It’s All About Them

We recently had the kick off seminar for Integrity Selling® and are currently going through the follow-ups with the group. For those of you not familiar with what I am talking about, we do a one day seminar with eight weeks of follow-up coaching by phone with participant groups of 6-10 to ensure they are applying the new principles they learned at the seminar. Without that follow-up, training is almost useless as Ebbinghous and Goddard study on learning proved that we will forget 75% of what we learned within 48 hours, unless there is follow up coaching or continual application of what was learned.

Our approach to selling, customer service and leadership development is simply this: It’s all about them. By them I mean the other person; the person in front of you. This principle is applicable to every relationship around you. It works so well with businesses simply because business is all about relationships.

What if you made every interaction you had with others about them instead of about you? What do you think the result would be? Would they:

• Take advantage of you?
• Enjoy the interaction more?
• Be willing to have more interactions with you?

The answer is most likely yes to all of the questions above. Which is what we want both professionally and personally?

What? You ask. I want people to take advantage of me? In a way, yes. You want them to take advantage of the talents, skills and abilities you have to help meet their needs; within reason. You want them to know that you are at their disposal, that you care about them, that you are more interested in meeting their needs than you are in meeting your own.

Notice I didn’t say, “You are not interested at all in getting your needs met.”

Why do most relationship approaches fail? That’s easy: It’s because most approaches are self-focused. Even the questions they ask are really set up questions to ensure they get what they want.

When someone approaches you either personally or professionally and they are more interested in getting their needs met, any interest they show seems fake. You automatically start losing trust and questioning their integrity. Even the most well intended people can sabotage their efforts because they made themselves, or their agenda, more important that the other person.

What’s the secret? Find a process that enables you to effectively circumvent your natural desire to get your needs met first. A process that can enable you to stay focused on their needs throughout the entire interaction. When you do this you will find that they are more willing to engage.

What about your needs? Don’t worry; most people understand that others have needs too. But by focusing on theirs initially you will open the door wider for their willingness to hear about and meet yours too. Like the late Zig Ziglar said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”

Give it a try. I’d love to hear about your results!