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What can matter more than price, sellers say, are elements that
economists don't take into consideration when preparing their tables and
charts: a slick presentation, a row of clean teeth, a crisp set of overheads,
a well-timed joke. These are just some of the tools salespeople use to
dilate the pinprick dot where supply meets demand to create a zone of
price-quantity free-for-all in which buyers' decisions are based more on
style and persuasion than substance and product. If we were to chart this
zone and overlay it on the intersection of the economist's two hairline
rules, we'd end up with something that would look like a wide, blobby ink
stain. What happens inside this area is what I call the charisma economy.
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But, like the paperless office, the Azzam-less office did not materialize.
"What I've found is that salespeople who do nothing more than offer
convenience or price do get replaced by the Internet," says Howard
Stevens, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and co-author of
Selling the Wheel: Choosing the Best Way to Sell for You, Your Company,
Your Customers. "Professional salespeople, on the other hand - people
who add value to their clients' operations - simply find the Internet reduces
the time they have to spend on mundane transactional activities and
allows them more time to build relationships, solve problems and become
involved in the customer's business."
A few months ago, Snetsinger let me accompany him to the Toronto offices
of the Young & Rubicam advertising agency. It was a Wednesday. On the
coming Monday, five Y&R officials would travel to Prince Edward Island to
compete for the island's tourism account in a presentation battle with four
other agencies. "The account is worth about $5 million a year," says
Snetsinger. "That's not a lot. But this is an account with enormous creative
potential. You can really show off your talent. It's not like selling soap or
toothpaste."
Snetsinger and I are led into a small conference room where the Y&R
people will be rehearsing portions of their pitch. I meet Susan Murray, a
43-year-old senior vice-president.
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we can configure it any way we like." Snetsinger studies the image for a
moment, then recommends that they arrange rectangular tables in the
shape of a capital T - with P.E.I.'s deputy tourism minister and his
entourage seated along the top segment, and the Y&R team deployed on
either side of the main axis. This way, Snetsinger explains, the target
bureaucrats - the "decision-makers" and "key influencers," as Rogen
describes them in his materials - will have a direct view.
"We've been partners with Tourism P.E.I. for six years," Murray continues,
moving to complete the allegory. "And we want to keep the relationship
going. It's time for you to assess whether you can find a worthier partner.
Like Doris' parents, I'm sure there are people who think they can find
someone smarter, richer and better-looking - or, in business terms, an
agency that will be more knowledgeable, more innovative and make P.E.I.
more attractive to potential visitors.... We're here today to say that we think
we've got a good thing going, and we're going to make it even better."
A few days later, I find myself in Rogen's own conference room at the
company's Yonge Street headquarters in Toronto. Snetsinger has offered
to let me attend one of his firm's "presentation skills" seminars. The
courses are taught at several different levels. I elected to participate in one
program that lasts three days and costs $1,900.
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When it's my turn, I tell everyone that I need help with my media
appearances. I say "um" too much. And I pad my conversation with filler
words such as "basically" and "frankly." I also tend to slouch. After one of
my recent appearances on the CBC debate show counterSpin, an amateur
media critic opined on his website that "Mr. J. Kay [sits] on set
hunched-over like Boris Karloff, creeping people out with his sinister profile
and druel [sic]."
These earnest beginners were a far cry from the professionals I observed
at Y&R. Public speaking, like tennis, golf and makeup application, is a
game of mistakes. All it takes is a single annoying habit to distract your
audience. In my case, the speech was coherent enough. But I had trouble
keeping still. To defuse nervous energy, I started rocking forward and
backward as I spoke - gripping the podium hard as if to prevent myself
from accelerating uncontrollably in one direction or the other. Most others
were just as rough. Kevin delivered a speech about his company's clothing
line in an uninspired monotone that reminded me of a high school student
reading a hastily scrawled report on his summer vacation. Tanya was lively
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This was just the first day of a three-day seminar, however. As the weight
of constructive criticism was felt, the quality of presentations got better.
People started to smile, enunciate and take their eyes up from their notes.
Kevin in particular made a welcome conversion to polytonality. The effect
was striking. His company's "Spoogee" T-shirts and "Tantrum" pants
suddenly sounded phat.
Tam then invited us to think of people who best typified each category. It
was a sort of business-world analogue to astrology, and everyone
(particularly the women, I noticed) had fun organizing their friends and
colleagues by sign.
Although such abstract exercises are popular, Tam says the real value of
the course comes in the exercises. "The most popular [part is] when we
get people up on their feet to do the delivery skills exercises," she says.
"These are the things that push people out of their comfort zones. You
make them maintain eye contact. You make them deliver [a short
presentation] without saying 'um' 500 times. They like it."
My own impression was that the course produces results. I don't slouch
any more. (Tam videotaped us. I really did look a little like Boris Karloff.)
Plus, I'm giving people more eye contact. A lot more. To the point of
spookiness, my wife has lately complained.
Kevin agrees: "Now, when I'm speaking to my sales team, my point comes
through totally clear. It's 'Guys, [you] have to sell more stuff.' I'm making a
lot more eye contact and getting better results. I'm a lot more
self-assured," he adds. "And that gives the whole sales team confidence."
But does that confidence translate into economic results? How much do
eye contact and 'um'-free presentations really help a salesman's bottom
line? To find out, I interviewed dozens of well-respected academics and
business consultants. To my surprise, very few of them had any idea.
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Yet that 10% is just a number Blades made up. He could not back it up
with any sort of proof. And, in Blades' defence, neither could the other
industry professionals I spoke with who rattled off similar statistics.
Historically, most of the research that has been done in the area is narrow
- and is generally limited to easily quantifiable independent variables. In a
famous 1972 article, "What Is Beautiful Is Good," for instance, three U.S.
researchers demonstrated that attractive individuals are assumed to
possess socially desirable personality traits. A 1979 University of Toronto
study found that "attractive individuals may be more persuasive than
unattractive persons." A 1990 study published in the Journal of Social
Behavior and Personality reached the unsurprising conclusion that test
subjects were more likely to hire a well-groomed job applicant than a
poorly groomed applicant with the same qualifications.
I did, however, have some success in finding a few indicators that show
how big the charisma economy has become. Business schmoozing costs,
for example, are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. According to
Canadian Department of Finance data, corporations alone spent about $2
billion on meal and entertainment expenses.
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"When I have an interview with a client, I wear my best suit and make sure
I'm clean-groomed," says Georges Azzam, the printing services salesman.
"Often, buyers look me up and down. They don't try to hide it. One
customer fixated on my watch. Sometimes it's the tie. Cars are important,
too. My [previous] boss used to say, 'Try to get yourself a nice car. You
never know when you'll have to take a customer to lunch.'
"Courses like those they give you at [Rogen] are useful in the sense of
providing tips as to how to comport oneself, how to talk [to clients] and so
forth," he says. "But I think they are missing a lot of the deeper psychology
associated with persuasion and influence. These programs teach you how
to communicate and project confidence. But what I talk about is more
systematic."
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"Or let's say I'm a market researcher and I'm trying to get you to fill out a
questionnaire. I'll be more successful if I give you a five-dollar bill up front
in the mailing itself than if I offer to give you five times that amount after
you complete it. We feel obligated by the receipt of a gift to say yes to the
person we owe. But we don't feel obligated by the promise of payment
after the fact."
Is Cialdini on to something? I think so. It was while reading his book that all
the disconnected bits of data I had picked up from Barry Snetsinger,
Yvonne Tam and the various sales industry experts I had spoken with
clicked into a logical whole. Reading the chapter on "reciprocation" made
me understand why Georges Azzam's boss took his clients out to fancy
restaurants. And the section on "social proof" put his remark about driving
a fancy car - "if this guy is doing that well, maybe I should stick with him" -
in context. Susan Murray's "sticking together" stunt was a classic appeal to
a phenomenon Cialdini calls "consistency." As for Rogen's presentation
skills course, one way to see it is as one long exercise in learning how to
create an air of "authority."
"There is much more to persuasion than just the art of it," says Cialdini.
"There are fundamental laws of human behaviour. It's not that corporations
don't work at training their managers, salespeople and marketers in
various techniques. It's that they typically approach the process as a kind
of art. The problem with art, though, is that only artists are any good at it.
The rest of us duffers would benefit from a systematic understanding of
how the influence process works. And that's what I think people and
corporations underutilize. Quite simply, there is a science to getting people
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to say yes."
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