In a posting today, Kos wrote:
“There will always be a number of people who aren't happy that I don't worship at the altar of their favorite candidate. Anything but blind worship is considered disrespect….Every election there's a crew that screams about biases and the like….Really, all the whining does neither you, nor your favorite guy any favors. It does the opposite -- it turns people off from your guy.”
I discuss this phenomenon of "activists influencing people AWAY from their cause" at length in my new book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (graciously reviewed on DK by both SusanG and OrangeClouds115). I write:
"You also have to be attractive, not in the fashion sense but in the pleasant/personable/good company sense. At the very least, you shouldn’t be a person who repels others…Many activists, in fact, manifest a repellent—again, in the literal sense—personality: unhappy, sour, judgmental, bitter, alienated or angry. And then they wonder why they have such a hard time selling their viewpoint! "
More below the fold...
Badgering, guilting, shaming and otherwise trying to coerce people into adopting your viewpoint is not just bad behavior, but bad activism. The reason it doesn’t work is because, put simply, people are more likely to be persuaded by someone they like, and whom they think likes and respects them, than someone they dislike, or feel dislikes or disrespects them. In fact, they are likely to flee from the latter – which is just what Kos is describing!
Salespeople learn all this in Sales 101, and so do the best activists, who shamelessly embrace non-exploitive marketing and sales techniques. What top salespeople and activists understand are three maxims I call Bitter Truths because no one, in my experience, likes to hear them. Bitter Truth #1 is:
“The success of your venture depends much less on the quality of whatever it is you are selling than on the quality of the marketing and sales you use to sell it.”
The evidence for Bitter Truth #1 is overwhelming. In classes I ask people to ponder these questions:
Is McDonald’s the best restaurant in the world?
Does Microsoft produce the best software?
Is John Grisham the best writer?
It’s safe to say that the answer, in all cases, is “no.”
McDonald’s, Microsoft and Grisham may not be the best at what they do, but their marketing and sales wins the day for them.
Let’s also be clear, however, that “quality” means different things to different people. McDonald’s may not win any haute cuisine awards, but the company isn’t going after the gourmet market. Rather, it’s going after the cheap food / comfort food / consistency of menu / convenience of service / child-friendly markets, and if one or more of these criteria are important to you, then McDonald’s does indeed offer a quality product. You can make a similar argument for Microsoft or Grisham. The very fact that a product is popular proves that a lot of people see it as “quality” in at least one crucial attribute.
Needless to say, Bitter Truth #1 also applies to the political and social arenas. It explains why some terrible people become president, and some much better ones do not. It also explains why you sometimes have trouble selling your “common sense,” “obvious” or even “essential” viewpoint to audiences. While your cause may indeed be “gourmet,” your audience may well be craving “comfort food.” Whether they truly want that comfort food (or “comfort politics”), or have simply been convinced they want it by the opposition’s zillion-dollar marketing and sales campaign, is irrelevant to our discussion. Bitter Truth #1 wins out.
Of course, if you can combine an authentically valuable “product” with great grassroots "marketing and sales" (i.e., activism), then you can move mountains and defeat even the most megafunded enemy. That’s the story of all great progressive activism in a nutshell.
In business and in activism, however, expecting the customer to automatically share your standard of quality is a classic screw-up, and usually fatal to the endeavor at hand. Your job is not to dictate to the customer what he or she ought to think or like, but to frame your views and approach to the customer’s reality and needs, so that he or she is most likely to “buy.”
And speaking of needs...
Blaming the Victim
As if Bitter Truth #1 isn’t unsettling enough, here’s Bitter Truth #2:
"People buy a product not because of its intrinsic qualities or characteristics, but because they believe it will either solve a problem or meet a need that they have."
In other words, we don’t buy something because we think it is wonderful or beautiful or valuable—although the thing we are buying may possess all of those qualities and more. We buy it because we believe it will help us either solve a problem or meet a need that we have—in other words, as a means to an end. There is even a business axiom that neatly conveys this concept, “People don’t buy drills; they buy holes.”
If you think about it, Bitter Truth #2 actually explains Bitter Truth #1. If we buy something because we believe that it will fill a need, and marketing and sales are the primary vehicles sellers (or activists) have for fostering that belief, then it makes sense that it is the quality of your marketing and sales, rather than the quality of the thing you are selling, that will determine your success.
No one likes Bitter Truth #2. Cooks wish that people bought their cooking because they love it; artists hate it when someone buys one of their paintings “to go with the sofa.” Hard as those people find it to accept Bitter Truth #2, however, many activists find it even harder. That’s because the things activists sell—peace, justice, freedom, equality, etc.—tend to be extremely high value: the most valuable things on the planet, in fact. This blinds them to the fact that Bitter Truth #2 holds no matter how valuable the thing you are selling is.
Here’s Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals:
“The first requirement for communication and education is for people to have a reason for knowing.”
In other words: a need. He also writes:
“Communication for persuasion . . . is getting a fix on [your audience’s] main value or goal and holding your course on that target. You don’t communicate with anyone purely on the rational facts or ethics of an issue.”
Notice how neatly he incorporates both Bitter Truth #1 and Bitter Truth #2 into that concise statement.
The needs I'm talking about, by the way, are far more fundamental than "I need clean air," "I need human rights," or "I need a progressive society." They are more on the order of, "I need to feel good about myself and my choices," "I need to feel safe," "I need beauty/spirituality/a connection to nature in my life," or "I need to belong to a community" - that last, a common, and quite legitimate, reason for doing activism. Most of us, in fact, are motivated by multiple needs at once, some "surface" and some deeper. But it's appealing to the deeper, more compelling needs that wins most sales - which is yet another reason why bullying, which by definition leaves your "target" feeling less safe and valued, doesn't work.
Activists who don’t understand or accept Bitter Truth #2 are usually easily spotted. They tend to be ineffective, and they also tend to go around asking questions such as the following, often in tones of high dudgeon:
What’s wrong with these people?! [Meaning: their audience.] Can’t they see that my cause is in their best interests?
Usually, the activist is asking rhetorically, which is a shame: if he asked for real, he might have a shot at answering the questions, thus arriving at Bitter Truth #2 and the key to improving his effectiveness.
As activists become more and more frustrated, they often ask more pointed questions, including:
How can people be so ignorant?
How can people be so selfish?
How can people be so short-sighted?
And the ever-popular,
How can people be so stupid?!
At this point, the activist is actively blaming the victim—i.e., his audience—for his own inability to, or unwillingness to, convey his viewpoint effectively. And the sad truth is that anyone who feels so negatively about his customers is unlikely to succeed at selling to them. So the more frustrated and embittered an activist gets, the more likely he is to fail.
The best salespeople and activists are successful largely because they build positive relationships almost effortlessly, and with a wide range of people. They are “people people” who love diversity, not just of race, class, religion, age, or gender-orientation, but of mind. They enjoy talking to people—or, more to the point, listening to them—hearing their stories and opinions, and figuring out what makes them tick. They find human nature and human behavior endlessly fascinating. And instead of blaming and berating their audiences for failing to agree with them, they work hard on understanding the (usually rational or at least understandable, if not optimal) reasons for their audience's viewpoints, and on improving their own persuasive skills..
Oh, I did mention that there were **3** Bitter Truths! Looks like I’ve given you enough here to chew on, though…I’ll get to #3 in a separate diary…
Adapted from The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way
by Hillary Rettig (Lantern Books, 2006)
www.lifelongactivist.com