Have you ever found yourself in a position where you had to deal with someone whose ego was as big as a house and you weren’t sure what to do?  Let me tell you from personal experience, once you understand what’s going on, you can literally have these people eating out of the palm of your hand.

During a recent seminar, I was confronted with a situation that involved an account manager who was trying to get a certain doctor to speak at a conference he was sponsoring.  The problem was that this particular doctor charged $5,000 for a speech and the account manager only had $2,500 in the budget.  Compounding the situation was that this doctor had a huge ego and his ego was tied to his fee.  The account manager’s question to me was, “How do I get this doctor to speak for $2,500?”

I must admit, I didn’t have a clue.  Fortunately, one of the other account managers in the room had the answer.  “I got that same doctor to speak for free two years ago and his fee was $5,000 then.”

Of course, everyone in the room wanted to know how he did it.  The account manager went on to say that the first thing he did was to stroke this doctor’s ego by saying, “Obviously, you are worth your fee or you couldn’t charge it.  So I don’t blame you for turning me down.”  He further appealed to this doctor’s ego by informing him that a very famous surgeon whom this doctor had studied under and deeply admired as a mentor was going to be attending this conference.  He then informed this doctor that he had jumped the gun a bit by telling the surgeon that this doctor was going to be one of the featured speakers at the conference.  When the surgeon heard this, he became very excited and told the account manager that he was really looking forward to hearing this doctor’s talk.

When the doctor heard this, he immediately volunteered to speak at the conference for free.  Why?  Because the account manager had offered him something that doctor’s ego (self-interest) was tied to even more strongly than his $5,000 speaking fee-a chance to show off in front of his mentor!

The lesson here is that people with big egos will trade off money for ego gratification any day of the week and see it very much as a win-win situation.  Once you understand what makes people with big egos tick, getting them to do what you want is really quite easy.

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