less happy than the right. Most
subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of
their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and
attitude towards the world.

Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or
open in expression. The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to
reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to
keep private from the world — and sometimes even from yourself.

The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends
to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your
personality.

“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”

- Live Ullman, actress, author

Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body —
including the face — then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is
organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world
and how we can better understand others. The left brain — reflected more in the
right side of the face — relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and
language.

The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other
more creative leanings.

The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life
emanate from your right brain. You express them more in the left side of your face.

We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.

The more controlled or conscious responses — the social mask you put on for the
world — may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more
readily on the right side of the face.

Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with
some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for
whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.

How Do You See the World?

Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world — which it
does predominantly through your left eye. And, when you face someone, your left
eye is across from the other person’s right side. Therefore, you are more aware of
their right side. But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face
which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side. You miss
facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.

“Public / Private Face” Exercise

Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone — and it doesn’t involve
disrobing or even touching. Sit facing each other. Now look at the left and the right
sides of the other person’s face. Does the right side show a more open, less tense
presence? Does the left look more reserved, serious? The left side, that is their left
side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public
face. In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition. As you face
each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.

“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most
memorable part of the face.”

- Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist

“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise

Now try this experiment. Get out your driver’s license. Look at both sides of your
face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper. Look “inward” at yourself
and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.

You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of
your face and your personality development overtime — and that of others in your
family. Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other
perspectives on them.

“Photo Finish” Exercise

To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of
“head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself. If you don’t have any handy,
ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and
compare notes on this exercise.

Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face. Flop
over one side of each negative.

Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from
the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo.
Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print
made.

Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half
negatives become right-right and left-left faces. You will then see exaggerated
versions of both aspects of yourself — and will probably be able to see each more
clearly.

Kare Anderson is the author of LikeABILITY (see Grand Store on her site), Make
Yourself Memorable and SmartPartnering. A popular speaker on SmartPartnering
and on how to be more frequently-quoted to become your kind of customers’ top-of-mind choice, she also publishs the SayitBetter newsletter, with 32,000
subscribers in 28 countries.

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Recently, I ran a seminar in central London. After the first day, from where I was I could see out in to the hotel reception area where a lady was requesting to keep her room for several hours after check-in the next day as her husband was ill. She wanted him to rest until nearer their flight time; rather than hang out in the city.

The receptionist kept on giving her all the excellent reasons why this was not possible. The lady listened respectfully and then kept coming up with even more compelling and articulate responses.

I watched her be charming and articulate while also being logical and practical. Without ever being rude or pressurised, she hung on in there, pursuing her desired outcome. Finally, the receptionist gave her a conceding smile and said “Ok, you are the winner here, aren’t you?”

How did she get what she wanted? Because she was flexible enough to keep offering varying behaviours and new conversational stances until the receptionist was unable to keep up with the thrust and parry of the disucssion for a second longer.

You can’t keep thumping and bullying someone into understanding your point of view. At least, not if you want a progressive outcome that is good for all concerned. The best communication tends to come from those that have a good persistent, genuine, regardful flexibility. For many people, flexibility does not come naturally or easily. I know what it is like; sometimes we can be so sure that we are right about something, can’t we?

Many people consider resolving an argument or discussion as something that is like verbal boxing. They bash and thump their way through an argument (with lots of those Batman-style ‘Kapows’ and ‘Ker-runchs’) until they get what they want. When you look at more artistic models of oriental martial arts, such as the form of t’ai chi, you see that the idea is not to overcome or overpower force, but to parry and redirect it - not to meet force with force, which is a bit brutal. Instead, you learn to align yourself with the force directed your way and guide it in a new direction. That is what the lady in the hotel did so wonderfully.

One thing I learned from the field of NLP when I first studied it was the notion that there is no such thing as a resistant person: There are only inflexible communicators. I really rather like that idea.

Here is what I think about that particular ever-present, three letter word - “but.” Yuck!

Often used unconsciously and automatically, it can be one of the most problematic words in the English language. If someone says “That’s true, but” What are they saying? They are actually saying it is not true or maybe they think it is irrelevant!

The word but tends to negate everything that was said before it. How do you feel if someone says to you that they agree with you, but?
What if you simply substitute the awful word “but” for the word “and” instead? Yeeaahh, that’s better isn’t it? What if you say, “that is true, and here is something else that is also true”? Or, “That’s an interesting point, and here’s another way to think about that.” In both cases, you start with agreement. Instead of creating resistance, you’ve created an avenue of redirection.

Now, just as there are phrases and words in your life that automatically trigger feelings of hostility or resistance, there are also ways to communicate that keep people amicable, agreeable, engageded and open.

For example, what do you think would happen if you had a communication tool you could use to communicate exactly how you felt about an issue, without compromising your integrity in any way, and yet you never had to disagree with the person either? Would that be a pretty powerful tool? Well, here it is:

It consists of a series of phrases that anyone can use in any communication to respect the person you are communicating with, develop lots of nice rapport, share with them your point of view, and yet never resist their point or opinion in any way. You see, without that kind of resistance, there can be no conflict.

Here are a sample of those type of phrases:

“I appreciate that and”
“I respect that and”
“I agree and”

Of course, you have to fill in the blanks, I can’t spoonfeed all of it to you, let me explain:
With these phrases, you are doing three things. You are developing rapport by entering the other persons world and acknowledging their communication rather than ignoring it or dismissing it with words like “but” or “however.” You are creating a frame of agreement that bonds you together, and you are opening the door to redirecting something without creating resistance. Beautiful eh?

Let me give you an example. Someone says to you, “You are totally wrong,” about something. If you say, “No, I’m not wrong, I am right” just as strongly, are you going to remain in rapport? Are you going to create an agreement frame? Not on your nelly. No way.

There will be conflict, and there will be resistance. Instead, say to the person, “I respect how you feel about this, and I believe that if you were to hear my side of it you may well feel something else.” Which is just what the lady in the hotel foyer was saying.

You do not have to agree with what the other person is communicating; as was shown here. You can always appreciate, respect, or agree with someone’s communication without agreeing when you don’t. You can appreciate their feeling because if you were in their shoes, you may well feel the same way.

You can also appreciate someone else’s intent. For example, many times two people on opposite sides of an issue don’t appreciate each other’s points of view, so they don’t even hear each other. But if you use the agreement frame, you will find yourself listening more intently to what the other person is saying - and discovering new ways to appreciate people as a result.

I was once at a Tony Robbins seminar and he did an experiment that gave some great results on this. He had two people take different sides of a question and debate it without ever using the word “but” and without ever trying to belittle the other’s point of view. A bit like verbal t’ai chi, cool eh? People found this a liberating experience and I have used it when working with couples in my consulting practice or employees when I have corporate clients.

They learn more because they are able to appreciate and respect the other person’s point of view rather than feeling they have to tear it apart. They can argue without getting antagonistic, hostile or upset. Most importantly, they can reach points of agreement.

Have a go at doing the same thing with someone. Pick a subject or topic that you can take opposite sides on and argue it precisely the way I described above - as a game of finding commonality and then leading in the direction you want to go. I don’t mean you should sell out your stance on the matter; I don’t want you to be an unnecessary “yes man.” But you’ll find you can reach your outcome far more effectively by gently aligning and then leading rather than by bashing violently. And you’ll be able to develop a richer, more balanced point of view by being open to another perspective.

Most of us look at discussion as a win-lose game. We’re right and the other person is wrong. One side has the truth and the other side is in darkness.

I have found in so many circumstances that I learn more and get where I want to go much more quickly by finding an agreement frame. Another really worthwhile exercise is to argue for something you don’t believe. You’ll surprise yourself by coming up with new perspectives.

When I trained as a hypnotherapist I bought a wonderful book called “The couple who became each other” By David Calof. The author had hypnotised a troubled couple to be each other for the duration of the session and they had to argue the side of the other one; thus learning more about the other ones point of view. I have done this in therapy many times with fascinating results. Is that getting a new perspective, or what?

The best sales people and the best communicators, all know it’s very hard to persuade someone to do something they don’t want to do. It’s very easy to get them to do what they do want to do, by creating an agreement frame, by leading them naturally rather than through conflict, you do the latter, not the former.

The key to effective communication is to frame things so that a person is doing what they want to do, not what you want them to do. It is very hard to overcome resistance. It is much easier to avoid it by building on agreement and rapport. You then turn resistance into assistance. Did I really just say that. Yuck for the second time today.

So when you are out there in the world in this coming week, be more flexible and see how often you can create an agreement frame to create more harmony in your communications and get much more of what you want.

Adam is a best selling author, consultant and speaker please visit his website for a vast range of personal development resources and to receive your free, instantly downloadable hypnosis session and amazing ebook: http://www.adam-eason.com Thanks.

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