Is what you imagine really what you notice.

Learning to keep your assumptions in check is a simple skill to acquire, but applying it consistently to your work takes a lot of effort. While this skill can provide you with a very important reward—being able to sell more in less time—many sales professionals still don’t take the time to learn how to incorporate this into their sales technique.

It begs the question: why don’t they just do it? Let’s look at an exercise based on the work of Dr. Brad Blanton (author of Practicing Radical Honesty: How to Complete the Past, Live in the Present and Build a Future with a Little Help from Your Friends). It is routinely performed in seminars by Engage Selling Solutions and the results—why people do what they do—reveal some rather surprising conclusions.

Participants each choose a partner and take turns sharing what each notices and imagines to be true about the other. It’s an exercise that illustrates how what we imagine to be true can affect everything else about our powers of observation. In this case study, remember the distinction between these two concepts: (1) our ability to notice is limited to facts about a person’s appearance, actions or words, but (2) what we imagine to be true comprises the rest of what we observe.

A typical session might include observations as follows:

“I notice that you wear glasses. I imagine you need them for seeing.”
“I notice that you talk about your co-workers. I imagine that you really care about what they think.”
“I notice that your hand is touching your face. I imagine that you are thinking about something.”

This exercise is not as easy as it might appear at first. People are being asked to verbalize what they notice—the things that are normally left unspoken. This is a behavior that is opposite to what is normally expected in our society. Given the opportunity, it’s interesting what people say, deduced from what they notice! Try this experiment for yourself.

Surprising results!
At the end of the exercise, participants estimate the percentage of time their partners’ observations were correct. On average, the participants score correctly about 80 percent of the time. That’s not a bad result. But then this is only a five-minute exercise. People tend to choose only the safest and the most easily observable assumptions, so the observed subject isn’t offended in some way.

Now consider this—if what we imagine to be true is correct only 80 percent of the time in a five-minute session, what percentage of time do you think we are correct in a day…in a month…over the span of a career?

Here’s another point to think about. When asked, participants indicated that similar observations made over a longer period of time would be more likely to be incorrect—most estimated that figure to be about 50 percent. This means that we’re potentially wrong at least half the time over the span of a lifetime!

In sales, people notice—and think they see—plenty of things they assume to be true. Most of these will remain unspoken, even the observations that are incorrect or misunderstood. And the percentage of time that people are wrong could be as low as 20 percent. Consider what kinds of observations could be wrong within that figure. And don’t forget, that figure could be higher, according to what participants in the exercise had to say about their own confidence in their powers of observation over time.

Potentially this means that you might be dead wrong about what you think you know to be true about prospects and customers…half the time!

What’s worse is that your prospects or customers may well be convinced that they are always right about what they observe. This can serve to quickly erode any chance of establishing a good rapport between a salesperson and a client. Let’s look at an example:

As a software sales representative, Kathleen was told by one of her prospects that the firm’s procurement and legal teams would have to first review the software provider’s licensing agreement and contract before any deal could be finalized. This process would start once the prospect had chosen to buy from Kathleen’s company. Assuming that the prospect’s team would accept the contracts and agreements at face value, and would not be able to cancel the sale, she waited until the very last minute to submit the licensing agreements for review. The prospect had waited (impatiently) to install the software and Kathleen had to wait to invoice the legal and procurement teams. Three months passed and still no contract. Both sides were still arguing over the licensing agreement!

Had Kathleen checked her assumptions when her prospect first mentioned the involvement of legal and procurement staff, the discussion with the client might have sounded like this: “I notice you mentioned that legal and purchasing will need to be involved, and I imagine this could either be a long process that could delay the implementation, or that they normally accept vendors’ agreements as-is. What do you think is more likely to happen?” That question might have drawn out the truth that vendors’ agreements were rarely taken at face value. That would have given Kathleen important facts with which to make better decisions (i.e., to suggest they start the review process in parallel to finishing the sale).

There’s a sad footnote to this example. During the three months of negotiations and delay, the potential’s office was hit by a tornado, destroying the building. All paperwork was lost. The sale never closed.

To make matters worse…
People love to be right—it’s human nature. Often, people will even search for things, even a gut feeling, to validate an assumption. In doing so, they often miss facts that might point to a different conclusion about a person, place or thing.

To make matters worse, we as a society tend to remember only the times we’re right and conveniently forget the times we’re wrong. We don’t keep our assumptions in check because we imagine we know what our prospects are really thinking. That’s why feedback is so important. It gives people an opportunity to verbalize what they think—to say what they believe to be true. Make no mistake about it: the truth hurts at times. But it beats the alternative in which people, groups or entire organizations go on making bad decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete facts.

Her is the challenge in sales. When you think a particular customer or prospect might become a problem—or seem uninterested in the product or solution being sold—you’ll procrastinate, avoiding to find a solution. The problem client becomes a low priority. Not surprising then, that customer ends up feeling unsatisfied.

No wonder many salespeople continue to have difficulties closing their sales and have conflicts with their clients! They are likely the same who think that they are always right…but we have demonstrated that people can be wrong—dead wrong—half the time about what they’re convinced is true! Add to that percentage those clients or prospects with whom you’re having a problem and you’re left with a sobering thought: You might be wrong far more often than right.

Research conducted by Engage Selling Solutions suggests that the most confident salespeople (and I meet a lot of them!) are seldom interested in playing the blame game—they want solutions. Salespeople who have a hard time admitting they’re sorry (or that they might be wrong) tend to be the mediocre performers in an organization…and most are doomed to fail.

There’s something inherently ironic about what it takes to be a successful, top-ranked, sales associate. Bucking conventional assumptions (and the natural tendency that so many of us have) about the need to be right all the time—in sales, the path to success and happiness demands that you accept that you might be wrong. Accepting the notion of being wrong doesn’t have to lead to a crisis of confidence. If your self-esteem is built on discovering the truth, of moving beyond blame, of implementing real solutions, and of accepting that you might be wrong, this knowledge will not fail you. Instead it will help you master one of the most important skills in sales: the ability to close more business in less time.

Colleen Francis, Sales Expert, is Founder and President of Engage Selling Solutions (www.Engage-Selling.com). Armed with skills developed from years of experience, Colleen helps clients realize immediate results, achieve lasting success and permanently raise their bottom line.
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