It is the way human mind is conditioned to see what they want to see. Sales Teams are conditioned to see the “the big prizes or benefits” offered to them by customers or partners in a reality distortion field created by smart crowd. The creation of reality distortion is pretty easy – promise of a lottery money when you have not taken any lottery ticket through email – was one of them.

In Sales this comes as promise of a market you have never been able to tap, promise of a corporate account you have not been able to approach, promise of government of ministerial business you have not been able to break into – these promises make Sales people drool. They often forget at the yield you are able to break into the said market segment, you would have wiped the floor clean, with a catch – you would have compromised on profitability. Your partner is asking you to give a discounted fare to win a corporate account – Your partner would not have given you anything to win the said account and if you start courting the account, you probably would not have discounted anyway to get the business.

So the question is how to make intelligent decisions to amidst such confusion, how to segregate signal from noise?

The first key is being aware.

I have found myself falling into the same trap when I interact with customers or partners – getting carried away. So as a ground rule for myself I do not make decisions on the spot, I ask for time. I come back and deconstruct the whole story. Approach it from every different angle and many a times when I replay the sound bites, body language, who was trying to sell – me or them. During the reconstruction process of the story – I rephrase many of the sound bites in common language, without the sales pitch and it becomes very evident that – the reality was being distorted.

Second step is being aware – you are not that smart, people you interact with are smarter. You need to work very hard, develop soft eyes, keep your human brain thinking (animal brain sedated, so that the carrot does not appear again and again, distorting realities), in order to make intelligent decisions.

Have you ever come across a blog post that you enjoyed so much you wanted to easily share it with the readers of your own blog? Sure, you can copy and paste the link and perhaps even a snippet of text with your own comments, but overall it's not a particularly enjoyable experience. We wanted to change this and make sharing other posts with your readers as easy as posting to your blog. Today we're introducing a new like and reblog feature enabled … Read More

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Have you ever come across a blog post that you enjoyed so much you wanted to easily share it with the readers of your own blog? Sure, you can copy and paste the link and perhaps even a snippet of text with your own comments, but overall it's not a particularly enjoyable experience. We wanted to change this and make sharing other posts with your readers as easy as posting to your blog. Today we're introducing a new like and reblog feature enabled … Read More

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When you start living in such worlds, you read books that reiterates your view point only,

you are not open to change (even though you always talk about change)

you try to create a world of soothsayers and turn away disrupters (truth is always disrupting)

you celebrate achievement of targets (when you have missed millions of opportunities)

you celebrate scores (even though they do not reflect any of the complexities and realities of the market)

“Some people are deep aren’t they” , Customer

“What happened last time? You sounded so disturbed on the phone?” Sales Person

“Probably the questioning was not there, straight on to the product. I want to give my child full freedom of choice. I do not want to push him on to reading. I am a voracious reader, however I firmly believe each person has his own way of learning and growing. A kid destined to dance may not read.” Customer

“So far from what you have said I do not see a disconnect.” Sales person

“You may know already. I did not know till recently that most of a child’s brain development happens before he or she is 8 years old.” Sales Person

“I am not interested rational and scientific fact. Any research is done on a specimen and cannot be taken as a rule for anyone and if you do look, you can find contradicting scientific studies.” Customer

“But there are some facts that you cannot ignore.” Sales Person

“A book is not a book it is the content.” Sales Person

“Content is meaningful only if the person within relates to it”. Customer

“It is not the children who need direction. It is the parents who see their children as extension of themselves. They need to be trained to understand their child better.” Customer

“I disagree to that, you need to give your child some direction, for example you initiated your children to video games, didn’t you “ Sales Person

“Yes” Customer

“You know the brain activity is very less when watching TV or playing videogame as against reading a book” Sales Person

“I disagree, having played videogames extensively. I would have agreed with you in an era of broadcast media, not in the age of interactive media.” Customer

“But children love books, why don’t they. Why would not they love something with pictures and activities,” Sales Person

“How can you say you are going to give my child Total Development through these books you don’t even know him” Customer

“You are saying that you do not like the pattern, the numbering of books etc”

“Yes, I do not like structured learning solutions. It is instinctive response. I am a person who can choose books based on the cover and get 80% accuracy on choosing something I love and value. I do not feel any pull looking at your product.” Customer

“See you are using all these build up because your product is expensive and you are not confident to leave it to the customer to make the decision. For me as a customer, it is not a throw away price to experiment with” Customer

“I agree to that completely” Sales Person

“An intuitive person senses when change is round the corner. When something as revolutionary as ipad is introduced you should be waiting for the developers who are going to revolutionise Reading by integrating visuals and references and videos into books. The seemingly dominant existence of books as they are currently viewed & stored will start to get questioned. When iTunes was launched no body doubted the CD industry’s foundation would be questioned. Let us wait & watch how iBooks and ipad will shake up the world. They have not claimed they hold any total solutions, yet they have left a huge blank space and potetntial to tackle the unknown.”

This insight kind of explains why people call Steve Jobs an expert at reality distortiion – my guess he is a dominant experimental and emotional self.