Does 'Everybody Lies' Mean Each New Prospect Is Like A First Date?

Tricky ground here, hey.

This book doing the rounds right now across media sofas comes from an obsessed google trends data explorer.

Knowing the wizened insider axiom, “all buyers are liars”, I couldn’t help but be intrigued.

The mismatches interviewers gravitate towards were unsurprisingly relationship based, in particular what goes on in the bedroom. We apparently tell our friends one thing, then search online on the ‘reality’.

Here’s one such exchange, from The Atlantic. What happens on a first date that makes a second more likely?

For the women, a woman frequently signals interest by talking about herself using the word “I” a lot. A man signals interest by talking in a deep monotone voice. A woman signals disinterest by using hedge words, such as “sort of,” “kind of,” or “probably.” A man can increase the odds of a woman wanting a second date by laughing at her jokes or showing support, such as saying “that must have been difficult” or “that sounds tough.”

Quite a bit to unpack there.

The rabid dangers of drawing business-place parallels perilously discarded, this reminded me first of interviewing. You know you’ve had a good one when the other party does all the talking, kind of thing.

Then that other first-meet minefield, the initial sales call on a brand new prospect.

We’re being shown the politics between a boy and a girl. Where’s the see-saw’s fulcrum? Who may be chasing versus choosing? Dating progress down to much more than the mere ‘said’.

Still, it seems that one side divulges. The other encourage divulgence.

Think back to any first-meet disaster.

One aspect I painfully recognise is those “hedge words”.

Upon hearing them – and there’s a sizeable library of non-commit filler – I always try and dig in. How dare they think they can fob me off? Hoping my shovel will unearth a genuine point of interest, rather than causing a hole for me to be swallowed whole. When you start sounding like a breathless radio or telly reporter, you know that ‘second date’ is unlikely.

Vagueness, detachment, indifference. These from our prospect certainly do kill any fruitful sales process blossoming. So I feel there’s something in being alert to the hedge word alarm.

One final point. A different road completely opens. The author also believes a search engine box to be “digital truth serum”. What have we to hand that’s a selling truth serum…?