“Dr. Saleslove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Enrollment” by Tony Rutt
What are the dynamics at play when you discuss the NWTA with an uninitiated man? What mindset do you need to flawlessly have a discussion about the NWTA? What skills do you need? What is the underlying process at play during an enrollment discussion, and what are some of the techniques to use?
I am going to address those questions in this article, in the hope that more warriors can have flawless enrollment discussions with uninitiated men. I use the word “flawless” deliberately. Not every man you talk to about the NWTA will sign up, that would on some level be perfect, and unrealistic. However, if you understand what the ‘under’ is in an enrollment discussion, what you bring to the discussion, and where it needs to go to reach a decision (one way or the other) then you will have done your part flawlessly, regardless of what the man ultimately decides.
This information comes from some of the many sales trainings I have conducted. “Sales,” I hear you scream, “Enrollment isn’t sales!” Well, if you think of sales, at best, as the clean exchange of information to determine if there is a potential match between what is offered and what is needed, I hope you will see that many of the same principles can apply. In archetypal terms, you will bring all quadrants into an enrollment discussion, not least of all your lover which will convey your attitudes and beliefs about the NWTA, your empathy for the other man, your unique language. What is offered here is from the other quadrants: warrior structure, magician skills and sovereign wisdom to support your enrollment lover.
Let’s begin with some basic psychology. Men will make the rational decision to enroll for underlying irrational reasons. They make the decision with their gut and then use their brain to rationalize the decision. Men act from the right brain hemisphere of emotion not from the logical left side. Men will respond to compelling language. So all this being the case, our role is more complicated than providing “just the facts”. We certainly will need to provide hard factual information, but we will also need to guide someone who is probably very much in his head into his more irrational, emotional side to make a commitment to the weekend.
To navigate through an enrollment discussion and effectively support an uninitiated man, we need two ‘enrollment toolsets’:
- A mindset – attitudes and beliefs around enrollment
- A skill-set – knowledge of and skills for a flawless enrollment discussion.
Looking at the mindset first. These are your attitudes and beliefs. Which are, in turn, what you believe works, what drives you, your consciousness of what you do. You having the appropriate mindset is the primary determinant of ongoing long-term success in enrollment discussions.
And what is the right mindset? Here’s a good indicator. Is any fear coming up for you around this discussion of enrollment? Some fear, of course, is healthy, but a paralyzing fear around enrollment is not. If you feel that your attitudes and beliefs are congruent with enrolling men in the NWTA, terrific! But if not, let’s take a look at fear and enrollment.
When it comes to fear and enrollment, fear can be boiled down to two main ones: fear of relationship, or fear of task. Fear of relationship comes from apprehension, oppositional behavior (fear of feeling fear), dependence, conventionality, need for approval, and a hard time delegating or compromising. Fear of task comes from a preference for achievement, people, problem solving, competitiveness and moving towards one’s destiny. So are you running your world or is it running you? Who’s pulling your strings? If you have what’s known as ‘high external levers of control,’ perhaps better known to warriors as ‘victim-hood’, you are less likely to be successful at enrollment discussions. However, if you have high internal levers of control, you are more likely to be self-accountable and to be more successful at enrollment discussions. I think there’s plenty of material in there for work statements for us all! If you do experience fear around the prospect of enrollment discussions try on some of these ‘attitude adjusters’: be optimistic, take risks, listen better, offer more, be more available, connect, be empathetic.
Turning now to the skill-set required for enrollment. It can help to understand the underlying process and dynamic at work in an enrollment discussion and where you are at in that process. Also, having some basic skills to help you navigate and facilitate the discussion is beneficial.
So how does a man come to say yes to the NWTA? In a nutshell, it’s when he sees the value of the NWTA in meeting his needs. Our role is to move men from not seeing or understanding the value of the weekend to a point where they perceive its value exceeds its costs, and they understand that it meets their stated needs. So, often we will need to work on increasing the man’s understanding and perception of the value of the NWTA until we can get him to a ‘yes point’.
But what exactly is ‘value’? Simply stated, value is needs being fulfilled. Clearly then we need to understand the uninitiated man’s needs. We do so in order that we can frame the benefits of the NWTA in terms that address what he is looking for. And where do we look for needs during an enrollment discussion? One way of looking for how needs show up is in terms of the man’s relationships: his work relationships, his personal relationships, and his relationship with himself. Needs show up in three ways: in verbs and actions (“I’m leaving my…”), in objectives or “to” statements (“I want to…”) and in challenges or “how” statements (“How will I ever be able to…”).
Needless to say a man may not willingly offer up his needs, so we need to be prepared with questions that will help uncover them. Use open-ended facilitative questions that avoid a closed yes or no answer and encourage the man to open up and speak. As in guts or any process work, be empathetic but not sympathetic. And if it’s appropriate, ask high-yield, juicy, scary questions to get his deepest needs. In a fluid discussion, it can be easy to be knocked off track, so I suggest that you keep in mind the following three questions (courtesy of Steve Newcomb) that are the basis of any guts process: I) What’s going on with this man? II) What needs to happen? III) What messages is he getting? An enrollment discussion is not a guts process, its objective is to inform and educate a man about the NWTA and help guide him to a decision point, however I think these three questions are an excellent way to track with an uninitiated man.
Once we have uncovered the man’s needs, its time for us to present the benefits of the NWTA. Let’s make the vital distinction between benefits and features. A feature is an attribute (the car has a V12 engine, the NWTA lasts two nights), whereas a benefit is what we actually get (you’ll leave everyone in the dust in this car, the NWTA will give you a fresh perspective on your life). Men want benefits and solutions, not the features and gritty detail. Remember that men respond to compelling language, or to use an old adage “sell don’t tell”, so again as in guts use a man’s own keywords back to him. Concretely, this means discussing the value and benefit of the NWTA in terms of how it will help meet his stated needs, and the value and benefits of the solutions (iGroup, training, support, etc, etc) that come as a consequence. I’m not here to put words into your mouth. Your communicating of the benefits will, and can only be, in your own voice, from your heart.
And once you’ve presented the benefits of the NWTA and addressed his needs and answered his questions, where do you go from there? Well, you invite a response, simply “What do you think?” And then you shut up, and wait for his response, however long it takes for him to reply. To jump in and save the man, to not let him sit with his feelings, is to do him a grave disservice. There’s a chance that he will want to sign up on the spot, but more likely are expressions of fear or skepticism, anger, misunderstanding, and more questions. Anticipate this. Prepare by reaching back to when someone first introduced the idea of the NWTA to you. Did you jump at it or did you have a lot of questions and concerns?
When a man (almost inevitably) comes back to us with a response other than “That all sounds fantastic, where do I sign up?” What do we do? Or as our President said recently, how do you turn a “challenge into an opportunity”? Recognize first that the enrollment discussion is a process and rarely a linear one. You may have to circle back around several times until the man is clear on what he needs and what the value to him of the NWTA might be. But fear is what often can come up for you at this stage. “What do I say next?” “How do I answer that?” “I’m losing this guy” “He doesn’t get it?” We all know about the fight or flight response to fear which in this context might look like “You didn’t listen to what I explained” (fight) or “You’re right, it does sound ridiculous, I don’t why I brought it up” (flight). Neither reaction is likely to move a man closer to the NWTA. There are two other reactions to fear however: freeze and facilitation. To freeze at fear is an instinctual self-preservation response, but again it won’t help our discussion much. So we are left with ‘facilitation’.
Think of facilitating as resolving misunderstandings. How much does the uninitiated man ‘get’? What has he potentially not heard? What is he confused about? Does he think that some of his needs will not be met? Have some of his needs remained hidden? Circle around: ask more facilitative questions (“Where do you see benefit from attending a NWTA?” “Tell me why you don’t think it’s for you?”), re-frame the benefits of the NWTA in his terms, and then ask again “What do you think?” You may not be able to demonstrate to the man that the benefits of attending the weekend outweigh the costs; the man may not open up to what he really needs; he may shut down. However, as long as you play your role cleanly you will have had a flawless enrollment discussion.
Postscript.
I want to briefly address something that you may have noticed by its absence. That is, any discussion of the cost of the NWTA. The price of the NWTA is irrelevant. Let me repeat: the price of the NWTA is irrelevant. Here’s why: until I fully understand how something can benefit me, it is impossible for me to value it accurately. When you buy something ‘expensive’ don’t you understand what it does for you first? Don’t confuse value (needs being met) with cost (money). The fact is that MKP is a scare commodity and exclusive (in that only a tiny percentage of men ever become warriors) means it could cost much more than it does. (I would guess that in retrospect you would have paid much more for the NWTA relative to the benefits you’ve received.) The purpose of the enrollment discussion is to help the uninitiated man understand what he needs and what the value of the benefits of the NWTA are potentially worth to him. But this is not a monetary discussion. What price can you put on regaining your life? It’s beyond money. If you frame the discussion first and foremost in terms of determining whether the NWTA is even a ‘fit’ for him, (“Is it something you would even benefit from?”) you can legitimately leave any discussion of the cost off the table. To do otherwise, to have a figure out there, is to keep the man in his head and make your job that much harder.
