Nadia “No-sell” and the Confirmation Bias

In this series of five posts, we’ll explore the manifestations of cognitive dissonance and how I feel it has resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy: a vast disparity between what we think sales people do, and what they really do to be successful.

Meet Nadia No-Sell, she works at an accountant’s office and the favourite part of her job is collecting her pay. She leans towards the shy side, so she has worked hard to find many inventive ways to avoid helping clients.

Say hello to Nadia

Nadia assumes that “Most of our clients can’t afford bookkeeping services in addition to what we charge for year-end tax filing, so why bother mentioning it?”. She might imagine “If they have questions about how we could help them prepare annual budgets, I’m sure they’d ask.” Or, this client seems to be pretty organised, so I won’t bother her with extra information.”

This kind of thinking allows Nadia to sit back, take orders, and live guilt-free. After all, she’s doing her job, why try harder?

Nadia doesn’t fuss if a client says “Oh, that service is a bit expensive… I’d like to think it over.” No problem!” says Nadia. Nadia will give them several lifetimes to think it over if they want it.

Clients don’t buy from Nadia, they buy in spite of her. And because they tend to only get what they need, not what they want, they tend to shop more, and eventually take their business elsewhere.

Nadia tends to assume that everyone wants to save money. It doesn’t occur to her that what most clients actually want is better value. Value, can be gotten not by cost savings alone, but often by information, and getting more of their wants met, even if it costs them more money!

Buyers have trouble getting information from Nadia, because Nadia thinks that giving additional information beyond the minimum, or what’s available in brochures or websites, is outside of her job description.

What Nadia fears most though, what she is reacting against, is the mere suggestion of ever being confused as Hailey Hard-sell.

Nadia doesn’t see herself as a salesperson, because she’s imagined what a salesperson is, and doesn’t want to be remotely associated with that stereotype. This makes her resistant to learning about sales.

Next, we’ll meet, Wendy “Won’t-Sell” and explore the reasons why she’s resistant to sales training and to the world of selling in general.