Ghosts in the Machine | These are Busy & Fearful Ghosts

58% of sales opportunities end up in “no decision”.[1]

To say that salespeople need be familiar with their competition is to state the obvious. Having knowledge of the companies you compete with, and how to position your products and services relative to theirs, is Sales 101. The more knowledge you have of who and what you are competing with, the better you will be able to position yourself. However, those companies you regularly compete with are not the competition you should be most focused on. In fact, most salespeople and most sales organizations completely neglect the one thing that most often stands in the way of winning new business.

Your first and foremost competitor is the human instinct to fear the unknown.

Even if you are successful in establishing a connection with your prospect, you still represent an unknown quantity if they have never worked with you before. Even if your company is broadly known in the marketplace, through longevity of existence or sheer force of marketing, it still represents an unknown quantity for those who have yet to engage its products or services. And even if your company’s products or services operate within a highly commoditized and mature industry, they will still trigger your prospect’s fear of the unknown instincts if said prospect has never had the occasion to actually use your version of them.

Breaking through the fear of the unknown is the single most challenging obstacle you will face throughout the sales process. It’s why 58% of sales opportunities end up in no decision, and even more are lost to an incumbent product or service simply because people feel that the devil they know is better than the one they don’t.

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If the sales function were an onion and you peeled all of the outer layers away, at its core you would find that the salesperson’s fundamental job is to affect change.

Salespeople fundamentally try to get prospects and customers to do one of two things:

• Switch products or services, or
• Embrace new products or services that aren’t currently being utilized.

In either case, change is what’s for sale. If the salesperson succeeds, the prospect buys something and a change is made. If the salesperson fails, no change is made and the prospect goes on doing the same thing they were already doing.

Now, to be fair, affecting change is hard. Everyone struggles with changing their mind, no matter how trivial or how critical the circumstances. One of the primary reasons people are less than enthusiastic about the idea of changing their mind is to do with the idea of change being an implicit acknowledgement that a previous decision or choice was wrong. People REALLY don’t like to be wrong. The other major reason we resist change, the one we will focus on, is because we actually have to think about it.

As we previously discussed, our minds are biased towards “fast & frugal” thought patterns that make mental life easier. We prefer ideas that confirm rather than conflict with our pre-linked mental associations simply because confirmation is easier to process. To attempt to change your mind is to actively resist a pre-linked association — like an established relationship with a current product or service provider — by deliberately and effortfully weighing the pros and cons. People would much rather stay on autopilot than do the heavy lifting of having to think about it because staying on autopilot is easier. Staying on autopilot is the path of lesser resistance.

Most sales training best practices approach the process of changing minds purely from the rational perspective. As such, it is generally assumed that companies adopt a project management view when pursuing a potential purchase, moving rationally through their collective decision-making process in a sequential order:

Drivers → Needs → Project → Alternatives → Concerns → Purchase

This is what’s known as the buying cycle and this is the way it’s “supposed” to go. However, while these steps are directionally accurate and informative, and salespeople do well to understand this construct, this is not the path that companies actually walk when considering and purchasing products and services. In reality, the path is less straight forward because it is being guided by people that don’t always do what’s rational.

A straight walk through the buying cycle may represent theoretical “best practice”, but people aren’t very good at robotically following “best practice”. The inevitable deviations from best practice that occur in every buying cycle are accounted for in the ghosts in the machine, all those biases & laziness short cuts, that impact how human beings think about changing. The way people think about changing has a far more profound effect on decision-making than the sequential steps that are “supposed” to unfold.

Case in point: In the initial stages — Drivers & Needs — it is assumed that rational thought carries the day.

This strictly rational view of the process oversimplifies, assuming the players involved are of the species Homo Economicus, that mythological figure of rationality previously mentioned in our Sunk Cost Fallacy discussion. In reality, the players are of the species Homo Sapiens, whose decision-making is haunted by mismatches between perception and reality. The individuals involved invariably view the importance of various Drivers & Needs through differing perspectives (refer back to our previous discussion on Framing). What’s most important to one person may be significantly less important to another, and vice versa. Anchored by these inevitable differences of opinion, the rationality of professional decision-making is necessarily limited.

The rationality assumption also implies an unlimited capacity for rationality. By consciously and effortfully engaging the deliberative and logical System 2 thought processes, which are less likely to be manipulated by the ghosts in the machine, people do have the ability to think clearly and rationally. However, we are only able to use System 2 in short bursts. Leveraging System 2 takes focus and energy which, like so many things in life, are limited resources and do not come without tradeoffs. In the real world, most professional decision makers have too many things to decide, and too little time to decide them. This has profound effects on the path the buying cycle actually follows.

Making matters worse for the salesperson aiming to affect a change, the decision-making process is cursed by uncertainty. Decision makers cannot predict the future and have no way of knowing for sure which decision is the “right” one. People may not like being wrong, but they are downright afraid of uncertainty. That being the case, when confronted with a decision between the known and unknown, more often than not they will stick with the thing they already know. This is the single biggest hurdle salespeople face.

These are the Busy & Fearful Ghosts, and your ability to affect change is dependent on them.

Paying Attention

“Attention isn’t free, that’s why we have to pay for it” -Anonymous

Goldfish are infamous for having minuscule attention spans. Estimates peg a goldfish’s attention span at ~9 seconds. Pathetic, right?

The human attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish.

According to research done by Microsoft in 2015[2], human beings have an attention span of ~8 seconds. And that’s down from the 12 seconds it used to be all the way back in 2000.

8 seconds. That is not a lot time, and it is especially daunting for salespeople who, by the very nature of their job, are responsible for grabbing and holding another person’s attention. In practical terms that means, when prospecting for new business, whether via email or on the phone, a salesperson has all of 8 seconds to grab enough of someone’s attention for them to continue reading or listening. That’s the first ~33 words (based on an average reading speed of 250 words per minute) of an email. Or the first 20 words of your voicemail elevator pitch (based on an average speaking speed of 150 words per minute).

Ouch.

Once you’ve kept their attention long enough to earn a follow up meeting or appointment, research from the RAIN Group[3] indicates that salesperson are given 5–10 minutes to prove their value. 5–10 minutes is a bit more manageable than 8 seconds. However, fail to grab their attention in that 5–10 minutes and they will politely go through the motions for the rest of your meeting, before politely telling you “thanks, but no thanks” and showing you the door.

Of course, there are those that dispute the accuracy of these time frames, but they miss the point. The point is not the exact number of seconds or minutes of attention you are initially given; the point is that your prospect’s attention is limited and fleeting.

Unlike goldfish, human beings have tremendous ability to focus their attention. We are capable of achieving flow states[4] where we enter “the zone” and lose track of time for being so singularly focused on what we are doing. But flow states are the exception and unrelated to the sales process. As a rule, most people — your prospects and customers included — move about their lives with their attention fractured. They are constantly bombarded by an endless variety of distractions, leaving them feeling stressed out and perpetually busy. The simple reason your prospects barely give you the time of day is that they are already paying attention to a variety of other things, and they just can’t pay for anymore.

Key Concept: Limited Attention

That human beings only have so much attention to give is a central tenant of behavioral science. It is one of the foundational reasons we often behave in seemingly irrational ways, defining us as Homo Sapiens and not Homo Economicus.

The limited and fleeting nature of human attention is not a newly discovered concept. All the way back in ancient Sumer, home of humanity’s first great civilization, wisdom literature[5] informed the people that they “should pay attention”. However, it has only been 70 years since a theory was developed to properly define it.

In the 1950s, American economist, political scientist & cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon introduced his theory of Bounded Rationality, formally codifying the phenomena of limited human attention.

Breakout Box: Bounded Rationality

Our current understanding of humanity’s limited attention began to crystalize with Herbert Simon’s Models of Man, published in 1957, in which he coined the term “Bounded Rationality”. The main point of Bounded Rationality is that most people most of the time are only partly rational. In his words, “boundedly rational agents experience limits in formulating and solving complex problems and in processing information”, therefore agents use heuristics (i.e. mental short-cuts) to make decisions rather than precisely optimizing rules.

This understanding of our limited attention flies in the face of rational choice theory, the framework in which classical economic theory is based. In rational choice theory, the rational agent is assumed to take account of all available information, including potential costs, benefits and probabilities, in determining their preferences and to act according what’s in their best self-interest. And they are expected to do so within a moment’s notice.

Given the contemporary acceptance behavioral science and current understanding of the ghosts in our mental machinery, it is stating the obvious to say that human beings are not perfectly rational agents. When making decisions, Bounded Rationality tell us that individuals are limited in three ways:

• The tractability of the decision problem
• The cognitive limitations of the mind
• The time available to make the decision

Today, Bounded Rationality is key to the study of choice architecture, as well as being a central theme of Cass Sustein & Richard Thaler’s popular behavioral science book Nudge.

Approaching prospects and customers with the knowledge that they, too, are no more than boundedly rational agents with only so much attention to spend, provides the aspiring salesperson with a better understanding of how they think about change. With their attention already spread too thin, given what’s expected of today’s professional decision makers, three “busy” ghosts are worth taking a closer look at.

The Focusing Illusion

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” So says founding father of behavioral science Danny Kahneman when asked to describe The Focusing Illusion. It is human nature to magnify the importance of whatever happens to be top of mind, be it a person, place, thing, or idea.

Just like Bounded Rationality, which it is a direct result of, the Focusing Illusion was understood and communicated to people in ancient times via maxims like “This too shall pass”. In present times, any parent that has gotten their child a toy that was begged for only to find it lightly-used and forgotten about a short time later instinctually understands this.

This Focusing Illusion affects the way prospects think about the possibility of changing. By default, they are focused on what they are currently doing, assuming whatever got them this far is likely the thing that will keep them going tomorrow. This creates the perspective that the products and services your prospects and customers are currently using, as well as the companies that provide them, are critically important to their success and probably not worth switching away from.

Of course, The Focusing Illusion can work in the other direction as well. For the prospect or customer that has become focused on making a change, nothing they are currently doing will seem as important until they take steps towards making said change. In many respects, this is the ultimate goal and dream scenario for the salesperson trying to affect change.

Einstellung Effect

Ever heard the saying “Everything is a nail to a hammer”? Though it has been attributed to the likes of the Bible, Buddha, Mark Twain and Abraham Maslow, we’re not exactly sure who first uttered this quippy little phrase. Nonetheless, it perfectly encapsulates our second attention ghost: the Einstellung Effect.

Also known as the Law of the Instrument, the Einstellung Effect refers to the human predisposition to solve problems in a specific and familiar way, even though a better way may exist. Put another way, the familiar way has an ironclad grip on our attention, literally blinding us to other possibilities.

Like a carpenter who is extra comfortable with a hammer, your prospects and customers are accustomed to and comfortable with the products and services they are currently using. And just like a carpenter who may use his trusty hammer to force a few square pegs into round holes simply because he so good with a hammer, your prospects and customers are likely stretching the use of their current vendors’ products and services in ways for which they are not optimally suited.

The Einstellung Effect presents an opportunity to the salesperson that recognizes the instances in which their prospects have over-stretched the intended capabilities of their current vendors’ products and services. These mismatches invariably create operational inefficiencies for your prospects and customers. Those inefficiencies are precisely what salespeople need to be looking for when attempting to influence the way their prospects and customers think about changing.

Choice Overload

People are easily overwhelmed with options when trying to decide what to do. We can deal with considering a few options at a time and still make rationally-optimal decisions. Present someone with more than a few options — which marketers often do, assuming more is better — and analysis paralysis quickly sets in. The more options we are presented with, the less optimal our decision-making becomes.

This is formally known as Choice Overload in behavioral science. Having too many choices effectively overwhelms and freezes a person’s decision-making abilities. When that happens, people lean even harder on the ghosts in the machine for help making decisions, creating an environment that is anything but strictly rational. This is the environment salespeople should expect when communicating with people who are already paying attention to too many things, like professional decision makers are.

Choice Overload leads to a myriad of decision-making “irrationalities”, two in particular are worth remembering:

• Parkinson’s Law of Triviality[6] : When making decisions, members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson’s Law basically dictates that professional decision-making is penny wise and pound foolish.

This happens because people feel the need validate their worth in the decision-making process, especially in professional group settings. In validating their worth, people will speak up about the aspects with which they are most comfortable. In a group setting, which is commonly the setting of the professional decision-making process, this inevitably focuses the conversation on simpler, relatively less important aspects of a decision. Based on time and energy spent, sweating the little things is more of a priority than tackling the big, complex things.

• Decision Fatigue: Anyone who has any level of experience playing sports knows the game is physically harder in the 4th quarter. It’s harder to move. It’s harder to breath. It’s harder to fight off your opponent. Everything is just harder. The same is true for our mental capacities when we are inundated with decisions that must be made. This is Decision Fatigue.

Decision-making exhausts the mind just like the game exhausts the body. Decision Fatigue is that burnt-out feeling you have after taking a particularly challenging test. You are capable of making decisions after taking a brutal test, but doing so feels harder, it takes more effort, and you’d really just like a break from deciding. Some decision makers have more endurance than others, just like some athletes are in better shape than others, but eventually fatigue sets in for everyone.

If a person is forced to make decisions when they are already mentally exhausted, the “irrational” influences of the ghosts in their mental machine become more influential to the outcome of their decisions, which is exactly what salespeople should try to avoid.

To avoid Choice Overload, Parkinson’s Law of Triviality & Decision Fatigue, salespeople do well to limit the number and variety of options they present to their prospects and customers. Various studies indicate that decision-making processes begin to get jammed up once you push past 6 or so options, but in truth there is no “right” amount of options, it will depend on the circumstances. The takeaway here is simply that less is more when trying to affect change.

Tool of the Trade: Priming

Limited Attention is one of the greatest challenges for the salesperson seeking an opportunity to present their value proposition. Limited Attention is what gives The Focusing Illusion, The Einstellung Effect & Choice Overload their power. Fortunately, there is a strategy salespeople can leverage in drawing the attention of their prospects and customers, mitigating the effects of these ghosts and planting seeds that will bear fruit in time. If you understand the phrase “to prime the pump” you are familiar with our first attention management tool: Priming.

To quote renowned psychologist and author of Presuasion, Robert Cialdini, “The factor that matters most in determining a person’s choice is not the wise one, but the one that has been elevated in attention at the time of decision.” And the idea that is elevated in attention is the primed idea. Cialdini goes on to say, “Therefore, it’s not necessary to alter someone’s beliefs or attitudes, but rather to focus that person’s mind on what you want them to recall in order to persuade them…You’re not telling them what to think as much as you are telling them what to think about…”.

Putting Cialdini’s argument in terms of the sales process provides the “ah-ha” moment that sales is about focusing attention, not convincing another person through rational debate/discussion.

There is no one right or best way to prime an idea in someone’s mind, that’s the stuff of science fiction. In reality, to be able to prime an idea in someone else’s mind you must first understand what’s important to them, which you do by listening (refer back to our previous discussion regarding Establishing Relationships). Once you understand what they care most about, only then are you able to choose which of those beliefs or ideas to elevate in attention. It is a waste of time to try priming brand new ideas in someone else’s mind, especially if they are not connected or related to something that person already cares about.

While you are listening to understand, be on the lookout for those beliefs or ideas that (hopefully) align with your value prop. When the opportunity presents itself organically within the conversation, and without attempting to manipulate, simply state the way your value prop addresses/meets/aligns with the belief or idea you’d like them to focus on. This is the most effective way for the sales professional to influence or persuade other people.

Dr. Cialdini emphasizes this point by pointing to the study of Psycholinguistic analysis which, “…suggests that the main function of language is not to express or describe but to influence, which it does by channeling recipients to sectors of reality pre-loaded with a set of mental associations favorable to the communicator’s view…” He continues, “We convince others by using language that manages their mental associations to our message. Their thoughts, perceptions, and emotional reactions merely proceed from those associations.”

Priming is not a nefarious magic trick. Rather, it is a specialized tool only available to those who are listening.

Bonus: Satisficing

“You can’t always get what you want…” so decision makers usually settle for good enough. This is the essence of Satisficing, and your prospects and customers are doing it, too.

Satisficing is a portmanteau of satisfy & suffice, introduced to the behavioral science community by — you guessed — Herbert S. Simon. Formally, satisficing is defined as, “…a decision-making strategy or cognitive heuristic that entails searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met.”[7] In his Nobel prize acceptance speech, Simon described his logic thusly, “decision makers can satisfice either by finding optimum solutions for a simplified world, or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world.”

What’s the takeaway for the aspiring salesperson? Your product or service doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be good enough to provide value in the real world. Further, your prospects and customers probably “satisficed” in selecting their current vendor, which means there’s wiggle room for a more satisfactory & sufficient solution.

Making Decisions

“Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic universe.” -Amos Tversky

Over the course of a lifetime, a person will spend the vast majority of their time either selecting from a set of options given some circumstance or following through on a selection they have made. This true of all autonomous individuals, and doubly true for the life of a professional decision maker. The core challenge in making and following through on all these decisions is that people yearn for certainty in a world that offers no more than varying levels of probability.

For example, a frequent choice that professional decision makers have to make is whether or not to hire or fire someone. This is among the most crucial decisions made in the professional setting, and there are usually robust debates on the merits of hiring or firing someone, without anyone being able to definitively stake a claim to the “right” answer. The decision to expand or reduce the size of your team is anything but black & white. The reason is uncertainty.

Nobody knows the future (those that say they do are selling something). Uncertainty about what might happen next has haunted humanity for the entirety of its existence. As a species, we like certainty. We like to know where our food will come from during the day and where we are going to sleep at night. When we are uncertain about these things — or anything for that matter — it stresses us out, forcing us to expend a lot of energy paying attention and thinking harder. And few things raise the specter of uncertainty like the thought of making a change.

As the great and wise Garth Algar once said, “We fear change.” Uncertainty is why. Changing, at any level, is stepping into the unknown. In our hunter-gather days, change, uncertainty & the unknown were risky in a life-and-death kind of way, which is why the fear of uncertainty is so deeply rooted in our psyche. Today, the challenge for the professional decision maker is in not knowing which decisions are right and which are wrong.

Key Concept: Uncertainty

Author H.P. Lovecraft famously wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Not knowing what’s going to happen is one of the prime drivers of humanity’s chronic state of anxiety. Uncertainty makes us anxious and fearful because it disrupts our System 1 autopilot[8], shifting our System 2 thinking into gear. Distracted and fatigued by the effortful mechanics of System 2, we react more instinctually and emotionally, and are more easily manipulated into irrationality by the ghosts in the machine.

Business professionals are future-thinking, such is the nature of their role in a profit-seeking and sustainable enterprise. However, future-oriented thinking always carries the weight of uncertainty, meaning your prospects and customers are wrestling with uncertainty pretty much constantly. For a decision-making professional, coping with uncertainty is a certain death and taxes.

Though the professional decision maker may have some confidence around the likely outcome of certain choices, they can never really know until after a choice is made. They are not Homo Economicus, able to perfectly calculate the odds of various outcomes in real time. They are Homo Sapiens, prone to fear of uncertainty. When presented with increasing levels of uncertainty, most decision makers will choose the most certain thing, which is to keep doing what they are already doing.

The way Homo Sapiens respond under uncertain circumstances is what’s missing from the traditional, Homo Economicus view of decision-making. Rather than leveraging a perfectly rational and finely-tuned decision-making process, your prospects and customers are likely incorporating their personal perspective on uncertainty into their mental models, which will deviate some degree from perfectly rational. The resulting model is generally known in the behavioral science community as Prospect Theory.

Breakout Box: Prospect Theory

Prospect Theory is one of the most foundational concepts within behavioral science. Developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 — earning Kahneman the Nobel Prize in 2002 — Prospect Theory is an economic theory that challenges traditional economic theory’s assumption regarding the absolute nature of expected utility.

In making-decisions under uncertain circumstances, Prospect Theory illustrates that people are generally loss-averse, preferring to avoid losses over the pursuit of equivalent gains. Taking a bit of a logical leap — and sparing you many mind-numbing details — what Prospect Theory really proves is that people think of expected utility relative to a reference point rather than as an absolute outcome.

Prospect Theory outlines a two-step decision-making process:

• Editing — Potential choices are ranking and compared with a reference point, which is often tied to the individual’s current circumstances.
• Evaluation — Relative to the reference point, potential choices are then considered either more or less valuable, which is further influenced by their proximity to the reference point.

In layman’s terms, people make decisions based on the potential gain or losses relative to their specific situation rather than in absolute or objective terms. For example, a person with no money (who’s reference point is being broke) will be eager to make a decision that would earn them $100, while a decision to earn an extra $100 wouldn’t do much for a millionaire (who’s reference point is being rich), even though it’s the exact same $100.

Prospect Theory gives is a more realistic view of decision-making under uncertain circumstances. The influence of a reference point is the key insight. Reference points provide certainty, which Homo Sapiens are very fond of. And nothing is more certain than the status quo.

Status Quo Bias

The Status Quo Bias is one of the most powerful cogs in our mental machinery. It underlies the habit research we highlighted in the Introduction when we unpacked the “ordering the same thing every time” phenomenon, and it is omnipresent throughout the entire sales process. More than any other company, product or service you compete with, the Status Quo Bias is your real #1 competitor. It is the “fearful” ghost and managing it is the biggest challenge sales professionals face.

The Status Quo Bias is basically the human tendency to prefer the current state of affairs. People generally fear that change from their current status quo, into the uncertainty of something new, will result in a loss (relative to said status quo). Certainty provided by the status quo is why people prefer not making a change. If a person stays with the status quo, they are likely to get the same outcome they have always gotten, and therefore certain to avoid a loss.

To fully appreciate the strength and influence of the Status Quo Bias, consider a fascinating thought experiment by Felipe De Brigard:

De Brigard presented participants[9] with the following scenario:

• It is Saturday morning and you are planning to stay in bed for at least another hour when all of the sudden you hear the doorbell.
• Grudgingly, you step out of bed to go open the door. At the other side there is a tall man, with a black jacket and sunglasses, who introduces himself as Mr. Smith. He claims to have vital information that concerns you directly.
• Mildly troubled but still curious, you let him in.
• ‘’I am afraid I have to some disturbing news to communicate to you’’ says Mr. Smith. ‘’There has been a terrible mistake. Your brain has been plugged by error into an experience machine created by neurophysiologists. All the experiences you have had so far are nothing but the product of a computer program designed to provide you with pleasurable experiences.
• All the unpleasantness you may have felt during your life is just an experiential preface conducive toward a greater pleasure (e.g. like when you had to wait in that long line to get tickets for that concert, remember?).
• Unfortunately, we just realized that we made a mistake. You were not supposed to be connected; someone else was. We apologize.
• That’s why we’d like to give you a choice: you can either remain connected to this machine (and we’ll remove the memories of this conversation taking place) or you can disconnect. However, you may want to know that your life outside is not at all like the life you have experienced so far.”

What would you choose?

When De Brigard posed this question to his participants a shocking 59% chose to stay connected to the machine. That’s right. With no less than the very nature of reality at stake, a solid majority of people still demonstrate a preference for the current state of affairs, choosing the blue pill and the status quo of remaining connected to the Matrix instead of the red pill and the unknown risk of discovering what the real world has to offer.

The Force is strong with the Status Quo Bias. Really strong.

In the parlance of behavioral science, the status quo is what’s known as a default option. A default option is a pre-determined course of action that takes the decision maker decides to do nothing. Put in Prospect Theory terms, default options are reference points. In addition, sticking with a default option is easier than deciding to do something else, requiring no effort from the decision maker, further emboldening this frustratingly persistent ghost.

To summarize our Making Decisions discussion thus far:

• Your prospects and customers have a default option in their current product or service provider (or lack thereof), which is their reference point in considering alternative solutions.
• Thanks to the inherent uncertainty in considering making a change, more often than not your prospects and customers, fearing a potential relative loss, will demonstrate a Status Quo Bias for that default option / reference point and simply decide not to change.
• And to top it off, their Status Quo Bias is reinforced by the cognitive ease of keeping the status quo.

Oof.

Now let’s take a look at two related ghosts that compound the already formidable power of the Status Quo Bias:

• Overconfidence Effect — Most people, most of the time believe that they are better/smarter/faster/stronger/prettier/etc. than average.

The Overconfidence Effect is why 93% of drivers and 90% of college professors consider themselves above average[10]. Further, the Overconfidence Effect leads individuals to have a generally optimistic view of the world and how things will work out in their favor.

When the Overconfidence Effect combines with the Endowment Effect (viewing things/thoughts you own/have as more valuable, which we will cover later), individuals take ownership of the decisions they make, which they are fully optimistic about. To change is to not only acknowledge your current status quo is wrong, but also take a pessimistic view of your current circumstance.

Is it any wonder why people so frequently stick with their status quo?

• Confirmation Bias — Simply put, Confirmation Bias drives people to find whatever it is they are looking for.

It is human nature to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories, rather than validation or support of beliefs or theories that contradict your own. When making decisions under uncertain circumstances, people tend to look for information that will reduce the uncertainty confronting them. However, not all forms of information will reduce an individual’s “uncertainty”. A person will often remain “uncertain” because they have yet to find information that confirms what they hoped to find, not because they haven’t found relevant information.

When your prospects and customers are tasked with deciding whether or not to change products or services, the Status Quo Bias provides the foundational rationale for not making a change, while the Confirmation Bias validates their preference for staying put by interpreting any new information as supportive of what they already think or believe.

Underestimate The Status Quo Bias + Confirmation Bias 1–2 punch and you’ll find yourself knocked out of the running for your prospect’s or customer’s business, wondering where you went wrong. But fear not! Remember the Scientific Method we discussed in the Prologue? Fortune has it that not only is it the best practice in approaching and refining your prospecting efforts, it is also a precisely constructed antidote meant to counter confirmation bias.

To have a Confirmation Bias is to seek out information that supporters and proves a hypothesis. The Scientific Method seeks to disprove a hypothesis, actively trying to find flaw in the assumptions made. If no flaw is found and the assumptions withstand the rigor of questioning and testing, then the hypothesis is proven, and Confirmation Bias has been avoided.

Use the principles that govern the Scientific Method when sorting out the objections your prospects and customers have that are ground in reason from those that are anchored to a Confirmation Bias.

Tool of the Trade: Reversal Test

How can a salesperson distinguish between valid concerns about making a change and concerns that are anchored to the status quo?

Introduced by Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord[11], the Reversal Test was designed to spot and eliminate Status Quo Bias, doing so by asking the opposite of the individual’s point of view. For example, let’s pretend you sell a system that is faster than any other currently in use. If a prospect or customer were to claim that their systems are fast enough and the company wouldn’t see benefit from increased speed, the salesperson would ask if the prospect or customer would expect to see a negative effect from having slower systems. If the prospect or customer doesn’t think slower systems would have a negative effect, then the salesperson knows their lack of interest in increased speed is legitimate. If, however, the prospect or customer does think that slower systems would have a negative impact, the salesperson knows their lack of interest in increased speed is grounded in the Status Quo bias.

Like all of the other tools presented here, this is not a magic trick. Rather, it’s an effective way of identifying where there might be real opportunities for a salesperson to affect change.

Bonus: Mood-Congruence

Being able to read the room is a valuable skill for a salesperson to possess. To read the room is to be in tune with the mood of the individuals in it. People’s actions are generally congruent with their mood and we tend to respond in ways that align with how we are currently feeling. This is what it means to have Mood-Congruence.

From the moment a meeting or presentation begins, take note of your prospect’s or customer’s mood and the general vibe in the room or on the phone. Are they in a bad mood? Are they distracted? Are they especially busy? Are they exhibiting open body language? Do they ask questions about and show interest in what you are talking about? This is how you become in tune with mood. This is how you read the room.

Always be aware of your surroundings and the people in them before you go about trying to sell anybody anything. And if your prospect is less than open and engaged, do yourself a favor and save your selling for another day. Trust and believe that, if you learn to read the room, the right opportunity to influence others will present itself.

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Changing your mind is hard. Not because the actual decision is challenging, but because have to think about it, and thinking is hard. The times we struggle the most in life, especially in fending off the irrationality of the ghosts in the machine, are the times we actually have to think about it.

Critically, change does not come through rationality, debate or “selling”. The ability to affect change first and foremost comes from understanding how people actually “think about it”. Viewing change through a behavioral science lens, we understand that people have only so much capacity to Pay Attention and are petrified of the uncertainty they confront in Making Decisions. Taken together, these dynamics are usually plenty of motivation for people to stick with the status quo. Knowing this, and engaging accordingly, you will be able to better prime your prospect and customers for changing their mind, while recognizing the best opportunities to do so.

Now that we know how to mitigate decision-making resistance, let’s talk about selling.

[1] Sales Benchmark Index, 2014

[2] Microsoft, Canada Consumer Insights Research or Statistic Brain

[3] A sales consultancy

[4] The mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

[5] Instructions of Šuruppag

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

[8] According to a 2014 study in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience

[9] Taken from De Brigard’s paper in the Journal of Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 23, №1, February 2010

[10] https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-drivers-really-think-they-are-above-aver/

[11] Nick Bostrom, Toby Ord (2006). “The reversal test: eliminating status quo bias in applied ethics”. Ethics (University of Chicago Press) 116 (4): 656–679. http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf