Sales Lessons From Poker

Some organizational and behavioral psychology books package insight into a convenient set of bullet points. They tout a system that claims to solve all of your problems in five easy steps.

Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff is not that kind of psychology text. It’s an illustrative narrative that shows how the author came by her hard-won understanding of human decision-making. Story-telling tends to make a point stick with us. After reliving her experiences, I really get the importance of key strategies like how to grow from failure—and that knowledge isn’t going to leave me any time soon.

Konnikova is a Columbia-trained psychology researcher who studies decision-making. She has studied how people react to uncertainty and incomplete information. This is deeply relevant to sales, where both parties to a deal suffer from incomplete information and that lack is, in fact, the greatest risk of all for the salesperson.

Inspired by John von Neumann and game theory, Konnikova decided to apply her understanding of psychology by attempting to become a champion Texas Hold ‘Em poker player. She hypothesized that an understanding of decision-making would allow her to succeed against opponents who were much more schooled in the mathematical probabilities of the game.

Konnikova uncovers a number of lessons in the course of her ascent to poker success. Many of these would help anyone be more confident and successful in life, but a few are particularly relevant in sales.

CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL

Controlling what you can control is a key theme throughout the book. One essential component is distinguishing what you can control from what you can’t. As Konnikova puts it, “If we cannot do it ourselves, we cannot control it.” Sales professionals have approximately zero control over prospect and client behavior, and limited control over team members’ actions. However, they can control their own actions and can also make efforts to positively influence others’ actions.

Some things are susceptible to influence and skill, whereas others are more in the province of luck. For example, someone who opened a fine-dining restaurant in February 2020 had the bad luck to encounter a much worse climate for their endeavor than someone who opened a similar restaurant in 2015 or 2018. The pandemic was not in their control.

Not everything is that clear-cut, however. And studies show that it is better to err on the side of believing things are within your power to change. Konnikova discusses the concept of the “locus of control,” originated by Julius Rotter in the mid-twentieth century. People can have an external locus of control, where they believe things happen to them because of chance, other people, and similar factors; or they can have an internal locus of control, where they believe they themselves have the greatest impact on their life outcomes. Konnikova describes how an internal locus of control is correlated with better success in work, but needs to be grounded in reality (you can’t actually control some things, like the deal of the cards or the pandemic hitting your restaurant).

She describes this as the mindset of a victor. If you believe you can change things, and make your best effort to control them, you can be resilient in the face of a failure. “I made the correct decision. Sure, the outcome didn’t go my way, but I thought correctly under pressure. And that’s the skill I can control.”

LIFELONG LEARNING

One of the best parts of the narrative is Konnikova’s account of her interactions with her mentor, poker champ Erik Seidel. She admires him deeply and describes his “passion and constant inquisitiveness.” He doesn’t want to quit getting better.

Asked what advice he gives most often, Seidel advises Konnikova to “pay attention.” She finds the truth of this very simple maxim when she watches a top poker player, a master of the big data analysis and probability aspects of the modern game, lose big because he was paying attention to his Twitter feed rather than to the actions of the other people at the table with him. No amount of data and analytics can fully substitute for being truly present in the moment.

For sales professionals, the advice to pay attention, be present, and to keep learning is paramount. “Just fine” is rarely good enough, she advises. Continual improvement is the way to control what you can control and to capitalize on the added information you can acquire by paying attention.

LOSER’S POKER

If I had to recommend one chapter of this book to read on its own, it would be “The Art of Losing.” Konnikova makes such a compelling case for the transformative power of recuperating from failure.

This is something that Maestro Group has talked about since its founding. In fact, our Phoenix Sales Method is named for the mythical bird that rises from the ashes of its former life. Sales is a great arena to learn about failure, because sales professionals face rejection so often—sometimes dozens or even hundreds of times in a single work day.

Konnikova illustrates the value of failure through her experiences learning to succeed at tournament poker. She points out the importance of not taking a loss personally, but also not blaming it on someone else. Analyzing her own decisions, she can come to understand what she can do better and what is or isn’t in her control.

Being methodical is also key. Data about your own failure is most useful if you have a set process that you can then adjust or tweak in response to feedback. (For more on the importance of process in sales specifically, check out Maestro Mastery #1).

THE BIG BLUFF

At the end of the day, Konnikova is a psychologist who projected enough confidence, paid enough attention, and learned enough from her failures that she achieved some high stakes victories in professional poker. Her psychology insights pepper the book and helpfully situate her experiences in the context of existing scientific research.

For example, she discusses the Ben Franklin effect, which is the concept that people are more positively minded toward people they have performed favors for. Konnikova reminisces about being badly beaten by a charming old gentleman who’d asked her help translating from Russian. Understanding how this effect colored her decision-making emotionally helps Konnikova to adjust her reactions to her opponents in later competitions.

The sunk-cost fallacy (sticking with an endeavor because of previously invested resources), and related concepts such as the planning fallacy (underestimating the time needed for a task), have been covered to great effect in the works of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Konnikova draws on their work to demonstrate how we can be drawn into irrational decisions. In sales, it can be valuable to identify if some deals that have been stuck in the pipeline for ages are actually never going to go anywhere. Instead of clinging to an emotional attachment to the work that was already put in, effective sales professionals will move nonresponsive deals to Closed Lost and put their future efforts into other prospects.

FROM THE POKER TABLE TO THE SALES DESK

If you’re looking for a good story that will help you understand the weird and wonderful science of decision-making, it’s well worth the time to read or listen to Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff. But if you’re ready to just start applying her insight, you can take a page from the Maestro playbook and “control what you can control.” Then learn from poker master Erik Seidel: Pay Attention. And finally, develop a set process for yourself (Maestro recommends HTV: Hypothesis, Test, Verify) so that you can adjust after failure. With those few steps, it won’t be long before Lady Luck seems to be smiling on you a lot more often!

Reach out to mastery@maestrogroup.co to keep your hand strong and your sales steady.