How Could They Possibly Not Understand You?

Their Perception Is Their Truth – Even When It's Incorrect

Oct 09, 2023

At the start of my sales career, I was fortunate. Fresh out of graduate engineering school, full of equations, and knowing little about sales, I had the opportunity to learn about sales from two great mentors: Dan and John. Two seasoned and successful salespeople with very different approaches to their craft. Dan’s approach was to investigate the prospect’s needs from a technical standpoint and convince them that our products could solve their engineering problems. He was an engineer and worked with his strengths. John was not as technical but was highly intelligent about a person’s emotional makeup and, through coordinating the proper company resources, could walk them through the emotional and information processing needed for them to understand that our products could solve their problems. Different but effective sales approaches.

The company was GenRad out of Santa Clara, and we were selling acoustic and vibration testing systems to engineers. It was fascinating work and for a newly minted engineer exciting. There is nothing like crash testing a new Cadillac by smashing the front end of it with a large, moving several ton mallet to see how the chassis and frame crush during front end impact! Or monitoring the vibration of an airliner wing in a massive wind tunnel to see how it reacts to wind profiles that simulated various flight conditions! Ours were expensive and complicated systems for that time and purchases were usually made by committee. It was a great learning experience, and my personal sales approach became a blend of the two.

boy singing on microphone with pop filter — Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

QUESTION: Would you like a future post comparing the two sales approaches? Let me know by using the chat.

During the sales meeting, there was usually a point where you could feel the energy in the room shift. Prior to the shift, the prospects (audience) would listen with a skeptical look on their faces. We would ask/answer questions of a fact-finding and information nature and they would do the same. The shift would happen at the point where they realized that what we were telling them was true, and that our equipment and company could help them solve their problems. Their perception of what we were presenting would change. They went from skeptical to curious and often excited. Think about it: They had a problem, and we were right in front of them presenting a solution. What is not to be excited about?

This brings us to perception. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that what we were doing with all of our sales techniques was learning how to understand and shift their perception. There are many definitions of perception, and the one we will use here is from Britannica: “the way you think about or understand someone or something.” A person’s perception affects everything that they experience and how they understand what they hear. We see this play out with the daily news where the same information will be interpreted differently based on the perception of the listening audience. One group may see the information as hugely beneficial and the other may interpret it as tragic. Why? The information doesn’t care or change. The only difference is the perception of the listening audience.

A person’s perception is a communication filter and everything that they experience is shaded by that filter. Research shows that we all tend to understand what you are already primed to believe. It is called confirmation bias. There are many theories about why this happens, and we will dig into some of them in later posts as well as in my upcoming “Getting Cooperation” book due out in 2024. My point here is this: The more you understand about the existing perceptions of your intended audience, the better prepared you will be to navigate those perceptions to get your essential message across as intended. They may not agree with you, but they will at least understand you as you intended. This is why it is so important to always consider your audience before communicating.

It is my personal belief that a lot of good can come from fully understanding each other, even if we don’t agree.

Remember reverse logic communication from a few weeks ago? These existing perceptions are why reverse logic communication doesn’t work very well. You are communicating in a way that makes sense to your perception filters, but your filters likely don’t match your audience’s filters. Not considering their filters before communicating will feel a lot like the Cadillac hitting the heavy mallet.

If you need their cooperation you must consider their filters or they will never understand why they should cooperate. Who cooperates with someone that they don’t understand or agree with? Not many.

Here are a few things you can do to tune your communication to their perception filters:

Consider past interactions and how they reacted to different earlier messages.
How does your message compare with the past ones you just considered?
Consider the perceptions of those advising or influencing your main audience.
What were their reactions to prior messages and how does your message compare to them?
Consider the pressures that your audience is under with respect to their job performance.
Does your message and requested action increase or reduce these pressures?

Answering these questions will get you out of your head and more into theirs, where their perceptions live. You cannot control how a person will react after receiving your message, but you do have control over how they receive the message and whether it was understood as you intended.

Next week we will talk about complete communication and ways to confirm that your audience understood your message as you intended.

I am honored that you stopped by and promise to make each post as valuable as possible. Let me know your thoughts about this week’s post by leaving a comment.

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