Leave your Child in the car

It’s really hard. Perhaps the hardest part of business. Somehow you have to strike the balance between being pragmatic, sympathetic and in control. Not just in sales, but in all parts of your business life. In fact, in all parts of your life. If you want the best from people you have to be prepared to understand them and have their best interests at heart; that’s being sympathetic. If you want things done you need to be prepared to make concessions and trade-offs; pragmatic. If you want success you need to be in as much control as possible, you need to have agency. It’s a balancing act.

The bit of us that is most likely to upset that delicate balance is our child ego state. We all carry within us the living memory of all the emotional ups and downs of when we were a child. There are sights sounds and smells that stimulate strong reactions in us that come right from our earliest days. Those impressions are deeply imbedded in us and they’ll never be eradicated. They are reactions designed to keep us safe with our own interests protected. Unfortunately those reactions are often incompatible with keeping that balance. Somehow we have to honour that child in us whilst gently, but firmly, keeping our child ego out of the way. David Sandler had a strong image when he said “Leave your Child in the car.” He meant, when you are having a business meeting, leave your Child ego behind and go into that meeting fully in control with your Adult and Parent ego states.

The Child ego state can be described as having different parts. According to Transactional Analysis we have to be aware of Little Professor, Natural Child, Adapted Child and Rebellious Child.

Little Professor wants desperately to show off, prove he is right, show superiority and dazzle with brilliance. I have seen many Technical Salespeople think that this is the right way to sell. Meanwhile the potential client becomes less and less comfortable about buying anything.

Natural Child has no place in sales. It’s not the time to fool around or make jokes that could fall flat or be unintentionally offensive.

Rebellious Child is far too likely to dismiss potentially good business, just because not everything is going his or her way.

Adapted Child wants to be a friend to everybody. That’s not helpful if it’s all “love me, love me”. They’ll end up doing whatever it takes to be liked, regardless of how beneficial that is long-term for our contact or ourselves.

So how do we keep our Child out of it? It’s hard when we feel under pressure. The first step is to realise what’s happening. Next step is to snap everybody into a more healthy place. The easiest way to do that is to ask a question from our Adult ego state. We immediately feel more in control and those around us are forced to respond in a more Adult fashion too. The heat goes out of the conversation. And we can send our Child back to wait in the car!