Human interaction is remarkably inefficient. It’s downright sloppy. We come into conversations with our own biases, hopes, dreams, beliefs, values, fears, experiences, points of view, and goals. We engage others, each with their own biases, hopes, dreams, beliefs, values, fears, experiences, points of view, and goals.
And each person in a conversation brings these factors into the conversation…..
As conversations progress, things change. Perhaps, we come to agreement–for the moment–on some common goals. Perhaps, we come to agreement on potential things we might do together and next steps.
But we change our minds, we change our goals, we talk to others and may shift our point of view. We also forget, we get distracted, we shift our priorities.
We are, each, influenced by lots of things, some having nothing with the people we are interacting with at the moment. For example, as I type these words, I’m a little agitated because my yard guy cancelled working today–and I needed him to get some things done. I’m distracted, because my mom is having some minor health issues (she’s fine).
These things impact me, what I do, and the conversations I might have with others–even though these things have nothing to do with the conversation.
And each of us bring different things into conversations, which impact the conversation.
Going beyond this, we have differing communications styles, impacting how we express ourselves, how we listen, what we hear. We connect with some things and people, we struggle with others—but we have to find ways to get past that, moving forward.
It’s the sloppiness, the messiness, the inefficiency of human interaction that makes these interactions so much fun. They bring meaning to each of us and those we engage. They make us who we are, and help us achieve. They bring great joy into our lives.
An human interaction, by design will always be inefficient.
The struggle we have as sellers is our focus on efficiency. Technology enables us to become enormously efficient. It enables us to get more done in less time. It enables us to do things differently, which enables us to increase our efficiency–and sometimes our effectiveness.
It can free us up to spend more time having more human interactions and engagement.
But it has consistently failed to make those interactions more efficient, in fact, in many senses, it has contributed to our inability to have high high impact, yet inefficient human interactions.
People buy from people.
People buy from people they trust.
People are plagued with fears, uncertainty, and doubt.
People have differing values, beliefs, biases.
The magic of selling is reconciling these, taking these very inefficient interactions, and helping each other move forward to accomplish our shared goals.
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