Imagine you have a good idea that you want other people to support.
What do you do? You try to sell them on it.
I’ve explored a lot of different ideas, and this is the best one.
It’s supported by a mountain of evidence and others who have embraced similar ideas have profited immensely, and did I mention it’s incredibly easy to implement?
In their bestselling book, The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath describe how most people react to this approach.
If you pitch the virtues of a solution, you are, in essence, a salesperson for that idea.
And how do people respond to sales pitches?
With skepticism. They quibble, challenge, and question.
What’s the alternative to a sales approach?
According to the Heath brothers, it’s dramatizing the problem to the place where the person you’re trying to convince “trips over the truth.”
It’s only after a problem becomes vivid in the mind of audience members that their minds turn to solutions. That’s what sparks sudden insights.
The best recruiters don’t focus on selling solutions.
They help their prospects experience the pain of their problems to the point they ask you to turn on the lights.