Sales EQ. Blount Jeb

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      Cognitive Dissonance

      When you attempt to hold two or more contradictory beliefs in your mind at the same time, do or think something that violates or is incongruent with a core belief or value, take an action that is inconsistent with a prior commitment, or are confronted with information that directly contravenes something you believe to be true, it creates mental stress and emotional discomfort. This is cognitive dissonance.

      Humans have an overriding desire to be consistent in their thoughts, beliefs, values, and actions. To achieve this comfortable equilibrium, we constantly seek dissonance reduction, much like hunger causes us to seek food to comfort a growling stomach.11 Dissonance is so emotionally painful that people will, in many cases, deny facts, deny evidence, and rationalize anything to protect a core belief.

      When stakeholders are placed in situations where they must make a decision, they're being bombarded by conscious rational choices, emotions, and subconscious cognitive biases. Some of these biases, emotions, and rational choices are opposing and contradictory, creating a state of dissonance. It is your ability to deftly maneuver and navigate this emotional minefield that opens the door to influence.

      Triggering Cognitive Dissonance

      Situation: The stakeholder is working with a vendor that is providing bad service. You challenge the stakeholder with evidence that his current vendor is screwing him over.

      Dissonance: The stakeholder originally chose and committed to the vendor. The stakeholder believes, like most people, that he makes good, rational decisions (egocentric bias). You challenged his judgment by showing him that he made a poor decision. The stakeholder is forced to either accept that he made a bad choice, blame external circumstances (attribution bias), lie that he knew the vendor was bad all along and had no other choice (hindsight bias), or defend his decision, turning you into an adversary.

      Result: He digs in his heels because the need to be consistent with his self-image and past commitments is powerful. Instead of agreeing with you, he argues back, making the case with the few good things the vendor has done for him while ignoring the damage the vendor has caused (confirmation bias).

      Most of his justifications are irrational. Yet the more you argue, the more he becomes anchored to his position. (You cannot argue other people into believing that they are wrong. This is the reason direct challenges often fail.)

      Your challenge creates psychological discomfort. Because you are the genesis of the pain, you become an unlikable adversary. When you are branded unlikable, win probability plummets.

      A Better Way

      Gaining an understanding of and leveraging cognitive dissonance is one of the keys to influencing stakeholder decisions.

      Rather than a direct confrontation – either with empirical evidence or with badmouthing a vendor that is clearly doing the wrong thing – create awareness with an artful question:

      “John, could you tell me what you like most about ABC vendor?”

      Average salespeople feel like this is a suicide question. “Why would I want them to tell me what they like about the vendor? Isn't that defeating the entire purpose?”

      To influence the behavior of stakeholders, you must manage your disruptive emotions (in this case fear), have empathy for the pain of cognitive dissonance, and have an acute understanding of how the human mind works.

      When you ask most people what they like about something, you trigger the negativity effect or bias. Most people will respond with a few positives and quickly shift to negatives. Humans are more attuned to negatives than to positives. We look for what's wrong or out of place, rather than what is right – it's just what we do.

      All you need to do is prime this behavior in your stakeholders by asking them what they like most. This has the added effect of disrupting their expectations, thus pulling them toward you, and causing them to become more engaged.

      In this case, there are obvious negatives, making the job of getting John complaining about the vendor and offering up a litany of its failures and shortcomings much easier.

      When John expresses his dissatisfaction on his terms, he becomes committed to making a change, and the probability that he will make the change increases because his actions must be consistent with his new beliefs about the vendor so as to avoid dissonance.