Selling With Empathy

This article is going to rile a good friend of mine. He says he doesn’t like marketing. Which is a load of old codswallop. He has stuff for sale – so he’s intimately involved in marketing. What he doesn’t like, is people being conned. And I’m with him on that one.

So I thought I’d start with a little disclaimer before I get into the meat and potatoes of what I want to share with you today.

Firstly lets get straight about money. No matter what your source of income – business, a job, or even social security (if you’re so lucky to get a free ride on the government/people) – something has to be sold to raise the money so you can get your grubby little hands on it.

Selling – the exchange of goods and services for money and…

Marketing – the whole process of finding a need, creating a solution, and getting that solution to market to be sold…

…are the means by which money is raised. Like it or not. That’s the world we live in.

And what I offer are the tools to get the job of raising money done. Like a hammer is a tool, so is Empathy – the tool I’m talking about today.

A hammer can be used for it’s intended purpose of persuading nails into bits of wood… or it can be used for grevious bodily harm. It can be used for the good purpose of building houses and it can be used for the evil purpose of ending dysfunctional relationships (hmm… maybe that’s not so evil. Whateva).

Each tool in a salesman’s kit is just a tool. They can be used for the good purpose of connecting people with things they need to make their lives better, or they can be used for the evil purpose of ripping people off blind. Same tool. Different Job.

My hope is that anyone who reads my stuff is on the side of good. Because this tool I’m about to explain – Empathy – is the industrial sized hammer of persuasion. Persuasion is not in itself bad. What you persuade people to do may be. Please be responsible with it.

It’s important to distinguish empathy from sympathy.

Empathy is where you momentarily intellectually place yourself in someone elses position to get an understanding of what they are dealing with. What it’s like for them. You’re not limited by that view and can see a bigger picture.

Sympathy is when you are sharing the other persons thoughts and feelings and agreeing with them that everything sux and nothing else is possible.

You’ll know you are being sympathetic with someone when you notice yourself unable to see any new action the person can take or any new perspective to view the situation from. Unfortunately people in sympathy generally cannot notice their own thoughts.

In empathy you are removed from and observing the thoughts and feelings. Getting a picture of them. Not being them.

Sympathy stops a sale in it’s tracks. Empathy can open a person up to new possibilities for action like a jack hammer opens up concrete.

The reason empathy is such a powerful selling tool is because it triggers something in the human brain which leads to instant trust. And when a person trusts you they will listen to what you have to say with an open mind.

Don’t ask me to explain why. I don’t know. It just does. I don’t need to know why. I just need to know that it works to understand another persons world. To be able to identify with (but not get tangled up in) another persons pain.

So if you want to sell something to a person and you want them to buy with conviction the first thing you have to do is understand their world. Understand their pain, fear, distrust, anxiety, apprehension and revel in their desire, wants, needs, goals and joys.

Because once you can do that, once you understand that… then you can speak to them in a way they will understand you. You can reference their world. For a human being to feel understood is like manna from heaven. Once they feel the thrill of another human being who understands their world they’ll be ready to have a look new possibilities.

That’s when you can start to paint a picture of what life could be like. And your product or service is the thing that’ll get them there.

I entered a store the other day to be greeted by a rather large and obvious shinning example of Plumbers Crack. Problem was it was a bottle shop, not a building supplies shop or a gay porn store.

The complex where the store is located is mostly frequented by people with a bit of money, style and taste. Executive class people who like to get dressed up and go to a restaurant. They pay a premium to sit in exceedingly comfortable chairs in a movie theatre and not have to deal with the riff raff. Getting things delivered to them in the middle of the movie.

In the moment I walked into the store and viewed the store assistants lily white hairy ass my empathy was with the store owner and his patrons. I promptly told the guy to pull his pants up and continued into the store to get some beer out of the fridge.

His ass was not what I was there for. And I really don’t think any one else came to see it either. And I don’t think the store owner intended for his employee to create that sort of vivid product display.

Unfortunately my empathy was in the wrong place. Because now this guy does not like me at all. And as I’m being served by one of the other attendants in the store the guy with no belt is staring at me as if he intends me ill will.

I tried to have a conversation with him about it but he was in no mood to make friends with me.

The thing is I wouldn’t have created an enemy if my empathy had been with him when I told him to pull his pants up because I would have done it in a not so loud voice. I’d have quietly sidled up to him and said “Look, I know you don’t mean to but you’re pointing your bare ass at the door and I don’t think it’s what people come in here for.”

Which would have been much more pleasant for him and he’d have complied and been happy and regarded me as a friend. Rather than regarding me as someone who’s sole purpose in life is to embarrass him and make fun of his pale over-sized rear end.

The lesson here is, make sure you’ve got your empathy in the right place. Properly used, empathy is an incredible tool for opening people up to new ideas, but put it in the wrong place and people are left feeling like you don’t care about them at all.

Remain Awesome.

Scotty Junner
The Unlikely Ad Man