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On Saying How You Feel, Not Just What You Think

Anyone who has ever studied the Sandler Sales system, founded by the legendary David Sandler, knows the “Sandler Rules”, including “no mind reading”, “sell today, educate tomorrow”, “no mutual mystification”. These were Sandler’s encapsulations of marvellous lessons in the selling process, which he developed from studying transactional analysis (remember “I’m OK, you’re OK”?) and as a reaction against older sales methods.

I can’t say that from studying Sandler, I became great at selling, because I didn’t. But I got better at it and, more importantly although it didn’t immediately help my bank balance, I got better at maintaining my self-esteem in the process.

A collateral benefit of all the Sandler training and practice was that I learnt to apply some of the rules in other, non-selling interactions (ok, for the benefit of sales trainers who like to tell us that all our interactions with others are about selling, my not-so-sales-oriented interactions).

One Sandler rule which I have found particularly helpful is “if you feel it, say it”. My take on that, in the sales situation, is that instead of just sticking to a scripted “performance”, if you are really listening to and observing the prospect you will pick up on, for instance, body language that doesn’t match their words. And as you notice your feeling response, instead of ignoring it you raise it with the prospect, that helps get the conversation back to a reality plane, as distinct from the usual sales “dance”.

And in the other-than-predominantly-sales situations, “if you feel it, say it” can be, in my experience, a terrifically helpful rule. Not always a comfortable process. Indeed if you are not usually given to expressing how you feel and like many  (most? all?) ofus have been socialised to be so polite as not to do so, it can be a stretch. But not sharing how we feel, as distinct from what we think, can mean we are in for a lot more conversations that go essentially nowhere, and even setting up businesses and personal relationships for boredom or even collapse.

Let’s face it, compared to the way kids tell you exactly how they feel, we as adults can get terribly “good” at concealing how we feel. Up to a point that’s helpful for civilised living, but it can very easily become deleterious.

And by the way, email can be a trap in this department, in that apart from smiley faces, how I feel is not always clear in terms of what I say. Sometimes it’s good to pick up the phone and say, “You know, what I’m feeling is ….”.

There are a couple of other tricks of the trade so that this process does not become just another way to lash out or otherwise indulge our egos, but that’s for another post, if need be.

And in the coaching context, “If you feel it, say it” is for me not so different from what I recall observing Thomas Leonard demonstrate about coaching, in “sharing what was there”, which in my paraphrase is about picking up on all the signals, listening to and feeling your own reactions and sharing those in an appropriate way. But with due respect to Thomas’ memory, I must say that in coaching, as in life, I prefer the Sandler formulation - “if you feel it, say it”.

Works for me.

Posted on Jan 4th 07 by Des Walsh.

Formerly a senior government executive and for the past eighteen years a business owner, Des Walsh mentors business owners who are keen to go to their next level and keen to stay unfried in the process. He is also a blogging evangelist, specializing in strategic business use of blogging and other social media tools. His home base is Australia’s Gold Coast region. http://www.deswalsh.com

Other posts on Coachamatic by Des Walsh.

41 Responses to “On Saying How You Feel, Not Just What You Think”


  1. 1 Erin Blaskie Jan 6th, 2007 at 3:07 am

    My favorite part of this post was the following:

    “And by the way, email can be a trap in this department, in that apart from smiley faces, how I feel is not always clear in terms of what I say. Sometimes it’s good to pick up the phone and say, “You know, what I’m feeling is ….”.”

    I think too often we turn to our e-mail as a way to get out our “feelings” instead of doing what you suggested - picking up the phone and saying what we really mean. I think if more people did that, both personally and professionally, we could avoid a lot of superficial conversations and the usage of emoticons.

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