What Sales Pros Can Learn from American Idol

by Dave Kahle

We’ve all squirmed uncomfortably watching some talentless candidate audition for American Idol.  After they are told by the judges they have no talent, they either fall into tearful disappointment, or defiantly challenge the motivation, intelligence or integrity of the judges.

            As we’ve watched, feeling really embarrassed for them, my wife and I would look at each other and ask:

            “Didn’t anyone tell them?”

“Didn’t their parents or their family tell them that they had no singing talent?”

“How could their friends have allowed them to go on thinking that they were a singer?”

“How could they have so deluded themselves?”

The painful truth is that their subjective view of themselves clashed horribly with the objective truth disseminated by the judges.  The clamor of those two forces slamming together resulted in an embarrassing life-changing moment, viewed by millions of people.  The problem was they probably never held themselves up for review objectively, preferring to remain within their subjective self-image.

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That seems to be a pretty wide-spread character flaw among American Idol contestants.  Even the finalists exhibit it.  Over and over again, the judges remark about a poor “choice of songs.”  The typical response goes something like this: 
            “I don’t care what they think.  I’ve always liked that song and I wanted to sing it.”

In other words, “It doesn’t matter what older and wiser experts think, my view is more accurate than their view. “Self-delusion rippled throughout a young adult’s self-image.

What has that to do with salespeople?

In recent years, I’ve come to see that character trait (self-delusion) as far more abundant among the salespeople with whom I work than in the past.  While it may be a generational trait, infecting every job title and position, since I work primarily with salespeople, I notice it primarily in sale people.

The tendency to delude oneself regarding our abilities has become an epidemic.  Protecting our fragile self-image from the objective reality is somehow more important today than ever before ... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

I know you are concerned with sales.  It’s easy to determine how well your people are selling to your customers.  That’s what sales reports are for.  But your customers are more concerned with how well they are being served by your salespeople.

         Why is that important?  Because you are in it for the long run.  You don’t want to just sell something to a customer, you want to build a relationship that lasts over time and results in years of sales.  In one sense, your business is not really a sales business, it’s a relationship-building business. In this podcast, I drill down into one aspect of that:  Serving the customer.