Ground Rule: Always prioritize objectives over emotional reactions
In 2012, as a rookie salesman with a boutique wealth management firm, I was working on a deal that could potentially move the needle on my P&L. The prospect was an organization that had just received funding and was looking to deploy the funds into fixed income instruments. I knew I was competing with bigger and more established players for this deal but I was able to get meetings and establish mind share with the decision makers.
Come decision making time, these decision makers became busy in audit meetings, month end compliance activity and board meetings. A week into this routine of them not taking my calls, I knew that the deal was gone.
I genuinely believed that I stood a good chance, I just had to know where and how I had blown this; but getting through to the folks was almost impossible. What I did over the next few days was to set up a meeting with someone in a different part of the organization, I had to get someone to allow me into the office after all! Once this meeting was done, I walked into the CFO’s office to request him for some answers. Gutsy but potentially embarrassing.
Needless to say, the gentleman was shocked when I told him I needed answers to just two questions. The conversation went something like this
Me: Was I in the reckoning when you were about to make the final decision?
Him: No
Me: At what point of time did I stop being in the reckoning?
Him: To be honest, you never stood a chance
Me: So I assume the discussions you had with me were to validate what the others were saying?
Silence
I thanked him for his time and got on with my life. The key learning here was that I was not calibrated enough to see what was really going on. But that is not the point of this post.
The point is that this gentleman was just doing his job, he wasn’t a bad person. He just did not see enough value in what I had to offer.
This is what I mean by seeing the world through the value lens. But to get to that, you need to follow the ground rule. Always prioritize objectives over emotional reactions. If I hadn’t, my emotional reaction would have led me to conclude that the gentleman had taken me for a ride and had wasted my time. But that would have gotten me nowhere.
If you did not catch the fine print, I was guilty of wasting someone’s time too. I had to sell the other guy in the organization a dummy to get my answers. No point in taking the moral high ground here. If the deal wasn’t worth my time I would not have wasted any time with these folks either. Clearly they were worth it whereas I was not.
By viewing it through the value lens, I had some possibilities to ponder over
- Did I not offer value in the first place? (Product problem)
- Did I offer value but wasn’t able to communicate it well enough? (Marketing problem)
- Am I calibrated enough to ensure this does not happen again? (Maturity, experience)
Would the prospect have refused Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s calls? Most likely not. It was not just about the prospect; it was also about the value I brought to the table. This experience made me better salesman, though it was not pleasant.
In a different context, let’s say I were interested in a woman who for some reason is always too busy to meet me. Different context, but the same concept. If John Abraham had expressed a desire in getting to know this particular woman, would she have continued to stay busy? Nope, it is more likely that she would have cleaned out her entire calendar to meet the guy. Once again, not a bad person. Just that the prospect does not see enough value in me.
Feedback is usually cryptic because people are so scared of hurting your feelings that they would rather beat around the bush and be polite than get to the real point that can potentially offend, but also help you improve. Going back to the ground rule, always prioritize objectives over emotional reactions
“Your gravest mistake wasn’t failing to find the answer. If you keep asking the wrong questions, you’ll never find the right answer” – Lee Woo Jin to Oh Dae Su in the Korean cult classic, Oldboy (2003)
This, after the man he locked up for 14 years finds him and asks him why was he imprisoned. Lee Woo-Jin then goes on to say that the right question would have been to ask why did he let him out after 14 years, not why he locked him up.
On a tangent, this movie is pure demented genius.
The value lens forces you to ask the right (and often difficult) questions, to introspect and to get to the root of things. Else we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes and end up blaming only external factors for outcomes.
When prospects see value in you, they will never confuse you. The interaction feels as easy as driving in Bangalore during the lock down. When they don’t see enough value, it feels like driving during the Bangalore peak hour before COVID-19, irritating and stressful.
Work on improving your value and on demonstrating the same effectively, the quality of the interaction starts to improve. Be it investing, sales or personal relationships, the value lens should be the central theme of most interactions.
The world starts to look more logical this way, people respond better to value than to moral appeals to their higher self.
