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We all know that there are people who say they are decision makers and there are those who really are decision makers. There is a psychological trick we play on ourselves that can keep us from identifying real decision makers. I learned about it from a Three Stooges episode. Did you ever think you’d get sales advice from the Three Stooges?

In this episode all three stooges dress up as physicians and find themselves in a hospital surrounded by legitimate doctors. The real doctors start to notice that these three new doctors are very odd. Not only do they act strangely, but they don’t seem to understand even basic medicine. The licensed doctors at the hospital are perplexed and don’t know what to think. After a short period of time the authentic doctors come to the conclusion that these three new doctors are probably extremely brilliant. They reason that these new doctors are so smart, knowledgeable and experienced that mere hospital staff doctors are not able to comprehend their brilliance. This helps to explain their peculiar behavior since everyone knows that brilliant people are eccentric.

The legitimate hospital doctors had fallen victim to what I call the Empowered Imposter Syndrome. In an attempt to make sense of authority figures who don’t seem to have any real authority or ability, we frequently explain their inconsistent behavior with irrational explanations that we fabricate. We need things to fit comfortably into our world as we know it, and want it.

We do the same thing in sales. You might be dealing with a customer who is no more a decision maker than your cat. You so desperately want that person to be a decision maker in order for the sales process to feel like it is moving forward that you create absurd assumptions about that person’s buying authority.

Example: You’re dealing with someone who doesn’t have any authority to create a purchase order. The company you are trying to sell to requires purchase orders for all orders. You have developed a great relationship with this person but he never buys because he doesn’t have the authority to give you a purchase order. You delude yourself by thinking, “He probably has an assistant that inputs his PO’s into their automated system that creates purchase orders.” The reality is that he has no assistant and they don’t have an automated PO system.

The salesperson in this example had created a decision maker version of an Empowered Imposter. One of the best ways to know if we’ve created an Empowered Imposter decision maker is to take our sales manager along with us to visit the customer. The sales manager won’t be operating under the same misconceptions and will spot the Empowered Imposter in a second. Yes, you can get good sales advice from the Three Stooges and your sales manager.

The sales tips that the Three Stooges provide in this episode are: beware of Empowered Imposters that we assume are decision makers and be honest with yourself about what you observe in your prospects and customers.

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Tags: listening

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