“You can no longer function as a man.”
“When I came in to open up one morning, there you were, with your head half in the toilet. Your hair was in the toilet water. Disgusting.”
“You’re weak, you’re out of control, and you’ve become an embarrassment to yourself and everybody else.”
These are some of the great lines from a drug intervention scene in The Sopranos. Soon after that last line, a fight breaks out, and the interventionists end up kicking the drug addict in the ribs while he’s on the ground.
Of course, that’s not how an intervention is supposed to go.
The theory is that, when one person tries to persuade you, there’s always a translation problem. In other words, your brain is always asking:
“What is this goon really trying to say, and why is he saying it to me?”
That’s why interventions are supposed to work. Multiple people, shouting the same message, make it more likely that the message will get through.
But what if you don’t have the luxury of marshaling multiple people to kick your prospect in the ribs?
What if you only get one kick? How do you convince somebody who’s perfectly ok as is… that he’s got a problem and it’s time to get help?
I’ve got some ideas about this. In fact, I’ve shared them in previous editions of my daily newsletter. Ideas such as:
A) Showing your prospect how his indifference is not really his choice.
B) Using open-ended questions to get your prospect to paint a vision of his own horrible future for himself.
C) Working backwards from an outcome your prospect wants to avoid (that HE wants – not that you think he should want), and showing him why he’s currently headed there.
But I’m a sucker for lost causes, and that includes convincing people who don’t want to be convinced. And I’m always looking for more ways to get around the translation problem.
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