Re-thinking Communication

I want to thank you all for writing in with requests for newsletter topics. I will do it more in the future; it was really fun to see how much everyone gets out of the newsletter. A little humbling, actually.

I've included a poll at the bottom of the post. It's just one question.

One subscriber wanted to know about the application of this material to sales. Clearly, when we think of salesmen, we think of someone that persuades you. Sometimes we think of salesmen in a negative light, as someone that may try to persuade you to do something that may not be in your best interest, just to make a sale (gasp!).

At a speaking engagement I had a couple of weeks ago, an astute listener asked about using the High-Performance Communication (HPC) skills to deal with hidden agendas. I view those as a form of the insincerity or information hiding that is associated with Advocacy (as opposed to Collaboration). Sales is a widely-accepted example of a profession in which some practitioners are seeking a given outcome, even if it occurs at the expense of another – the very definition of advocacy.

I see this topic as a great opportunity to describe how to start using the material in the High Performance Communication newsletter to its fullest extent. I have been talking all along about how we can change our own perspective, and by talking to people as if they too understand this material, guide them through conversations so that we end up in a win-win situation most of the time. This week, we will think about selling interactions in a new context – as the same kind of face-to-face interactions we have at work every day.

I’ll play the part of the salesman and say I view selling as a collaborative effort and not adversarial. For the sake of this discussion, it isn’t a contest in which you ‘lose’ if you buy what I am selling and you win if resist buying. It is a collaborative effort in which we are both engaged in trying to fix some perceived issue that you are having. Maybe you need to increase your production, or cut your costs, or raise your quality – whatever it is, you have a need and I am there to help you with it.

That change in perspective alone should have you talking to me, the salesman, differently than you would if you perceived this as a contest. You now see me as a resource that should have a mutual purpose in which you and I want to accomplish the same thing. Not coincident purposes, in which what I want to accomplish and what you want to accomplish are different but mutually beneficial, but a true mutual purpose. I ONLY want to sell you something that helps you accomplish your objectives. If I don’t believe it will, then I will tell you so. For your part, you ONLY want find the best way to accomplish your objective. If you don’t believe in me to help you, you must say so.

You must examine my credibility (track record, knowledge, openness, sincerity, curiosity, etc.) to see if I can act as a resource in solving the issue. In this way, you view the salesperson as a CONSULTANT. So you can feel free to discuss this with other resources, or to discuss other resources with me because we are after the same thing and I want to be connected to a knowledgeable partner in this. One that knows what they want. That makes it much easier to match you with the right solution.

Sales is generally viewed as a four-step process:

1. Prospecting (or qualifying) potential customers. This step is about finding someone that may already use the widget you are selling, or may have an issue for which your widget is a candidate solution.
2. Interviewing qualified customers. This is where a salesperson finds out all about the important who, what, when, why, where, and how’s regarding the issues you are facing. It is also when they work though the acceptable solutions.
3. Presenting a solution. This is where they present their recommendations for your issue.
4. Closing the deal. This is where they negotiate through any differences between your desired solution and their proposed solution.

Think how easy closing would be if you had each been collaborating through the process! Then think of how you could guide this with High-Performance Communication (HPC) skills, whether you were the customer OR the salesman. Finally think that, if you WERE the salesman, how appreciative your customer would be for you acting in this way. Not just now, but in the future as well.

Remember that just because the other person has a vested interest in the outcome, doesn’t by itself mean that they are honest or dishonest. They could be either. Using HPC techniques, you will collaboratively ask for and evaluate the evidence they use to support their claims. You will evaluate their perspective based on the strength of the information, add that with what you know, and develop the best solution you can.

When I start my conversations with salespeople, I tell them (using the components of THE SCORE) that I am not sure if I need their product; I need a solution to a specific problem and while I think that their product MAY be a solution, I need their help in determining if it is the best one. I ask them if they feel they are capable of using their expertise and objectively help me find a solution. Many say yes, and as i guide them through the process, I begin to find that some really aren't that credible. Their solutions may turn out to be what I need later, but they aren't really right to help me evaluate the issues.

This is the way to approach a problem solving dialog. Viewing an interaction with a salesperson as a problem-solving session is a way to leverage HPC skills into those conversations. Basically, you are converting Advocacy into Collaboration, treating your counterpart with respect, making decisions based on facts, evidence, and sound principles – and building great business relationships. All of this promotes better communication, better decisions, better results!



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Persuasive Words – Phrasing and Credibility

This is the last article for this series on Persuasion. Even though I could write lots more on this subject, there are other subjects that are just as important and I want to get what you feel you need. After this installment, I am going to move into another topic. If you have something in particular you would like to cover regarding face-to-face communication in business, email me. This blog is about learning skills to help you influence your company to get better results, so let me know if there is something specific you are grappling with.

Checkout the Pathfinder Communicatotrs LinkedIn group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1958793) to see great NEWS articles from HarvardBusiness.org. Also, come see me at the September 22nd meeting of the Society for Software Quality. Go to (http://www.ssq.org/sd/) for meeting details.

Now on to the newsletter....

When engaged in persuasion, you can tell the winners from the losers pretty quickly. The losers are insincere, make claims they can’t back up, shade the truth to make their stories sound better, and generally lead the organization down a path. If you enter into a persuasion and someone is doing this to you, you need to ask them questions – the important questions – which we have covered in the last few weeks on this series. What evidence do they have? How do they know? Isn’t there a downside?

Listen for these words when others speak: free, proven, guaranteed, easy, or risk-free. These are very persuasive when they are true. If others are using them, ASK THEM TO EXPLAIN THE REASONING behind their use. If these words go unquestioned, and they are accepted by the listeners, you will have a HARD time changing their minds. Sometimes, we want to believe that one or more of those words apply to the software package being recommended by a colleague. If we wait to question them, even just to wait until we can ask them in private, the decision makers in the room can be swayed and could make decisions that will be hard for them to take back without losing face. It is important to plant seeds of doubt in the group if doubt is appropriate. And remember, if you question the magic words and the speaker has the right information prepared to prove their point, it goes a long way towards cementing the decision. So use these words yourself AND BE PREPARED TO DEFEND THEM with sound logic and easy-to-understand reasoning.

Persuasive language is always more persuasive when it is simple to understand. Persuasion is often telling a story in which the listener can imagine themselves involved as a character. You lead them from point to point, and by the time you reach the end, you share the same perspective – they are persuaded. It is often just explaining something in a way that is easily understood and credible. Simplicity extends to numbers as well; that is it is usually unnecessary to say that “sales were up 9.815% this year” when you could say “sales were up nearly 10%”.

Wordy sentences make listeners feel uneasy, as if you are trying to carefully craft a partial truth. Those of you that have attended classes or have read this newsletter for very long will remember that the “S” in THE SCORE is about simplicity and sincerity. They are important independently, and together have a dramatic impact on your perceived credibility. If you say “At various points throughout the fiscal reporting period, production figures were unpredictable and at other times quite steady, ending in a negative position versus forecast overall” you may sound like you are trying to avoid saying that “Production was down last year”. This can even be embarrassing when someone a listener asks “Did all of that you just said add up to production was down?” and you have to answer “Yes”. Even though you weren’t trying to hide anything, it feels as if you MIGHT have been, or that you felt you could fool the audience, or that you didn’t think anyone would notice – and that attacks your credibility.

Finally speak in a way that is positive, confident, cooperative, and credible. Be careful not to wander into arrogance or insincerity. Instead of saying “If we accept this proposal”, say “When we accept this proposal”; instead of “I guess we will need a consultant during phase 2 of the project”, say “I believe we will need a consultant during phase 2 of the project”; instead of “Your idea won’t work”, say “Let’s talk though your idea so that I understand it better”.

Give me your ideas for the next series. Otherwise, next week I will be left to my own devices.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasive Words - Describing Benefits

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Occasionally, some of my students will want me to utter some series of magic words that will hypnotize whomever I am speaking to and cause them to be putty in my hands. Yeah, right. Persuasive words don’t work like that. Manipulation sometimes does, but we don’t deal in that because it is neither a long term nor constructive strategy. I will take some time and talk about how to phrase things to make them helpful in motivating others to take action on what you are discussing if you have followed the other parts of this series.

We have talked about credibility, creating a mutual purpose, developing evidence, using emotion, and good presentation structures. Here are some thoughts for framing what we say.

Remember that the mutual purpose is something specific that we can agree that we both want, and we try to make it as concrete (as opposed to abstract) as we can. Working together “for the good of the company” or “in the interest of justice” is fine, but they are each a little abstract. “For the good of the company” is made a little more concrete and is still mutually attractive when expressed as “to be more profitable”. It becomes more concrete (but maybe not as mutual) when it becomes “to cut expenses” and VERY concrete and not mutually purposeful AT ALL when it becomes “reducing your wages”! We want to pick the most concrete purpose we can (because it is the most galvanizing) that is still mutually agreeable. This tends to be more difficult as the number of people involved gets bigger, just because finding something that a large group is each interested in is more difficult than finding a common thread amongst a smaller group.

If we can arrive at a truly interesting and functional Mutual Purpose, we then should define its benefits. When you think of benefits, think about what desirable result will accrue to your counterpart from the Mutual Purpose. As an analogy, if someone tells you the new laptop computer you are buying has a Pentium Dual Core 2 GHz processor, you have a vague idea that it is perhaps faster or more powerful than your current machine. That is not a benefit, but a feature. To express the benefit, you must express what it does for YOU. “It will start twice as fast as your current computer, handle 3 times the number of concurrent applications, and will allow your computer to download files as fast as your connection will allow” is a statement of benefit. “It will let you do more work in much less time” is another statement of benefit. A car with a small engine may not sound good, but if it is framed as a big increase in gas savings, then that benefit may outweigh an “unnoticeable” reduction in power and help persuade you to pick the car.

NOTE – I am not advocating that you EVER withhold the downside of a perspective. I am suggesting (stating, really) that describing the BENEFITS of something (like a mutual purpose) is FAR more persuasive than framing just the features.

Understanding the tangible benefits of a perspective is important to all of us when we make a decision. Recognizing that we BOTH value those benefits makes us appear more aligned and increases the likelihood that we won’t disappoint each other in our journey to attaining them. Developing a track record of persuading people to do things that in turn provide them benefits is a great way to get them to listen to you the next time.

More on persuasive words next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasive Evidence

Last time we spoke about the various structures of persuasive presentations. These structures described how you may want to present your perspective and the ‘evidence’ or ‘backing’ that supports it. Long time readers of this newsletter have heard me speak of Advocacy vs. Inquiry as the primary methods of business communication before. Advocacy is the style in which the participants pick a perspective and maintain it throughout the evaluation. This is how trials are conducted; each side may have different perspectives regarding the degree of guilt of the defendant, and they argue those sides by presenting evidence. There are strict rules for conducting advocacy (precisely why it is usually unsuitable for work) and many of those rules extend to the introduction of evidence.

What constitutes persuasive evidence in a collaborative work environment? Let’s talk about that:
There are three types of evidence: Objective Evidence, Social Consensus, and the speaker’s Credibility are types of evidence.

Good objective evidence is not necessarily tangible, but it is verifiable. Certainly well-prepared statistics, photographs and video, interviews or testimony all serve as objective evidence.

Social Consensus are things like common knowledge, things that we are willing to stipulate as true without further discussion, and any agreements that were previously reached using an acceptable method.

When presenting evidence it is necessary to do it in a way that is most accessible by those listening. 75% of people understand things better if presented visually, so graphs are good. Keep things simple; fight the desire to complicate a chart by showing too much (or different types) of information on it. Use simple numbers (round them off). Strive to make the perspective seem simple and clear, without oversimplifying. You would know if you oversimplified if your counterparts aren’t sure how the proposal fits with the issue at hand. When it comes to being authentic, simple, and direct consider things deeply - remember that what is said is not as important as what is heard and remembered.

If the speaker is credible, their evidence is more persuasive. Seems simple enough, but what makes us credible? I say it here again because I can’t say ENOUGH how important your own credibility is to your communication: Competence, Trustworthiness, Good Will, Dynamism (speakers that move and appear to possess energy and enthusiasm are more persuasive than those that aren’t), Eyewitness access to information, Background and Training, a good track record for being right.

The idea of how access to information is acquired is an important one. Does the persuader have primary access (eyewitness, for example) evidence? Is the source of the evidence reliable? Is the access secondary (hearsay or worse)? Many “conspiracy theories” gain a startling amount of traction with NO evidence!

When we are considering opinions as evidence (which we frequently do in business) we need to consider the source. Is the source of the opinion an expert? Are they a layperson? Make sure your expert is qualified as an expert in the subject at hand. A marketing expert’s opinion on advertising deserves more weight than their design opinions (unless that is another area of expertise).

Finally, different kinds of evidence carry different weight based on how they are developed and by whom. A rule of thumb regarding the relative weight of evidence that is accepted in many circles is as follows:
1. Assertion (in my opinion…)
2. Common Knowledge or Stipulation
3. Lay Opinion (if a reasoned conclusion)
4. Expert Opinion or Consensus of Lay Opinion
5. An Empirical Study or Consensus of Expert Opinion
6. Consensus of Studies

Note that an opinion that is not a “reasoned conclusion” is listed as an assertion – a kind of “trust me” statement. Next is common knowledge precisely because we only SOMETIMES correctly identify certain knowledge as common. Frequently, what we think is common knowledge is not held by other people in our organization. A lay opinion for which there is a demonstrated logical basis is at number three. From there, it becomes a matter of experts, well prepared studies, and consensus that raises the probability that the evidence is correct. This knowledge will give you a great advantage in preparing and critiquing persuasive perspectives.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Preparation

Over the past month I wrote a series on the elements of persuasion. A brief recap:

1) The persuader’s credibility and reputation gives them standing, making them a voice worth listening to.
2) The persuader’s ability to show a mutual purpose and benefit to the person being persuaded and thereby giving a basis for the parties to agree to become interdependent and work together in each other’s interest.
3) The persuader’s ability to create an “emotional acceptance” of the content of the perspective being presented. That is, presenting a perspective that is ‘likeable’ OR presenting alternatives that are somehow more ‘unpleasant’, leaving the persuader’s perspective as the most desirable course of action in achieving the mutual purpose. Cialdini’s six laws of persuasion help show how to attach an emotional element.

In closing on persuasion, I will begin a discussion of the last element – content. The content of your perspective consist of several parts:

1) The way you structure your presentation of your perspective (this week)
2) Your conclusions and justification (next week)
3) The benefits provided by your perspective (in two weeks)
4) The WAY you say things (in three weeks)

Structure - Learn a few ways to describe perspectives, and you are well on your way to being MUCH more persuasive than you are today. Experiment with these structures:

Problem and solution – Describe a problem, and then its solution. Sounds simple, but to be much more successful that you currently are, remember to help the listener make a negative emotional connection with the material. One way is to remind them of how difficult this problem makes it for them to succeed. Another is to explain what the consequences of doing nothing are. There are many other examples of making the listener ‘feel real dislike’ for the problem, too many to list. Next, describe the solution. Be realistic and truthful – you always want to maintain and protect your credibility. Help the listener ‘like’ the solution. Be vivid in your description and help the listener see themselves as not only benefitting from the solution, but benefitting by being part of its successful implementation. Their help on the team will be invaluable and you should help them imagine how grateful everyone will be. This is a good structure when the listener has not already developed an opinion.

Present both sides – In a case where there is already a controversy, it is useful present both sides. Present the opponent’s side first. You want to make sure that at the end of that part of the presentation, you have their agreement that you have presented their perspective accurately and that you have described the evidence they have to justify their perspective (statistics, facts, etc). This is key in establishing your credibility, showing your understanding of the issue, and will help them be more receptive to listening to the other perspective. When presenting the other perspective, concentrate on challenging their justifications – the facts are not as they think, or the evidence is either inaccurate or somehow suspect. Please refer to the blog posts from November 2008 for a more info on this activity. I will cover it in detail next week (conclusions and justifications). Obviously, this structure assumes that the discussion is taking place after competing perspectives have been developed.

Cause and Effect – Describe the problem, its cause, and any contributing factors. Describe how your solution fixes the problem by mitigating or removing the causes and contributors. This structure is useful when all parties agree that the best outcome is to return to some status quo and you are merely trying to agree on the means to do so, rather than changing the status quo.

Call to Action – Use this structure when most people tend to support your perspective. Start by describing a pressing common need, and describe how your perspective will satisfy that need. Make it clear how we ALL experience the need – this is a galvanizing description of a mutual purpose. You are describing what we are changing from AND why we MUST. Next, provide a clear and positive vision of the future state. After we implement this perspective, we will have tangible benefits. I will cover describing benefits in two weeks. Close this presentation with specific actions to be taken, and who will take them. Be grateful for their support.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication