If I happen to be in my car at six o’clock on a Sunday, I always make a conscious effort to turn on the local NPR station and listen to Car Talk.
One of the most notable aspects of this radio show is how these guys present themselves. On both the radio show and on their web site, it is a study in self-deprecation. If you visit their web site, it says in big print: “our lousy radio show.” They constantly present themselves as incompetent crooks who are astonished that NPR doesn’t toss them off the airwaves. Of course, after multiple jokes about not knowing anything and being in business largely to hose their customers, they conclude each call with their best guess as to the caller’s car problem. I have no data, but they seem to be right almost 99% of the time, solving problems that have stymied many others.
(Along with the radio show, these guys actually do run a garage in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I have used their services myself. I usually go to the local dealer, but one time the dealer and all their factory trained mechanics couldn’t figure out a problem I was having with my steering. After weeks of aggravation, I dropped my car off at the Car Talk garage, and it took them all five minutes to tell me that I needed new tires. Fixed. Very impressive.)
Now let’s contrast this very successful self-deprecating approach with what we typically encounter when people are trying to sell us something. As a speaker, I often meet professional people in the post-presentation networking period. Most of these people have a standard little presentation of their services. Without exception, they tell me about the importance of their services, the benefits of their services, and the many ridiculously obvious reasons why I need to call them and avail myself of their services.
Their arguments are excessively logical. But there’s one little problem with their presentations, and that is: they make me feel inferior. When a lawyer tells me that I need to put my legal affairs in better order, or a person in finance tells me that my life would be much improved if I availed myself of their expertise, in my heart of hearts, I feel like an idiot for not having taken care of this already.
A logical listing of positive outcomes should certainly motivate actions in a rational person. Sad to say, I’m not all that rational. Once I’ve had this negative feeling, in order for this person to get me to take action and come into their office as a customer, I have to independently overcome a purely irrational emotional resistance to having further contact with them.
On the other hand, if I were to have a problem with my car, assuming I could even get past the hordes of other people calling in to discuss it, Tom and Ray would not tell me about their expertise. They would not give me a lot of logical arguments about how to improve my overall car maintenance. Nope. They would first spend 80% of the time talking about what incompetent crooks they are. There is no chance of my feeling like an idiot when they are preempting me with talking about what idiots they are.
While it seems somewhat counterintuitive to speak of yourself in the negative as part of the sales process, by pointing out your own personal peccadillos, flaws, and frailties, you are much more likely to make a personal connection. Making that personal connection, and making a potential customer feel emotionally safe around you, is a big part of the sales process. Most people will just assume that you are professionally competent, so it’s somewhat redundant even talk about it. They’re much more interested in what it will feel like to do business with you on a purely personal level.
Granted, this is not universal. There are a lot of situations where price is everything and there are naïve inexperienced people out there who will buy into a golden ideal of perfection, so I can’t totally trash that sales technique. But from my own personal perspective, the person who is quick to point out their own mortality, fallibility, and the limits of what they can do for me is much more likely to get my business.
© Justin Locke
