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Learning Mirrors

Reading Never Spilt the Difference and the one of the first lessons he demonstrates working in workplace is that of mirroring. I have not seen it done exactly how Voss describes it but it called to mind something similar I have seen done by a former colleague. I respected S for his emotional intelligence and ability to put customers at complete ease. He could talk about a concept in his head as if it were ready for prime time and the customer would be eager to give us a shot. I learned a lot from observing S in action. He would almost always replay what he had heard from a customer no matter whether the conversation was happening by phone or in-person. It would almost always be a concise summary of what they had stated and no more. Once the customer confirmed he had it right, S would clarify any conclusions he had drawn based on what he had heard thus far. The way he did it was so flawless that the customer might not realize he was already sowing seeds of the solution he intended to sell them down the road. And usually the first call would end at that point.

S would go do his homework and come up with a proposal that mirrored exactly what he had heard, played on the fears and doubts that were expressed or not. He would also play up their hopes and dreams in the context of what we was trying to sell as an idea or a concept. S was a vaporware man and he was a bit of a lone-wolf. He did not have anything real following his brilliant presentations. It was hard for the rest of us to get inside this mind-meld he had going on with the customer and on the off chance that we did, it was just about impossible to deliver the dreams he was dreaming for and with them. But often it did not matter much. He was able to create relationships that did not exist before his interactions with the customer, have conversations that had had not been possible until then. Sometimes the payoff period was much longer than the sales people would have wanted. In balance, when I look back, it seems like everyone came out ahead in the end without anyone winning too much. 

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