From SUCCEED WITH JOHN BITTLESTON
Today • Monday • June 23, 2008
DON’T you dread it when the voice at the other end of the phone says: “Hello, so-and-so, how are you today?” The egregious sales pitch that follows is enough to bring up your breakfast.
British actor and writer Peter Ustinov had a point. When a
Sales training is important and I am the first to acknowledge that there are legitimate techniques for closing a sale. But the most important sales tools we have are our ears and our eyes.
Someone came to me for an interview recently. Nice chap, decent, experienced, but totally lacking emotional intelligence. He talked from start to finish. He was still talking as I gently pushed him into the lift and waved him goodbye. He did not look at me. He did not observe the surroundings. He did not ask a single question. But, boy, did he talk. He should be in the “talking Olympics”.
Sad that the notes I had to write after his departure read like a primary school report: “Could do so much better”.
His inability to ask, to listen and to enthuse lost him the offer of a very good job. Even a smile would have been some compensation for his poor interactive ability, but this fellow had taken gravitas to its logical conclusion — grimness.
He is not alone in the sea of cold fishes.
When we train people — whether they are sales people, IT technicians or doctors — to deal with others, we must teach them first to observe.
Doctors know this. “Eyes first, ears second, hands last and least, mouth not at all.” That was the dictum on which they were brought up — for reaching a diagnosis, but not often for dealing with the consequences of it.
Every interaction we have with another is about them, not us. You may think that if both sides approach it from this point of view, there will not be much communication — each will be waiting for the other to speak. In practice, there will be excellent communication.
An out-of-work friend came to me for advice. He has had a bad run, not all his fault. He has failed in a couple of jobs and is failing again in the present one. He asked me what I would advise him to do.
I have observed this very nice man for a while now. He is depressed (but not clinically), he is dejected, he is a little sorry for himself, he is sensitive to other people’s criticism, even when they do not mean to be critical.
I am normally a kindly, sympathetic fellow. Life has been good to me; I try to be good to those it has not treated so generously. But I gave him hell — well, not quite “hell”, but heading in that direction. Why?
The world bullies the defeated, applauds the successful. But it applauds most those who try, even when they do not succeed.
In fact, the world reserves the best of its pleasures for the enthusiastic. Not for the unrealistically-effusive, but for the communicators who demonstrate that they have observed the other person, have worked out the position they are in and who react to that analysis with gusto.
Genuine, sustainable enthusiasm is infectious. All those who bask in its sunshine become lively, interesting, engaged.
And that is where we come in. Every greeting must be relevant, genuine (not rote) and about the other person.
The late philanthropist Ee Peng Liang had it to a fine art. “How can I help you?” he greeted almost everyone. The difference was that he meant it. Can you mean your greeting, too?
John Bittleston mentors people in business, career and their personal lives at www.TerrificMentors.com.
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