Business partnering in a way is like dating. Nobody wants to “date down”. And if they feel they do, they are very likely to treat their dating partner in a patronizing manner, avoid commitments and see the relationship as casual, temporary. They might even feel that by giving their partner any small token of attention, they are doing their “insignificant other” a grand favor for which their dating partner should be eternally grateful.

This is pretty much what happens in a business relationship where one side feels like they are “dating down”.

If your potential business partner feels superior to you, they will either avoid building a long-term business relationship with you, or will only agree to a relationship that would place you at a serious disadvantage. Either way, there is a high probability they will not be open and straightforward with you.

On the other hand, if a potential business partner feels inferior and insecure, they are likely to become secretive, manipulative or untruthful to mask their inferiority and achieve a better negotiating position.

Which means that to get an open and honest relationship with a potential business partner, you need to:

1. Offer an equal partnership, a win-win situation.
2. Feel confident in what you bring to the table.
3. Answer all their questions openly and honestly, so they will see they can trust you.
4. Offer a taste of your expertise or a generous sample of your product at no charge and with no obligation, for them to get to know you and your business.
5. Oh, and avoid traditionally trained salesmen interfering in your negotiations with your potential partner.

Related Posts:

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 1.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 2.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 3.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 4.

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth, rita kai articles, why do people lie

As work-for-hire professionals, small business owners or members of sales/marketing departments we are seen as “salesmen” by our potential customers. “Salesmen” is one of the groups carrying the “habitual liars” label. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our potential customers meet us with caution and suspicion, half-expecting us to try and take advantage of them, and prepared to defend their interests from us. In a way, we are seen as a potential enemy. Sad, but unfortunately that’s how it is.

That’s why potential customers are so reluctant to tell the truth, open their cards, make any form of commitment. They don’t want “salesmen” to put pressure on them, to use disclosed information to manipuate them, to trick and trap them. If you’ve ever shopped for a car, you know what I am talking about.

The question is: what can you do to make your customers let their guard down and be open and honest with you? There is one and only one thing you can do:

Extract yourself from the “salesman” category and move into the “excellent specialist”, “expert in a field”  or “helpful and knowledgeable person” category.

The best way to do it is to position yourself as an expert in your potential customers’ eyes even before they contact you. Here are a few things you can do to accomplish that:

1. Build a reputation of an expert; become well-known in your field as the person to go to.
2. Be a source of an excellent  information that your potential customers can access before they even contact you.
3. Pre-qualify your customers.
4. Don’t look or sound needy or pushy. Lay off cheap salesmen tricks. Create an image of a successful specialist who doesn’t need to run after or put pressure on his/her customers.
5. Don’t be vague or elusive or your customers will be vague and elusive with you. Tell your customers exactly what you can do for them and provide them with clear options to choose from. Answer your customers questions and concerns to their satisfaction.
6. Be honest with your customers and sincere in your quest to provide them with the best service/product/information.

For additional information on this topic visit Ari Galper’s Unlock The Game website and sales blog.

Part 5 of this guide: Dealing with a potential business partner is coming next.

Related Posts:

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 1.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 2.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 3.

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth, rita kai articles, why do people lie

You can often see this kind of unhealthy relationship developing between a salesman and a buyer, an employer and an employee, between mistrusting business partners, between a corrupt government and its citizen…

The worst case scenario, of cause is when it happens inside close relationships — between spouses or romantic partners, friends, parents and children. It’s so much easier to loose trust than to get it back after it’s been lost.

Unfortunately, some of us — doesn’t matter how honest we really are — are suspected by default, before we even have a chance to shake the other person’s hand or say “hello”. It’s because in the eyes of the other party we belong to a group suspected of habitual lying. We’ve lost trust for no fault of our own and now we have to do our best to gain it “back”, if we are to ever have an honest open conversation/discussion/relationship with this other person.

In Part 4 of the series we’ll be talking about how to gain trust of a suspicious client of a potential business partner.

————————————–

Photo:  Remedium

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth, rita kai articles

Important! Before we proceed any further I have to warn you to never use this technique on children and teens. It’s a strictly R-rated one.

Here’s how it works. First, you have to apply the first technique and make a recurring lie ineffective. Then, every time a liar starts telling his or her lie or is about to start telling it, beat them to it and adjust that lie to sound completely ridiculous.

For example, if an employee is late again and is about to come up with another excuse, you can say, “Oh, wait, don’t tell me… Let me guess — you’ve been kidnapped by aliens.” Or, “I know, I know — you helped the entire retirement home to cross the street!..”

It may be even more effective if you can say it with a straight face.

Or, lets say, your boyfriend (or girlfriend) always comes up with the stories to make you jealous.  When they start telling you another jealousy-generating tale, tell them as a matter of fact, “You know, it doesn’t surprise me at all. The Playboy Mansion (or the New York Fire Department) just called. They all want to have your babies.” Then, turn away and do something mundane as if you haven’t just made fun of them but stated a simple fact.

The majority of people — including liars — hate to be the butt of the joke. And if their lies not only ineffective, but make them look like fools, they will stop producing them quickly.

Although, you might need to repeat the grotesque technique several times with different funny lines until a liar will realize that he or she is really out of their lying luck with you.

Related Posts:

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 1.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 2.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 3.

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth, rita kai articles

You’ve probably noticed that some of the lies people use are recurring lies.

Take Joan, for example. Joan likes to “inflate” to importance of her position at work. Even though she is a receptionist at a car dealership, to anybody who asks she tells she is an office manager. Somehow it makes her feel more successful.

This lie is innocent enough in a sense that it doesn’t do anybody any harm. However, most of the recurring lies fall into two not-so-innocent categories:

1. Cover-up lies designed to let a liar get away with something, prevent him or her from facing consequences.

2. Manipulation lies used to make someone either do what a liar want them to do, or feel the way a liar wants them to feel.

An employee coming up with various wild stories to explain his habitual lateness for work is using cover-up lies. Recurring lies don’t need to be identical, but they do need to serve the same purpose.

A fake friend making up stories in order to make another person feel bad is using manipulation lies.

How do you stop someone in your life from telling recurring lies? There is a very simple tried-and-true method for that. Both cover-up lies and manipulation lies are used by liars for practical reasons. Until those lies achieve goals they were designed to achieve, until a liar succeeds at using them for his or her purpose, the lies will keep recurring. But it’s in your power to stop those lies from working:

1. Stop believing recurring excuses, make them ineffective. For example, you can tell a habitually late employee that you’ve added  the time he owes you and came up with so many hours. And that he has to work those hours off by the end of the month — on weekends if he has to — or he will lose his full-time employee benefits. Then, make sure you follow up on that. Or subtract  the hours from his paycheck.

2. See a manipulation for what it is and either ignore a manipulative lie completely or do the opposite of what a liar wants you to do. So, next time a “friend” starts telling you a devastating story, interrupt her casually, tell her you need to make a call or go to a store,  and then do so. Don’t listen to her stories and ignore her “well-meaning” advice, or she’ll keep doing it.

Sometimes this technique works almost overnight, like a charm, but most often you would need some patience and consistency for a few weeks to start seeing results.

(to be continued)

Related Posts:

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 1.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 2.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 4. (coming)

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth, rita kai articles, why do people lie

Wish me luck :)

P.S.  It’s 3:06am, Sunday, here, in Pennsylvania, and I am about to fall asleep at my desk. BUT… The maintenace is all done, everything looks fine to me. Please, let me know if you find any glitches.

We have built an entire economy on lies and deceit, and whenever you build something on something that isn’t true, when it cracks a little, it’s like building a home, or an entire building, on a sinkhole.

Suze Orman

Related Posts:

Quote: Bill O’Reilly

Quote: Sex

Quote: Confusion

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Unfortunately completely eliminating all lies from one’s life is about as easy as teaching a penguin how to fly. Basically, it’s impossible. That’s because we can’t control other people’s actions. We can only influence them with our behavior. So, we are going to increase the frequency of people telling us the truth and decrease the amount of lies directed at us.

Here’s how we are going to accomplish that:

1. Stop the behavior that provokes lies. Certain aspects of our behavior (as adults) encourage other people to lie to us. Here’s the list:

• Behavior that makes it easy for other people to disrespect us — submissiveness, self-disparagement, inability to stand up for yourself, helplessness, pure grooming or dressing habits, etc. People are much more likely to lie to a person they disrespect than to one they respect.
• Behavior that makes other people want to stay away from us — neediness, clinginess, abusiveness, hysterical nature, tyranny, etc.
• Overly suspicious or jealous nature that can be provoked by perfectly innocent actions on another person’s part.
• Behavior that makes other people afraid to tell us the truth — vindictiveness, abuse or overly emotional reaction to any bit of disappointment.
• Gullibility and/or unwilliness to face the truth.
• Asking a question with a pre-set one-way answer. “Does this skirt make me look fat?” “Am I prettier than her?” “Isn’t my child genius?”
• Asking a guilty party questions to which you already know answers or rhetorical questions (unless you’re testing him or her). For example, if your spouse comes home drunk, barely on her feet and smelling of alcohol, asking her, “Have you been drinking again?” will very likely produce a lie. Asking an embezzling employee, “How could you?” would also very likely encourage him to  lie.

2. Close the loopholes. You wouldn’t make it easy for a child to stick his fingers in a power outlet, would you? Of cause, not. The same way you shouldn’t leave a temptation within an easy reach of someone who may be easily tempted. If all it takes is “a little lying” now and then, they will go for it.

For example, if your teenage daughter is addicted to text messaging, and your cell phone bills are outrageous, even though she keeps promising to stay within the limit, get her a pre-paid phone. This way she CAN’T go over the limit.

Or if you need to repair the roof on your house, make sure you find out the price range and the type of  repair that needs to be done, and not simply hope that your contractor will give you a decent price and do only what is necessary. For he may be tempted to give you rather inflated price or add an unneeded procedure hoping that you will go for it.

Make it harder for people to lie to you by eliminating temptation.

3. When asking a sensitive question, make it easy for people to tell you the truth:

• Stay calm, unaccusatory, and casual in your questioning.
• Be prepared by gathering the facts beforehand.
• Keep questions short and to the point. Ask one question at a time — don’t pile them up in one endless question.
• If possible avoid questions that sound like an accusation.
• Ask a question when the other person is relaxed and the least expects it.
• Let them know it’s ok to tell you the truth and be prepared to handle the truth.
• Don’t let them get away with a BS.

(to be continued)

Related Posts:

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 1.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 3.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 4. (coming)

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth

Please, understand that:

a)   to tell if someone is lying and find out the truth
b)   to make someone tell you the truth

and

c)    to make someone admit to lying

are three different things.

You can find out the truth even when someone is lying to you. There are many techniques for that. I talk about some of them here, in my blog, and I am writing a book that would teach all the techniques I use, so anyone can learn them.

Now, about making someone to tell you the truth… It’s not always possible. Even professional interrogators can’t always succeed at this. What you can do, though, is to increase the occurrences of people being truthful with you and decrease the amount of lies coming your way. I will tell you how to do just that in the second part of the article.

Making someone admit to lying is not always possible and not always desirable. Unless we’re talking about white lies to which people usually don’t mind admitting when questioned, admitting a non-benign lie is often humiliating.

“Yes, I lied. I weight 30 pounds more.”

“Yes, I lied. My business isn’t as successful as I led you to believe.”

“Yes, I lied. I’ve never had a speaking part in a movie.”

“Yes, I lied. It’s a cubic zirconia, not a diamond.”

Even if they know you know that they lied, people will often resist owning up to a lie. If you don’t care for the relationship between you and that person, you can keep pressing on. But if the relationship is important for you and admitting to that particular lie would be embarrassing, it might be a good idea to let it go. Often all that is needed is for other person to get the hint that you know the truth.

Getting a confession of a liar may be good for your ego, but it’s frequently accompanied by a strong resentment from him or her toward you.

(to be continued)

Related Posts:

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 2.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 3.

How To Make Someone Tell The Truth. Part 4. (coming)

Technorati Tags: how to make someone tell the truth, rita kai articles

Let me ask you this: have you ever let yourself down? I don’t know about you, but I do all the time. I can’t trust myself to always feel motivated when I need to, to exercise daily, not to watch so many movies, and to always have a clever comeback when I need to protect myself from a mean remark. And I know I am far from being the only one acting against my own best interest.

So, if we can’t trust ourselves to always be on our own side, how can we reasonably expect other people – no matter how wonderful they are – to never let us down?

Humans are not perfect. It doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve to be trusted. It also doesn’t mean that we are to be trusted blindly. An absolute trust is a strange concept in an adult human being and it leads to all kinds of nasty stuff – from mass suicide by cult members to charismatic psychos like Hitler being elected to power.

And yet, without trust we feel lonely and miserable.

What we really need is the balance between two extremes. We need to trust without becoming gullible and we need to see warning signs for what they are without becoming chronically and painfully suspicious.

I don’t remember who said it, that to trust is to know what a person is capable of, but it’s so true! If we know what a person is capable (or not capable) of, we can trust him or her to act within their capacity, within their character.

It’s not all black or white, good or bad, pass or fail. It can easily happen that the same person who will always be there for us when we need him is incapable of staying faithful. Or that a person, who is completely trustworthy around money, isn’t so good with secrets entrusted to her.

To understand a person is to avoid many pitfalls that a blind trust and chronic suspicion dig for us on a road of life.

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