Getting The Undecideds To "Vote" For You

Well, in 48 hours it will all be over!

The final votes will have been cast and counted; the results will have been castigated by the losers and commended as a “mandate” by the winners.

And of course (if recent history is any indicator) the lawyers will go to work.

Then, the 2012 race for the White House will probably get underway!

While I admit, I’m tired of this prolonged election cycle, there are some important things we can learn from it that can become springboards for our careers. One of the most important is that there are a lot of “undecided” voters still out there.

According to the last report I heard, one in seven of them are “persuadable” (meaning they can still be swayed). Lesson to be learned: Too often we tend to assume that everyone we need to influence has already made up his or her mind.

Recently, I had a salesman tell me that after two meetings with a potential large account, he wrote it off completely because they seemed to be disinterested. Then he ran into one of the company contacts at a function. This person expressed surprise that she hadn’t heard from him again about his product offering. What he had interpreted as “undecided” was really a silent plea for him to get beyond the specs of his product and show the buyers how his product could solve their problems.

Over the years, I’ve known many people who felt that their careers were stalled because of indifferent managers, when in truth the manager was still trying to make up his or her mind about the individual—in other words, they were “undecided”—waiting for the person to illustrate that they were ready for more responsibility and worthy of promotion.

The key to persuading the “undecideds” in your life is to remember that people do things for their reason, not yours. This means you need to identify their “pain” and show them how you can help alleviate it.

Vote early (and vote often)!
Have a great and profitable week!
Robert Hidde
bob@confidentliving.com