Communication SkillsSelling Skills

Want to sell more? Consider the shape of the table you meet around…

Could the shape of the table impact your ability to sell? As always, my friend, Kare Anderson has written another brilliant article called, 5 Ways Storytelling Can Boost Participation and Performance.

The story quickly is this: A federal judge tasked a college class to “research ways to improve the jury deliberation process.” They undertook their study with vigor and looked at typical factors like age, gender, ethnicity and even jury directions and the food the jurors ate. What they found was that jurors sitting at a round table discussed more issues and came up with more accurate and more fair verdicts. When the table was rectangular, the person at the head “tended to dominate the conversation” and jurors were less willing to discuss their opinions.

But that isn’t really the story.

The judge was delighted with the research findings because he found a way to speed up deliberations. All jurors henceforth had to sit at rectangular tables.

Here is the story. The table may matter. But way more important is to ask the right questions. Ask – don’t guess – what your buyer wants. It’s too easy to consider that the feature, what the prospect is asking for, is what really matters. Focus on helping achieve their successful outcome.

My daddy always said, “If you don’t ask, you won’t get.” Or, you may get the opposite result of what you really wanted.

Your thoughts?

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