For 10+ years now I’ve worked in various types of sales.
Like many Sales Professionals, I became quickly addicted to reading books, watching videos, and listening to audio materials by popular sales and ”success” gurus.
Thinking I had covered enough ground and looking for the next hidden advantage, I began exploring the subject of negotiation to further my understanding of selling related concepts such as deal making, bargaining, creating value, etc.
Almost immediately, I found the concepts, techniques, and perspectives of the popular negotiating experts both highly fascinating and easily applicable to everyday selling. This only sparked my interest to grow, and after reading over 100 books on both subjects I began to see numerous similarities between selling and negotiating – to the point where it was hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
For example, one specific concept called “saving face” continued to pop up in both sales and negotiation literature. However, never did the authors seem include an exact description of just what it was and why it was so important.
Completely hooked on finding more ways to unify these two topics , I slowly but surely discovered that all roads lead back to works under the umbrella of Social Influence Psychology, reaching as far back as 70 years and still going strong today.
From all of my research, I now have a comfortable understanding of “face”, and this has led me to believe the following:
- Many of the well known sales and negotiation strategies are not only related, but often times interchangeable
- There exist many powerful strategies that have yet to make it into the popular culture of selling and negotiation that we have today
- Greater awareness of Social Influence Psychology will facilitate better outcomes in all of our person to person interactions
My mission going forward is to curate this wide body of knowledge, further explore the ideas above, and identify the most practical applications of Social Influence Psychology for salespeople and other professionals.
Coming up next week will be the first official blog post, explaining the concept of ”face” and why it can potentially make or break every sale.
Sincerely,
Mike
Saving Face 