This is the first installment in a three-part series on resilience.
May 03, 2023
By Adam Rosa
I had a college psychology professor who loved saying, “Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory.” Honestly, I thought the class was a bit of a joke, didn’t pay attention much, wrote my twenty-page final paper the night before in three hours (I’m a writer, after all), and finished with a B, maybe a B+? In all, I considered it a success and didn’t think I would give the class another thought.
Six years later, it might be the class I think of most, and even more now that I work in sales. The phrase she used, which we are mercifully referring to as PVEST, was actually a theory she had developed as a framework to measure strength and resiliency in adolescents. For the next three weeks, we’ll dig into the idea of resilience—who has it, how we talk about it, and how we can gain more—and using as our own framework for examining the buyer’s (or seller’s) psychology to win more deals.
The part of learning about PVEST that stood out most to me was a figure my professor presented on resilience, based on research by David Fletcher and Mustafa Sarkar in their work on psychological resilience in sports. The figure separates people into four categories, based on two concepts—support and challenges:
The basic premise is simple—the number of challenges and amount of support you experience as a child helps determine how you will behave in stressful or high-pressure situations in the future. Challenges are obstacles you must face as a young person. This can be growing up in a dangerous neighborhood, dealing with death in the family, having a bully at school or even in the home. Some of us deal with none of these, some all, and thus you can classify people into those with high challenges or low challenges.
Supports are the people and things that help build you up to problem-solve. They are good teachers, engaged parents, access to education and resources. If you grow up going to a good school with people who encourage you to solve problems, you had high support.
The flipside of that is, of course, low supports. Going to a school with minimal resources, growing up in a home where your parents weren’t very present. It may be having limited access to books and, nowadays, the internet. Supports are what allow you to overcome your challenges or not. Together, these factors are what shape your level of resilience—your ability to successfully adapt to challenging situations. Sales is stressful. There is a lot of money on the table, and people are often hesitant to try new solutions. If you understand the psychology of your buyer or prospect, you can understand their likely responses to certain situations. You can plan smarter and use their psychology WITH them, not against them, to plan for the best outcome for all parties. To do this, you need to better understand each quadrant of the model.
Understanding buyer psychology is becoming one of the most recognized “it” factors in successful sales. When you understand who you are talking to, you can mold your pitches and calls to support your prospect’s style. Don’t worry, you don’t have to ask prospects about their childhoods, but you should be on the lookout for certain traits to understand how best to cater to their needs.
People who grew up with high challenges and low supports tend to be (understandably) stressed individuals. They grew up in difficult environments with limited ways to get out of these situations. To do so they often become combative, dominating, or unwilling to budge. These are traits that do very well in stressful environments, but less so in business. These buyers are very headstrong, they don’t react kindly to perceived disrespect, and they often enjoy dominating the conversation.
How can you make working with these individuals easier? The way to these buyers’ good sides tends to be how you give information. People who fall into this category do very well with consistent environments. Trust is the motivating factor for individuals in this category, and a way to build trust quickly is through consistency and following through on promises.
Calm demeanors and allowing them to feel out the playing field is also vital. People who are “vulnerable” in terms of challenges often are apprehensive if they feel things are being forced onto them. With these individuals, a relaxed manner where you show you are not trying to control them does well. This is not to say that you let them do as they please or let them feel they have control over you. Rather, they should feel that things are on an even ground. Trust and respect are even more important than usual for buyers in this category.
Buyers in this category grew up with high supports but low challenges. They tend to have had a good education and access to resources, but not many difficult challenges as a child. As a result, they have what we call masked vulnerability. These are people who often do not recognize their own vulnerability, people who did not gain skills to overcome obstacles growing up. As a result, they tend to shut down in high-pressure situations without recognizing themselves as the one unable to overcome.
These buyers tend to be those who ghost you or have no answers for challenging questions or situations. They seek comfort and resist difficulties. They are buyers who would prefer to keep the status quo even if it means small losses, rather than risking a large loss.
While your vulnerable buyers thrive on trust and respect, your masked-vulnerability group thrives on reassurance and key planning. If you notice a buyer who is cautious, averse to large changes, and is hesitant to take on any risk, it is very possible they fall into this category. As a result, your priority should be to focus on showing them past examples with similar buyers and to build them as many resources and as much structure as possible. Having a plan and clearly outlining the details of this plan gives them security. This will also help them become more resilient down the line if problems arise, as you can refer to all the plans and structures you already have in place.
I don’t mean buyers who hide and hope you go seek. Rather, these are people whose resilience or vulnerability is hidden. They grew up with low supports as well as low challenges and, as a result, they are a bit of a mystery. They haven’t had experience with challenges and thus the way they react is unknown or “hidden.”
Buyers in this category tend to be stagnant or guarded. They have not experienced much change in their lives. They are different than those with masked vulnerability in that they are not necessarily averse to change. People in the hidden category may very well thrive in change. They also may be apathetic to it, and simply allow things to happen with no major input. Or they may be highly adverse and shut down.
Despite not knowing how they will react, there are still ways to identify and help these prospects. Common indicators of people in this group are that they appear to not care, they may simply be very willing to go along with things or are your “yes-people” (people who say yes to everything, even if they do not actually want to whatever it is). The best way to support this group in sales is to focus heavily on momentum! If you are familiar with Maestro’s DRIVE concept, with this group, it is all about V for velocity! People with hidden resilience or vulnerability are stagnant, but not always averse to change. So if you get the deal in motion, and focus on keeping the deal moving, you will help cater to the needs of these types of prospects. They need a push, and the rest will fall into place.
If you have been following along, you know that we are at our high-support, high-challenge group. These are folks who had many difficult experiences in their adolescence and were supported with many ways to solve and overcome these challenges. As a result, they have learned to become resilient. They are people who face problems head-on, are not scared of change if it will result in a positive outcome, and often are the people who like to go out and get new things done to add to success.
This is not to say they are the easiest group to work with or to close deals with; they simply are the people who embrace change the most on their own of the four groups and, just like all the groups, you can use this to cater to them and close more deals.
People in this group are typically seeking new opportunities and solutions AND acting on them. Be aware of the difference between those who look and have acted on those new opportunities and those who always look but never close. If the latter, you may be looking at a hidden yes-person—who seems resilient because they say yes—but never signs deals.
When you work with resilient prospects, it is important to remember that while they embrace change, they are looking for change that is extremely positive. They are typically critical thinkers who are looking for THE BEST options, not just better.
As a result, the best approach with these types of buyers is to focus on success. They want to know why your solution is the best and how they can experience success. Steps and consistency are important with resilient buyers, who are focused on how to improve. Concentrate on discussing outcomes, success, and logical next steps. Buyer psychology is no small feat. To use all these lessons, you need to become an expert in observation, reaction, and planning. You need to be great at knowing how to change your approach depending on your buyer. Sales is like a game, but a game where you want both parties to win.
Interested in increasing your resilience as a sales professional? Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co!
Get the Maestro Mastery Blog, straight to your inbox.
