Sales Intelligence: Perception and Perceptual Objectivity
I run every morning! Most mornings I run the same route. It includes a sizable hill. The hill is steep and goes on for about 3/4 of a mile; a real leg burner! I start obsessing about this hill as soon as I wake up. It gives me real anxiety, I fear the discomfort I’ll experience trudging up that hill barely able to catch my breath. Even as I approach it I doubt whether i’m ready, whether i’ll be able to get to the top, and every time I get about half way I say to myself “ I can do this, it’s not so bad”. When I’m done; the anxiety I had is a distant memory, it’s been replaced by a feeling of accomplishment, and satisfaction. So much for pattern recognition! I became aware that my perception of the hill is directly related to my relationship to it. The closer I am to that hill the more accurate my vision of it is, the further I am away the more distorted.
Of course, my mind automatically turns to sales! Specifically,
consultative selling;the process of asking thoughtful, mindful, questions in order to uncover a customers true and compelling reason to change. This is the hill! I realized the more clarity I had around the problem, and the more I was able to see the problem from the customers perspective, the closer I was able to get to it, the more effectively and efficiently I could provide solutions of value.
When i’m running it’s simple to figure out how to get a non distorted view of the hill; I just run to it. When i’m interacting with a customers it’s a little more tricky to ask the right questions at the right time and uncover a customers true and compelling reason to buy. The answer for me, comes down to Perception and Perceptual Objectivity. Perception is the uniques way we experience a given situation. Perceptual objectivity is a competency, a learned skill that enables one to perceive a situation with relative objectivity by not limiting our view through excessive subjectivity. In other words, by keeping our own biases, assumptions and thinking errors in check, we allow ourselves to be more open to seeing the multiple perspectives that make up the problem. This increased clarity allows us to ask better questions which gives us the ability to provide solutions of greater value.
Like running, you have to dig from within and challenge yourself! There is no easy way. To leverage perceptual objectivity you need to look inward and really understand what makes up your own perceptions. My experience has been that the more I look inward, deconstruct, and listen to my own stories around certain situations, the more aware I become when excessive subjectivity is getting in the way
