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Iceberg

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CONTENTS

The power of silence

The iceberg

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© Copyright by GEKA-Management Verlags AG, Glarus

These training instructions are printed as manuscript. They, or partsthereof, may not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hiredout or otherwise circulated. All rights reserved, including the right of translation into foreign languages. 010112



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How to overcome the “Neanderthal” and secure the help of giants.

Example 1

The manager sends for a trainee. The young person enters the officeand stands in front of the manager’s desk, expectant. The managerlooks the trainee straight in the face, in a quiet, friendly manner, silent-ly and a little longer than usual. What will happen? – The young personwill not be able to stand the tension and will grin awkwardly or – if he/she is cheeky – ask directly if there is something wrong. In any casehe/she will do something to break the unbearable silence.

Example 2Do you remember a scene in a Western where everything was in tur-moil? It was amusing, but not in the least frightening. But in “RiverBeach Inn”, when the actors were dead silent, and not even a mousewas stirring, there was a strange feeling of suspense, and you could feel

your own heartbeat.

How would you explain these astounding impacts?

An uncanny, incomprehensible power

Nothing on earth impresses and disturbs our subconscious, our “Nean-derthal”, more than ordinary silence. This silence recalls a situation inthe wilds, one hundred thousand years ago, when not the faintestbreeze stirred the leaves. There was dead silence, and the slightest noiseserved as a warning. Such silence is foreboding; it affects our “Nean-derthal” like some invisible power.

Silence is uncanny because we do not know what it means. If a suddensilence spreads over some congenial gathering, the result can bepainful; everyone feels uneasy, yet no one dares move until the spell isbroken.

Deliberate silence is a tremendously effective tool. It is an effectivetool because most people have no idea of it’s impact and even less of how to profit from it. It makes us uneasy if we are not trained in the art.Once I know what silence means, it is not particularly difficult for meto remain silent, if necessary, longer than the other person.

To put it bluntly: Many people are ineffective communicators becausethey do not know how to be silent. We can recognise the weight of si-lence only if we have learned how much silence can express. It mayseem unimportant, but it never fails to affect us, and it is up to us to con-trol its effect – not only on ourselves, but on others. Do you know howmany kinds of silence there are? Have you experienced embarrassedsilence, frosty silence, active silence, grim silence, humble silence, fear-ful silence, sinister silence, challenging silence, oppressive silence,meaningful silence, guilty silence, reserved silence, awkward silence,impressing silence, mysterious silence, arrogant silence etc.?

The power of silence

Silence:a tremendously effective tool

Learn to be silent!

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Henry Miller in “The Tropic of Cancer”:

“There is such an intense silence that it sounds like the Niagara Falls in

my ears.”

Silence is an effective tool because people in this hectic 21st centuryhave lost the feeling for the riches it embraces. What does that mean?Let us recall the following story:

Chuang-Tse, the Chinese philosopher, who lived about 2500 years ago,had to wait twelve years until he had the opportunity to meet a master,with whom he had been corresponding. After a journey of several days,Chuang-Tse finally reached his destination. The two masters bowed toeach other in silence and sat down, one opposite the other. Half an hourlater, Chuang-Tse rose – not a word had been spoken. His friend fol-lowed his example. Again, the two men bowed in silence and took leave

of one another. On the way home the disciples questioned Chuang-Tse:“How is it, master, that you waited so many years to meet your friendonly to sit in silence opposite each other?” Chuang-Tse replied: “It wasthe most beautiful half hour of my whole life. A single word would havebeen too much.”

Just consider this situation! A half hour of silence in the presence of thefriend you have waited twelve years to meet! What a neurotic, noisyrace we are nowadays. For many of us, five minutes silence, five minuteswithout background noise seem an unbearable vacuum.

Konrad Lorenz, the well-known behavioural scientist, writes in hisbook “Das sogenannte Böse” (“On Aggression”): “When two Austrianfarmers want to do a deal, you can tell right from the start who will out-smart the other. Whoever first mentions the matter in hand is weakerand will succumb.” – This statement holds good for silence too. The psy-chology of the situation is the same: It’s a matter of refraining from say-ing what is on the tip of one’s tongue.

Of what use is the knowledge of the power of silence to me?

If we are to win our battle, we should at least know the weapons at ourdisposal. Most people do sense the impact of silence, yet they are notable to recognise its true value and even less able to use it to their ben-

efit. The more important it is that we – who want to have an effect onothers – become fully aware of its importance.

If we fail in our dealings with colleagues or customers, it is rarely be-cause of our talent for keeping quiet. On the contrary, it is often be-cause we talk too much.

Of what use is the knowledge of the power of silence to us? How canwe profit by silence?

The author experienced the following episode: “On my car, which wasonly a year old, the rubber seal around the windscreen was beginningto go at the corners. In my opinion, this should not have happened on4

“It takes us 3 years to learnhow to talk and 50 to learnhow to be silent!”Hemingway

Know the tool anduse it properly!



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such a new car. So I went to the garage and asked for the service man-ager – the person to talk about free of charge repairs. The man, let uscall him Mr. Smith, came out of his office to meet me at the reception

desk. Having greeted me, he immediately asked whether there wassomething wrong with my car. Instead of answering the question, I sim-ply pointed to the car parked in the yard. On our short walk to the yard,Mr. Smith tried at least two or three times to get more out of me. Myonly answer was a silent gesture.

We reached the car, I pointed to the windscreen seal and said: ‘This caris one year old!’ At this Mr. Smith fired questions at me. ‘What deter-gent do you use? Have you a garage? Do you often leave the car neara factory? Do you often park it under trees?’ Instead of answering, I just looked at him without a word. Mr. Smith got more and more flus-tered and talked like a magpie. Suddenly he paused and then he said:

‘Of course, there is no question of a repair under guarantee because Iunderstand the car was bought thirteen months ago!’ Again, I justlooked at him and said nothing. In his painful distress, Mr. Smith con-tinued:‘It can only be a question of a gesture on our part; we would cov-er the labour cost, and you would pay for the material!’ My answer tothis was that I continued to look at him in silence just quietly shakingmy head. Mr. Smith was at his wits’ end and concluded: ‘I don’t have theauthority to do any more, I’ll have to discuss it with the General Man-ager.’ Thereupon I thanked him profusely and assured him that, nodoubt, he would persuade his boss that this was a repair under guaran-tee. The next day, Mr. Smith phoned me to give me the good news thathe had been able to clear the matter with his manager. They would cov-er the full cost.

Note: Please don’t think that it was less of a strain to keep silent all thattime than to argue in the usual manner. Those few minutes were no lessstrenuous for me than for Mr. Smith!”

Another story of practical consequence was told us by a participant inthe course of a sales training.

We were speaking about the disagreeable concessions and discounts,which hard-boiled buyers try to get out of salespeople over and overagain.

In this connection, the participant asked: “How would you have reactedin the following case? – I had placed in front of my prospect the finalcontract for a data processing system, which meant a considerable ex-penditure for him. He picked up his pen to sign, but then turned oncemore to me and said: ‘I want another 2% discount, or the deal with yourcompany is off.’”

Question: What would you have done in this case?

Without further consideration, our reply was: “We would have lookedat the man in silence for so long that he would have been ashamed toact in that way, after all that had been put into the deal.”

Silence requiresabsolute attention.

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The executive replied: “That’s just what I did! I looked at the mansternly, silently and at great length. Do you know what happened? Af-ter a few moments the man blushed (!) and, muttering to himself ‘Well,

one has to ask …’, quickly signed the contract.”

The moral of the story, of course, is not as simple as “just hold yourtongue and wait for the desired reaction from the other party”. It’s notall quite as easy as that. But we have learned a lot if we understand theimpact of silence and are conscious of the fact that deliberately keep-ing silent can be highly profitable.

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Your own examples:

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How is the subconscious influenced? How can people be guided?

Astonishing experiences

Have you ever asked yourself why that small scratch on your brandnew car ruins the pleasure of owning it? A few missing square milli-metres of paint are enough to spoil your appreciation of the manysquare metres of superb gloss. Isn’t that odd?

Similarly with a glass of freezing water: The smallest shock will causethe water to turn to ice and the glass to break.

Perhaps you have had the opportunity to observe the relationship be-tween two people, who live in the same building. They are the best of friends. Then, one day, some small, insignificant incident will put their

friendship to the test. Suddenly, the neighbourly relations do not onlycool off but, in a matter of moments, they turn into deadly enmity.

Have you ever come upon a customer who has been “brainwashed” bythe competition? Whatever the salesperson says, is like water off aduck’s back. The customer seems to be wearing some sort of armour,being so influenced by what the competition had to say. There seems tobe no room for new ideas; basic attitude and viewpoint appear to havebeen determined once and for all.

If you talk to such a customer, it is as if you had a big sponge in yourhand; when and wherever you squeeze it, all you get out is what itsoaked up – the sales talk of the competition.

Every day, the salesperson has to deal with people “brainwashed” bythe competition. It is part of the daily routine to witness how, at someinnocent remark, the other’s feelings jump from one extreme to theother, how a casual word may be considered tactless and so not forgot-ten. Every single day, salespeople must be aware of being judged bytheir car, their suit, their socks, their hairstyle. That’s what makes thesalesperson’s job so difficult and demanding.

On the other hand, we can turn these strange reactions of our fellowhuman beings to our advantage. We can cause the other to forget aboutwhat the competition said and to learn to appreciate our opinion, our

proposition, our offer. We may just as easily win the prospect over byan incidental remark as by our appearance. Therefore, it might be wellworthwhile to give a little thought to the laws, which govern human re-actions.

The Iceberg

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A clear, easily remembered explanation

Think of an iceberg! Only about 1/7th rises above the surface of the wa-

ter. The remaining 6/7ths are under water and not visible to the humaneye. A human being is comparable to an iceberg. Only a very small partshows: the conscious. By far the greater part, however, remains hidden:the subconscious.

What happens inside this iceberg?

Wherever we turn, we receive positive and negative impressions:

“A beautiful tree!”“A flashy car!”“Unpleasant smell of gas!”“A pretty girl!”

“Nice music!”… etc.

Positive and negative impulses flow constantly through that part of theiceberg which is above water. Most of them only pass through quickly.Sometimes, however, one will stick and sink down into the invisiblepart of the iceberg. It seems that no two human beings are alike in thisrespect. One individual will register more positive impressions, the oth-er more negative ones. Extremely selective are pessimists, who accu-mulate nothing but minus points, and optimists, who collect mainly pos-itive signs.

This is the reason why different people form a quite different opinionof one and the same thing, why they react in different ways.To me, Mrs.Smith is very likeable, but to my friend she is anything but. When I amwith Mrs. Smith, I keep collecting positive points; whereas my friend, inthe same situation, will gather nothing but negative impressions.

Whether we collect plus or minus points has nothing to do with ourconscious will. The switch operates completely automatically. The pes-simist cannot help seeing only the negative sides of something. One willsay a bottle is half-empty while the other considers it half-full. Some-one will find the red of a desk top bright and stimulating while theother will say it is gaudy. For one, the black cat is a dear little kitten,whereas for the other it means bad luck. To some people “expensive”means they have to pay a high price, to others the same word stands for“value” and “top quality”. 9



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How can this knowledge help us?

From this we can deduce some laws, which we should definitely know

if we want to influence and guide others:

First law: Everything has two sides, a bright and a dark one. Everythinghas positive and negative aspects.

One feature

with a positive and a negative aspect

Every car has countless features: shape, colour, engine power, fuel con-sumption, wheel diameter, where the ashtrays are placed, price, termsof delivery, guarantee etc. But every single one of these features hastwo sides, a positive and a negative pole, so to speak.

But this does not apply only to a car; any object, any service, any action,any suggestion, any offer has thousands of features, and in turn everysingle one of them has a positive and a negative side.

This simple knowledge is extremely important for the salesperson, be-cause it teaches that every machine, every product, every offer has justas many advantages as disadvantages, as many of each as it has fea-tures; and everything has countless features!

The opportunity for salespeople, therefore, does not lie primarily in theproduct they want to sell. The great opportunity lies in the faculty of observation, imagination and imaginative talent. It should be their aimto discover more features in their offer than anybody else would and,accordingly, to see the positive side of every feature.

Salespeople never sell the product as such; what they sell is the pictureof the product they imagine in their minds and which they cause othersto see. When a product leaves the plant it is unfinished. It is the sales-person who finishes it by giving it a multitude of features, by creating

an image of the product. In this sense, the salesperson is engineer,artist, inventor and creator, all in one.

The fact that we never buy a product as such, but the image we have of it through the salesperson as intermediary, may be illustrated by thefollowing example:

Think of two ballpoint pens that are exactly alike. One is quite new, theother has been used once for perhaps five seconds. Which ball pen willyou choose? Since there is practically no difference between the two,you don’t really care which one the salesperson gives you.

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First law:Everything has two sides!

Nobody ever buysa product, but rather thepicture one has madeof it in one’s mind!

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Now the salesperson won’t say: “This pen has been used once for fiveseconds.” What he will say is: “This pen was used yesterday to sign atreaty.” With that, the pen becomes something special. It now differs

fundamentally from the other pen, which is new, even though they lookexactly alike. You now have a very specific image of the pen which,compared to the other, has a “history” all its own.

Schopenhauer said:“Not what things really are, but what they are for us, in our conception,makes us happy or unhappy!”

If you enumerate a long series of “benefits” you only call for the ques-tion: “And what are the drawbacks?”

In speaking only of the “features”, I can camouflage my intention of pointing out only the positive side of each single one. It is even better

to forget about any such complications and simply to state what is to besaid about the product.

Of the three possibilities

a) the advantage of this material is its durability

b) the striking feature of this material is its durability

c) this material is very durable

the third is by far the most convincing.

The more simply I formulate the positive statement, the more “neu-tral” it sounds, the better it will strike home.

Second law: The first plus (or minus) impression that sinks down intothe subconscious, the lower part of the iceberg, has a tendency of at-tracting other plus (or minus) points.

Or: It never rains but it pours!

This law may also be termed the law of generalisation. We have the ten-dency of jumping to general conclusions from a single indication. In

other words: One impression will set the switch for either nothing butplus points or nothing but minus points to sink into the lower part of the iceberg.

Here are a few examples to illustrate the point:

On a road leading to a small town, there is a large, somewhat rusty signthat reads “Hotel Bellevue”. Would you feel inclined to stay at that ho-tel? – You will only go there if you haven’t been able to find accom-modation anywhere else. You are somewhat doubtful as you enter theplace. It has recently been redecorated, and the food turns out to be ex-cellent; but the first impression of the rusty sign remains, and you are

Benefits or features?

Second law:The first impression decides

whether plus or minus pointsare collected!

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all too ready for the negative. You will be much more sensitive to thenegative sides of every feature the hotel has than to the positive ones.

Visiting a certain restaurant for the first time, the service does not comeup to our expectations. More precisely, out of some ten waiters, oneserves us badly. – What do we say about it afterwards? “Service at thatrestaurant is abominable!” Just once we had dealings with one out of ten waiters, and yet we are not ashamed to pass a general judgment!

While the very first impression is not all-decisive, it does operate theswitch and determine my positive or negative attitude and whether Iam inclined to gather positive or negative points.

How can the knowledge of this law help me? It teaches me to be care-ful. The insignificant outer feature of my appearance or of my productmay be decisive for me, for my product, for my company and for my

sales success. A salesperson, whose clothes are slovenly, makes theprospect think not only: “This person has a strange way of dressing!”,but also: “It must be a strange company that sends out suchpeople …”.

A frayed shirt collar, worn out cuffs or a stain on the tie may do moredamage than can be repaired by a two-hour talk.

That same law will explain why, after hearing two or three proven facts,we will not notice if the next statement is a lie. Or reversed: Once a liaralways a liar.

The third psychological law is probably the most difficult to under-stand, but to know about it is worth a very great deal.

Third law: The human subconscious operates like an adding machine!

What does that mean? Nothing more nor less than that our subcon-scious does not evaluate and weigh the individual plus and minuspoints that sink down into the lower part of the iceberg, but that it sim-ply counts them up one by one. In other words, for the subconscious,every positive impression is of equal value.

A favourable price counts just as much to the subconscious as an at-

tractive colour, a modern design or a practical shape. To our logicalminds, this sounds absurd at first. This would mean that the poorest ar-gument carries just as much weight as the most convincing, from a log-ical, objective point of view. Strange as it may seem, that’s the way it is!

Alternatively: As to influencing the subconscious, the number of posi-tive impressions, ideas or features is more important than the weight of the individual impression, idea or feature. This means that many points,which may be weak individually, have a greater effect than one single,important and weighty point.

We repeat: To know this, is worth a very great deal. Don’t delude your-self by saying: “That’s illogical and contrary to reason!” Modern adver-12

Third law:The subconscious works likean adding machine!



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tising is based on this law! Day by day, we read: “Coca-Cola”, “Coca-Cola”, “Coca-Cola”! Day by day, we read: “Beer X is best”, “Beer X isbest”. Until the positive statement will have sunk down into the lower

part of our iceberg. Then, one day, we hear ourselves say: “I’ll try it!” –“A Coca-Cola, please!” – “An X beer, please!”

Convincing really has very little to do with logical thinking. If it were amatter of scientific logic, then university professors, mathematicians inparticular, would be born salespeople.

Now you may think: “How does that fit in with customers telling you,after placing an order, that the colour, the price, the good service orsome other salient feature was the deciding factor? Why do customersalways praise just one positive feature and never speak of the greatnumber of positive features?"

It’s easy to see that this is no contradiction. It is quite conceivable that,on the one hand, the large number of sales points were decisive and, onthe other, that the customer will only speak of the one which was deci-sive.

Imagine, for instance, that you are in a queue at the cinema box office.The lighted signboard above indicates that it is almost sold out. Yet,tickets are still being sold, and the queue is getting shorter. You hopethat you’ll make it. The couple ahead of you get their tickets. As youstep up, the sign goes on: “house full”. Turning to your friend, you willsay: “If it hadn’t been for that couple …!” You’ve got an irrational irri-tation with the two people and don’t give a thought for all the others,maybe five hundred of them, who are equally to blame for your failureto get in.

A very similar thing happens to our customer if we “bombard” the sub-conscious with positive impressions, interesting details, attractive sug-gestions. One impression or another will remain stuck to the surface.That’s what the customer will talk about afterwards. Don’t worry aboutit! You know better! Every single plus point which, in the course of con-versation, you instilled into the subconscious is just as responsible forthe good result as the one feature which the customer stresses more orless incidentally.

How does it help us if we know these relationships?

1. You don’t get so easily discouraged any more when you see that twoor three plus points are not sufficient to convince the prospect and tofill the lower part of the iceberg.

It should be possible to turn a difficult discussion partner into a FullyActive Reference by having enough ideas and enough time to presentthese ideas.

2. You don’t like one of your discussion partners at first sight?

Influencing the subconscioushas nothing to do with

logical reason!

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Look immediately for as many positive characteristics in his outwardappearance, his nature and his statements as possible. Look for positivepoints until you like the person.

Gottlieb Duttweiler, founder of Migros, one of the biggest retail busi-ness chains in Switzerland, made this technique into his rule of life. Hewrote: “I got accustomed to enter everything on the credit side.” Thereis no denying the fact that Gottlieb Duttweiler knew how to see a pos-itive side even in the hardest strokes of fate and to evaluate it consis-tently.

3. You want to convince somebody, to “sell” an idea to a customer, yourmanager or a colleage? Note down all the reasons, even the mostthreadbare, that might speak for your cause.

You will be astonished about the result!

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Enter everything onthe credit side!



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Which points in this text do I consider to be the most important ones …

… and what do they mean for me in practice?



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text 06 – iceberg

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