"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Everyone has different lives with different experiences. Our experiences shape the way we think, behave and communicate. Every person’s perspective or point of view of how the world works is what allows us to understand reality. However, since no two people are alike, everyone’s understanding will be different. Sometimes they may clash against each other, but sometimes they harmonize.
In the business world, perspective taking or the ability to step outside of our own viewpoint and into someone else’s is very valuable. From reading Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human, the best skill to have for today’s non-sales selling is to be perceptive of other people’s emotions, perceptions, motivations and more importantly, the manner of how others think. This skill is called attunement or power to adjust oneself so that both sides benefit.
One way to attune ourselves with others is to see the world through their eyes and get inside their heads. How? By truly listening, observing and understanding others, we can see the mental map of the big picture of others’ goals and what makes them tick.
By imagining what others are thinking, we can come up with new possibilities to improve our business and how it benefits others. To improve our imagination and come up with creative insights, we must do different things all the time.
Doing different activities such as watching random shows, working on different projects and talking with various people everyday enriches our mind and our perspective. To better illustrate this, let us take the definition of perspective in terms of graphical interfaces. For example, there is the one point perspective that contains only one vanishing point.
This perspective shows that the farther you are from the vanishing point, the more you see, but the closer you get, the less you encounter. Why? Because if a person is too attached to their own viewpoint, the more he/she thinks that is the only and correct way to do anything. By expanding our perspective, we see a bigger picture and become more open-minded.
There are also zero, two or three vanishing point perspectives which create the illusion of 3-D in space. These multiple vanishing points stand for the different angles one can attune to in certain situations. In terms of visual perspective, it is “a set of systems or mechanisms used to produce representations of objects in space as if seen by an observer through a window or frame.” Finding the right frame to differentiate our business from competitors is essential to attract new customers.
5 Frames for Non-Sales Selling
- Less Frame – “Less is more”
- Have options, but not too many options that will overwhelm your customers
- With fewer options, customers are able to imagine the outcome more clearly than having too many that makes things complicated
- Experience Frame
- People feel happier when purchasing items in terms of experience rather than pure material object. Why? Because material objects loses its significance sooner than fun memories
- Experiences allow humans to have stories to share and connect with others
- Overall, this leads to more satisfied customers and referrals
- Label Frame
- Labeling people according to status changes people’s behavior to follow suit with their label
- Blemished Frame
- Adding weak negative information after a positive one can provide clarification and highlight the positives with more impact
- Sometimes imperfections do become perfection
- Potential Frame
- Potential to be good at something is more interesting and catchy than already being good at it
- People do love uncertainties and mystery as entertainment where they think more and come up with more reasons why something is an excellent choice
Perspective in Web Development
In addition to website design, perspective is also important when determining different user roles a website can have. Each role signifies the permissions, actions and resources a member may have access to. Not all roles are created equal.
For example, administrators have the ability to make any types of changes. Moderators may have the ability to edit any contents, but not always have the ability to add new contents. Normal users can only see the contents, but cannot edit or add new ones. Other roles can be defined depending on the stakeholder’s position.
The power to change permissions for each user is valuable for complex websites such as forums, portals, social networking and other data driven sites where multiple users have different goals and strengths. All of these roles have to be determined by the business owner or the staff who are going to manage the website. Thus, the business owner must know their business inside and out. Who are the different users for your website and what can they do?
