Sales EQ. Blount Jeb

The stakeholder originally chose and committed to the vendor. The stakeholder believes, like most people, that he makes good, rational decisions (egocentric bias). You challenged his judgment by showing him that he made a poor decision. The stakeholder is forced to either accept that he made a bad choice, blame external circumstances (attribution bias), lie that he knew the vendor was bad all along and had no other choice (hindsight bias), or defend his decision, turning you into an adversary.

      Result: He digs in his heels because the need to be consistent with his self-image and past commitments is powerful. Instead of agreeing with you, he argues back, making the case with the few good things the vendor has done for him while ignoring the damage the vendor has caused (confirmation bias).

      Most of his justifications are irrational. Yet the more you argue, the more he becomes anchored to his position. (You cannot argue other people into believing that they are wrong. This is the reason direct challenges often fail.)

      Your challenge creates psychological discomfort. Because you are the genesis of the pain, you become an unlikable adversary. When you are branded unlikable, win probability plummets.

      A Better Way

      Gaining an understanding of and leveraging cognitive dissonance is one of the keys to influencing stakeholder decisions.

      Rather than a direct confrontation – either with empirical evidence or with badmouthing a vendor that is clearly doing the wrong thing – create awareness with an artful question:

      “John, could you tell me what you like most about ABC vendor?”

      Average salespeople feel like this is a suicide question. “Why would I want them to tell me what they like about the vendor? Isn't that defeating the entire purpose?”

      To influence the behavior of stakeholders, you must manage your disruptive emotions (in this case fear), have empathy for the pain of cognitive dissonance, and have an acute understanding of how the human mind works.

      When you ask most people what they like about something, you trigger the negativity effect or bias. Most people will respond with a few positives and quickly shift to negatives. Humans are more attuned to negatives than to positives. We look for what's wrong or out of place, rather than what is right – it's just what we do.

      All you need to do is prime this behavior in your stakeholders by asking them what they like most. This has the added effect of disrupting their expectations, thus pulling them toward you, and causing them to become more engaged.

      In this case, there are obvious negatives, making the job of getting John complaining about the vendor and offering up a litany of its failures and shortcomings much easier.

      When John expresses his dissatisfaction on his terms, he becomes committed to making a change, and the probability that he will make the change increases because his actions must be consistent with his new beliefs about the vendor so as to avoid dissonance.

      5

      THE FOUR LEVELS OF SALES INTELLIGENCE

      We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgment of the intellect is only part of the truth.

– Carl Jung

      There is no doubt that ultra-high performers (UHPs) are smart people. They are keen observers and have insatiable curiosity. They have the innate ability and talent to connect disparate ideas, data, and patterns and then leverage these mashups of information to offer insights and solve problems.

      The good news is it is highly likely that you have an above-average IQ. I know this because people with above-average IQs are statistically more likely to read books and seek out knowledge.

      The bad news is a high IQ is not enough. Ultra-high performance requires innate intellectual ability combined with acquired, technological, and sales-specific emotional intelligence. These are the four types of intelligence that open the door to ultra-high sales performance:

      1. Innate intelligence (IQ)

      2. Acquired intelligence (AQ)

      3. Technological intelligence (TQ)

      4. Emotional intelligence (EQ)