Friday, December 14, 2012

On Persuasion and "Win-Win" Arrangements



Confusion regards sales terms

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When I started off in sales after spending about three years at site, the one advice people would give me was “ you have to be persuasive”..with the wisdom of a Zen-master .Accordingly, I thought to myself 'gotta be persuasive dude' and "Aal-eez-Well", but there was a spanner in the works,as usual. 

"What’s 'being persuasive'? How do you be persuasive?" were some questions which baffled dumb 'ol me.When I asked, the Zen-masters just smiled a-sort-of-Zen-master smile and uterred wisdom like “ find it out for yourself” or similar words to that effect. The advice-givers are never generous with definitions, as you may be aware. 


However, then I found out when once a person has made up his mind, it is difficult to get him to change his mind. I  was mainly getting my results with my personality, my ability to make friends, my lack of ego at my job hours ( but man I had an ego a mile long after office -I had to do a lot of struggling to realize ..or correction make my CPU realize that the world does not revolve around me-but that's another story).Finally, I decided that persuasion is what precedes aggresion, but I was not happy.
By then there were young people under me and I told them the same thing, crossing one more generation, without any definitions-of course. I had made up my mind by then that persuading is gentle aggression. I was not completely sure but then, no other definitions came to mind. About 10 days back, I came upon this definition in a book in the British Library here, which in my opinion, is superb and exactly conveys what ‘being persuasive’ can mean in sales. I thought therefore I‘d share it, for a change, being in a good mood.
This definition  gives you four approaches all based on the ‘win-lose’ sales concept of situations, which are as under


     1.Unimpressive approach: lose-lose

    2.  Timid approach: You win-I lose.

     3 .     Aggressive approach: You lose –I win

     4.   Persuasive approach: You win-I win


 This impressed the hell out of me, cos it makes perfect sense.Hope you think it is helpful.

 Now, I thought like crazy but could not recall the author. So, if he or she is reading this, thank you for a concept so brilliantly explained.Superb clarity of words and thought. Now I know what to tell my subordinates next time anyone asks me how to be  persuasive.!!
Wishing you lots of profitable selling
Best Regards from

Bilbo.