Greg's Right FIT #498 – This week: Stories, Attractiveness, Garlic

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Stories
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Stories

• Put your listener in a physical space. It doesn't take much, just a sentence, but makes a big difference in the mind of your audience. My writing group tells me this. A lot. When we attach locations to scenes in a story, the story gets better.
• Show don't tell. My lovely bride recommended, "The Red Chamber," and the author is a master of this. Consecutive sentences, or short dialogue showing backstories. As John McPhee might say, use A, B, and C to tell the story of D.
• Rethink "then." This scene happened, then this scene, and then this scene. Great for police evidence, bad for a story. Instead, take a page from the South Park guys, connect scenes with "but" or "therefore." This happens, therefore this happens, but then this happens, therefore this happens.
• True stories and true stories told in an entertaining way aren't the same thing. Entertainment requires editing, so unless you're being deposed, it's ok to make some alterations. Memory is a funny thing. The more we tell a story, the less true it is. . .as regular readers tend to remind me.

Being Human – Liking

"Although it has long been suspected that physical beauty provides an advantage in social interaction, research indicates the advantage may be greater than supposed. . .attractive people are more persuasive both in terms of getting what they request and changing others attitudes." – Dr. Robert Cialdini

Last week we talked about rapport and my opinion that modern sales training focused too much on rapport. One of my sales training friends replied asking what I made of my book friend, Dr. Robert Cialdini, and his second listed persuasion technique: Liking.

For those of you that haven't committed this chapter to memory, Cialdini digs into research explaining how humans love to interact with people they like. In that chapter he talks about the way we instantly like attractive people, even salespeople. This influence tactic is the reason why we see movie stars hawking goods, and why you'll find runway models standing by new automobiles at the trade show. Since we like attractive people, the marketers hope we'll pass those warm feelings to their products. Research shows it works.

So, what about "liking" as it relates to rapport? Since liking is so important to influence, aren't the training companies right to focus on rapport?

Let's look at this sales grid.

I have an exercise tied to this I won't bore you with, but what you need to know is looking the lower left, simple products sold to buyers with low budget prioritization, are transactional, one-call-close types of sales cycles. Contrast that selling process with the upper right. Sophisticated products, often very expensive, sold to buyers that can prioritize the company's budget. That is a complex sales process. My example last week was training for complex sales processes, like those. They feature many calls, multiple buyer personalities, buying committees, maybe even RFIs and RFPs. The point I was trying to make is that rapport in complex sales cycles is less important than understanding the customer's opportunity, resources, and decision making process.

I think companies put complex buying processes in place for a reason. They want to minimize those influence tactics Dr. Cialdini so painstakingly outlines. Nothing minimizes attractiveness and small favors (powerful tactics for liking) like a committee.

Does that mean complex sales cycles ignore the psychology of persuasion?** No. If you can get Brad Pitt or Scarlett Johansson to go on your sales calls, you should. My point is if we're focusing on the smart part of sales, the natural charm parts will enhance our efforts. It's better than relying our charm but not knowing how to sell well. Buying committees respond well to the former versus the latter.

Impossibly smart, attractive people armed with deep sales and product knowledge are fantastic complex sales cycle people. If you can't be both, it's best to focus on developing your complex sales cycle skills. And if you're super attractive and don't want to invest time in sales skills, sell products and services on the less sophisticated side of the equation. Like selling apparel. You'll kill it.

** Check out this new paper: "Mirrored Matching: Facial Similarity and the Allocation of Venture Capital" – Do subtle visual cues influence high-stakes economic decisions? Using venture capital as a laboratory, this paper shows that facial similarity between investors and entrepreneurs predicts positive funding decisions but negative investment outcomes. The power of the liking principle.

Random Stuff

"Last night we had three small zucchini for dinner that were grown within fifty feet of our back door. I estimate they cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $371.49 each." – humorist Andy Rooney

My gardening education continues. In the fall of 2022 I planted some hardneck garlic and it started growing way too soon. I think the late freeze killed it, but it may have been me thinking I should cover it as the snows came. Nothing grew for summer 2023.

Fall of 2023 I tried some new bulbs, planting them in neat rows. Spring of 2024 there were many plants. Mid July we had nice big bulbs that we dried out for a while, then moved into the basement. By the end of the summer it was usable and everything we ate that winter had lots of garlic in it. I set aside the biggest bulbs to plant in the fall. However, when I went to plant them they looked terrible. Nothing like their parents. I must have done something wrong. I planted what was left and 50% of the plants came up.

It's mid-July 2025 and may be hard to tell from the picture, but this years garlic are small. Not impressive. Obviously my bulb storage issues were real, but there's another problem. I planted the survivors upside down.

Not only were those guys mistreated in storage, when I put them in the ground, I pulled a Jigsaw and said, "I can't help, you'll have to help yourself," then buried them for the winter. Survival of the fittest. I should have double checked which end I was supposed to plant facing down, but it was cold and I was in a hurry.

In the meantime I learned there are other places to get garlic. Like that grocery store we go to each week. Less than a buck a head.

It's the journey, not the destination.