CHAPTER 1
Breaking Buyers’ Patterns
THE “MOST ELUSIVE PROSPECT” . . . I’m selling for a company in
Chicago. When I’m not on the road, I’m pounding the phones at my desk,
generating leads. Today, in fact, I’m breezing through my contact manager
when I stop and stare at the notes section of one record.
There’s the date and time of the last call, and next to these notes are the
letters “lvm,” short for “left voice mail.” Below this note is a string of identical
calls going back three years. We have “left voice mail” messages for this
woman forty-six times!
Now, what would you do with a prospect like that?
“What is there to lose?” I think, so I dial and—surprise—get her voice
mail. I wait for the beep and leave a message.
“Congratulations! This is Dan Seidman of corporate recruiting. You
have earned our company’s prestigious Most Elusive Prospect Award. We
have called you forty-six times—today makes forty-seven—and you have
never returned a single call. I just wanted you to know that nobody in our
entire database, with thousands of companies, has ever ignored us as frequently
as you. Thanks for not calling. And congratulations on your award.”
I hang up.
And what do you think happens? Ninety minutes later the woman calls
me! And I get an earful. “You stupid jerk! I don’t have to return anybody’s
calls, ever. How rude to leave me that message. Don’t ever call our company
again. You’re a jerk.”
I manage to get a word in—“Wow, I had no idea you’d be upset. I’m so
sorry”—and bang! She hangs up the phone.
Oh, man, what did I do? Well, at least she called me and not my VP of
sales.
Moments later, the phone rings again. It’s her! She proceeds to tell me
how awful she feels popping off at me like that. And, actually, my message
was pretty funny. And, yes, she does use services like ours. Then she asks if
I would please come in to see her next week, to talk about our offerings.
Yes, she became a client and no, my VP never did hear about my coldcalling
strategy.
You’re wondering, What happened here? The story I just told illustrates
what’s called, in psychology, a pattern interrupt. Its roots are fascinating,
and the strategy is useful as you learn to better influence others.
The late Dr. Milton Erickson is considered one of the world’s great psychologists.
He perfected pattern interruption and other creative influence
techniques to help patients work through problems that result from being
stuck in a pattern of thinking or behavior. His ability to help patients
change behavior—and to stop doing those things that are damaging to
themselves and others and instead do things that are useful—is legendary.
And isn’t influencing your buyers to change really the ultimate goal of
selling?
As I mentioned in the book’s preface, as sales professionals, we need to
help prospects to change products and services—to change their minds.
And as you probably know from experience, people often follow a wellworn
path when encountering situations where discomfort occurs (a sales
rep calling, for example). Dr. Erickson revealed how we can move them off
this path and, by doing so, open up the possibility of different outcomes. In
other words, we’re going to break their tried-and-true patterns.
Learning to Respond in an Unexpected Way
So let’s return to the example of selling: Sales pros encounter similar problems
every day when prospects throw the same old objections at them: “We
don’t have money for this. . . . Let me think about it. . . . Call me in six
months.” But what if salespeople can learn to respond in an unexpected
manner? They can break that bad dialogue and create a useful conversation
that is more likely to end in a decision. But first, how did that jump from
the world of psychology to the world of business occur?
The bridge between pure psychological counseling and related business
applications was built by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, creators of
neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a technique used in psychotherapy
and in organizational change management. Bandler and Grinder studied
and then modeled Erickson’s techniques. Bandler had some fantastic success
experimenting with and testing the pattern interrupt technique on
patients in mental hospitals. He decided to find extreme cases of antisocial
behavior—people who had spent years institutionalized—and treat these
individuals differently than traditionally trained doctors were taught. His
results proved both astounding and at times humorous.
In one case, Bandler was called in to help treat a man who thought he
was Jesus Christ. Here’s a fellow who insisted he was someone he was not,
in spite of counselors saying, “C’mon, man, you are not Jesus. What makes
you think that?”
...
Wow! eBook
