Nothing happens until somebody sells something. To make sales happen, IMMS.com Key Sales Consultant Randy Schwantz has created a comprehensive series of 43 Producer Success Lessons. Used singly or in combination, these powerful tools can help your producers build their skills - and grow their sales.
A farmer invited a group of city folk to his farm for a visit, where he explained his philosophy of farming. 'I’m an old-fashioned kind of farmer,' he said. 'I can drive a tractor, bale hay, plow the fields, shoe horses — you name it, I do it.'
'Can you lay an egg?' asked a guest.
You don’t have to lay eggs to be a great communicator. What you do have to be is very flexible. How flexible are you? Flexibility is the key to effective communication with widely varied groups of people.
Think about it. If your flexibility and behavior had unlimited ranges, couldn’t you persuade and influence anyone? Probably. Our effectiveness is limited by our own flexibility. If there’s a behavior you can’t generate, there’s a response you can’t elicit. You’re responsible for effective communication. You have to be able to try a wide range of behaviors until one works and you get the response you want. That’s a tall order.
For example, what’s your range of behaviors within each of these pairs of opposites?
Loud - Quiet
Laugh - Cry
Eloquent - Inarticulate
Emotional - Stoic
Happy - Sad
Love - Indifference
You can produce a range within each of these opposites at any instant. How wide is it?
BEHAVIOR AND THE MARTIAL ARTS
The Japanese self-defense system aikido teaches you to meet force with flexibility, re channeling your opponent’s energy and power rather than trying to overcome it. An aikido master seeks points of resistance and flows with them until they’re redirected away.
Great communication is similar. You have to be so flexible that it’s impossible for another person to build up any real resistance. Like an aikido master, you constantly seek to align yourself with the other person’s driving force, then use it for better results.
WHAT’S YOUR OUTCOME?
The first step in becoming flexible is to know your outcome. What do you really want? If you want to sell an executive more Homeowner’s coverage, are you prepared to be very flexible in your behavior and communication to achieve that outcome?
A common roadblock in this situation is ego. Have you ever thought, 'That guy was an airhead — he didn’t even know what he wanted' or 'She was so rude she wouldn’t even let me ask the necessary questions'? You have to ask yourself, 'What’s my outcome, and how do I need to be different to communicate with this person? Is there anybody on the planet that could handle this person under these circumstances? If so, how could I do it?'
Or perhaps you met with a Risk Manager who hadn’t smiled for maybe 30 years. Remember, someone somewhere can make that person smile. It might be their spouse, a co-worker, or one of their children. Are you flexible enough to try a range of behaviors until you find the one that works with this person?
The point is, can you persist until you obtain your desired outcome? Can you stay focused on the outcome and not on the immediate situation? If you can, you’ll almost always come out ahead.
BREAK YOUR STATE
A very important concept in the study of human behavior is 'state.' State is the total of all of a person’s experience and thoughts at any particular time. For example, you might be in a high-energy state right after closing a big deal and feel as if you can change the world. On the other hand, you might be in a very low state at the end of a long, hard week and think even mowing the lawn is too much extra work. Same person, different state.
Your state at any moment strongly affects your ability to communicate. If you’re in a relaxed state, you might find that negotiating and persuading are very easy and that you’re good at them. If you’re in a nervous state, you might communicate poorly, with little flexibility. It follows that if you could control your state, chances are good that you could control your abilities and outcomes.
So how do you control your state?
Your physical situation is one factor of your state. Try this — slouch down in your chair, slump your shoulders, cast your eyes down, unfocused, toward your desk. Now quickly, without changing your posture, be overwhelmingly happy! You can’t do it!
Let’s try the opposite approach. Sit up straight in your chair and put a big, goofy smile on your face. Look around. Without changing your posture, be sad. You can’t do it, can you?
Guess what? This approach works well when you actually do feel sad or happy. You interrupt your current state by changing your physical situation.
You can use this when you need to increase your flexibility. Recall the last time you were really unhappy about something. It was all-consuming, wasn’t it? What would’ve happened if you’d jumped up and down and quacked like a duck while your were in that state? Could you have remained unhappy for long, or would you eventually have laughed at yourself?
Remember the last time you worked with a difficult prospect. Could you have changed the situation somehow to make it similar to one in which you successfully dealt with a prospect? Were your behavior and thinking more flexible than the prospect’s? Could you have changed something about your state? A change in either or both of these things might well have dramatically changed the meeting.
The key to effective communication is flexibility. If you’re more flexible than the person with whom you’re communicating, you’ll almost always be the persuader, not the persuaded — so work on your mental flexibility and on changing your state. Being able to do either of these well will increase your ability to build and maintain rapport.
EXERCISE
Change your state often today by controlling two things: First, keep an open mind about every idea with which you come in contact; in other words, control your judgment and thinking process. Also, take control of your physical situation. Sometimes during the day, slump, walk slowly, and look down. Go ahead, be depressed. At other times, straighten up, look around, and smile.
What range of behavior can you generate? For each type of behavior listed below, mark the range within which you feel comfortable. Recognize that the range in which you can’t generate behavior limits the responses you can elicit; work to expand your range, using changes in state and beliefs and a willingness to try something new.
For example, for the producer who marked the range below, being loud is easy and being very quiet is difficult. Dealing with soft-spoken people will be difficult for them and offers the greatest opportunity for flexibility.
Range of flexibility Area for improvement
Loud XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Quiet
Mark your own ranges. Add any other behaviors you want to work on to the list.
Loud Quiet
Laugh Cry
Eloquent Inarticulate
Emotional Stoic
Happy Sad
Love Indifference