Instead of swirling downward into frustration, âYes andâ spirals upward toward possibility. When you stop youâve got a set of options, not a sense of futility.
There are certainly plenty of times in life to say âNo.â When it comes to moving others, however, the best default position is this second principle of improv. And its benefits stretch further than sales and non-sales selling.
Related Quotes
Anyone who sellsâwhether theyâre trying to convince customers to make a purchase or colleagues to make a changeâmust contend with wave after wave of rebuffs, refusals, and repudiations.
How to stay afloat amid that ocean of rejection is the second essential quality in moving others. I call this quality âbuoyancy.â Hall exemplifies it. Recent social science explains it. And if you understand buoyancyâs three componentsâwhich apply before, during, and after any effort to move othersâyou can use it effectively in your own life.
Questions, whose potency weâve seen in both interrogative self-talk and in pitching effectively, change the rules of engagement and therefore the nature of the interaction itself. The conversation becomes more of a dance and less of a wrestling match. Thatâs something that Fuller Brush founder Alfred Fuller intuited years before improv was ever invented. âNever argue,â he wrote. âTo win an argument is to lose a sale.
... âYes and,â which forces them to build on the previous idea. You canât refute what your colleagues say. You canât ignore it. And you shouldnât plan ahead. Just say âYes and,â accept what the person before you offers, and use it to construct an even better campaign.
âThere are people who prefer to say âYes,â and there are people who prefer to say âNo,ââ Keith Johnstone writes. âThose who say âYesâ are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say âNoâ are rewarded by the safety they attain.
Every circumstance in which we try to move others by definition involves another human being. Yet in the name of professionalism, we often neglect the human element and adopt a stance thatâs abstract and distant. Instead, we should recalibrate our approach so that itâs concrete and personalâand not for softhearted reasons but for hardheaded ones.
The people with the best defaults are typically the ones with the best environment. Sometimes itâs part of a deliberate strategy, and sometimes itâs just plain luck. Either way, itâs easier to align yourself with the right behaviour when everyone just is already doing it.
The way to improve your defaults isnât by willpower but by creating an intentional environment where your desired behaviour becomes the default behaviour.