THE DOUBLE EDGED SWORD OF ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY
World-famous peak performance consultant in turnaround expert Anthony Robbins often tells the story of when he first went to work with motivational speaker Jim Rohn. He was hired as a sales person.
Well, Anthony Robbins would spend the 45 minutes while driving to every single sales call putting himself into a “peak state”. He would shout positive affirmations again and again and again. When he arrived he was so certain that they would buy that there was absolutely no chance for them not to buy. He was vibrating with certainty.
This worked so well for him, that every single person, who we sat down with for the first month bought. Bar none. And he’s not lying. It’s an actual fact. If I remember correctly, he sat down with about 200 prospects — and every… single… one of them bought a ticket to a very expensive seminar.
That’s the power of congruency.
Whenever two people meet, as long as there is rapport, the person who is most certain will dominate the situation. That’s true. However, here is the part of the story that Anthony Robbins sometimes forgets to share.
About half of the people who he sold backed out within the coming days. Half.
There was massive buyers remorse. Why? They had been pushed, bullied and essentially forced to buy through Tony’s conviction. He hadn’t left any space for them to say, “no.” And, if you don’t give your prospect the opportunity to say no, they won’t. Not to your face, anyway. They will just wait quietly until you go, and then they will call your company and leave message saying what? You guessed it, ” I changed my mind.”
That, also, is the power of congruency. It’s a double edged sword.
I made some cartoons recently about niche marketing. But secretly they’re also about this topic.
There is a real trend in sales training to make sure that you are congruent. In other words, make sure your words, voice qualities and nonverbal communication are all aligned. Somehow, you are supposed to do this all consciously. Somehow you’re supposed to notice if the fact that you’re raising your left eyebrow a quarter of an inch is congruent with that word that you just said. It’s ridiculous, if not entirely impossible.
We are told to “fake it to you make it”, to “congruently act as if you knew what you are doing”. Now, while there may be some life or death situations that call for this level of “created certainty,” day-to-day sales probably… isn’t… one of them.
It’s almost a form of brainwashing.
When you consider that most sales training is very aggressive, dominating, paternalistic, tough and goal oriented you realize that it’s no coincidence the most of the sales trainers are male. In sales we’re taught to be tough.
“Little boys don’t cry.” If you meet with the prospect, and they say, “No. We’re going to go with your competitor.” It’s not uncommon to have the sales manager berate to you for having “given up”. For not having tried “hard enough”. For not being skilled enough.
There is a subtle way that you become labeled as a wimp. All too frequently people’s bosses will say to them, in essence, “Get back in there. Stop whining.”
That can take a heavy toll on your self-esteem. And if you are the boss you don’t get out of this – in fact, you’re harder on yourself, aren’t you?
And so many of us did stop whining. We live that game. We went through the intense hazing that happens in corporations. We hype ourselves up to cover the pain we were experiencing. The excitement becomes a sort of armor and painkiller to protect and numb us from the constant rejection were facing.
When faced with poor statistics and results — most senior managers don’t want to admit they are wrong. Even worse, there is a subtle sense of, “I did it the hard way. I had to suffer through constant rejection and so should you. You’re not going to get off easy if I wasn’t able to you.” But that’s not something to condemn those senior managers for. Because, to admit that they could have achieved the same goal without the same incredible psychological pain — to admit there was a better way — would mean that they were wrong. That’s not something that anyone — especially macho males — find easy to do.
So, rather than look for a new strategy — they simply push everyone to “try harder”. After all, they are being pushed to create more profits by the shareholders. Then, they push the salespeople and the salespeople are told to push the prospects until the prospect say “yes”.
Everyone’s pushing someone.
This is ironic — and not a little tragic — because ‘pushing’ virtually guarantees that you – the salesperson – will be rejected. The experience of rejection is literally manufactured by the sales person within the process.
Rejection is often a self-inflicted wound.
We are taught to believe that congruency is something you whip on from the outside. If you’re feeling uncertain, you are told simply too pump yourself up, or get yourself in the peak state. And, again, but nothing wrong with these techniques. For many people, they can be very useful.
However, what is rarely explored is why we are incongruent in the first place. If our words and our nonverbal communication don’t match — why is that? Is it really because we’re not trying hard enough? Or could it be because, deep down, we don’t really believe what we’re saying?
There’s a scary thought.
What will happen if we have to admit that we don’t really believe our product or service delivers on everything we say it will.
What happens if you find yourself sitting with the client, and you know that you will never be able to fulfill on all your promises? Do you try to convince them that you will? Sometimes you know that, as soon as you get the order, they are going to get some pretty horrendous service — but you try to fake and pretend like they won’t. That’s the cause of incongruency — dishonesty.
If you want to be congruent — become radically honest.
Then, you won’t have to try to be congruent. In fact, read that sentence again. The fact that you are trying to be congruent — reveals that you’re not already congruent.
Congruency is a state that emerges naturally, not something you can force for any great length of time. Forced congruency is the beginning of self-delusion.
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil in the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.” – Eric Hoffer
And here’s the even more disturbing question: what are you trying to be congruent with? To be congruent means to “be in line with, to match up with, to be consistent with”. Are you trying to be in line with your company’s policy? Are you trying to match up your behavior to your sales training? Are you trying to be consistent with society’s expectations on you? Or, are you open to being consistent with your own deep inner truth and wisdom?
What would happen if you made the truth of your own experience the only thing you were committed being congruent with? Is it really worth the cost to try to be congruent with anything else?
An important question to ask yourself might be, “What’s more important — being real and being myself, or becoming successful?” You can have both but which one matters most?
NATURALNESS VERSUS PRETENSE:
It’s very important to understand the difference between naturalness and pretense. If you are behaving naturally, you’re just being yourself; if you are acting with pretense, you’re probably trying to be somebody you’re not in order to make an impression. Pretense comes with a heavy price tag — naturalness doesn’t.
In fact, this might be a good point to touch on the notion of ‘humanness.’ To me, the core of this is reclaiming our humanness in business. It’s about getting out of the artificial buyer/seller roles and having honest conversations. Unfortunately, so many people have a failure oriented definition of their humanity. The only time they refer to it is when they screwed up and then they say, “Well, I’m only human.” Somehow we’ve come to believe that “being human” means being prone to messing up.
I would offer another way to look at it: being human, in my experience, means being fallible while simultaneously being capable of growing into greatness.
Being more human is a good thing. But it can take a while to shed the layers of skin we have taken on due to the messages we have received about what ‘professionalism’ means, and how to ‘sell people.’ In business, these messages play like tapes in our head encouraging us to keep pushing ourselves and other people. We are told to “sell ourselves” first and then sell others — and don’t give up until they say yes.
Remember: While it may be true that the person with the most certainty, and congruency is able to dominate the situation — is that really what you want? Is that what sales has become? Domination? One person subjugating another person? Something to think about.
Absolute certainty about what other people need is a double-edged sword. It’s not very human. It probably doesn’t feel very real or natural to yourself — or to the person you’re talking with.
THE ALTERNATIVE TO ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY:
You may find that humility and genuine interest in the other person is much more powerful. You may find that you can feel convinced about the value of your product and service without needing to be “convincing”. You can learn to cultivate an easy certainty that you will always do your best to listen for the truth, and I speak from your truth. If you do this you will naturally become more congruent — from the inside out. Just tell the truth.
What else is there?
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