Hi, this is Tasha and I’m the founder of Emerge Sales Training. Today I’m going to talk about why telling people that you have a bad idea might actually be a good idea.
Recently, I read the book “Originals”, which is super good, probably not shocking if you follow me. It’s on how non-conformists change the world. One of the topics in there was really around how original people get people to trust their ideas. It’s super counterintuitive, and one is actually picking out the flaws ahead of time. Let me just go ahead and walk you through the logic of this and then I’d love to hear what you think so if you are seeing this on social media, leave a comment, or shoot us an email and let us know.
Here’s the logic: Most of us don’t want to be taken as a sucker, right? So, when someone is coming to us with an idea that just appears to be so amazing, take a step back. Has anyone ever told you something that sounds so good that you’re like, “That’s too good to be true.” What we do intuitively is we start looking for flaws in the argument. What that does is that decreases trust.
What originals do to get their ideas across is they actually expose the flaws from the beginning. What’s really cool about that is if you expose some of the flaws, which every idea has some no matter what it is, there is no perfect product. If you see a great health and wellness product, some of the flaws might be the cost. Even if you look at our sales and leadership programs, there are some things in there, right?
I can’t think of any flaws. No, I’m just joking. The casual nature of our coaching team, the fact that maybe we don’t have specific network marketing backgrounds, those are flaws. By exposing that, then the other person isn’t looking for them and they’ll actually walk alongside you and say, “Okay well, yeah, Tasha. I see what you’re saying I can see how that’s a flaw, but here’s how we can make this work.”
Instead of them looking for chinks in your armor, which decreases trust, they walk alongside you and they’re like, “Well, let’s look at how we can address these flaws or maybe these flaws aren’t so bad.”
What if when we were presenting an idea to someone, we actually acknowledged some of them? Now, not in a way that detracts from our confidence at all, but if we acknowledge some of the flaws, would we then increase trust? Without even realizing this, I have been doing this for a long time, and I’ll give you an example.
When I do my webinars, we will typically start off with what’s hard about whatever topic we’re talking about and then I’ll just say, “Well, let me give you a little brief insight into how we train and who Emerge is.” I always start with, “Well, this one major disclaimer. I am not an actual, active network marketer, but please before you hang up, I have one redeeming quality. I’m a very active network marketing customer.”
Then I just go on to explain my perspective as a customer and then explain that I’m here representing your customer, like please make it easier to buy, please explain your stuff so I can understand. As opposed to your upline who’s saying, “Hey, we need you to do better, and make more sales, and whatnot.”
There certainly have been people that have said, “Well, Tasha’s not a network marketer. We’re out.” But, I think it’s less people than would have otherwise if I didn’t just acknowledge that from the beginning. If I had never acknowledged that then as people are listening to the training they would just look for reasons to shoot down my credibility. But because I already said, “Well, here are the reasons I’m not credible, but here’s the reasons why I might be credible despite that,” then it actually changes the conversation and increases trust.
Now, there are a couple of keys to making this work. Number one, it can’t be snarky. It can’t be like “Five Reasons You’ll Hate Guacamole” and then they say the reasons are number 1, “You hate delicious things,” and number 2, “You don’t like to be healthy.” That’s dumb.
Don’t make it about being snarky. The reasons that someone might not like Emerge, would be things like our background, like I gave in the example, or the fact that we are jokey, and sarcastic, and casual in nature, the way we challenge conventional wisdom within the industry, etc. Those are things legitimately that people might not like, so you want to make sure that it’s not meant to be snarky or fake reasons.
Then the second key to making this work is it really depends on is your skill level. I would not necessarily use this in a sales scenario unless your skill level is very, very high. If you are just kind of starting out with, let’s say you recently took Your Direct Sales Foundation, or you’re just about to enroll, I would not use it there. I would wait until you are super skilled in your basics when it comes to sales, like maybe you’re in that 70 to 80 percent, and that’s where you could introduce a particular flaw. Not when you’re in a place where you’re not doing well.
This isn’t going to pull you from totally stinking to all of the sudden being a rockstar, but this will increase trust with a certain percentage of people that are looking for chinks in the armor.
I feel like it’s where it’s most valuable is in leadership and so let’s say I have an idea about something that we want to do. I actually, I have another business that I played with with a friend of mine for a while called The Christian Network Marketers Community. For the past three months, I’ve been kicking around bringing it back and so if I’m going to go to my leadership team to say, “Hey, I think we should bring this back, here are some of the pros, but here are also some of the cons. The amount of work it’s going to take. How do we figure out this particular challenge? How do we align the two companies so that we don’t have to create additional products?” Those are actual challenges.
Instead of my leadership team pushing back and saying, “No, because here are all the challenges,” they would say, “I see those challenges, let’s see if we can work around them,” and they’re not going to feel like they have to do it, or they’re not going to feel like they need to be defensive.
Another really good place to put this is where what you can offer as a leader. I do some work in my recruiting class around who you are as a leader. We did a little bit of it in the Little Strengths mini course that we do, but really going through your talents, and your gifts, and your strengths, and kind of just understanding what you’re good at as a leader. If that’s all you say, they’re going to start saying, “Well, crap. You can’t be perfect so let me find the chinks in your armor.”
But, if I just tell you what they are, they’ll be like, “Yeah, okay. Well, that’s who you are.” If I were doing that, I would say, “You know what I’m really good at? Taking very complicated things, making them simple. I’m good with learning language and knowing how you can apply it and seeing patterns so you can be successful and identifying these patterns. What I’m not so good at is like the feeling stuff, and sometimes my insatiable desire for it to make something amazing can get in my way and make people a little bit crazy. Will you still have me as your coach, or as your leader, or as your trainer?” Then they aren’t going to be looking for all the things they may not like about me. Instead they’ll be like, “Oh, well those are the things … Alright, well if you’re willing to acknowledge your flaws then you’re probably pretty trustworthy.” It’s super helpful.
That is the tip that I wanted to give you today. I think it shows up most when it comes to ideas or even presenting yourself as a leader that someone would follow. I’m curious to hear what you guys all think and I hope that’s helpful.
Now, this is a tip that you would layer onto some of the foundations you may have already built in Your Direct Sales Foundation or Your Leadership Foundation. So, if you haven’t taken those courses, make sure that you check them out at emergesalestraining.com/courses.
That’s it for today and I will see you guys soon.
If you’d like, you can watch the video here: