How to tell the truth without hurting anyone
and how to use it in sales?

So, salespeople – eyes wide open.

We are willing to put a lot of effort into making something work – whether it’s building affinity with someone (read: love) or with a client we want to sell something to. Many speakers go on stage and talk about this topic.

But: how often do you actually manage to tell the truth?
Are you afraid of it because you believe it can sometimes be painful?

The truth can be painful for a simple reason: we are all living in our own “movies”, which we project for one reason or another. Everything is fine as long as our film runs in a direction we can still play. But everything eventually comes to a stop.

This is a simple action cycle that tells us one thing: we are done. It’s time to start a new cycle.
So: START – CHANGE – STOP.
It’s a cycle that repeats itself with everyone. Those who recognise it can create their future more easily.

The action cycle: start, run, stop

Recognising the action cycle is only the beginning. You also need to know when to start, how to run things and when to stop.

It’s true that after a breakup, we usually look for a new relationship. Or we don’t (apathy). But the question is: will we bring the experience from the previous relationship into the new one, did we cut off the past too early, and did we end it in the right way? All of this determines the steps and relationships you will create in the future.

It’s the same with a client. If you are not prepared and you mess something up, it will be hard to get back in. There is no re-take. That’s why I always allude to this: your conversation should be real, because everything is verifiable.

Truth as personal property

Truth is something that is real for you – and no one has the right to take it from you, change it, or convince you that it is not true.

Anything that pushes you to do something different, even though you know it is not in alignment with your truth, is in fact suppression of your truth. And that is “forbidden”.

Polarities, prosperity and BE–DO–HAVE

In my seminars I teach that there are two poles (a polarity). In relation to any matter, you can decide to continue with it – or not. It’s the same with a client. There is nothing wrong with someone saying no. In fact, it is often a sign of healthy reason.

So – do you understand the statement that:

The one who can give up prosperity can also create it, change it – in short, can truly have it.

The one who grabs it and is in fear of losing it will, in the event of a loss, pay a much higher price than the one who can allow things to flow on.

With that, you can start a new action cycle and begin creating in a new unit of time.
So, BE–DO–HAVE works in such a way that you are willing to give something up in order to have it – primarily havingness – and thus also get it.

Some talk about this in the language of manifestation, so it is most likely very similar. You can also give up a personality you know is not working and change it into one that does. Everyone should at least once experience what “have not” feels like in order to truly have – “have”.

So, in a moment of truth we can decide which path we will take. And if the decision is genuine, without manipulation, the moment of decision will be right – and we will succeed.

How open are you really to the truth?

Everything described above about not facing the truth can simply be an escape from reality, events and the “comfort zone” – which is only a comfort zone for a limited time. At some point you have to look truth in the eye.

Ten-minute truth – a practical example

On my last trip to Skopje last week, I got into a taxi and – as usual – greeted the driver with: “Good day, how are you?”

The answer is almost always: “Yeah, I’m fine… you know how it is…”

This time I asked: “What is it that I should know?”

Because I speak Macedonian, I dared to go further than most would. Let me tell you this: the language itself is not the problem – just like in sales you can speak Chinese and no one understands you, but if your intention is good and you know how to transfer it to the client, they will buy. The same happens in communication in any other language, where not only your language skill matters, but also your intention.

So I engaged in the conversation. My intention was to take this debate all the way to the end, so that the person on the other side would understand my intention. And my intention was: that 99% responsibility does not exist.

If two people are in conflict, both have 100% responsibility to talk things through. The one who runs away from responsibility usually has something to hide. The one who enters the conversation is the initiator, the cause.

Communication as a cycle: cause–effect–cause

Communication is always two-way and there are rules you need to follow.

The one who starts the conversation is the cause. He speaks clearly, makes sure the other side hears him (“Did you understand me?”), confirms or gives acknowledgment that creates a sense of importance for the other person – because they are sharing that moment of communication with them – and finally hands the communication over, showing that he can now also be the effect.

That is the cause–effect–cause cycle.

The gentleman and I had a conversation that lasted exactly 10 minutes. That’s how long it took him to drive me to the Chamber of Commerce in Skopje.

It was a very interesting exchange. I let him talk for a few minutes about how everything is ruined, political parties have taken everything, no one thinks about ordinary people, the city is polluted, families are broken, the culture is supposedly coming from the West, and so on.

I agreed with him. Because if you don’t agree on anything, what kind of conversation is that? Think about it.

But precisely because I agreed, he then let me share my reality. And he listened with interest. Mainly because I know that part of the world, even though I haven’t lived there for 25 years. I had never really wanted to say what I think about it. This time I created the conditions to say it.

First I asked him if he agreed that a lot of people there are resentful. If you tell them anything, they take offense. He agreed.

Then we went further and realised that this resentment also creates a lot of bad feeling and shifting of responsibility onto others. He agreed with that as well.

So, if that is the case, I told him honestly that people there “jump” at every unnecessary thing and never think about actually fixing something. Because they themselves haven’t fixed much in life due to their own out-ethics, they judge others (read: they transfer responsibility to others).

LEAD: how to recognise who you are dealing with

What we are really talking about here is a topic from my seminars called LEAD. How do you recognise who you are dealing with?

Responsibility is always 100%. When we truly take it, the problems with a certain person, company, client, club we once belonged to, or with our own family members – start to disappear.

Some call the problem between terminals “ego”. True, the concept probably originates from Sigmund Freud, but it only partially explains social relations. So far no one has really managed to use it effectively in sales or in arranging general relations between people, because I do not see such results anywhere.

Wars, collapses, illness, unexplained illnesses and deaths. What else?

Sales, “supermen” and ethics

It is the same in sales. Sales works for a while, then someone appears “by accident”, our beloved superman, and – just like in some marriage – he comes and goes. He looks for new opportunities.

I always ask myself: did he leave anything behind?

Any strategy, good relationships, people who could inherit his technology and continue to use it? I don’t know. What percentage of such people is there really?

They come and go. They get bored.

Okay, but where is ethics in all of this?

We don’t only need the ethics of an individual, we need an ethical system that will “foresee our steps in the future”. And such a system will keep the company, family and country healthy.

And such a system already exists. We can provide it for you. It works – and it is simple.

Why is this happening? Because there is no truth?

Have you ever experienced anything similar?

Even though we keep circling around the question of how to organise our companies, align employees with our vision and strategy, the truth in the whole story is always just one:

Sales without people does not work.
Your sales strategy must be aligned with your people.

There are systems and systems, seminars and seminars – and only the best manage to recognise “what actually holds water” and start using it. And that is the truth.

Truth, “enturbulations” and tsunamis

Truth is a fact you can state exactly as it is – but you still have to know how.

If your truth causes small enturbulations (discomfort), that is probably not a problem. A bit of turbulence is always needed to get a team moving.

But it is not okay if those waves are tsunamis.

And this is exactly what I talk about in my seminars:

• how to communicate,

• how to create reality with someone who doesn’t even have a reality that you exist, let alone that you are selling something,

• and how to use that shared reality to raise the other person’s understanding, so they truly get you.

The right intention and the right start

And that’s still not everything. If you have created understanding between you, that’s only the beginning. Now you will start a conversation with someone you don’t yet know. That’s why it is useful to have a few basic tools to recognise who you are dealing with.

Will the time you invest in a communication be useful?

In short: none of this will work if you don’t start with the right intention.

So before you approach a person with whom you’ll be sharing reality, ask yourself:
Why am I going there?

And if the answer is: “To help him/her,” then go.

No client will buy if they feel you are there just because you want to sell something. Nobody buys anything if you don’t follow the right path.

The right path is to create the conditions for the client to hear the truth about what you are offering – and to agree with it.

The taxi driver and his truth

I believe that today my taxi driver is in his car, driving his clients around – but that moment with me stayed with him.

How do I know?

Because he went silent when he heard the truth. You are confronted with the fact that you understand that something can be true which you had pushed down in your memory for a long time. In the end he said goodbye very kindly. And that’s enough for me to know that we parted on very good terms.

It’s the same as a closing conversation with a client. You, the salesperson, know they will buy from you – you simply know. It’s the same with relationships between people: you just know that someone will stay, or leave. We all know – we just pretend we don’t.

People like to push the truth deep inside and hope it never comes out. But it will. Sooner or later.

And that is why it is good to know how to reach it – and how to let it out into the world without tsunamis.

Communication, politics and “people in departure”

From here onwards, we can start fixing the world with truth that we know how to find and express in the right way.

The biggest problem in arguments in Slovenia at the political level and between politics and business lies exactly in not knowing how to communicate correctly.

It’s almost funny when someone tells me they have completed a communication course, yet their lips are so tightly pressed together that you can immediately see it will be hard for them to communicate – or they will “explode” the moment you offer your view of their reality. So be careful with whom you communicate – and how.

There is another extreme that says: “I’ll say what I think, and it’s up to you whether you agree or not.”

But what does that create? Good or bad relationships?

When we want to gain something, we usually don’t judge. If we have affinity for someone, we normally don’t condemn them.

So yes – let’s create affinity and talk until we resolve something.

Communication is the only real way out of misunderstanding and any kind of crisis.

It’s true that sometimes there is no real communication partner on the other side. But – have we really done enough to find that out? To really see whether the other side is a poor communication partner? The easiest thing is to cut communication.

It seems to me that – just like in Macedonia – we also don’t have much time here to get to the bottom of a situation, so we end up with expectations.

It’s the same in sales. If a salesperson only has expectations – “to sell” – they will have a hard time selling.

I agree, if something is time-sensitive, you can’t hesitate too long – but at least leave the door open and say that you will talk again the next day, next week, etc.

This way we don’t create a hostile environment, because it is communication – when it’s absent or used incorrectly – that creates hostility and bad feelings.

And that is one of the biggest mistakes organisations make when they hire and fire people – they don’t put effort into “people in departure”, only into those who are arriving. Mistake.

Core intention: to help or to sell?

When building good relationships, we usually try to find at least one good thing we can start a healthy conversation with.

But none of this will work if your core intention is not good.

So: if you don’t really want to help your client –
stay at home.
Or in the office.

Dragan Šibanc