PsychSelling - The Secret Strategies of the Psychiatrist Applied to Sales. Greg Bennett
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and discipline it takes to focus on another person for LONG stretches of time without wanting to talk, put your two cents in, fix things, argue … or just daydream. For most people it’s almost impossible to focus on another person for even five minutes, let alone fifty minutes out of every hour, eight hours a day! And that’s certainly true for salespeople, who unfortunately are the exact opposite of doctors in that they talk 90 percent of the time with the client only 10 percent.
Psychiatrists also have other great habits and techniques, (I call them “tricks” but they don’t like to think of them that way), that they employ to remain detached from conflict, control the conversation, and dig down to the critical issues of a patient; all while not taking things personally, or taking all that stress home with them. How different that is from most salespeople! Unfortunately, most sellers take everything personally, are usually out of control, and rarely dig beneath the surface of the any conversation. And I believe this is why they struggle with sales and with forming deeper relationships.
The more I studied psychiatry and psychiatrists, the more I realized how much more effective and happy salespeople could be if they could somehow acquire some of these habits and skill sets. And over the past 20 years of teaching these techniques, that’s proven to be true!
The more I studied psychiatry and psychiatrists, the more I realized how much more effective and happy salespeople could be if they could somehow acquire some of these habits and skill sets.
Q: You seem to think the way psychiatrists approach what they do is the opposite of the way most salespeople operate, is that true?
Absolutely. The two are completely opposite in how they approach an interaction with another person in a work setting (a patient in the case of the doctor and a client for the seller). While they both are engaged in questioning, listening, probing, and “selling” solutions (or are supposed to be engaged in these things) – doctors and sellers are completely opposite in how they approach those tasks and accomplish their objectives. And I believe it’s in being the complete opposite that has made what I call my “PsychSelling” strategies so popular among sales people and sales managers; for once they learn this approach, and these new habits, they are unlike every other seller out there … and that’s a good thing!
Q: What would you say are the main ways psychiatrists are so different from salespeople when they’re engaged with another person in a work setting?
I would say the main difference, and it’s a big one, is that salespeople tend to think that the whole thing, the whole process, is about them; about getting their needs met, about selling more of their stuff, about getting their egos stroked, etc. While the psychiatrist tends to see the entire interaction as being about the patient, about getting the patient’s needs met, about discovering the patient’s hidden problems and pains, about working with the patient’s ego, etc. To a psychiatrist, their own ego is something that must be tamed and set aside; to a seller, the ego is front and center, dominating all internal thought, motivating all external actions, and interested in mainly making sure they (the seller) is always right, safe, and secure. This first difference could be boiled down to the difference between these questions: while the doctor asks -- “What is going on with you?”, the seller asks: “What stuff of mine do you want to buy?”
What is going on with you? vs. What stuff of mine do you want to buy? -- a world of difference in those questions.
Another big difference between the two is in the overall use of questions and listening styles in their daily work. Psychiatrist[s] are probably the greatest questioners and listeners in the world, while salespeople are generally thought of as the worst (can’t get much more opposite than that, right?) Psychiatrists not only ask good initial questions, they tend to dig beneath the surface with clarifying questions in order to get at the underlying issues a patient may have. This is called active, participatory listening. Contrast this with salespeople who generally don’t ask very effective initial questions, and rarely (if ever) ask clarifying questions that get at anything beneath the surface. Sellers prefer to skim across the top, hoping to gather just enough information to find an opening in order to pounce on the prey.
Psychiatrist[s] are probably the greatest questioners and listeners in the world, while salespeople are generally thought of as the worst (can’t get much more opposite than that, right?)
These of course are huge generalities I’m using here, painting entire groups of people with traits that certainly aren’t true for 100 percent of either doctors or sellers. I’m sure there are some psychiatrists who don’t question and listen very well, and there are certainly some sellers who are master communicators. But we’re talking about the 90/10 concept, with 90 percent of people acting a certain way and only 10 percent breaking from the norm.
A final difference I’ll list here--and there are several others we will address throughout this program--between doctors and sellers is in presenting solution ideas. Psychiatrists know that many patients must learn to own their problems before they can accept possible solutions, and must even feel that the solution is something they, the patient, discovered or selected in order to feel empowered to make changes. Sellers meanwhile feel the solution belongs to them, they own it before, during, and after the sale … and it’s their job to convince the buyer enough so he or she will buy the seller’s solution. Thus they probe for problems only to tee-up solution answers they learn to deliver with power (aka, cram down the throat of unwilling buyers).
Q: So how did you go about putting the PsychSelling strategies together?
Well, once I had my “pop sales psychology” model down in my mind, I just started interviewing doctors and other practitioners involved in the world of mental health. I asked them how they approach what they do. What do you do during a client engagement? How do you stay focused without daydreaming? How do you control different situations? How do you question and listen without becoming distracted? How do you get people to own their problems and want to seek help? How do you get people to believe they came up with the answer vs. just giving it to them? I asked it all, and I listened. I also asked them for some of the “hidden tricks” they use to control the setting and the interview.
Once I had all that, I broke it down into a process that could be applied to a normal sales conversation. Of course there are many types of sales people, processes, and systems, so I put together ideas that could be applied easily to a variety of different sales scenarios, and employed by salespeople of all experience levels.
As for the various areas I addressed in building my PsychSelling System, I started with the psychiatrists’ mindset: how they thought about the engagement, and how they mentally prepared themselves for it. Then I moved into how they physically set up the engagement and their body language. Next, I addressed their questioning and listening strategies. And finally, how they introduced their solutions so that patients felt they were a partner in the solution.
I then turned these concepts and steps into something a salesperson would use on a day-to-day basis, and the results have been amazing. Over the past 20 years, thousands of salespeople have heard my PsychSelling strategies and have employed them successfully to increase their sales while enjoying themselves at the same time. Salespeople report things like: being more in control, being more relaxed, better able to get at the core questions and concerns of the client, feeling less pressure and stress, able to form better relationships, not feeling pressured or uncomfortable in front of a client--even an angry one--and many, many more. And it’s not just in their role as “sales person”; these individuals have reported that they’re forming better, deeper relationships in their personal lives as well.
I then turned