Business Communication: May I Have This Dance?

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Nov. 22, 2015 - PRLog -- By Tom Mulligan

Business and especially sales people find themselves at the dance everyday. We may not be asking for a dance, but we are still asking someone for something and the old self-doubt comes pouring back in.

What if they say no?

How will I deal with the rejection and humiliation?

As these concerns deepen a bad thing happens. Nothing. We forget that the other person is wondering what to do too.

There are many reasons business people pursue behavior profiling. At the core we desire to understand people and make it easy to be understood. We want to start and maintain relationships with people so that they will feel comfortable with us. Certainly that is a worthy goal, but there is more. To really use Extended DISC to the fullest, we have to help people feel good about themselves. Back at the dance, we started to have fun when we felt good. We felt like we belonged. We were OK.

Extended DISC profiling http://www.coffmangroup.sandler.com/content/show/86396  is one of the strongest tools we have to start and maintain short or long term impactful relationships. It doesn’t matter what we are selling, buying, leasing, renting, trading or procuring, who we are managing, working for or with or simply talking to. Two people are going to go through a high school dance ritual in order to start or maintain an effective relationship.

With Extended DISC profiling we learn how to identify the behavior traits of people we meet. We can easily make some predictions as to how they prefer to communicate with us. It is our job to stretch ourselves toward the behavior of other people and to help them stretch toward us. We naturally mirror one another whether we try to or not. We move toward each other and the dance begins. The less we have to stretch, the more comfortable we are. So it follows that the less the other person stretches the more comfortable they are. They feel they belong. They’re OK.

We live in an age of disconnection, distraction and preoccupation. Are we in a time when quality one on one communication is a lost art? That time cannot come. People do not thrive in isolation. The way we communicate may change, but we still dance.

What do you think?

Tom Mulligan is a Managing Director of Coffman Group, a Sandler sales and management training firm based in Kansas City, Missouri. Tom has a record of uninterrupted success in sales and sales training, is an award-winning performer at the Fortune 500 level and has helped thousands of small businesses achieve their goals. He understands business owners, because he is one. Contact Tom: tom (at) coffmangroup.com or visit http://www.coffmangroup.sandler.com/