Have you ever had a prospect become non-responsive right before you close the sale? Have you ever experienced a failure and wondered how you could’ve prevented it? You can avoid the potential paralysis of these situations by leveraging three forms of reasoning. I’m not a scholar of classic rhetoric and I don’t pretend to be one on tv, but just ask my friends… I tend to be the nerd in the group when it comes to research, logic and analysis.

I’ll do my best to define three logical methods of reasoning I’ve discovered and how we can use each of them in sales and leadership today.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning solves for the rule but allows for the exceptions. This type of reasoning permits us to make logical inferences without having 100% of the information. Without this type of thinking, many of our discoveries in science would not be possible. For example, since we’ve observed whitetail deer to be brown with a white tail, we can induce that all whitetail deer are brown with white tails, but we would be wrong (reasonable but not conclusive!). Some whitetail deer with a recessive gene are black.

How can we use Inductive Reasoning?

Inductive reasoning is where we know a precondition and the result, but we want to solve for the rule. In other words, a rule might be “When we train our salespeople, we see an increase in sales for the next quarter.”  The way we solved for this rule was by looking at the two known variables. First, we trained the salespeople. Second, there was an increase in quarterly sales. Inductive reasoning leads us to solve for the rule that “When we train our salespeople, we see an increase in sales for the next quarter.”

If a line of business has experienced steady growth over the past 5 years, then with all things remaining the same, we might expect the same to continue. In other words, “Don’t change the rules and you won’t change the outcome.”

“ As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. —ALBERT EINSTEIN

Deductive Reasoning

This type of logical thinking is probably most familiar to us. Deductive reasoning is based on a series of truths leading us to a confirmation, solution or another truth. It’s the reasoning used by mathematicians. If A = B and B = C then we all learned in Geometry that A must = C.

How can we use Deductive Reasoning?

Deductive reasoning keeps us focused on the facts… the truth, not opinions. When a sales professional or business leader is examining a situation to forecast an outcome, deductive thinking can be used to forecast a logical outcome and navigate or communicate the plan forward.

“All Purchase Orders from the customer’s Global Services Group have been put on hold. The Network Integration team is in their Global Services Group. That is why the Network Integration Project Purchase Order will most likely be put on hold soon.”

“ Elementary, my dear Watson! —SHERLOCK HOLMES

Abductive Reasoning

This is probably my favorite! When we observe a result, we make assumptions on the cause. We speculate. Abductive reasoning allows us to solve for the cause or source. If your sales increase in a region and you trained the sales team 6 months ago, the assumption could be that the training is the cause for the increased sales.

It may also be due to the recent decrease in oil prices, the addition of 2 new reps in the territory, or the new social media campaign launched by your marketing department. Abductive reasoning is used to speculate the causes. While Sherlock Holmes is usually associated with deductive thinking (which he did use!), he uses abductive thinking most of the time!

How can we use Abductive Reasoning?

Abductive reasoning is best used to guide our investigation. When a result is either desirable or undesirable, we should investigate so we can either reproduce or avoid those outcomes in the future. By using abductive reasoning we can brainstorm logical reasons for the results we saw. When we do that successfully we are able to recreate the good or avoid the bad outcomes.

I think Aristotle would be a salesman if he were still around today. Either that or he’d be one heckuva debater! I picture Aristotle debating just as good as Will Ferrell from Old School… but maybe without the blackouts.  

How have you used these types of reasoning in your business communications?

Logically yours… See you next week,

Russ

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