The Art of Drinking from a Fire Hose

Every year around this time, I start a new cycle of classes and as usual, I’ve got some eager, excited, anticipating students, many of whom will (I can already tell) work themselves into a bit of a frenzy wanting to soak up as much persuasion as possible in a short period of time. As one client put it, “I kind of feel like I’m drinking water out of a fire hose.”

For those students I say, Stop! Take a deep breath. . . now let it go.

Persuasion is a process, just as living is a process.

This program can feel intense and content rich. That’s because it is. And when something is as intense and content rich as this, people can choose to become overwhelmed. Here are some suggestions that I think are helpful.

For students just starting out (and this holds true across the board from learning a new language to learning an instrument to learning persuasion), the first thing I suggest is LISTEN. Open your ears and let it in. Even for topics that are vast, which you don’t believe you are absorbing, be assured, if you listen, you are absorbing.

This learning is ongoing because A, there’s so much of it, and B it’s ever evolving. If you don’t get the opportunity of hearing something the first go around, you’ll hear it again later in the year or the next year, you’ll keep hearing things. Get it at whatever level you can and then start applying it. Then as you apply it, I’ll show you how to refine it and make it even more powerful.

What we are really studying here is human behavior. This is something you will hear me say over and over. We are studying human behavior, and since human behavior is not nor will ever be entirely predictable, we keep improving our strategies to be able to interact persuasively.

This learning keeps us on the leading edge all the time compared to those that have typical sales training as a background. People are individuals with different criteria, with different ways of interacting, and as such, the keys to unlocking their particular patterns are all going to be different as well.

Some of my students have been working with me for four or five years. Some have just started within the last month. There will be even more new people in the months to come.

Many new students have the expectation that they should be able to master persuasion immediately, if not sooner. I can safely say, I have not mastered persuasion and I’ve been at it for years. I don’t think this can be mastered as there is always something new around the corner.

Obviously, it doesn’t hurt to do your homework. Learning is going to happen in a variety of ways and the homework helps to install this information. So to my new student who was drinking from a fire hose, I said, “If you step back and have perspective on this, imagine yourself able to catch the spray from the fire hose instead of having it aimed straight at your face.”