Chief of Staff | Baker Communications, Inc.
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When I first heard about the Johari window, the term intrigued me. Simply put, the Johari window helps you understand your relationship with yourself and with others. It was conceived by two psychologists — Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham — as a self-help exercise to give you a “window” into understanding four areas about yourself, as well as how you are perceived by others.
The way the exercise is conducted is by picking adjectives that you feel describe yourself from a list. Then a peer would select adjectives about you from that same list. Those adjectives were then inserted into four quadrants. The top left quadrant holds all the words that you both agree on, while the bottom left quadrant holds only the words that you selected. They were called the “arena” and “façade” quadrants, respectively. The façade quadrant is where those descriptors reside that only you chose. They may describe self-limiting fears, anxieties and doubts; or equally likely, words that lean more toward the self-aggrandizing end of the spectrum.
But it was the other two quadrants that really piqued my interest. They housed a person’s blind spots, as well as attributes that were invisible to both you and your peers. Your blind spots appear in the upper right quadrant and contain a list of attributes that your peers see in you, but you don’t recognize. The bottom right quadrant was called the “unknown” quadrant and housed all those attributes that neither of you was aware of.
In the world of sales, there are six sales competencies that usually find their way into the blind spot category. What’s a competency? A competency represents a collection of skills, knowledge and attributes in a particular area. In the sales job role, what we refer to as a person’s “sales DNA” is one of the most likely places for a blind spot to occur. These are the six competencies that make up a person’s sales DNA.
The Need For Approval
The first of these competencies is the seller’s need to be liked. That seems counterintuitive. Wouldn’t you want your clients to like you? To some extent, but like a personal coach, a good seller needs to ask tough questions or point out a blind spot that may be impacting the customer’s desired outcome. Needing to be liked to the point where those questions or blind spots are never discussed will only come back to haunt you later in the sales campaign or relationship. Good salespeople don’t need a high level of approval.
Control Of Emotions
Strong emotional intelligence is an absolute necessity for a salesperson to deal with all the objections that come up during a sales cycle. Reacting emotionally or taking the objection personally will absolutely destroy the successful conclusion of the sale. The right way to deal with an objection is to acknowledge it and offer to respond to it at a later time.
An example may be price. “Your prices are much higher than your competitors!” Instead of berating your competitor or responding with an emotionally defensive position, there are other ways to proceed. “Let me make a note of that, and I promise to get back to you on what we can do for you in that area. Are there any other issues that trouble you about our proposal? I’d like to provide you with answers to all those as well.”
When you respond like this, the conversation will continue. You now also know the objections, and you can structure a more effective response, like packaging up your pricing with more appealing terms or bundling non-financial items that improve your value proposition.
Supportive Beliefs
This covers a wide range of beliefs that a seller might hold onto as absolute facts. Some examples of these beliefs might be:
• If prospects are happy with their current vendor, for sure I won’t be able to close them.
• I don’t have time to prospect.
• It’s completely normal to encounter those sales objections.
• I can’t sell without marketing collateral.
• I have to submit proposals to close deals.
• My product is much more expensive than my competitors.
• My competitor is much bigger than my company. Why would this prospect choose us?
As Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, either way, you are right.”
Supportive Buy Cycle
The way a person makes their own purchase decisions impacts how they will react to a customer’s buying cycle. For instance, if you’re a person that likes to do a lot of research when you buy an item, you won’t object when your client says that they need to do that as well. Unfortunately, that will bog down the sales cycle and invariably introduce a lot of competitors into the decision process. At that point your chances of closure dimmish, especially when a competitor has a much different supportive buy cycle.
Comfortable Discussing Money
A seller must be able to have an in-depth conversation with prospects about the financial aspects of a deal. Whatever personal biases they bring with them, including their perception of the cost — versus the value — can impact the deal negatively. They must understand and believe in the value that they are bringing to the customer.
Handles Rejection
Out of 100 calls, 10 become prospects. Of those 10, three will actively consider your proposal. Of those three, only one will close. Those are typical selling scenarios for many salespeople as deals move from prospecting, down the funnel, to win/loss opportunities. That means being able to deal with a lot of rejection along the way without letting it defeat them mentally, is imperative. That’s a formidable task.
These are six of the most common blind spots that can hurt a salesperson’s success. As a sales leader, you must be able to surface these areas to successfully coach your sellers on how to be more effective, and in turn, produce much stronger performances. The good news is that data science and sales-specific assessments can now illuminate these areas successfully.
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