Business Basics: Interested Versus Interesting

Business Basics: Interested Versus Interesting

You may have read a couple of my recent posts about gratitude and being of service and how they positively affect both my life and my business. Based on popular demand, or more honestly on Facebook likes, I decided to write a little more about some common sense things I do and how they help me to be more successful in my business and life.

A long time ago, for me, a mentor told me I needed to be interested versus interesting or I was going to be a tremendous boor my entire life. “America,” she said, taking a drag off an unfiltered Camel cigarette, “you are darling but such a boor at parties,” she said as she exhaled a plume of blue gray smoke, “try to be more Jackie Kennedy. That woman was interested and interesting.”

I did not understand at the time because I was 20 and knew absolutely everything, so I did not follow up with any questions. This was exactly what she was talking about.

Fast forward through my first career in television and film production, which by the way I found made me very interesting because everyone always wants to know about that type of work, and I find myself in sales. Sales is different; in sales it literally pays to be interested.

Some of you may be familiar with the Socratic Sales Method which advises being interested and asking questions to overcome objections and make a sale. Socratic sales has four benefits:

1.  Makes you look smart
2.  Uncovers objections
3.  Makes you an authority figure
4.  Drives the conversation

This is exactly what genuinely being interested versus interesting does, but without the mercenary and manipulative feeling that comes from the Socratic Sales Method.

If I had only known that asking questions and being interested, would make me look smart I would have started doing it when I was 20. If I had known that being interested uncovers objections, I would probably be married or in a relationship. If I had known asking questions would make me look like an authority figure I would have jumped on the bandwagon a long time ago. And if I knew that by asking questions I could drive a conversation to a place where I wanted it to go I would have started asking questions immediately.

In my early sales career, I briefly scanned the Socratic Sales Method and tossed it aside as too manipulative for my likes. I wish I could say I started to ask questions more frequently but I did not. I had a lot of training to overcome.

The training I am speaking of is learned in school and in life. I am a man and by my very existence, I thought, am interesting to a number of people. My parents found me very interesting. The people I was in relationships found me very interesting. Sometimes the people I worked for found me interesting. I tried very hard to learn whatever I was learning and that made me interesting, I assumed.

Unfortunately I confused interesting with importance and it was not until later in life when I found I had cheated myself innumerable times by only learning as much as I was taught or told about people, places, things and ideas. I confused teaching with learning and robbed myself of countless opportunities to be more interesting by refusing to be interested.

Not only did I not know the importance of being interested, but I also felt that it made me look weak or insecure. But today, I have enough confidence to be interested. I no longer choose to be ignorant, nor feel stupid because I ask questions and am interested in the answers people give to those questions.

There is a quote by Herbert Spencer that I keep posted up in my house. I think it is important and relevant to the interested versus interesting topic.

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

This simple thing, asking questions and listening to the answers, is one of the keys to my success in business and in life. It seems so simple but on reflection it was very hard to learn.

When I am not interested, I am ignorant. Ignorance is not very interesting.

If you have any other questions, or want to share your story, please reply to this post, contact me via my website, my facebook page, or on Twitter @AmericaFoy.