Stop trying to impress me.  It’s a real turn off.  I can make up my own mind about whether I like you; trust you; believe you, or not. You don’t have to make up my mind for me.

Me, Myself and I

Despite this, you continue to dominate my space assertively trying to convince me of your merits. My logical brain shows me a well presented, confident individual yet my intuition, my gut, is telling me to be wary of you because I’ve seen people like you before…and the result usually isn’t very nice.

If you haven’t worked it out yet it’s everything you pride yourself on. It’s the charm you exude, the cut of your suit, your answer for everything, your smooth talking and your sustained eye contact and set smile. It’s even your instant warmth and sincerity, your penchant for storytelling, your endless advice giving (even if we don’t ask for it), the way you dominate conversations (instead of listening) and your seemingly full of promise. Except all you do is leave me feeling that only you matter and I’m just a pawn in your game of seduction, control, and self delusion.

So stop it.  I’m not buying it anymore.   You’re too dangerous.  Get out now.

How to spot the Sales Narcissist before they get you.

Say hello (or rather goodbye) to the Master Charmers – the Sales Narcissists; the sales people who schmooze their way into your world, gaining your trust only to rip you off and leave you worse for wear. These guys give sales a bad name and one sales narcissist can make a bad impression despite 20 good guys leaving a good one.

A degree of narcissism is common in many people. It becomes pathological when the narcissist lacks normal empathy and uses others ruthlessly to their own ends.

Like all narcissists, the sales narcissist is a master manipulator.

Besides the clues I listed in my introduction, the list of behaviours (compiled from the latest research* on narcissists) below will give you some clues that a Sales Narcissist may be in your midst. A word of caution: just one item does not make for a Sales Narcissist. However, if you can list five or more behaviours for one individual my advice is to keep your hand on your wallet and your eye on the Sales Narcissist while you back up to the door and then run like hell.

1. Self absorbed & Attention Seeking
   • Seeking and requiring excessive attention, admiration and rewards from others.
   • Listen for the constant use of “I”, “me” and “my” when they talk.
   • They get impatient and restless when the topic of discussion is about someone else, and not about them.
   • Tend to use melodramatic righteous indignation to over-assert their character, credibility, values, and integrity.
   • Insists on being the centre of attention and is often the most charming person in the room.
   • Very outgoing and excels at marketing themselves.
   • Highly materialistic.
2. Deception and Rule Breaking
   • They feel that the rules at work don’t apply to them, often lying to get what they want.
   • They will always cheat whenever they think they can get away with it.
   • They are inappropriately calm and poised even when they are caught in a lie; and when caught in a lie they explain it as a “harmless misunderstanding”.
   • There is often a history of concealed legal problems and financial “misunderstandings”.
   • They use self-delusion to justify unethical behaviour, “you’d do the same thing if you were in my position”.
   • They deal with dubious ethical issues by relativising them with phrases like; “it’s just how you look at it” or “everybody else does it”.
   • They can use verbal ambiguity as a manipulative technique – says a lot but with no substance.
3. Arrogance & Superiority
   • Seeing themselves as perfect, they project to dump shame onto others.
   • If they feel deflated they may come across as arrogant displaying a sense of superiority by diminishing, debasing, minimising or degrading somebody else.
   • Unfailing belief in their superiority over others.
   • Their behaviours are tailored to appear psychologically open, strong, caring, and resilient.
   • They claim to have expertise in an unrealistic, impossible number of fields.
4. Sense of Entitlement & Aggression
   • Feeling a sense of entitlement, they hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favourable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special.
   • Failure to comply is considered an attack on their superiority, and the perpetrator is considered an “awkward” or “difficult” person.
   • They are given to frustration, anger and irrationality when they do not get what they want.
5. Deflection & Exploitation
   • They expect others to do the day-to-day chores as they feel too important to waste their time on common things.
   • If you share workload with them expect to do the lion’s share yourself.
   • They love to delegate work or projects and interfere by micro-managing it. If it goes well, they take the credit, if it goes badly they blame the person they delegated it to.
   • They exploit others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible.
   • Strategic use actual (or implied) intimidation to get their way.
   • Causes arguments for ‘effect’ not fact: arguing for the sake of arguing. They will cause an argument just to protect themselves from a perceived ego threat.
   • They rely on words like “integrity” “openness,” and “trust,” to deflect requests for proof of their character e.g. “don’t you trust me?”
   • They have expert knowledge of the tools and techniques used by other manipulators.
6. Lack of empathy or remorse
   • Their lack of empathy colours everything they do. They may say, “How are you?” when you meet, but they are working from memory. They are not interested in how you really are.
   • Their sense of self-importance and lack of empathy means that they will often interrupt the conversations of others.
7. Lack of insight and self awareness
   • They very rarely talk about their inner life, for example their memories and dreams.
   • They have difficulty showing genuine emotion, so they tend to fake it.
   • They do not recognise that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. They see others as only there to meet their needs.
   • They seem to have few long-term or deep relationships.
   • They consider interpersonal influencers like charm and endearment to be more important than skill based competencies.

Sadly the role models for sales people portrayed in the movies, literature or the media are narrowed down to the sullied stereotype of Sales Narcissist, leaving most people believing that all sales people behave this way which is not the case at all.

Good sales people hate being stereotyped as charming, manipulative rogues which is why many sales people are reticent to call themselves ‘sales people’.  Sad really, especially when there are so many people who have the potential to be fantastic in sales careers because, unlike their Sales Narcissist cousins, they show genuine regard for others. They listen and are sincerely interested in helping us achieve results or solve problems. In short, they are authentic people who want to do a good job.

What happened to authenticity? The very quality we look for in our very best relationships?  I suggest that the ‘less is more’ approach works best; downplaying your capabilities and emphasising your genuine desire to understand another person; remembering the three questions: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say matter to you?’

It does take skill to help put someone at ease and allow them to feel comfortable, genuinely opening up to you with the confidence that you have their interests at heart.  Keep it simple and to the point. Show genuine interest by stating your intentions up front, ask questions and actively listen. By verifying what you have heard you will impress more people more often by these specific actions than trotting out the dog and pony show charm fest.

It’s up to the good sales people to demonstrate these behaviours, overshadow the sales narcissists and give sales the good name it deserves.

*BSRP, Wikipedia, Changeminds.org, Winningteams.com

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au

What does neuroscience and increased sales have to do with each other?  It seems more than we would think.  The latest research into neuroscience reveals that how we use our brain does make a huge difference to our long term sustainability, our overall wellbeing and our success in sales and other professions.

The world of neuroscience proves what high performers have intrinsically done all along – by engaging in effective self appraisal, continuous learning, a healthy lifestyle and a mindful approach to  work and one’s personal life leads to clearer thinking, better decisions and much better outcomes overall – short and long term.

Kelly Rothwell, Barrett’s neuroscience expert says the choices we make, the view we take of things, how we process and manage information and how we take care of our overall health and wellbeing can all be learned.  She says that “there is a lot of information about how to lead a physically healthy life style, i.e. diet, food, exercise but very little on healthy mental habits that can lead to enhanced performance.”

Mindfulness is the practice of being in the moment.  Mindfulness training, even a short amount has been found to increase attention span, increase cognition and reduce stress, and even increase our immune function.

So how can we make our brains fitter generally, more practiced in ways so they can work for us in ways that help us achieve better results in sales and in our lives?

A study published in the first NeuroLeadership journal found that there was a 30-50% improvement in the stress levels in a group of people trained in mindfulness, that is from just 100 minutes of training in one week.

From the psychical sense of the brain, it is understood that practicing mindfulness thickens a specific set of neural circuits regarding our focus, control and attention.  By practicing focusing and switching your attention, you increase your ability to do so – and the benefits are multiple – for example, several studies talk to the stress and health benefits that appear to come from practicing mindfulness.  You also increase your self-regulation capacity, which is the ability to control what are known as our automatic neural functions – self-regulation has been closely linked to personal productivity, and even success in life overall, in long term studies by Walter Mischel.

So how can we make our brains fitter generally, more practiced in ways so they can work for us in ways that help us achieve better results in sales and in our lives?

Some important Brain facts:

• Our Brain uses up to 30 per cent of our entire body’s energy supply
• Our Brain uses about 20 per cent of our body’s oxygen supply
• Our Brain wants to conserve as much energy as possible
• When we expend energy from our Brain, it is from our Conscious processing part – our thinking, our focus i.e. problem solving, decision making, creating, etc.  Thinking and focusing use up more energy which is not the main goal of our Brain, yet we need these functions to succeed and thrive.  Ever wonder why you feel so tired after really concentrating on something?
• The Conscious part of our Brain is our computer programmer (what we think).  It is where all our thoughts, our ‘self talk’ takes place – whatever we think drives how we feel, which in turn drives what we do or say, and is then etched into our Subconscious
• Our Subconscious is our hard-drive, with all the programming (our thoughts) in it.  The subconscious part of our Brain manages 99.7 per cent of everything we do.  Therefore if what we think is faulty or toxic we are programming our subconscious to be faulty or toxic
• Interestingly our Brain does not recognise what is helpful or unhelpful to us, it just does what we tell it or ask of it.  If we ask unhelpful questions or feed it unhelpful information, we are likely to get unhelpful answers when our subconscious retrieves it
• The quality of our thinking in the Conscious part of our Brain can really affect our ability to perform well and if we do not recognise unhealthy programming that resides in the subconscious

This information is important if we want to work out how we can perform at more optimal standards with fitter brains.  Finding ourselves in a more complex world requires even more considered thinking and focus. This means using the conscious part of our brain more often requiring more energy. Unfortunately the brain, by nature, wants to use less energy.

Kelly Rothwell points out that one of the reasons we make assumptions is that from a simple brain perspective, we ‘assume’ to save energy.  If we operate off old memories and experiences which are etched in our subconscious, rather than creating or writing new ones, it helps us save energy which is the main goal of our brain.

Saving energy is a very important function, yet it does not help us in situations where we really need to pay attention and listen with focus and without prejudice. This is why, even with the best intentions, we are not always helping people or clients the best way we could or should.

There is however some good news. As before, we can train our brain habits to improve the quality of our performance such as listening, questioning, processing, focusing, etc. Purposefully training our brain to the standard we want and need in turn improves our sales results and customer experiences.  The good news is we can program in better capabilities by first consciously, deliberately making them important and practicing them until they become automatic, part of our subconscious. This way when we need to access these skills, they are easier to retrieve and fulfill the brain’s main goal; to consumer less energy.

So which subconscious programs are currently serving us well and which are viruses causing us to derail?
Every thought we have is either health enhancing or health depleting, so how are you programming your brain and is it able to give you the performance you need?

We need to take care with our thoughts.  We have a saying at Barrett ‘watch who you let near your mind’ for good reason.  Thoughts are very contagious and passing on the wrong ones to others can have disastrous consequences.  Just think how most people feel about prospecting – most people are scared of it even if they haven’t had to do it themselves.  Most of their perceptions are formed from hearsay not actual experience.   This is why all of our programs include Mindset as a critical component so people can reboot their subconscious hard drive with better quality content and habits. It’s also why Barrett recommends interval training for all our programs to provide opportunity for people to apply their new skills, behaviours and mindset bit by bit so they create new and better habits in their subconscious.

If you want to develop or improve your brain fitness take a specific look at our Optimistic Professional program on our Mind Your Emotions website.  And for more information on neuroscience and sales culture please contact our head of Consulting and neuroscience expert, Kelly Rothwell on 03 9533 0000.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au