Sympathy or Empathy: A Soft Sell Dilemma
ByThese two words, “Empathy” and Sympathy” are very often confused.
And, so what. Who cares whether there is a nuanced difference between them. Use one, use the other, it’s pretty much all the same.
Well in fact, it’s not.
It is very likely that as a care-giver and service provider you tend, by personality, toward being an empath—enjoying a strong, dominant ability to empathize.
However, not knowing the difference between sympathy and empathy can bring your business to its knees. Because, as powerful and praiseworthy as empathy can be, empathy has hidden in it a blind trap of self-denial leading to business frustration and even a sense of personal failing.
So okay. Now what?
First – easy definitions.
Sympathy—a feeling for.
Empathy—a feeling with or into.
It’s all about the prepositions—”for” or “with.”
Okay, how about getting a little more concrete.
If your spouse, child, friend, parent, next door neighbor comes down with the flu and has a 102 degree temperature, is sweating, and is dashing between the bed and the bathroom, what would you be doing if you were being sympathetic?
Going off to the pharmacy for aspirin, placing a cold wet cloth on his or her forehead, offering lots of liquids, making sure the TV screen was clear in sight of the bed and the patient had the clicker, regularly taking his or her temperature?
That would mean you had a feeling for the patient. Sympathy.
But if you came down with a headache and needed to crawl into bed, or pitifully called out for more liquid, or requested your own favorite TV show?
That would mean you have feeling with the patient. Empathy.
So what’s the big deal?
Empaths are at risk for losing themselves in their feelings with others. They often lose their balance and actually enter the other’s world.
We have a dear friend who is a website designer. She told us about a woman who came to her, someone who had paid a lot of money to have a website designed by someone else and had been royally ripped off, and our friend cried. She wept at the abuse she recognized the other person had suffered.
Very sensitive, right? And very commendable too.
But our friend admits that her first impulse was to repair the woman’s site without ever charging her for it—without charging her at all.
That’s the empath’s blind trap—you give yourself away because you take on the feelings and the situation of the other person. Empathy. Feeling with.
Now what does this have to do with soft sell marketing?
Care-givers and many service providers have real trouble asking for the sale. Even worse, asking for the money to consummate the sale and thereby be paid for the value they are truly worth.
They consciously, but mostly unconsciously, enter into the other person’s experience and, due to their intense understanding of the other person’s pain, find it very uncomfortable to ask for money. In so doing they lose themselves in the transaction.
Sympathy is called for. A feeling for. Appreciating the situation but retaining a sense of self and a sense of your own value as you offer your solution.
That’s what truly benefits the other person, because you stay at a sufficient emotional distance to be able to solve the problem, and require that you are paid appropriately for your expertise.
So—sympathy or empathy?
Well, both, actually. They compliment each other and are very effective as a team. When someone comes to you they don’t want you to become them, they want a solution, The deeper you can feel with them and retain your sense of self the better you understand their situation and the better solution you can recommend.
But beware the blind trap. As a care-giving soft sell marketer what you offer is valuable and you should be paid what you are worth. That’s what we want for you. And that’s what we want you to want for you!
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim
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Judith & Jim, thanks for raising the issue. I wanted to comment because years ago this same issue completely puzzled me when my mentor brought it up. I asked him what REALLY makes people want to buy? He said, “Empathy. When you can feel what they feel, and speak and write from that place of complete emotion.”
Later I heard from another mentor that it’s important to enter a conversation that already exists in your prospect’s mind. Sort of empathy, too, but also forces you to be very in-tune with the individual person in your target market.
Great post!
Milana
I have always gotten a headache over the differences in the words! I think it is find to appreciate what someone else is going through without giving yourself away. I find that I am a better therapist when I have a felt sense of what someone is going through but if I stay in it, I serve no one. It does help me to join with my clients to express my appreciation about what they are going through. I only do that so I can offer a solution or solutions.
Hi Jan,
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, indeed, empathy makes for a better therapist, in fact it makes for a better solver of problems in general– and I even think that’s true if the problem is mechanical.
I love words and their subtle differences in meaning and so bear with me here for a bit.
Your word “appreciation,” is an apt one. It means to be conscious of, perhaps fully conscious and to bestow value upon. And when we are empathetic that’s exactly what we do>
Become fully conscious of and bestow value — even when, as therapists, what we are witnessing is someone’s deep pain. By appreciating it we do what no one has ever done — we SEE them and we do not flee from them and their pain.
That’s not to say we want them to live with their pain, It’s our job to help them through it and past it. But by acknowledging and appreciating it we dignify their experience as the first step to helping them let it go.
What a gift.
Jim
Hi Milana,
Thanks for your comment.
Feeling what our clients and customers are feeling creates a deep sense of identity. They know we get them and, after all, that’s when the sale is made and the relationship is created — especially long-term, return customer relationships.
And that conversation in their head, that’s approximately the same conversation you are hearing when you are feeling what your clients are feeling. That connection is the power of empathy.
Jim
People that I trust speak highly of you, but I do have to say that ’soft sell’ gives me the creeps. It feels sneaky, like the nurse in the dentist’s office who used to sneak in with the needle under her napkin. I told her finally, “I know it’s there, just quit hiding it. Just bring it on and get it over with.”
I have had a business for 37 yrs, and we have endeavored to be authentic in all dealings with our customers, delivering a high level of customer service. Authenticity has built our business from the beginning – we sell goods, not services, but our exemplary service sets us apart. It has not had to be defined with empathy or sympathy – it is identified as ‘delivering.’
Pam,
Thanks for posting your comment.
When I first read it I thought I didn’t get your point, because what you said didn’t seem to have anything to do with the point of the post. But whatever anyone writes contains the possibility of a different interpretation so I closed the email deciding to return to it later.
Later I returned and my response didn’t change. But given I had other things to do I closed the email again.
Now it’s my third read, after having read the post you responded to again, and I don’t see the connection between your concern and what we posted.
You wrote that what you do re: customer service — ” … has not had to be defined with empathy or sympathy – it is identified as ‘delivering.”
So? Your customer service is exemplary. Terrific. Authentic, even better.
But the reason we wrote about the difference between sympathy and empathy is stated in the last full paragraph:
“But beware the blind trap. As a care-giving soft sell marketer what you offer is valuable and you should be paid what you are worth. That’s what we want for you. And that’s what we want you to want for you!”
Care-givers and service providers have a problem giving themselves away by often charging less than what their product or service is worth. We aren’t generalizing but stating what many many people we’ve communicated with have verified.
For them empathy can be and often is a problem. So being aware of the dynamics of empathy can be very useful.
You wrote that ” but I do have to say that ’soft sell’ gives me the creeps.”
Okay. But what about it is creepy? You make the analogy to slipping in with a hidden needle. Just how does soft sell do that in your opinion?
And what do you understand soft sell to be? And feeling creepy is a pretty strong response. What got touched in you?
If I take your analogy at face value you seem to be concerned with being deceived or at least condescended to because you know the needle is there so you want the straight deal. I agree. The straight deal is what soft sell is all about.
So I invite you to follow up on my response and tell me what the creeps are all about (I don’t want to presume), and given what we write in that post, how does soft sell become the target?
Jim