“Why can’t we just be direct and honest with our prospects?”
Honesty is good. Directness is good. Why play games if we are trying to create an environment of trust? That’s a completely legitimate question.
The answer is that we don’t “play games” because we want to. We play the games because that’s how the prospects communicate and make decisions. The game already exists. We are just speaking our prospect’s language. People are comfortable with “the dance” and they don’t make decisions by just comparing pros and cons and making a rational and entirely factual decision. Another way to put it is that people have blinders. You need to work around them to get a clear line of communication established. Neuroscience tells us that the human brain does not like changing its mind. Thousands of years of survival programming are not offset by a few hundred years of “modern” living conditions. The brain creates defense mechanisms against change for a reason. It has to create new neural pathways to think differently, and that is work. Neuroscientists will tell you that the brain is wired to be efficient, and minimize effort. Hence, it creates these blinders. Here are the top 3 blinders you are facing:
Blinder 1 is called Confirmation Bias. The human brain will. by default, filter out information that does not align with existing beliefs. Even if we actually process that information, we will give it less “weight” than information that confirms or aligns with our currently held set of beliefs. This is why prospects can be so reticent to accept new information that is so factually obvious. Change is hard, so the brain chooses what information to take in, in order to minimize the amount of work it has to do. If you have teenage kids, you know exactly what I am talking about there.
Blinder 2 is Anchoring bias. The brain tends to stick to initial assessments it makes, even when presented with information that could lead to a different conclusion. It’s like the brain has said, “hey, I already assigned a meaning to this. Check the box, I’m done. I don’t want to re-open this for more analysis.” Anchoring is caused by inertia. It is a lot of work to get an object in motion, certainly more than maintaining motion once it’s established. (throwing in a little physics for the other mega nerds out there). Personally, I love Anchoring bias, because I’ve made a lot of money from it. When I play poker, I will rely on the other players “labeling me” early. If I get caught bluffing early in the game, that creates an anchor in the mind of the other players. “He’s a bluffer” is what they think. Knowing that, I know they will almost always call me for the rest of the night, so I only play when I have cards. I can take down 25 hands in a row, they’ve anchored me as a bluffer, and they are sticking with that label.
Blinder 3 is ego. Good old fashioned ego. Psychologically, we tend to connect our opinions to our identity. This happens across the board. “I’m a New Yorker” or “I’m a Jets fan” is the verbiage many use. “I am” not “I like” or “I think”. Note that difference. Hence, threatening to invalidate our opinions ends up being like threatening to invalidate our identity. Talk about inertia!
All of this is solved by a neuroscience and psychology based sales process. You can’t just be brutally direct, because people don’t receive information that way. As I already stated, human beings find comfort in the dance. It protects their ego, and works around the robotic, programmed defense mechanisms our brains use. You can argue that it’s a bad thing, and you might even have a case for that argument, but that’ also true with gravity. Argue against it on a moral basis all you want, it’s there, and it’s impacting the way things behave.