In this TED‑style talk, Caryn Lee shares a personal story about losing a publishing and consulting firm after a failed buy‑out proposal with her two older partners. She uses that experience to illustrate why traditional needs‑based or relationship selling often falls short. Lee introduces three core ideas: (1) similarity bias – people prefer those they perceive as similar; (2) the existence of deep behavioral and motivational differences among prospects, illustrated through spectrums such as extrovert‑introvert, strategist‑doer, and planner‑spontaneous; and (3) the Platinum Rule – treat others the way they want to be treated, rather than the Golden Rule’s “treat them as you would like to be treated.” She explains how to apply these concepts in sales: research prospects beyond commonalities, identify their preferred work style and motivations, and deliberately adapt one’s own communication style (e.g., pacing, delivery format) to match. Lee emphasizes that this adaptation requires intentional effort but is rooted in integrity, not manipulation. She concludes by recapping the key takeaways: recognize similarity bias, uncover differences, and show up like your prospect to achieve faster, better results.
Chapters
Good afternoon. I know Vernita and I are between you and alcohol, so bear with me. Today I'm going to tell you about how I lost a previous business. So I had 2 partners, and we had a publishing and consulting firm. And they had founded the company over 10 years before I got involved. Few years into me working with them, I ended up buying into the company and running it day to day. Loved what I did. We had a great partnership. Okay, Joe was our researcher and product development person. He wrote books. He was pretty brilliant. Sally, she was our trainer and our consultant. And I was responsible for sales, operations, and making sure that we made a profit. And so it was a really good mix for the partners. So all along, they were a little older than I was, and all along the plan was for me to take over, to lead the business going forward after they retired. So as we got closer, we were doing well. We tripled the revenue, we added 24 global distributors, and I started talking to them about the transition. And I got a proposal together, gave them the proposal. I was going to buy them out. They were going to work for a few more years and then retire. Well, we didn't really get very far in negotiations. They said no. So in 2015, at the age of 50, I started over. and launched my present company, Narrative. Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that story later. And there is a connection to that story and what I'm going to tell you. So basically, I was trying to sell that proposal to my partners, right? So I am going to challenge you to significantly change the way that you talk to your prospects and the way you approach them. OK, this goes beyond needs-based selling. It goes beyond relationship selling. It goes beyond talking to your prospects about their favorite football team. It is more in-depth, and it is harder. It takes more work. It takes intention, but it's worth it. Okay, before I give you that challenge, I'm going to tell you 3 things. The first thing is that— does anybody know what similarity bias means? Similarity bias says that people like people that like them. Right? And people like people that they think are similar to them. So bottom line, we need to make our prospects or our spouses or our coworkers— by the way, this is for anybody that we want to influence— we need to make them think that we're like them. Okay? So that's the first thing. The second thing is we tend to assume that we are like the people in our circle, right? You know, we have all these people in our circle, we know them, we work with them, them day to day, we're friends with them, and it's just— we sort of like, for example, we think they must be in the same political party I am, right? If I go to church, they must go to church. If I don't go to church, they must not go to church. Now intellectually we know that, you know, people are different, right? But our default is kind of those people sitting next to me, they're the They're similar. Well, I want to talk about how different they are. The first way is we have a lot of behaviors, traits, personality traits, you can look at them. I'm going to use some easy examples that everyone can relate to. So let's think of this scale right here as a continuum, a spectrum. Over here we've got the extroverts. Who identifies as an extrovert? Me. Across the spectrum over here, we have the introverts. Who are our introverts? So, and then in the middle, you've got people that are a little bit of both, right? And we call those ambiverts. That's one example, right? The other example is, let's say over here we've got somebody that loves strategy and they're very creative. They're thinking way out in the future. They love the ideas, right? Let's walk across the spectrum and we have the doers, the people that make things happen. They're the implementers, right? They might be able to brainstorm for a little while, but at the end of the day, like, just tell me what we're going to do and let's do it. In the middle, you have people that translate between the strategists and the doers. So I can tell you all kinds of— there's like tons of examples beyond those. But even with that, you've got the strategist that's the introvert or the strategist that's the extrovert or the— so there's all these combinations, right? The next thing is motivations. We all are motivated by different things. Some people really are motivated by money, but less than you think. Some people are motivated by learning a lot, right? Some people by power and leadership. Or helping others and being altruistic. And there's obviously all kinds of combinations. But if we polled everybody, we might rank those very differently. I could go on and on about differences, skills, generational differences, intelligence. There's— but think about all those combinations. So number 2 point is assume that there are some differences between you and who you're working with, or in this case, who your prospect is. Okay, number 3. Once you understand how different they are, then what you need to do is realize, okay, I like to behave this way, they like to behave that way. And if I'm over here, I need to stretch across the spectrum and try to act like them, try to think of what motivates them. It's the Platinum Rule. Has anybody heard of the Platinum Rule? Yes. So the Golden Rule is treat others as you want to be treated. The Platinum Rule is treat others the way they want to be treated. And that's my challenge to you today. My challenge is to show up differently to your prospect. Now, this is not easy, right? I've been with my husband for 22 years. And when I want him to do something I want to do, I have to think, now, how do I act like him? Well, he loves data, right? He loves all this data before he makes a decision, right? And I can make a decision on very little data. So when I have to go approach him, and it depends on how much I want to do what I'm thinking about, then I might spend a lot of time gathering that data before I go talk to him. But it's hard. It's not what I want to do, like, automatically, right? So it's hard. The other thing is I don't want you all to walk out this door and say, she's going to manipulate people, and she's a fake. And, you know, what I'm— I'm not talking about manipulating people when I talk about getting closer to them and doing things the way they like. I'm talking about influence with integrity. Okay? You can still be authentic. You're not changing yourself. You're just stretching a little bit during that interaction to make them feel comfortable. And you're actually being kind to them, right? So don't go tell the people I'm manipulating. So let's get— the one thing you're going to ask too, I hope you're thinking about it instead of that alcohol, that you're thinking, well, how do I do that, Karen? How do I figure out how different they are and what to do with them? How do I do it differently? Well, I'm just going to give you a couple of examples. You already probably do some of this. So you go to LinkedIn, right? So you do some research before you meet a prospect. You go to LinkedIn, you might talk to people that already know that person, you might remember when you met them before and kind of think about their behavior. But again, you're going to look at it in a little bit different way, not go on LinkedIn to see what are our commonalities, which is a great way to do it as well. You're going to actually think about How do they like to work? How do they like to behave? What are their motivations? So I'll give you another example. Let's go back to introversion and extroversion. So I'm an extrovert. I want— my prospect is an introvert. OK? I am not going to throw down the proposal at coffee and say— and walk them through the proposal. Because introverts like to review things, take some time and digest it before they meet with me and talk about it. So I'll give it to them a couple days before. If I'm working with an extrovert, I'm not going to send it to them 2 days before because they're not going to look at it. If I am being an extrovert and I go to have coffee with my introvert prospect, I'm going to stop talking with my hands. I'm going to slow my pace, and I might even talk a little bit softer. And that will make them feel better because they don't like this, you know. Also, one more example. If I'm a planner, right, I love to check off my plan. I have— I'm very sequential and methodical. I go 1, 2, 3, 4. But my prospect, they're flexible, they're spontaneous, they're creative, they like to multitask. So what I have to do, instead of trying to force them to go through my sequence, I'm going to follow their conversation. I'm going to follow their lead, right? And again, it takes intention because I want to go through it 1, 2, 3. But I've got to intentionally try to Do what is more comfortable for them. Okay, so I'm going to go back to my story, my story of my partners. I'd given them a proposal and they said no. I did not do what I just told you to do. I did not think about how do they feel, how are they going to feel, what do they think about retirement, what are they thinking about this this baby, this business they've built, and now they're going to at some point walk away. I was in my business mode. I was thinking about the business after I bought the business— I bought it from them. What did we need going forward? It was very logical. And even both sets of lawyers said it was a really good deal for them. It was a perfect proposal. But what I had— we had 3 executive salaries to pay in a small business. And I didn't— we couldn't sustain that for a long time and continue to grow. So I was like, okay, I'll keep Joe because he's the product development person. He's a researcher. I kind of need that. I'll get Sally to just— I'll just pay her when I need her. So I'll make her a consultant. Okay. Well, that was— it was over before it started. Now, it's embarrassing standing up here and me telling you this because it sounds so obvious, right? It just sounds so obvious. But I have to tell you, it took me months and months to figure out what I had done wrong. But I had just— they had built this baby. They had put blood, sweat, and tears in it. And Here I was devaluing her contribution by saying, oh, I'll just have you as a consultant, right? So big lesson learned. So I hope that you all can take away from that something going forward. So just to recap really quick, people like people to do business with people that are similar to them. We aren't similar to everybody. There are differences. Figure out those differences. Try to show up like them. And if you do, you'll get a better result faster. It is hard. It takes time and effort. But anything worthwhile does. Thank you. Thank you very much.
