CONFIDENT THINKING -- BRIDGE TO CONFIDENT SELLING -- PART ONE

CONFIDENT THINKING -- THE BRIDGE TO CONFIDENT SELLING

PART ONE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 2006

KEY TO DOING BUSINESS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Confident Selling (Prentice-Hall 1970) was designed to get past the arrogance of the seller and the adversarial relationship with the buyer.

It was written in the confrontational and popular climate of “winning through intimidation,” which it summarily rejected as counterproductive.

Confident Selling, on the contrary, envisioned the selling situation being totally constructive around intuitive listening, not talking; around observing, not intimidating; on determining the buyer’s needs, not imposing the will of the seller on what the buyer was willing to buy.

Confident Selling's most reverberating claim was, and continues to be, that the biggest obstacle to success in selling is the seller, not the buyer. The lack of confidence in the seller, which the buyer quickly senses, poisons the climate.

Confidence, however, is not derived from reading books, or looking in the mirror and saying repeatedly, “I am confident I am confident I am confident.” It is the seller believing in himself, seeing himself as partner with the buyer in the enterprise, where he interprets the buyer’s situation clearly to the buyer's advantage.

Thus avoided is the crippling effect of inappropriate sales psychology. Selling is a walk in the part if the seller has his ducks in a role and isn’t a barrier to his own success, which happens only too often because the seller fails to define the selling situation clearly.

Confident Thinking can be gleaned from the seller's own customer base. Virtually all the problems the seller has experienced in the seller’s accounts have occurred in the buyer's operation with his present supplier. You can take this to the bank. The Confident Thinking seller will note and use these data for he will:

(1) Have an understanding of customer business, history, culture, and operations.

(2) Have a record of past and current complaints.

(3) Have identified complaints specifically as they relate to the application of his products.

(4) Have a record of the time lag between reporting and addressing complaints.

(5) Have a record of complexity and success or failure in meeting complaints.

(6) Have a clear understanding of chronic problems and where they occur.

(7) Have an assessment of customer operating competence.

(8) Have a record of who, what, when, where, how, and why relative to the account.


Confident Thinking alerts the seller to every possible nuance of the sales call, and is pivotal to an exploration and evaluation of the prospect’s current satisfaction. It also represents listening with a “third ear.” This is not a time to be obsessed with making an impression. That will occur naturally when the buyer realizes you are sincerely interested in his operation. This is a time to listen and learn.

There are three levels of hearing in every selling exchange:

(1) The “hearing level”: we hear a noise, the muddled voice of the speaker, but little else.

(2) The “listening level”: we hear what is said, but fail to decode and register what is meant.

(3) The “thinking level”: we hear the words, understand the implicit and explicit message, and decode and digest its precise meaning.


“Listening” is only possible at the “thinking level.” The buyer never says what he means, but always means what he says.

For example, imagine he promised the seller an order when his current supply ran out. But when the seller comes back he finds the buyer has reordered from his current supplier. Is the buyer a liar?

Hearing at the first or second level it might appear so. But at the third level it is clear that the buyer has never been convinced to change. The seller must always translate what the buyer says to what he actually means. Saying he would purchase from the seller was a way to get rid of him. As the evidence clearly indicates, that is precisely what transpired.

Sellers, like everyone, are handicapped when it comes to listening:

(1) 40 percent of our development is learning to talk;

(2) 60 percent is learning to read.

Listening is taken for granted. It would seem we are supposed to acquire the skill by osmosis. Consequently, most sellers, as with most people, are poor listeners.

There are a series of impediments to active listening: worrying about some situation at home; wounded pride for being treated with condescension; lack of respect for the buyer; a wandering mind; thinking of the next call; or calculating the commission on the sale. A trigger word can throw the seller off balance emotionally, such as being called a “peddler.” Should the rebuttal instinct kick in, the game is over.

Listening demands that most rare of human characteristics, emotional maturity and self-discipline. With maturity comes control, with control comes Confident Thinking, and with Confident Thinking comes competence and Confident Selling.

So, for a situation to “listen” well, the seller must listen with his whole body. This means using eyes, ears, hands, and posture as components of listening to display interest and attention. It also means listening to what the seller’s gut is telling him about the buyer. Research indicates 75 percent of communication is verbal and 25 percent is written. That no doubt will be changing with the Internet. Even so, with face-to-face contact, 85 percent of communication will likely continue to be taken through the eyes and only 15 percent through the ears.

For the seller, this is daunting. He must see clearly, hear thoughtfully, and react suitably, trusting his mind and body to be alert to vagaries in the situation. From the moment the seller comes in contact with the buyer in the buyer's environs, he must adjust to what it is shouting at him, that is, he must wear the personality of the place, its essence and character as if a garment. If this sounds absurd, think again.

The Confident Thinker feels everything before he thinks of anything. This is so from his initial contact with the receptionist, security guard or secretary to the person he is to meet. From these data, he has a sense of the space and place and what it shouts to project, equating how authentic this is to its palpable reality.

For example, the seller notes if the climate is relaxed, tense, anxious, frantic or self-absorbed. The walls of the lobby talk -- how furnished, decorated and ergonomically appointed -- to visitors and tell them how they are esteemed.

Is the place seller friendly? Or is it seller hostile? The seller takes a moment to note the dynamics of the people moving about: do they appear to be trusting, suspicious, playful, perky or somber? Does it have a classic or New Age ambience, or some other?

Emerson said, “What you say speaks so loudly I cannot hear you!” Nothing is a function of chance. Everything is crying to be understood. In this sense, the seller need not think, but only feel. What it “feels like” is likely to be “what it is.”

The seller can check first impressions with all that follows: content, context and process of the sales call. This is all part of listening.

Without realizing it, the seller is busy processing information: (1) potential; (2) climate; (3) personnel; (4) opportunity; (5) possible brush off treatment; and (6) readiness of the buyer to go for the seller's major objective, the order.

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A baseball player may only get a hit every third appearance at the plate, which is considered good, but he expects to be ready to hit every time. He contributes whenever he puts the ball into play, but not before. Likewise, the seller’s success ratio is likely to be even chancier, but he, too, is not contributing until he has an order in hand.

These data are flooding the seller’s consciousness. On the one hand, he must be ready, and on the other, must trust his mind to process the information efficiently. Confident Thinking precedes engagement. A seller can think too much, just as a baseball player can think too much at the plate. Then, seller or player is each other’s own worst enemy.

The Confident Thinker knows valleys go with peaks, failure leads to success, and learning takes place on plateaus, not during soaring euphoria. Ultimately, the seller needs to trust his wits, training, and conceptual framework to put him in the zone, going with the flow with his mind and body working as one.

That will happen if the seller is open to experience, alive and sensitive to everything. No matter how the call goes, it is a learning experience. There is no such thing as a bad at bat or a bad sales call. Each is a step in progress. As long as the seller has the buyer’s best interests at heart, seller and buyer are connected. This will be implicitly understood.

We are all products of our programming. We cannot escape it. It will not get in the way if we accept it and adjust to it with understanding.

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Once I was traveling with one of my men, who became engaged in an animated conversation with a man at a large construction site. The man was well dressed and friendly. He asked my salesman for his business card. They exchanged cards and my salesman nearly feinted.

The man was chairman of the board of a Fortune 100 company. Large potential customers as well as authority figures intimidated this particular salesman in general, being the reason I was traveling with him. It puzzled me because he appeared so talented. If only he could get his arms around his problem, he could be successful, I reasoned, but what was his problem? It showed itself here.

Later, I asked him what had happened? His comment was matter-of-fact, “He’s a civil war buff like I am. We just hit it off.” I said I could see that, but what about the feinting?

No reply.

He asked you to call on him in New York City, right?

“Yes,” he answered, “he’s got some stuff he wants to show me.”

I don’t think so, I said.

“No?”

No, I repeated. What other reason would he want to see you?

This completely threw him. He could not fathom a man of such status would want to work with him. He had allowed the CEO to display his remarkable civil war knowledge – his I sensed was much greater – without interruption, feeding the CEO lines to make his delivery more impressive.

You listened, I reminded him. Didn’t you notice, I persisted, you hardly spoke at all, feeding his remarks with questions that kept him on theme. You were selling. You could have embarrassed him with your knowledge but you didn’t. You perceived him correctly, and kept him on center stage.

Here was a seller who was easily intimidated by position power, avoiding it whenever he could. This resulted in him making rote calls again and again on high-end buyers while concentrating on low-enders without clout. His programming here was showing.

Even with the flicker of bias, the buyer senses it. It did not show here because it was a neutral zone (construction site), and casual conversation led to a subject of common interest with no one required to make a decision.

Did my salesman experience an epiphany? I would like to say, yes, but that was not the case. He took his rapport with the CEO to be a fluke, and never called on the man in New York City.

If a seller recognizes his bias, he can control it by accepting himself, as he is, being aware and accepting of others as he finds them. Every interpersonal exchange has the potential for hidden contamination when bias is denied.

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Going through the mind of the buyer in the sales interview is this chronology in descending order:

(1) Am I comfortable with this person?

(2) Can I see my people doing business with him?

(3) Will his products fit comfortably with what we are doing?

(4) Is he technically competent?

Notice the chronology. It may seem 180 degrees out of phase, but it is not. It is always in this order, while it is seldom clear to either the buyer or the seller for this to be the case. Yet, both bear it out in practice.

Invariably, the myth persists that competence matters most, when it matters lease in fragile interpersonal exchange. That is why high tech people are often duped in the selling situation. They think the mind is dominant when the emotions control the game.

The seller who recognizes this chronology and works his magic with it, first in creating comfort, then in developing trust, then in establishing rapport, and finally in generating collegiality will have a most viable trump card if he is also competent. Seller and buyer will then both profit.

If he isn’t competent, the buyer will be duped and likely become embittered towards people who sell, stereotyping them as distrustful when they are no more distrustful than any other profession, perhaps less so.

Comfort, fit, and competence are in sequential order and this never changes despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

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