Shut Up Already! The More The Decision Maker Talks, The More They Like You!
Do you know Frank's two favorite topics?
It’s a strange phenomenon that Dale Carnegie noticed over 60 years ago. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t thinking about selling Voluntary Benefits or Decision Maker appointments when he wrote his seminal masterpiece “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t take full advantage of this universal truth: The more the Decision Maker talks, the smarter you are and the more he likes you.
So how do we get good old Frank (the fictional owner of Frank’s Welding) to talk “more?” My experience is that to get Frank to talk “more” we have to get him focused on his two favorite subjects. Any idea what those two subjects might be?
The Decision Maker’s Two Favorite Subjects
1) Himself
- This should go without saying. Most business owners/Decision Makers are Type A personalities with fairly healthy egos.
- They love to bask in the sunlight of admiration and attention.
- Often times their personality pervades the entire organization.
- They love, love, love to talk about themselves and are by far their own favorite subject.
- Before you dismiss these Decision Makers as vain, please understand that you are your own favorite subject. Don’t believe me? I can prove it to you. Have you ever been in a group photo? Who’s the first person you look for? If you are like every other person on the planet, you have a pecking order when you look at a group photo. You look at yourself first. Were you blinking? Did you smile? Did your outfit make you look fat? Then, and only then, do you start to look at others. Next comes your sweetie, then the kids, after that your friends in order of how much you like them. But you always start with you.
2) His business
- Many business owners consider their business to be an extension of who they are as a person.
- They are the ones who sacrificed and worked a trillion hours a week to make their business survive.
- They are the ones who paid themselves last to make sure that their employee’s payroll didn’t bounce.
- Their business is almost sacred to them and they can talk wistfully about it for hours.
How I Learned This Lesson
The week I started in the Voluntary Benefits arena I called on a fairly large communications company. They had around 100 employees and their owner Les was rumored to be a great guy. I didn’t know that first hand because Les had a barracuda (or some other word that begins with b) for a gatekeeper. I mean she was downright brutal. Finally two years later I ran into Les at a Chamber of Commerce event and he was gracious enough to schedule an appointment with me.
The day of the appointment we hit it off famously. He was talking my ear off and I was encouraging him to continue. Early on in our conversation, I asked Les the very simple question, “How did you get started in the business?” The magic of this question is that it focused on both of Les’s two favorite subjects: Himself and his business. Once he started on these two subjects, Les lost track of time.
45 minutes later Les looked down at his watch and said, “Holy crap! I have to be at an appointment across town in 15 minutes and it is going to take me 20 minutes to get there. What did you want to talk about?” Les and I both had lost track of time and had truly bonded over his fascinating story. He had detailed the incredible challenges he and his business had faced and how they were able to survive. I also realized that Les was actually lonely. His gatekeeper was so good at guarding his time that he rarely got a chance to interact with his customers and vendors.
Knowing how hard it was to get on Les’s calendar I just gave him a very bottom line, two-minute overview on what Voluntary Benefits could do for his business and how the programs could help his employees. I stressed the importance that we see all his employees and asked him to make a payroll deduction. The only question Les asked was, “Do we need to hold a special meeting for this or can you just come to my all employee meeting next Monday?” (For those of you scoring at home, that is a buying sign.)
