What Can Survivor & Big Brother Teach Us About Selling?
I have a guilty pleasure. Well, I have more than one, but at the moment I’d like to have a little fun and talk about one of them. I really like competitive reality shows. I don’t generally like other reality shows, just the competitive ones, specifically Survivor and Big Brother. I reference these shows from time to time in my writing, which some folks will remember, and I do the same in my upcoming book and my upcoming online course.
Why do I care so much about these shows? Aside from the fact that they are entertaining to me, I see many opportunities in life to take lessons that can train us in sales and business, and this is one of them. These shows give us a unique vantage point that allows us to see life and how decisions are made from an angle not always made available to us. So much of the behavioral ability that we need in sales doubles as social skills that we use everyday in life. This means that we get to learn from everything; including pop culture.
As you are likely aware, these shows are strategy games where players get voted out one by one as the game progresses, so it is important to influence others to vote the way you want them to in order to get the right people out of the game at the right time, and to simply remain in the game yourself. The issue is that there are a dozen or more people all trying to influence each other at any given time.
The overwhelming majority of players severely lack any subtlety whatsoever. When interviewed by producers where other players cannot hear them, they talk about how good their strategy is and how they understand the game so well, and as a result they know that the best next move is to get player X out of the game. Then they return to the group, find someone who they know needs to be influenced and tell them that they “need to vote player X out of the game”, and list the reasons why. While this is a form of strategy, strategy does not mean anything if you can’t convince people to go along with it.
Most of the time what happens is that the players who feel insecure with their place in the game, at the moment of the conversation, agree to go along with the plan, and the players who feel more secure and have other ideas also agree, but then secretly work behind the first players back on another plan. So, what is going on here, and what is the takeaway?
What is going on is that the person who is told directly how to vote automatically thinks to themself, “why is this other person deciding how I vote?” If the person who was told how to vote feels secure in the game, that will cause them to dig in on their own plan even more because they now sense a formidable force that they will certainly have to deal with down the road. And if they don’t feel secure in their game, they may agree, and may even go along with the plan, but they will be incentivized to look for others to work with at the first opportunity.
So, what is the answer? Well, it’s simple but rare. It is so uncommon to see a player who has a plan ask other players what their plan is, what they are worried about most, and why they are thinking what they are thinking. If players did that more, they would know what other players’ biggest insecurities and concerns are, and could speak to those in future conversations. Also, of note is the fact that having a conversation with someone right before a vote, is always seen as trying to force an outcome, but more inquisitive conversations earlier in the cycle would be seen as more strategic and constructive.
All of the above is true when power is equal, but it is even more so when the person trying to do the persuading has more relative power. In shows like Survivor and Big Brother power can shift quickly based on the circumstances, and a person who had power one day can be the most likely to be voted out the next, while a person that had no power can sometimes find themselves being looked to by others as the outcome decider.
Oftentimes when people on these shows gain power, they become fixated on executing a very specific plan that they have envisioned, to the exclusion of all else. They find themselves in a position of power, and then falsely calculate that executing their own plan, including voting out the people that they believe threaten them, is the best way to hold on to that power. And sure, to their credit, if they did have complete control, and could make sure that the exact people they wanted to be voted out were, in fact, voted out, they might be right. But that is not how life or the game works, and there are other people with independent brains in the game. Regardless, they push forward trying to exert maximum influence on their alliance, or within their sphere of influence hoping to be able to execute perfectly on their plan.
Sometimes they get their way in the short run, and sometimes they don’t but inevitably, there comes a time when they are no longer holding power and have to rely on others. That’s how the game works, and that’s how life works.
As a player starts to develop power, they are in the perfect situation to strategically share power and democratize certain parts of the strategic decision making to other people in their sphere of influence. This can earn the person loyal supporters who trust that they are heard and valued by that person. Regardless of the presence of structures and titles, power will shift, and if a person who just found themselves in a position of power misses an opportunity to strategically share power, they will find themselves in a much worse position when they no longer hold the same level of power.
Even if they are right, and their plan is best, a suboptimal plan with buy-in from a team or a group, that is well executed, will achieve far superior results compared to an optimal plan with limited buy-in and subpar execution. Buy-in from the team actually improves results even if the plan is not perfect. It is not that people on the team all need to get their way, that is impossible, but they need to feel heard, and valued, and their ideas accounted for. If that process takes place, then the majority of people will be more bought-in to the plan and share the vision and work harder and smarter to achieve it. This will mean that even sub-optimal plans yield better results than optimal ones that are not well executed.
Basically, the point here is that creating plans and then trying to persuade people to execute the plan as you have constructed it will often lead to sub-optimal outcomes. Whether it is a project or program within your organization, or a sales process with a customer, the more your counterpart has access to real influence and feels that access, the more buy-in there is, and the more likely you are to end up with collaboration and a high level of execution.
Telling another person what to do is a form of confrontation, and that means it triggers the fight or flight response. People don’t change their mind because you tell them to. Instead, they entrench (fight), or they disengage (flight), and then do whatever they want without you. Those are the two options. So, developing conversations before the critical decision point, and allowing your counterpart to truly be heard and feel like they have an opportunity to shape and influence will help you avoid the fight, as well as the flight.
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