subject: Why Selling Into A Group Can Feel So Gross [print this page] At the front of the room someone is doing their pitch. Theyve just spent 30-50 minutes on their topic of choice, and now they are selling their system or program from the stage.
Some in the audience are swooning, credit cards out. Others are crestfallen, knowing they cant buy in. Still others have a disgusted look on their face.
Ive been at many of these kinds of pitches over the years and even delivered them myself a time or two. I just recently gained an insight into why they often feel so gross and how to make them more ethical.
At nearly any event you have a tribe gathered. Meaning people who feel like they belong to a group. If the event is done well, there can be a powerful sense of community created, where people experience a high of intimacy and belonging that may not be present in their day-to-day life.
This sense of community and belonging is even more powerful at events that focus on transformational, spiritual, or cause-related work.
These are potentially dangerous waters for any business. Belonging is such a core human need, and it is so lacking in much of modern culture that it can overwhelm folks. When you make a pitch from the front of the room, it affects people strongly. So strongly that its not possible for many people to make an individual choice based on their own heart. Instead, groupthink is a
tide that can sweep away their sense of groundedness, no matter how good the sellers intention.
Selling into a crowd is a fundamentally different dynamic than having the same conversation one-on-one.
Imagine this:
A respected, cherished teacher is at the front of the room. Its cost each person hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars to be there between tuition, travel, lodging and food. Theres a glow, and nearly everyones been pretty darn happy with the event so far.
The exercises, the teachings, the hanging out in each others presence has woven folks together. This happens on the personality level, where people just like each other and want to be near; folks eat meals together. Its a hard decision just to take space for yourself to rest, because it can feel so good hanging out.
It also happens on an energetic level where hearts become woven together. There is a group heart that emerges in an event. Everyone becomes emotional or spiritual family to some degree or another.
When the pitch comes from a presenter, its not just a simple choice of whether to buy or not. The pitch represents a pathway, and the leader is traveling in that direction.
For everyone in the room, the choice of buying the program or not is really to some degree a decision of whether you are going to continue to belong to the group or not. People who are less vulnerable to this are the ones who already have a strong sense of belonging with the leader or elsewhere. For instance:
long term clients who have enough of a personal relationship with the presenter that they know their sense of belonging isnt at risk;
peers of the presenter, those who have their own
communities, know that their sense of belonging and connection to the presenter exists at a different level;
visitors to the community, those who have a strong sense of belonging to another community or family, whose need to belong wasnt high when they came to the event.
There are also people who have a personality with a strong rebellious or independent streak who may be cranky about the pitch, so will probably not buy.
If the presenter has done a good job connecting with their right people, the room is going to be full mainly of folks who belong to their community, and many fewer of the exceptions I list above.
You can see the problem, cant you? For someone in the room, its going to be hard to tell how much of their decision to buy into the pitch is coming from a real sense of Divine guidance, a personality sense of Yeah, I could really use that. or being moved by the tide
of group energy, I really want to continue belonging!
This is often exacerbated in these situations when individuals stand up to announce their decision to buy and frame it as a choice of commitment and courage. This can be absolutely true, yet if the group ends up applauding, it reads in the group as Buy, and you
receive approval and belonging.
This dynamic is well-known in the seminar field and is often used manipulatively to drive greater sales at events. Painful! Many people avoid or are uncomfortable making pitches into a group for this exact reason.
If you arent aware of this dynamic, even if you go to great lengths to make it okay for participants to choose from their own hearts, people can still end up manipulated by the group energy. No matter how strongly you stress individual choice, if you dont address the dynamic of the group energy, it will be an invisible
tide sweeping people along. Because its invisible, someone can think they are making a decision for themselves, and yet like swimming in a tide, they can end up somewhere far from where they would have ended up without the tides influence.
Your offer is still coming from your heart as a way to serve. Dont let your knowledge of the group dynamic stop you from offering.
Just take some time to acknowledge the dynamic and work with it. The people who do buy will be the right ones for you, and those who dont will stick around longer.
