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How not to sell.
The great sales myth is that sales are convincing someone of something. Chris Voss calls this a pseudo-yes. It’s meaningless. It’s empty.
The alternative to convincing is understanding progress. What changes would make someone’s life different?
Discovering progress is no small task because of two frequent mistakes.
First, artificial context. A recent spam caller asked if I’d like to save money on my electric bill. Well, of course! But the context of buying their solar panels wasn’t in that moment of the call. Better would be to find out that solar panels and windows come after kitchens.
Second, “drill without unpacking answers.” Books are not to be read, they are to teach. Similarly, questions don’t exist to be asked but to inform.
What to do instead.
To sell an idea there are four steps. 1
Identify your forces of progress. What are the push and pull and the habits and anxieties for your progress? It’s easy to describe the new (pull) but, said Greg, “I need you to spend more time on why you need to change (the pushes) but even more, the anxieties and habits.”
Identify their forces of progress. What forces of progress move your audience? And there may not be one audience! There are lateral, vertical, and tangential stakeholders.
Present a prototype. Combine those forces of progress into a few options. Choices allow people the space to think. What’s good about this versus that? It spurs choice when “do nothing” “Option 1” and “Option 2” are framed side-by-side.
Modify based on feedback. A sale isn’t a transaction. There is the buyer but also the user.
Homework 1
The next time you try to sell something to your family, a restaurant, a movie, or a vacation, go through the steps. Get used to your below-the-watermark things and practice finding theirs. Find those uglies in the pit of your stomach.
Homework 2
Jobs is a theory, which is useless without application. We can live those experiences but we can also learn them. In addition to listening to the podcast, apply the ideas to the world around you. Be curious!
Check out season 1, episode 10 for related ideas.