Sales Leaders Rule #22: People Don't Argue With Their Own Data

People remember 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, but 90% of what they say and do. Unsure if that's true? When you have an argument with someone, after the exchange you'll likely find that you can recall almost exactly what you said, but struggle with recalling more than several specific points or general overview of what the other person said. If you ran a tally, you'd probably find that you can only accurately process about 20% of what the other person communicated. That's why each person in an argument has such confidence and conviction when they're telling their side of the story, but it doesn't resonate with the other side because they aren't fully paying attention.

Rather than trying to overcome this natural communication barrier, use self-discovery to break through performance barriers. Your job as a sales leader is to get people to self-discover. When you tell people what the problem is and you tell people what the solution is, they deny it. They resist it. Even if they are receptive to an idea, they have to internalize it before they will take the steps necessary to resolve the problem.

If people don't argue with their own data, you have two jobs as a sales leader. Number one is to have them self-discover what their problem is. Number two is to have them self-discover what the solution is. You can do that in many ways but asking great questions tends to be the simplest and most effective process.

Create a list of questions that cover common problems in your company, industry, environment, and culture. These questions will make up a self-discovery playbook. When someone on the sales team inevitably faces one of these common challenges, the sales leader can go through the playbook's line of questions. These questions should be designed to guide the sales person to identifying the issue.

Once the sales person has defined the problem, sales leaders must resist the urge to assign a solution. And that is often difficult because our egos drive us to be perceived as knowledgeable or an expert. Not to mention simply giving an answer typically expedites getting on to the next task in our busy day. But if a sales leader does assign solutions, all this is for naught because the sales person hasn't self identified. That means they will still be reluctant to adopt the solution or worse yet, blame the sales leader for a "mis-identified" problem.

So, sales leaders need to be patient and say things like, "Well, if I wasn't here, how would you solve it? Well, how would you do that? And what happens if that didn't work in this specific situation? How would you overcome this?" Sales leaders can't be satisfied with general or overly-simplified solutions. Create artificial roadblocks of things that could happen and probably will happen. By doing that, the sales leader has prepared the sales person to be armed and ready with their solutions when the what-ifs materialize.

Sales people can become remarkably self-sufficient but only if they are allowed time to self-discover their own resolutions. Don't tell people the solution, even if you're certain that you have the ideal answer, because they will resist it. Use human psychology to your advantage by letting them verbally work through the solution with you so that they remember the 90% of what they said rather than a fraction of the solutions you provide.