What Does Best Working with a Corporate Psychopath Share with Optimal Selling?

I've lately seen a coincidental flurry on workplace hazards when dealing with tricky people. From the angry likely being more successful to how narcissism supposedly greases those often murky career wheels. And here's another.

Given that roughly one in a hundred people are supposedly psychopaths, that quintet of (similar, save for impulsiveness) narcissist alarm terms above might suggest a disproportionately larger amount of them sully our workplaces.

At least one recent survey suggests this is worryingly the case. Up to one in twenty-five in our world. Meaning we are bound to encounter their ilk prospect-side.

Yet one of the key ways to blunt their destructive presence intrigued me. As it is also a pillar of how we must seek to best sell.

Here's Dr Holly Andrews, an associate professor in coaching and behavioral change at the UK’s Henley Business School;

if you work with a corporate psychopath, understand that this person is going to always put their personal priorities first, so try to
“align what’s in their interest with what’s in the organization’s interest.”

The only deviation from this with the tenet of solution selling is that buyers often try to make a balance for both personal and professional win.

Yet the indicator is strong.

Think of that word used; align.

Even if fixated only on themselves, it is the symbiosis between their own and the organisation goals both that allows true buying success to flow.

Dr Andrews advises more tactics too.

• try to get corporate psychopaths to co-operate with you rather than exert authority
• you can place a ‘counter-sidekick’ with them, someone they trust who’s got the opposing traits
• put a focus on the importance of the process, honesty and openness rather than the endgame

That last one I find especially prescient.

Just the kind of vital data we must track for every person on every deal.