Persuading someone may give you the “thrill of victory.” And that’s a problem because for someone to win, someone else must lose. However, if, instead of competitively persuading, you cooperatively help someone else frame and improve their own thinking, they can experience their own “thrill of victory.” And that feeling replaces any potential buyer’s remorse with an enduring commitment to their own, new thinking.
The benefits are both practical and enduring. When you do something to others, they may buy-in, accept, and comply with your solution over the short term; but it will be your solution, not theirs. When you do something with someone else, they’ll commit to their solution over the short term and feel better about themselves and how you helped them. That feeling will endure over time.
This flows from an adaption of Bryan Smith’s five levels of persuasion: tell, sell, test, consult, co-create. The insight is that if you’re in charge and you tell someone to do something, the best you can ever expect is compliance. If you want them to buy-in, input, or contribute, invite them in by selling, testing, or consulting. And if you want them to commit, you must co-create as partners.
The first two, telling and selling, are things you do to others. Testing and consulting are things you invite others to do. The last, co-creating, by definition, must be done together.
Most successful sales presentations include:
- Situation/problem – the issue, noting pain points, challenges, needs, and why those matter
- Solution – the product, service, or idea as the answer to the problem along with its features and benefits, supported by data and evidence including perhaps case studies, testimonials, demonstrations
- Call to action – next steps to close the sale and move forward.
While selling is better than telling, it still runs the risk of buyer’s remorse as people re-think their choice once you stop applying your powers of persuasion. In Smith’s framework, selling is closer to telling than it is to co-creating.
An alternate approach is to move from selling to testing or consulting and to flip the flow. Instead of trying to persuade someone to accept your ideas, or even to provide input or contribute to your ideas, offer to help them ratchet up their own current best thinking. This requires them to be open to and to value your help. That’s only going to happen if they believe you have their best interests at heart and that you have something to add to the conversation.
The first time is the hardest. People will be taking a risk with you. But if you do focus on helping them with their best interests at heart, and do provide valuable frameworks or perspectives, they will be much more open to your help the next time.
One good approach is to leverage Roger Neill’s current best thinking framework. Current best thinking is the best one person or a group can do on their own, explicitly inviting others to add their knowledge and perspective to ratchet that thinking up to a new “current best” level.
Instead of you stating the situation/problem and solution on the way to a call to action,
- Invite them to explain the issue or problem, noting pain points, challenges, needs, and why those matter, as well as their current best thinking about how to approach the issue or problem along with any concerns they have about that current best approach.
- Provide a framework for thinking about the issue or problem and approach, and any new perspectives, data, or evidence that may improve the thinking – especially around context and impact.
- Ratchet up the current best thinking together as joint problem-solvers.
The fundamental difference between persuasive selling and ratcheting up current best thinking is that persuasive selling is something you do to someone else while ratcheting up current best thinking is something you do together.
John Hall
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