To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (14 page)

Norman Hall has the optimistic explanatory style down. When he was rejected, as he was several times during the sales calls on which I joined him, he explained the rejections as temporary, specific, or external. The jewelry store owner was busy with a customer and couldn’t focus on brushes. The maintenance guy hadn’t carefully assessed his supplies yet. The clothing store manager was probably having cash-flow problems in a tight economy. When I asked him about these rebuffs, Hall was unperturbed. “I’m a damn good salesman,” he told me. “You have to keep going. That’s it.”

Still, the glasses Hall wears have clear lenses—not rose-colored ones. He finds some customers annoying. He admits to taking some rejections personally. He’s had plenty of grim, unpleasant days. But negative events can clarify positive ones. They equip Hall not with weak-kneed dreaminess but with tough-minded buoyancy—the proper balance between downward and upward forces. His is not blind optimism but what Seligman calls “flexible optimism—optimism with its eyes open.”
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—

T
he first thing we hear is panting. That’s followed by the
clumpety-clump
of four feet on the hallway carpet. Penelope Chronis and Liz Kreher, their dog in tow, are arriving to open their office and begin their day. They are surprised to see Norman Hall—they’d placed their order less than twenty-four hours ago—but are delighted to get their electrostatic carpet sweeper and stainless-steel scrubbers. It also turns out that they know Beth, the woman from the break room, and encourage Hall to use their names as a way for him to gain credibility.

His delivery made, Hall and I walk down the corridor toward Beth’s office. At this point, I feel like my presence is cramping Hall’s style. He doesn’t need a wingman on this sales call, so when he enters her lobby, I head for the elevators.

It’s about 11:00
A.M.
when we split paths, and I wait for Hall on the sidewalk in front of 530 Bush Street. Beth had shown barely a crease of interest in brushes or much else back in the break room, so I expect Hall to be down by 11:05. He’s not.

Nor is he down at 11:10. Or 11:15. Or 11:20.

It’s not until nearly 11:25 that Hall pushes through the glass doors on the ground level of the office building and walks toward the sidewalk.

I look at him but don’t say a word. I just open my palms upward and raise my eyebrows to ask, “Well?”

He shakes his head and, with the forefinger of his right hand extended parallel to the ground, he makes a slashing motion across this throat.

No sale.

We walk in silence for maybe eight steps. Then the last Fuller Brush Man in San Francisco turns to me and says, “But I think there’s going to be a chance to get her next time.”

SAMPLE CASE

Buoyancy

Be like Bob: Practice interrogative self-talk.

Next time you’re getting ready to persuade others, reconsider how you prepare. Instead of pumping yourself up with declarations and affirmations, take a page from Bob the Builder and pose a question instead.

Ask yourself: “Can I move these people?”

As social scientists have discovered, interrogative self-talk is often more valuable than the declarative kind. But don’t simply leave the question hanging in the air like a lost balloon. Answer it—directly and in writing. List five specific reasons why the answer to your question is yes. These reasons will remind you of the strategies that you’ll need to be effective on the task, providing a sturdier and more substantive grounding than mere affirmation.

In other words, ask and you shall receive.

Monitor your positivity ratio.

It’s the golden mean of well-being, the magic formula for flourishing, the secret numerical code of the satisfied: 3 to 1. What can you do to ensure your balance between positive and negative emotions reaches that elusive ratio?

One way to begin is to visit Barbara Fredrickson’s website (http://positivityratio.com/). Take her “Positivity Self Test”—a twenty-question assessment you can complete in two or three minutes that will yield your current positivity ratio. Then establish a free account and track your ratio over time. (You can find background on the test in Fredrickson’s book,
Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3 to 1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life
, an excellent popular introduction to her academic work.)

In addition, be more conscious of your emotions in the moment. In fact, try listing Fredrickson’s ten positive emotions—joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love—on your phone, computer, or office wall. Select one or two. Then in the course of the day, look for ways to display those emotions. This will give you a psychic boost, lift up the people around you, and increase your chances of moving others. Am I sure? I’m positive.

Tweak your explanatory style.

Martin Seligman’s work has demonstrated that how we explain negative events has an enormous effect on our buoyancy and ultimately our performance. Start revamping your explanatory style in ways science has shown are effective.

When something bad occurs, ask yourself three questions—and come up with an intelligent way to answer each one “no”:

1.
Is this permanent?

Bad response:
“Yes. I’ve completely lost my skill for moving others.”

Better response:
“No. I was flat today because I haven’t been getting enough sleep.”

2.
Is this pervasive?

Bad response:
“Yes. Everyone in this industry is impossible to deal with.”

Better response:
“No. This particular guy was a jerk.”

3.
Is this personal?

Bad response:
“Yes. The reason he didn’t buy is that I messed up my presentation.”

Better response:
“No. My presentation could have been better, but the real reason he passed is that he wasn’t ready to buy right now.”

The more you explain bad events as
temporary
,
specific
, and
external
, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity.

As some positive psychologists have put it, the key is to “dispute” and “de-catastrophize” negative explanations. To dispute, confront each explanation the way a sharp lawyer would cross-examine a witness. Poke holes in its story. Question its premises. Identify internal contradictions. To de-catastrophize, ask yourself: What are the overall consequences and why are those consequences not nearly as calamitous as they seem on the surface?

For more information, visit Seligman’s website (http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx), and take his Optimism Test to get a sense of your current style. And check out his classic book,
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
.

Try the “enumerate and embrace” strategy.

One way to remain buoyant is to acquire a more realistic sense of what can actually sink you. You can do that by counting your rejections—and then celebrating them. It’s a strategy I call “enumerate and embrace.”

1. Enumerate.

Try actually counting the nos you get during a week. Use one of the many free counter apps available for smartphones and tally every time your efforts to move others meet with resistance. (You analog types can use a small notebook and pen, which work just as well.)

By the end of the week, you might be surprised by just how many nos the world has delivered to your doorstep. However, you might be more surprised by something else: You’re still around. Even in that weeklong ocean of rejection, you’ve still managed to stay afloat. That realization can give you the will to continue and the confidence to do even better the following week.

2. Embrace.

For the really big Nos, consider following the lead of Jay Goldberg, founder of the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse, an art gallery and memorabilia store in New York City. Early in his career, Goldberg was working for a prominent American political consultant, but what he really wanted was a job in Major League Baseball. So he sent letters to all twenty-six MLB teams asking for an interview, an internship, anything that would give him a chance. Twenty-five of the teams sent him rejection letters. (The New York Yankees never responded.)

Goldberg kept those letters. And when he launched his own sports agency in the early 1990s, he framed each one and hung all twenty-five on his office wall. “It was my way of showing that I didn’t quit,” he says. “I got all these rejections, but kept going.” Even better, representatives of some of the teams that rejected him found themselves gazing at their earlier decision when they negotiated with Goldberg over one of his clients. “The letters gave me a little smile every time I looked at them.” These days, Goldberg has them in his office at his popular baseball retail space, reminding him daily that how you see rejection often depends on how you frame it.

Don’t forget to go negative every once in a while.

Every silver lining has a cloud. Buoyancy, whether positivity ratios or explanatory style, isn’t about banishing the negative. Negativity and negative emotions are crucial for our survival. They prevent unproductive behaviors from cementing into habits. They deliver useful information on our efforts. They alert us to when we’re on the wrong path.

As Fredrickson explains, “Life gives us plenty of reasons to be afraid, angry, sad, and then some. Without negativity you . . . lose touch with reality. You’re not genuine. In time, you drive people away.” So allow yourself what she dubs “appropriate negativity”—moments of anger, hostility, disgust, and resentment that serve a productive purpose. For instance, suppose you fail to convince a client to sign on for another year. If part of the reason was that some of your work this year wasn’t up to your typical standards, get a little angry with yourself. You screwed up this time. Then use that negative emotion as the impetus to improve.

And consider a few dollops of what Wellesley College’s Julie Norem calls “defensive pessimism.” Her work has shown that thinking through gloom-and-doom scenarios and mentally preparing for the very worst that can occur helps some people effectively manage their anxieties. If this approach sounds useful, present yourself with a series of “What ifs?” What if everything goes wrong? What if the unthinkable happens? What if this is the worst decision of my life? These questions could prompt answers you didn’t expect, which might calm you down and even lift you up.

Send yourself a rejection letter.

Even in an age of text messages and Twitpics, rejection still often arrives in the form of a sheet of letterhead folded into a paper envelope. Nobody likes receiving rejection letters. But one way to reduce their sting, and perhaps even avoid one altogether, is to preempt the rejecter by writing the letter yourself.

Say you’re interviewing for a new job or trying to raise money from an investor. Take an hour and write yourself a letter from the person you’re trying to move explaining why his answer is “Thanks, but no thanks.” List the reasons he’s turning you down. And, of course, include the irritating phrases—“After careful consideration . . . ,” “We regret to inform you . . . ,” and “We had many qualified applicants . . . ,” and so on—that are standard for this genre.

When you read your letter, you’ll probably laugh. Once the rejection is in writing, its consequences can seem far less dire. More important, by articulating the reasons for turning you down, the letter might reveal soft spots in what you’re presenting, which you can then work to strengthen.

And if you’re too lazy to write the letter yourself, try out the Rejection Generator Project (http://ow.ly/cQ5rl). Just choose your favored style of repudiation, type in your e-mail address, and in minutes you’ll receive a dream destroyer in your inbox. We regret to inform you that the site is designed for writers trying to sell manuscripts to publishers, but its results can apply to anyone, even you. We wish you well in your future endeavors.

6.

Clarity

F
orgive the intrusion into your personal affairs, but let me ask: Are you saving enough for retirement? If you’re like many people, your answer is a quiet and sheepish “Uh, probably not.” Around the world, but especially in the United States, the number of individuals who haven’t made adequate preparations for their golden years stands somewhere between grim and alarming. About half of U.S. households are financially unprepared for their breadwinners to retire at age sixty-five. Three in four Americans have less than $30,000 saved in their retirement accounts.
¹

It’s not entirely our fault. Partly because our brains evolved at a time when the future itself was perilous, we human beings are notoriously bad at wrapping our minds around far-off events. Our biases point us toward the present. So when given a choice between an immediate reward (say, $1,000 right now) and a reward we have to wait for ($1,150 in two years), we’ll often take the former even when it’s in our own interest to choose the latter.

Policy makers and social scientists have devised a few methods to help us overcome our weakness. One technique, akin to Odysseus’s strapping himself to the mast to sail past the Sirens, restricts our ability to choose. We ask our employer to automatically deduct a set amount from every paycheck and funnel it into our retirement account—which allows us to do the right thing by default rather than by taking affirmative steps. Another is to make our choices and consequences more concrete—for example, by reminding ourselves that the $1,150 we’ll get in two years could be a down payment on a new car to replace our current auto, which probably won’t last much beyond twenty-four months.
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