Sharon Drew Morgen
Listening Biases: how influencers unwittingly restrict possibilities
Do you enter conversations to listen for what will confirm your assumptions? Do you assume the responses to your questions provide an accurate representation of the full fact pattern - 'good' data - on which to base your follow-on questions? Do you assume your history of similar...
The Cost of Automating Customer Care
Remember when a person would answer a company phone? I found myself shocked recently when a live human answered. “Um, Hello?? Are you a real person?” When we call a company these days we often get caught in one of those automated loops that lead...
Inside Curiosity
Curiosity is a good thing, right? But what is it? Wikipedia defines curiosity thus: a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and animal species. What, exactly, does this mean? What’s ‘inquisitive thinking’? Does it matter...
Seeking Appointments is Costing You Sales
Have you ever wondered why people agree to an appointment from your prospecting calls? Obviously, it’s not because they need your solution or they wouldn’t incur an 80-90% fail rate (higher if you count from your first prospecting call). You’re charming, your solution great,...
Can We Know When We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know?
Years ago I visited a spa where 4 magnificent macaws stood on individual perches, each with a long, not necessarily heavy, chain around one of its legs. Yet the chains were not attached to anything: if the birds had known what they didn’t know,...
The Importance of Disruption
I was once fired from a Speaker’s Bureau for posing this question to the audience: Why aren’t you closing all the sales you deserve to close? “You’re too provocative! No one wants to hear from a disruptor!” was the reason. When speaking with a friend…
Making Money AND Making Nice: selling, managing, coaching, and leading with respect, kindness, and...
When I asked a clerk at Walmart during the pandemic if I needed to wear a mask to enter, he responded: “Do whatever you want. Frankly, they don’t pay me enough to care.” The implications of this statement sent my mind reeling and I had...
Let’s Make Sales Relevant Again
When Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1937 he laid the foundation for sales thinking that continues today: find folks with a need, get into a relationship, and tell them about the features, functions, and benefits of your solution...
You Can’t Lead If You Can’t Follow
A friend of mine delivers leadership training in police departments. On the first morning he has the partners dance with each other, taking turns for an hour at a time as Leader and Follower. As most of them are men, they start off very...
Groupthink: the cost of collective stupidity
Years ago I sat next to a lovely young man on a plane. Dressed for success, he exuded professionalism. SD: You’re all dressed up to see a client, I bet. You look great. YM: Thanks. I am. I’m going to offer my services free to…
Listening Biases Restrict Sales Success
The problem with accurately hearing what others mean to convey is not that we don’t hear their words accurately. The problem is in the interpretation. During the listening process, our brains arbitrarily filter out, or reconfigure the uncomfortable, unknown, or confusing, to make what’s been...
Boredom: A Route To Creativity
We live our lives with continuous stimulation - on-demand access to movies, articles, social media, friends, TikTok, books, games and music. With all possible, all the time, how can we hear ourselves think long enough for new and creative ideas to emerge? I don’t know...
Making Negotiation Win-Win
Using current negotiation models, people feel they are giving up more than they want in exchange for receiving less than they deserve. As part of standard practice, negotiation partners going into a negotiation calculate their bottom line – what they are willing to give...
What Makes A Decision Irrational?
After spending 30 years deconstructing the mind-brain interface that enables choice and decision making, and training a decision facilitation model I developed for use in sales, coaching, and leadership, (Buying Facilitation®), I’m always amused when I hear anyone deem a decision ‘irrational’. Only outsiders wishing...
Facilitating Compliance: helping patients choose health
In the late 1970s, I approached my studies for an MSc in Health Sciences (Community Health Education) with an idealistic goal to create ways to promote wellness and prevent disease. Although life took me in a different direction, I’ve tried to stay caught up...
The Two Buying Processes: the Buy Side and the Sell Side
When I coined the term Buying Process in 1987 I was describing the change management steps people take between having a problem and self-identifying as buyers. In other words, the Buy Side. Over the years the sales industry has (mis)translated the term to refer to how...
Our Brains Cause Resistance: why change management initiatives get opposed
After listening to folks complaining about getting resistance during a needed change initiative, I decided to write an article explaining how resistance gets triggered from our brain. You see, people don’t make a conscious choice to resist; their brains are perceiving risk and automatically...
Guys Aren’t Gender Neutral: the how and why of (un)biased communication
As someone who's written about communication for decades, I’ve decided to say what it feels like day in, day out, to be at the wrong end of being a person in America. A female. This article offers my personal viewpoint of how our endemic...
Conscious Failing
As a preamble to a discussion about failing consciously, I’d like to retell a story. Many years ago Xerox was beta testing a then new-type digital printer. The testers sent back complaints: it was hard to figure out how to work the damn thing,...
Bridging the Gap between What’s Said and What’s Heard
I used to assume that what I hear someone say is an accurate interpretation of what they mean. My assumption was wrong; what I think I hear (the words, the meaning) has a good chance of being inaccurate, regardless of my intent to listen...