In The Know with Kelly Grafton: Politeness in prospecting

Hi, I'm Kelly Grafton and welcome to In The Know, a podcast where we explore what it takes to grow, lead, and thrive as a sales professional. Each episode, I'll sit down with sales experts to dive into the training, techniques, and real-world experiences that shape successful careers in sales. Whether you're just getting started or well on your journey, you'll hear practical insights and inspiring conversations to help you stay in the know. Hey, Memory Blue, what's going on kelly grafton here welcome to in the know we have our special guest back we have miss bitty balducci back in the studio yay very excited and um this is you know we've done a couple of these with you bitty so very excited but in case this is your first one bitty is all the way out in washington state so she flew in from washington state to be with us here in virginia she is an assistant professor at Washington State University where she loves to study cold calls.

She loves to dive in and nerd out on cold calls. So the marriage between her getting to access Memory Blue's cold calls and us getting to access her knowledge of analyzing the data is beautiful. She has a bunch of, she's in a bunch of journals, right? Elite journals in the space.

And, you know, she's a, she has a PhD in marketing as well. So lots of knowledge in the table that we get to benefit from as a company as she goes and analyzes so much data. So our last episode that we just did, you know, or the last couple episodes, we've been diving into a lot of your research and specifically the last one we did vocal cues. So we talked about that informal language, verbal, sorry, verbal cues, verbal cues, all the cues, informal and the formal language.

And the conclusion was informal words. Yep. Plus formal voice. Yes.

Okay. So that is the combination. So we're still, we're still learning. So hopefully you guys that listened to it last episode, we got to notice some of those things and took Biddy's advice not to change everything at once, but hopefully you're progressing.

So I'm excited to dive in today. So what's our topic today, Biddy? What are we getting into? Well, today we're going to talk about politeness, but before we do, I have a question for you, Kelly.

Oh, okay. What do you think of when you hear the phrase saving face? Saving face. What do I think of?

So I feel like saving face is like a psychological, I've read it in a psychology book where it's where you're, you're making sure the other person, if they're wrong, you're not like calling them out for being wrong per se, but you're giving them an out of like saying maybe this happened and they can say oh yeah that is what happened they can kind of admit they're they were wrong through an excuse sure it really was their fault sure like you're saving them from like I don't know maybe you're maybe they call that because of a red face you get when you're embarrassed I don't know that's kind of what I'm thinking of I actually love that I wasn't aware of that but that let's just that's a thing let's go with that.

So yeah, so that's a great example. So saving face is exactly what you talked about. And taking a step back, that phrase has been around for a while, but not as long as I had thought it was until I started looking into this. But it came around in 19th century China, of all places.

And the idea of the face is that it's basically just the image that you project out into the world about yourself. So my face as Biddy Balducci, your face as Kelly Grafton. And so the idea is that we are all humans. We all want to be portrayed in a positive light.

So saving face involves enhancing my image of someone else, or at least verbally expressing that, and reducing any kind of embarrassment or things like you had mentioned before. So that is what saving faces and the reason why I asked you about that and that's how we started off this podcast is because what I want to talk to you today about is about politeness and politeness specifically as a way to help the prospect save face. Okay. Yes.

Now why do we care? Why do we care if the prospect has saved like has her face saved well the reason why we want it to be that way is because if you have a face threatening situation where maybe you feel like someone's questioning your image or tarnishing tarnishing your image in some way it can lead to some things we do not want like hang up process boom exactly what you're calling me and you're here I wouldn't I would not keep that person on the phone exactly yes yes so you could have refusal to cooperate, hanging up, you could have withdrawal, maybe they're not hanging up, but they're still not engaging, and they could get hostile, and I'm sure some of our SDRs are aware of this.

I have listened to, as a sidebar, like very, very many, like hundreds of calls from memory blue, if not, you know, close to a thousand, and I know that that happens sometimes, so we want to save the prospect's face because we want to reduce friction. So that's all that polite communication is. It's a way of communicating that reduces that friction to avoid offense. Yeah.

Okay. So, and the way we do this is through the concept of being polite on the phone. Exactly. And knowing you, politeness has a lot of different components to it.

So when it comes to you teaching about politeness what what are we what are we looking at here yes yes so politeness as you noted it is a little bit more complex than what we've learned as you know children i'm sure your parents taught you your teachers mentors whatever and some of it is exactly what you're thinking so there's two components i'm going to briefly touch on them and then i'm going to dive into both in more detail. So the first component is niceties. Now these are probably what you're thinking of when you're thinking of politeness.

These are just polite words and phrases, stereotypical, please, thank you, stuff like that. And that helps enhance the prospect's image in, you know, you're enhancing their image when you use these phrases. And then there's something called deference and that is basically uh you know kind of softening the forcefulness of statements and recognizing the prospect's autonomy because to your point they really do have the ability to just hang up whenever they want so we're going to talk about how both of these things are needed to effectively save the prospect space and when to use these things i was curious about that because Please and thank you.

And it just, for me, it sounds like, okay, out of respect for a person. So I would feel respected if someone used those terms. But I've also been in situations, this has nothing to do with me being cold called, but just in situations where people are over the top. Yes.

That it makes me feel uncomfortable. Like it's almost fake. 100%. You know, I did a training with some SDRs in the Virginia office.

And I had someone mention, like, you know, can it be too much? The answer is absolutely. So as with so many things in life, you want to do these, like express politeness and these niceties within the constraints of your context. So in calls with prospects, we're calling them out of the blue.

It's unsolicited. They don't know us. And so we don't want to be overly complimentary. So these niceties, we're going to temper them.

Now, in the real world, I might say something like, Kelly, your hair is amazing and you look phenomenal. And how do you fit that jacket so well? You know, I mean, I could say all of these things, which actually are true. But I wouldn't do that in a prospecting call, even if I could see you, because we don't know each other like that.

Now, so niceties, as I mentioned, these are just stereotypical, polite phrases. And these are going to be things like that many of your SDRs are doing just inherently because this is what we learn as children. Right. So just saying things like good morning, how are you doing today?

Or it's like I'm glad I caught you on the phone. Did I catch you at a bad time? Just thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to hear me.

Like things like that are all examples of niceties that your SDRs are already using quite regularly Yes they doing great So to your point you don wanna go over the top And why niceties help in calls with prospects is because it shows that you value that prospect. And we do, I mean, we want to get the occurs, we want to get those meetings scheduled and attended. And so at the end of the day, our, you know, our pay is on the line. So we want to make sure that they feel valued.

And what I looked at and what I found in looking at the data is that the timing of delivery of these niceties is very, very important. So I just want to guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you are talking about the timing of using the niceties, are you talking like beginning, middle, end?

Exactly. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm just thinking, right, I want to start off with thank you for taking the call.

So maybe the front. Yes. And then I almost feel like the middle, maybe not so much. Okay.

And potentially at the end, whether they took the time to hear me out and it's still they're not willing to take the meeting. Or if they are willing to take the meeting, it's like, appreciate it. I just sent that over to you. So I just feel like maybe the beginning and end.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's just my hypothesis. Okay.

So your hypothesis is grounded in reality in the sense that that is what we see in the data a lot. However, the best time, so definitely in the beginning, having these niceties is very, very helpful. And frankly, your SDRs don't really have to change anything to get those in because when I've looked at the hundreds of calls, you're already doing it. So good on you.

Yeah. Oddly, in the middle of the conversation, that is when it peaks in terms of helpfulness. Interesting. Yes.

Okay. So the idea behind that is that these niceties, they show that you value them and it establishes what's called reciprocity. So basically it kind of goes back to like what we learn in kindergarten, like treat others as you would like to be treated. Now we are calling them out of the blue, we can't expect them to be nice to us right away.

But if we are showing them that we value them and that we're enhancing their image, saving their face, it's more likely that they're going to reciprocate in kind and it'll set the tone for the conversation. So that's why this beginning and middle portion are really beneficial to having those niceties. Now, So, unexpectedly, because in the data we do see this happen at the end, it can actually backfire at the end of the conversation. Oh, interesting.

Okay, why is that? Well, my intuiting after looking at these things is that the nature of the conversation has shifted. So, we are trying to get down to next steps, action steps at that point, whether it is finding a different time to contact them. whether it is following up with a meeting that we've just scheduled, or maybe just asking them if they could accept the calendar invite we just sent.

And so we are very task-based at that point. And so it kind of is like we've already established that reciprocity. We're moving on to different things at this point. So rather than valuing themselves generally, we want to instead focus on valuing their autonomy specifically around what we are recommending those next steps be, which gets to the next point, which is deference.

Oh, okay. I know. So deference is probably a part of politeness that you didn't think of right away. And basically, it's just, you kind of actually alluded to it.

You're like giving them the opportunity to kind of say, oh yeah, I was wrong about that without feeling silly. that's kind of what it comes down to is like you know for example let's say you know you sent the the prospect an email and they're like oh I don't have it oh it should be in there like you know it's there but you know rather than saying it's there just check harder you're like oh it should be there um so kind of softening those phrases um so or even saying I just feel like a common thing oh, it may have gone into your junk or something like that.

Okay. Absolutely. Absolutely. That is exactly what we're talking about here.

Yeah. So all these things do is just they kind of soften the forcefulness of statements. And once again, we want to do this specifically around next steps and action steps because it shows prospects that you value their autonomy. People like having their autonomy.

They want to feel empowered to make the decisions that they feel best to make. And at the end of the day, they do hold that power to hang up at any point. So we want to recognize that they do have this authority and propose those action steps. Don't just, you know, wait for them to say, hey, when can I schedule a meeting?

Just do it with a little bit of a softer approach. Okay. And how you can do that is with hedges. Oh, we got another word in here.

Okay. Hedges. That's an interesting word. Yes.

Okay. This is a whole different body of work in the linguistics literature. Basically, they are things like could, would, may, possibly, maybe, kind of. The list goes kind of on and on.

There you go. But it is, there are things that you can add in to just soften the forcefulness of your statement. So you had said the example, it may have just gone into your junk. May is a hedge.

Okay. You know, rather than it went into your junk. Or let's say you're at a natural point in the conversation where you are ready to discuss those next steps. So since you said XYZ, I think we could benefit from setting up a time.

I think is an example. Yes. Yeah. Good.

Exactly. Because you are not saying we could, we will benefit from connecting. You're giving them the autonomy to disagree essentially. So, and then also with like accepting that calendar invite, we, it rather than saying, accept the calendar invite.

If you, if you see the, if you could accept that calendar invite when it comes through, like that would be great. So if is an example, it's conditional, and so is could. So these are all examples of how you can kind of soften those statements when you want to move them a little bit further down the sales funnel. Okay, okay.

So if I'm putting this all together, politeness at the beginning and in the middle, and then deference, well, really throughout, but especially when those questions come up and a part of deference is hedging, especially at the end of a call when we're setting up those next steps. Yes, yes. Okay. So, yes, exactly right.

So the only key is, is just like those niceties where you want to do that up in the front and the middle, there's a timing piece with this deference. You talked about the end, and that's exactly right. You do not want to do this in the beginning. Now, like I mentioned, the hedges, they will give the prospect autonomy.

and we basically don't want to give them an easy out to hang up with us right away we want them to hear us out so we want to limit the amount of autonomy we're giving them to have the conversation in general it's never going to be an ideal time for them to have this conversation we want them to hear what we have to offer so in that initial part you want to avoid um you know if i if i could have a few minutes of your time. No, we're not going to do that because they don't want to give you that time.

So avoiding that those hedges in the beginning where it can give them an easy out, but using them at the end where you've already kind of built up the value and then you're recognizing that they do have the autonomy on on what actually ends up happening. Yeah. Now if you guys are wondering, well what about the middle of the call? Basically it doesn't matter one way or another.

You could use hedges in the middle. You could not use them. It has a neutral effect. So you know if it easier for you to just simplify and think of beginning and end for hedges that works perfectly well Okay That is really cool to know and this is this is again based on analyzing all of these calls and you seeing successful calls yeah where deference is saved really towards the end and not used in the beginning absolutely yes so this is based on tens of thousands of memory blue calls over the course of an entire month for all of the offices in the United States.

And I have some math lovers out there. This is basically controlling for everything outside of that interaction with a fixed effects model, if anyone's interested in that stuff. So it controls for things like the prospect's gender, the prospect's personality, my personality. It basically controls for all time invariant unobservables, i.

e. like personality kind of thing. So, yeah, so this is on average, this stuff works in these different time periods throughout the call. Okay.

So I think what would be helpful too, because I know our last podcast, we talked about the formal piece. So just so we're not getting confused with politeness and formality, can you, again, just rehash what those differences might be? So if they're trying to put everything together once they're ready for that or they're ready for that, what are those little nuances? Yes.

So as we talked about in the last podcast, like the formality of language, it operates on a continuum from very informal and conversational to structured and rigid. Now, politeness, you might be both formal and polite, but actually it doesn't have as much overlap as you might think. so um once again i am i'm a professor i'm a researcher i don't just take those things as like you know oh yeah sure no i look at the analysis and so i ran some correlations for those of you who know that you know that but basically it's just shared variance how much do these two ideas overlap?

And the answer is not much. So the correlation between niceties and formality is only 0.05. So that means 5% overlap.

If you think of a Venn diagram, it's pretty minor. Yeah. And then for deference and formality, it's actually negative, negative 0.09, which means they're inversely related but basically anything under 0.

2 correlation is a small effect size so sorry if I lost some people there but basically they're not really related actually and to give you an example of why that might be imagine you are presenting to your colleagues on state of the elephant you are going to be sharing information about whatever you're presenting let's imagine that I'm on there and I'm talking about you know my research for example I'm going to probably be speaking pretty formally that is structured and somewhat rigid right I'm sharing very detailed aspects of the analysis that I've done and so it's gonna be very formal but it's not gonna be very polite I'm not necessarily going to be throwing in niceties here and there I mean it doesn't warrant that for example, nor does the deference piece because I'm kind of just sharing information, right?

So you can see very easily how you can have situations where you are very formal but you're actually not that polite. Yes. And it's not a bad thing. No, no, no.

I mean it's they're just two different communication styles. Yeah. So you can overlap them or you can run them parallel to one another and not overlap them. It's kind of something that we just do as humans.

We like suss out a situation and figure out what is most appropriate. And in the example, for example, like, you know, giving a presentation or maybe even just like if it's more of a dialogue, if you're interacting with your teammates and teaching them an activity, you're going to be having that back and forth exchange, but you're still going to be more formal because you're presenting information and trying to guide, but you're probably not going to be throwing around a lot of niceties.

You're not going to be really hedging that much because you are sharing information, hopefully that you're very confident in. Okay. All right. That's a, that's a helpful distinction.

Especially I know we're going to play some, some calls. So I think we'll dive into kind of like what that sounds like for what we've been talking about on this podcast specifically. But is there anything that you wanted to touch on before we maybe give them some examples? You know, I think let's dive in.

I have a comment afterward that I hope I remember, but let's dive into the calls. Okay. Awesome. All right.

So we have a couple of different components here. So we have an opening clip that we'll talk about, discussing opportunities clip, and then a closing clip. Yeah, exactly. And so I kind of broke it down into those three categories.

Discussing opportunities is really just like, I call it like the meat and potatoes of the conversation. Opening is just that initial introduction. Did you get the right person? Have you established that they have a minute of their time that you can take?

And the end is just wrapping up those next steps. So anything in between, that's that discussing opportunity. And as you can see on that slide, I have highlighted the example of red is the niceties, whereas blue is that deference piece so you can see the hedges in that blue blue section as well okay and so that's what we you want us to listen for is using those those niceties and the deference yeah yeah so that screen right there um will show you kind of what an ideal call would look like where you have niceties up front and in the middle and deference at the end and you can see there is some deference in the middle as well and as you recall you can take it or leave it it really doesn't matter.

So it's a dealer's choice on that. Okay. All right. Shall we get into it?

Let's do it. All right. All right. So this is the opening.

Hi, Kara. My name is Ryan Bumson calling with Session Board. How's your morning going so far? Okay.

So, you know, very simple. It's not over the top. To your point, it's very context specific. Just asking how their morning is going.

Did I catch you at a bad time would also be an example. You know, just things like maybe they say, I do have a minute. You say, thank you. It could literally just be stuff like that.

Okay. So you guys are already doing that. So good work. The only thing here, the only thing with the beginning portion is to avoid using hedges because once again, that is something that demonstrates that we recognize their autonomy and of course they do have the autonomy but we want to have them on the phone so we can present our value proposition and we can't do that if they hang up so uh for example if you say hi kelly it's bitty i was wondering if i could have a few minutes of your time that is hedging a lot yeah and we're giving you the opportunity to say no uh whereas good morning how are you doing today for example you're answering my question yes yes yes but it's also polite yes yes and you know did I catch you at a bad time that is a way to get them to respond but it's not going to be like if I could like it's very very hesitant I guess I should say so we're going to be more direct with that response okay that makes a lot of sense okay all right now we're going to get into the meat and potatoes as you call it let's do it discussing opportunities.

Here we go. Okay, sounds good. I totally respect you doing your research around time, but I feel like we can answer any questions you have on our sources on our creative and digital media teams and how we integrate together. Okay, so you can see highlighted there, you know, building up that image with those niceties.

They're respecting the fact that they're doing things on time you can also see the hedges there as well so things like i feel like that is that you know that's a hedge like i'm not saying we could benefit i'm saying i feel like we could benefit another way to do that would be i think we could benefit um something like something like that you could put in that middle if you wanted to if not it's okay but that's what we're shooting for here okay i like it um and and like you said but the niceties are important here.

So yeah, I totally respect you and doing your research. So I just imagining being that person like yeah yes thank you And it just nice to hear that Oh yeah of course and actually you know i kind of mentioned at the beginning of this podcast like that is where it peaks literally um and it's not always natural to incorporate these niceties in so don't kill yourself if you're like you know how am i going to do this but uh it is very much the case according to the data that like there's a huge jump and it peaks in that middle so if you can find a way to Just maybe thank them for sharing whatever information.

For example, that would be maybe an easy way to incorporate that nicety into the middle of the call in a natural way. Yeah. Or I'm thinking there's plenty of prospects who can't share their information. It's like, hey, Betty, totally respect that.

I know that you have a lot of sensitive data. Yeah. And then can continue going another way to have the nicety in there. Absolutely.

I think that's a great example. Okay. All right. That's very practical.

I feel like that's a really good takeaway for the team. All right, so we have one more. Yeah. And this is our closing.

So our closing, we see a lot of blue here. Lots of blue. So we see a lot of the difference. Yeah.

And this is a good example. This is good. All right, let's see how he crushes this one. Closing.

Here we go. All right, cool. I'll send you an email with a white paper, and then maybe just send you a tentative invite for, I don't know, a free Wednesday here morning. And, you know, if that doesn't work out for you, can we just move it?

Okay. Observations. So my memory blue hat says you got to be a little bit, you know, a little bit more direct. Yeah.

Is like my first thought of, you know, maybe we can always move it. It just sounds like it's going to be something that they won't show up to. So the data is challenging me on this though, huh? It is.

Yes, yes. It definitely is. And so once again, this is just like recognizing they have autonomy. This is kind of the make or break.

everything in our conversation has led up to this point and we've already established that we value them by expressing these niceties and hopefully building a little bit of reciprocity with that now we're moving in we are still recommending what we want to achieve but we are recognizing their autonomy and what happens when someone tells you you don't have a choice you want to do the thing that they don't want you to do so that's kind of the logic here right and it can be very very subtle it could be if you have time next Tuesday at 11 I could send over a meeting invite and would love to meet you on the call so that was three hedges in one so you can do it like that as well so that would be an example of how you can kind of just subtly in a very honestly it's so subtle they I'm sure they don't even notice it on a conscious level sure like that you are giving them that autonomy, but that goes a really long way.

Yeah. Rather than just saying, this is the time. Yeah. Because I feel like a lot of what I hear our managers teach is like, let's do this.

What is your schedule? Like this in this state, we'll find 30 minutes to put on the calendar. Zero deference in there. So even just like you said, maybe just like, hey, why don't we do this?

Even like why? Does why count as a difference? Why don't we? Am I stretching this?

I think it's not a hedge but I think it counts for what the purpose of the deference is yeah okay so why don't we do this let's pull up our calendars and maybe we have some time I'm looking Thursday or Friday yeah and maybe is a hedge yeah so absolutely so just like still direct but yeah a little bit of like exactly the hedging exactly the way I talk about this with my students I teach sales is I I call it a pillow of politeness. So it's just little words that make a big difference.

Like, you know, maybe we could do it on Tuesday versus we could do it on Tuesday. So it's giving them a little bit of a sense like, okay, they're actually going to respect my autonomy and my decision to decide. And, you know, you could do this even beyond toward the end of the conversation. There are multiple opportunities in which you could do this.

when setting a meeting, maybe they say no, either way. Okay. Well then you discuss next steps, like, you know, would there be a better time for me to contact you? That's an example, like would right there.

Um, maybe they did accept and you asked them like, if you could like click accept on the calendar invite so that I know you received it. That was two hedges in there. So you can use a lot. And my recommendation to SDRs, because you guys make a lot of calls every day, so I'm sure you have your habits in place.

And that makes perfect sense. My recommendation is to specifically come up with a couple of different script options for the beginning and the end. The middle is kind of hairy. It's kind of hard to know how people are going to respond.

but that beginning and end is relatively structured as far as the whole call goes. And you can work to ensure that you're not asking if maybe they could give you a little bit of time in the beginning, for example. And you could also structure out like how you're going to make a meeting request. So you could do that and be like, OK, there is I see some hedges in here during my meeting request.

I don't see them up front and then go from there. And you can have, you know, you have like common objections, right? Like you probably get very similar objections from call to call to call. Think about how you would respond to those and how you could incorporate either niceties or deference depending on where on the call it is.

That would be my recommendation is just to like plan because, you know, 90% of success, I think, is really just like planning and practice. and so this is stuff that once again looking at thousands tens of thousands of calls this is this is what successful sdrs are doing yeah the data doesn't lie does it no i love it so that's our challenge and i like i like how you were saying go look at your script we have our sheet music plan it out maybe upgrade it a little bit um to have some of these in it and some different options yeah that role play we're huge we love to like you know practice through role plays and with our peers and our managers.

And like you said before, it's like what feels authentic to you. Yes. And I think it's so cool because you can hopefully through the different examples that we shared today and just us even playing through examples, you know, you all can really hear the deference examples, the hedging and then the niceties too and where to put them, where not to put them. So that was very insightful.

Thank you, Betty. I love that. And like you said, the data doesn't lie. So if you're anything like me, a little challenge with the last part, but based on lots and lots and lots of calls.

Yeah. And you can use different hedges that work better for you because there was another SDR in the Virginia office who was like saying maybe at the end going in for the close just feels too cushy. Like, that's fine. There are other like hedges you can use.

There's a whole list that I've given and hopefully you guys will be receiving soon. but like even if, which is not, I don't think that's very like flexible, but it still adds a little bit of conditionality that can help soften that statement. So if we could set a time for Tuesday at 10, for example, that is enough. So you can play around with what works for you.

You don't have to go using hedges that don't feel authentic. So I think that's super important as well. So try to see what works with you and what feels the best for you and your company and your vibe. Yeah, that's great.

And even like, I know some of the things we talk about is like, oh, these people are harder to call because of the industry, the persona. So even taking that into consideration. Absolutely. Yeah.

That was so insightful. Thank you so much, Midi. I love this one. I'm excited to see what you all come up with and putting these into their sheet music, like you said, planning it out, practicing, making it their own, and to, you know, to see the results really show with their work.

So that was awesome. Anything else to add? I think that's it. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. This is wonderful. I'm so excited for our team to go and implement this. Thank you for having me.

Yes. All right, everyone. We'll see you next time in the know and go practice. Have fun.

And we'll see you next time.