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If you’ve read Steve Peters’ seminal work, The Chimp Paradox, you’ll be aware of the useful way that Peters models the brain:
The job description of the ‘Chimp’ is to get our genes into the next generation and is concerned with our most basic needs: food, sex and survival. A very useful thing some 100,000 years ago when our ancestors’ life expectancy was only about 25 years and they were constantly hiding from or fighting predators in the form of animals and other tribes.
The ‘Chimp’ has not evolved
Fast forward to the 21st Century and society is no longer dependent on just the basics, but evolution has not kept pace with human advances and the ‘Chimp’ part of the brain has changed very little. In a sales situation, the problem is that, unchecked, the ‘Chimp’ will react to a difficult buyer or a sales objection with the same intensity as if our very survival was being threatened and we were back on the plains of Africa.
In those times, the three main defence mechanisms of the ‘Chimp’ was flight, fight or freeze. When you bring these mechanisms into a modern sales scenario, they play out in customer interactions in three unhelpful ways:
None of the above states are conducive to winning business, though I’m willing to bet that, unless you’re one of those lucky ones blessed with an unnerving self-confidence, the vast majority of salespeople who have carried a target would acknowledge that they’ve been caught in at least one of these states at some point in their career.
Dragging your ‘Chimp’ into the 21st century
So what’s the antidote for something that’s so ingrained in our evolutionary psyche?
Bring out your ‘Human’ with mindfulness and practice:
By using both these useful and pragmatic tools, we can successfully tame the ‘Chimp’ mutterings and give ourselves the best possible chance of success.
Contact us to find out more about our innovative sales training which puts your sales team firmly in the ‘Human’ mindset and gives their ‘Chimps’ the elbow.