Are you practicing the Four Methods of Detachment?

Welcome back to the 5th issue of the Disrupting Conversations newsletter!

In this issue, you’ll find a podcast episode about the critical relationship between trust and risk (hint, trust must come before risk). The ‘Think Different’ section focuses on how high-performers use the power of detachment to perform and achieve great results. Finally, there’s an age-old reminder from the Buddha, as well as a meme from everyone’s favorite salesperson, Michael Scott.

I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for joining me again, and please reach out by responding here any time you have questions or feedback.

–Dan

Breaking Sales is my podcast to connect with those who are ready to break free from the chains of old sales methodologies that don’t work.

🎙 The Relationship Between Trust and Risk

Your prospects don’t know you. They don’t know if you’re there to really help them or just make a sale. Before you can even think about presenting your solution, they need to trust you and know that you’ve got their back.

The more genuine time you spend listening and learning, the more their trust increases.

Prioritizing your pitch over understanding the prospect’s perspective can cause distrust and actually add to the potential risk that they perceive. Ultimately, it will result in them staying the course and maintaining the status quo without making a change—even if they really do need to do something different.

In this episode, I describe the relationship between trust and risk, and how mindset, listening, and questions work together to build trust and reduce risk with your prospect.

Think Different: How Do High-Performers Use Detachment?

This is one of my favorite topics—skills. If you’ve ever thought mindset is a bunch of fluff, I think you’ll find this topic very real and timely given some of the marketplace demands many are facing.

Most people tend to approach tough or high-stakes conversations with hopes and expectations for a specific outcome. How could you not?

The paradox, though, is that these attachments to a particular outcome do us and the other person we are speaking with a disservice—and often have the opposite effect we want.

I like the metaphor of a first date: You go out with someone new, and you have ideas about what they’ll be like, how the date will go, and where it might lead. You’re starting to attach to an outcome—the vision and expectations you have going into the date.

Maybe you think, “I hope they like me” or “I hope we have a second date” before you even arrive for the first one. If you get attached to that, you lose your objectivity and become very subjective.

🚨 You start listening with biases. Instead of hearing the truth, you start to shape what you’re hearing through biases based on what you want.

We do it as parents, too.

We want the best for our children, so we create visions of how we see our kids experiencing the world. Our goal is to help them avoid the mistakes that we made, and achieve more balance and fulfillment in life. So we often listen with an ear to help or solve their problems quickly, early, and often.

Sometimes they listen, but most of the time they don’t. If we could detach a bit from “saving our kids,” we would probably ask more questions, learn more, and parent better. And, our kids might even heed our advice more.

You probably know what I’m going to say next…

Sales is the same.

🚨 Getting attached to an outcome you can’t control depletes your energy and tears at your confidence.

You can’t control how a date goes or what they think of you; you can’t control whether your children take your sage advice; and you can’t control whether a prospect is willing to make the change you offer.

To have meaningful and powerful conversations, in sales specifically, there are four areas of detachment that make all the difference. Pam and I discussed this in a recent podcast episode, and I want to elaborate on our insights here. Let’s dive into them.

The Four Methods of Detachment

1. Detach from the outcome.

Learn to detach from the outcome. The outcome is like a giant lead weight shackled to your leg that you bring into the meeting; all of your energy and focus is attached to what you want.

Thus, aim to avoid thinking about next steps, commitment, or your conversation goals, or you risk only asking questions and listening for things directed toward that desired outcome. Worse yet, you will deplete trust.

👉 On the other hand, if you can stay in the moment and avoid attachment to what happens next, you’ll enhance your questioning and listening skills, you’ll build trust, learn more, and you’ll end up having a much more successful conversation.

2. Detach from the prospect’s (other human being’s) demeanor.

This is the Achilles heel for many self-prescribed “relationship” salespeople.

We’re always looking to pick up patterns and nuances from body language, behavior, and facial expression to determine what comes next. If the person comes in with a negative demeanor or energy, we have to be careful not to internalize and allow that to influence what we say, ask, or do.

If we don’t, we’re liable to pull back or become defensive if we perceive the prospect to be unhappy, distracted, or otherwise not engaged and responding how we hope.

👉 Too often, salespeople believe a good rapport and a lighthearted relationship will earn them the sale, but this isn’t true.

3. Detach from the prospect’s answers.

“There is no good or bad in what someone shares with you.”

A lot of time, we say things we don’t mean, or we think we mean in the moment but we don’t — it’s more about our biases coming in to protect us. Your prospects do the same thing.

A lot of sales people, or leaders (especially new leaders), won’t ask the questions they want or need to ask because they’re afraid they’ll get an answer they don’t like. Avoiding the question means you learn less and you’ll never get to the truth.

Sure, you might be picking up good energy that appeals to your social needs and the desire to jive with the person in front of you. But what you’re missing when you prioritize that social connection is the ability to address the prospect’s actual needs.

👉 What the prospect says isn’t good or bad; it’s just information, and our responsibility is to understand it.

4. Detach from your own biases.

When we go into a conversation with expectations and attachment to outcome, we start listening with biases that support what we want, not what the prospect is actually saying.

As soon as we do that, it’s impossible for us to ask the right questions, because we only ask the ones that we believe will prompt the answer we want to hear. This may feel good to us for a while, but it doesn’t help us get to the truth nor does it help the prospect actually decide to make a change—and work with us.

👉 Detach from your own biases, and you’ll arrive at the truth much more quickly and with less struggle on both sides.

***

I get that this can sound daunting—or even shocking.

“Dan, are you saying that you want me to go into this appointment that took me six months to get, and not to care at all?” No! That’s not it. It’s a hard concept to grasp, but detachment is key to building trust and lowering the perceived risk your prospect feels toward change.

💡Detachment is your ability to demonstrate your neutrality to another human being who may or may not trust you yet, and who may not understand your motives behind the conversation.

When we’re truly detached, we feel less pressure and perform better.

That’s what’s so important about detachment. It reduces our own pressure so we can perform at a higher level when we’re under stress or need to perform in the clutch.

If the idea of practicing these four methods of detachment in your own sales process feels compelling, but you’re not sure where to start, reach out to learn more.

Laughter Can Drive Performance—If You Let It

Thanks for reading!

Want to know more about the work I’m doing? Follow me on LinkedIn.

Was this newsletter shared with you? Subscribe here.

Learn more about Lappin180.