Don't Bring Facts to a Feelings Fight: The Science of Persuasion and Trust in Sales

Speaker A: And a tenet that we live by, which is the watch phrase for the Persuasion Blueprint, is that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. But before you can persuade others, you have to persuade yourself.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Thoughts on Selling podcast. I'm Lee Levitt, sales coach, podcast host and author of the Second Meeting and Together We Win both due out later this year. Today we're talking about the science and art of persuasion and why facts alone will never win the deal. My guest is Danny Bobro, communication coach, mountaineer, and creator of the Persuasion blueprint. He spent 36 years helping businesses master the art of first impressions. In his bag, three of the seven summits along the way. Here's what to listen for. The three Cs of persuasion, caring, connection, and collaboration, and why they have to

Speaker C: happen, in that order.

Speaker B: The brain science behind why people say no and what to do about it.

Speaker C: And the lesson from a health club

Speaker B: saleswoman who outsold everyone by doing less. If you've ever wondered why your best pitch falls flat when the facts are on your side, this one's for you.

Speaker C: Let's go. Today it is my pleasure to have Danny Bobro join to talk about all things with regard to communications. Danny is an expert in communications and in persuasion, in how people communicate. So, Danny, let me ask you this question. Who is Danny Barbro?

Speaker A: Thank you for the opportunity, Lee. I appreciate it very much. Danny Barbro is someone who's very passionate about communication, and he didn't become that way overnight by any means. And I think part of the reason that I am where I am today is I was born with a rather serious vision impairment, which is non correctable. And it led to some challenges as a youngster. Thought I was smart and athletic, but was a terrible student and a terrible athlete. And so there was a little bit of cognitive dissonance, you could say, which was tough for my young brain to wrap around. At the same time, I think that may have given me a deeper empathy for other people that were not maybe the big kids on campus. So what I did have was an ability to connect with people when I got older. In his infinite wisdom, my ophthalmologist said, all right, you're going to college because you barely graduated high school and are barely able to get into a college. It's time for reading glasses. So, uh, those reading glasses probably would have been nice in first grade, but anyway, that's the way it was. And then I excelled academically and as a sophomore in high school, to go Back a little bit. An epiphany for me was when my high school gym teacher, whose name was Mr. Rusk, I can't remember his first name, taught me about the psychological fatigue barrier. And that was an epiphany for me. It helped me realize because the tenet is that our minds tell us our bodies to quit long before they need to. And that just made a lot of sense to me. I had been pretty much a quitter up until that point. So from that point on, I excelled in athletics as long as it wasn't involving any kind of a projectile because I only have one eye and it's not very good. So depth perception was not my forte. But I got involved in endurance sports and other types of activities that helped develop my confidence. And as I said, I excelled academically, really had a facility for marketing and sales. That's really where I excelled and built my business. I was originally in the healthcare field, learned about selling from some very talented people. And then my brother, because I come from a family of dentists, my brother was and continues to be a practicing dentist. He suggested that I focus in the dental space. This was in 1989. And in his inimitable fashion, in his capacity for understatement, he said dentists are dying out there, which is news to people who aren't dentists. But it was a, uh, competitive and is a competitive field. Dentists need a lot of assistance on the practice management and communications side. And so I became basically a glorified list broker because in 1989 that's all we knew how to do. The Internet commercial was not yet commercially available, wouldn't be for another 10 years. And so we developed direct mail programs. And um, with the advent of the Internet, we became digital marketing specialists. And we found that we could get the phone to ring, get leads to websites. But what happened after the phone rang was just as important, if not more important, than getting the phone to ring in the first place. Through the telephone tracking technology that we employed, we were able to listen in on how the calls were being handled or in, unfortunately, the majority of cases being mishandled. And that led to me create what I called the art of first impressions, which was a telephone skills mastery curriculum. I realized people needed guidance on communications, not just on the telephone, but in face to face communication. And that really was the precursor to the persuasion blueprint, which is what I coach people on now.

Speaker C: Yeah. So the art of first impressions. What's the old saying? First impressions last?

Speaker A: Yep. And a tenet that we live by, which is the watch phrase for the persuasion blueprint is that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Zunan wrote a book called the First Four Minutes and they claimed that people make decisions about who they're going to work with or not work with within the first four minutes of meeting them. But I found on the telephone that I could usually tell within the first 10 seconds if somebody was going to have a successful outcome or not just based on that first impression.

Speaker C: Yeah. And we were talking about enterprise sales, multimillion dollar purchases of huge computing systems. Decisions are all based on emotion, not facts.

Speaker A: Right. Which is counterintuitive to a lot of people who think that once you get to a certain level of sales, it's all about the facts and it's still about the feelings. And I like to, uh, quote Tova Hellerstein, who wrote a book called Don't Bring Facts to a Feelings Fight.

Speaker C: I love that. So let's go back to the central governor conversation. Our brain makes our body quit before our body is ready to. Same thing is true in sales.

Speaker A: That's an interesting point. We talk about persuasion and people usually think, yeah, I'm going to be taught how to persuade other people. And indeed that's part of the coaching. But before you can persuade others, you have to persuade yourself.

Speaker C: And that, okay, we've gone from a conversation about NLP to a conversation about who am I?

Speaker A: And I'm with you, wiring your brain, rewiring your brain. And just to get a little bit into brain science before I get myself into trouble, the limbic system, which is comprised of the amygdala, uh, and the hippocampus. And that's the responsible for forming patterns based on emotion, fear, excitement, trust, skepticism. And then you got the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for cognitive rational thought. And then you've got the anterior cingulate cortex, which mediates between the two. The key is that you not only need to engage your counterpart in such a way that you don't try to get them to ignore their limbic system, but you try to play nice with it, get them to feel safe. This goes back to Maslow. No matter what level you're communicating with people, you've got to make sure that their physical needs, their safety needs, their belonging needs, their self esteem and their opportunity to be the best they can be are covered. And then people will begin to allow you to engage with them on a rational basis. But that of course doesn't always happen and it often doesn't happen at the Beginning of a conversation. We're often met with resistance and we coach people on how to identify what type of resistance as well as how to respond to it. Because if you meet resistance with resistance, that's a vortex that you're going to get sucked down into and the outcome is not going to be pretty.

Speaker C: We saw that in the karate community, kid. If they push, you go back. If they don't push, then you can push forward. It's the uh, using the other's energy to guide what you do.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That's right.

Speaker C: So talk to me, Danny, about the persuasion blueprint. A lot of people think that selling is about persuading people to do things they don't want to do, which is why so many people hate salespeople and particularly car salespeople. Right. The perspective is if I go into a car dealership, they're going to tie me up and force me to sign on the dotted line to buy a car. And uh, that's not usually what happens in a car dealership.

Speaker A: It's also why people bristle at the thought of being asked to sell themselves. And the fact is that every communication is a sale. I'm selling your audience right now. But let's get back to brass tacks and basic principles. Uh, first of all, a sale or marketing or anything that you practice is a tool as since we're dropping movies, as Shane said in the movie Shane, a gun is just a tool like a hammer. It's as ethical as the person using it. My definition of persuasion is various techniques and mindsets intended to influence people to a desired course of action in a non coercive manner. So it has nothing to do with manipulation. Sales, it's the brother in the family of persuasion. I define sales as communication with a purpose or empowering people to make informed decisions because the decision may be that you're not a fit for them as long as you have integrity and honesty. We're not asking you to persuade anyone to do something that they don't want to do. One other point I'll make just is that some people confuse convincing with persuading. And for me, convincing is influencing somebody's opinions, attitudes or beliefs, which is a tall order in itself. But persuading is encouraging people to take action. It's a lot easier to convince someone that they should lose weight than it is for them to lose weight.

Speaker C: I love those distinctions.

Speaker A: Now, in terms of the framework and structure, it's predicated on the fact that people don't care what you know until they know that you care and, uh, I've identified three different components which are sequential in their execution. Although that's not to say that once you finish one, you're done with it. But the three components are caring, connection and collaboration. Caring sets the stage. It establishes the emotional connection so that people feel safe and are willing to hear what you have to say.

Speaker C: And they become open to the connection.

Speaker A: Exactly. And in that sense, it is indeed sequential. Connection is about establishing credibility and earning trust. And it has to do with paying very close attention to the signals that your counterpart is sending so that you know what pace to operate at, when it's appropriate to ask open ended questions that, uh, ask them to reveal something about themselves. And that cannot be done at the beginning of a new relationship. You need to earn that, either implicitly or explicitly. Indeed, it's important to establish your credibility by sharing your expertise. But what we have found, there's plenty of literature we talked about before. The call that backs this up is that people are far more interested in being shown that you understand and get them, rather that you know what you're talking about.

Speaker C: Sharing expertise and credentializing are not the same.

Speaker A: Well, that's right. That's right.

Speaker C: Salespeople show up and say, I'm your account manager from Xerox Corporation or XYZ Corporation or whatever. I've been here for five years and I'm here to sell you shit. It's like that's credentialized. That's not sharing expertise.

Speaker A: Sometimes translating attributes into benefits gets a bad rap. But I still think that it's a fundamentally important skill to recognize the difference between an attribute and what the helpful outcome of that attribute is to your counterpart. I liken the sales call to sculpture. You're basically chiseling away the marble to reveal the ideal profile of the counterpart of your prospect. So it's there, but you have to reveal it. But you have to be in a position where the prospect is willing to allow you to reveal it.

Speaker C: I love that. And it reminds me of a book that, uh, Jacques Wirth wrote many, many years ago called High Probability Selling. And his central point of view is disqualify early. Keep chipping away at that harder outer edge until you see a, uh, firm no. And the earlier you find that no, the earlier you can disengage. And if you don't find the no, you've got a good prospect.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree. I would also submit that people need to learn to embrace no. Because what I've learned is that no does not mean no. No often Means I'm afraid. I do not want to lose control, and I want to make sure that we don't have a fight on our hands. And you're going to try to make me do something I don't want to do. Going back to my years in health club sales, membership sales, typically the easiest sale for me was somebody who would walk in and say, look, I don't want any of your bullshit. I just want to take a tour, and I'm not making a decision today. And I would say, wonderful. Thank you for letting me know that. Let's relax and take a tour. And I learned this from one of my, uh, fellow salespeople who was. She was old. I think she was maybe 32 years old at the time, or 35. But when I was 22, I thought she was ancient. She did not take care of herself. She was not a physical specimen. The rest of us were very fit. And I used to look at her and say, now, why is she consistently the top salesperson in this club? And I committed myself to watching her. Every time I walked by her cubicle, somebody had a pen in their hand signing a contract, and I thought, how does she do it? And what I learned was that people are much more concerned and interested in being in control than they are in being impressed by your expertise, because if anything, that can intimidate them. And she would sit hunched back on her chair, just leaning back, and the people would just be writing contracts all day long. And it really taught me an invaluable lesson. Slow down. Let the person tell you who they are. Let them be who they are, and respond to the buying cues as you receive them. Relax, enjoy the process, and don't feel pressure, because if you feel pressure, so will they.

Speaker C: That's fabulous insight. The challenge for many salespeople is they look at a prospect as though the prospect was a bag of groceries, and they want to put that bag of groceries on their counter now. And many, perhaps most, don't have the awareness that's not what prospects are.

Speaker A: That's right. No, I know. And especially if you're getting pressure from management or depending on where you are in the quarter, people feel the need, or they feel that you get through a certain number of no's to get to a yes. And I mean emphatic no's, like, I'm out of here. But it's also a quality thing, not a quantity thing. I talk to people about phone skills that some coaches say, well, you don't want to stay on the phone too long. They're afraid that the person's going to say something stupid and piss off the caller. And I say, look, in dentistry, for instance, we calculated that the average lifetime value of a patient was $7,500. And this was several years ago. It's probably higher now. Well, do you not think that spending 11 minutes instead of four minutes on the phone is worth it? That's $1,000aminute. Once you become adept at mastering this technique, you're going to become more time efficient. But at the beginning, your employer should definitely not give you any pressure about getting off the phone quickly with somebody that could be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands or millions, depending on the industry.

Speaker C: Yeah. From my perspective with regard to outbound sales, salespeople should never hang up first. Never ever. Right. If a customer wants. If I'm talking with a prospect and they say I've only got 30 minutes, I am very likely not to say at, ah, 25 minutes. Well, we have five minutes left. What do you want to cover? I will make sure that we're at a point where if they have to disconnect, I've gotten commitments exactly at 35 minutes. I'm not gonna remind them. You were supposed to five minutes ago.

Speaker A: Mind the time, but keep it to yourself.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Cause people magically have more time. Because there's no such thing as boring convers, long conversations, just boring conversations.

Speaker C: Right. This is fascinating. So, Danny, we've covered the first two Cs already, the caring and connection. Now the third C is collaboration.

Speaker A: Correct. And collaboration is all about encouraging, uh, your counterpart to be a co owner to actually participate in formulation of the plan. Because if you say it, it's one thing, but when they say it, it's theirs. And when you have somebody, by periodically checking in with the prospect and really being patient and almost nitpicky to the point where you show deep concern that before I'm getting yeses from you. And they could be commitment yeses, they could be counterfeit yeses or commitment or confirmation yeses, as Chris Voss makes the distinction. But if, even when it's a commitment yes, I don't rush to close the deal because people can change their minds for sure. I had an experience last night. People, uh, had opened up a new dental practice and they were anxious. We were already doing their website, their digital marketing, and they realized they wanted to do direct mail as well. And I had always, like I said, let's get your digital platform, your digital presence on stream and coordinated and consistent. Because when people receive direct Mailings. The first thing they're going to do is go to your website or search for your review. So let's get the internal house in order or the digital house in order. They said, yeah, but we really want to get this going. And I said, all right, fine, let's do it. So I made my presentation to them, and they were, like, ready to sign up for a, uh, program that I think really was. They said, well, I want to target everybody within 10 miles of my office.

Speaker C: Everybody. And everybody. Anybody, Right.

Speaker A: And I knew that was going to, I guess there was going to be 100,000 people because they're in a metropolitan suburb, uh, of a large metropolitan area. And I thought that would blow their budget. And anyway, at the beginning, I don't want to cast too broad a net. I'd rather keep it a little tight. And if you're getting good experience and good results, then we can broaden the net, right? And that's how you save your money, and you don't blow a lot unnecessarily. Uh, and so I really reality checked them. They were saying, let's get started. Let's just do this. Let's just do this. And I was saying, all right, we can. And let me explain to you how you could do it. We can go a certain radius, and if you don't have the budget to target every household, we can divide it into halves or thirds or quarters even. Would you like to know what I would do if it were me? And they said yes. And here's where I narrow the choices. Right?

Speaker C: Because if they said no, you would have walked away, right?

Speaker A: Uh, I was pretty confident they weren't going to say no. But of course, this is based on the tenet that confused people don't buy. So I let them know that they had all kinds of choices. So they felt like, okay, there's a lot of flexibility here, but I don't know what the hell to do. And I'd already established myself as a credible expert, and I'd already established the connection with them through my Cause Marketing Foundation. By the way, you know, we have a foundation that raises money and resources for oral health education and treatment. They knew that and they'd actually participated it in the past. So I had quite a relationship based on trust. So I said, would you like to know what I would do in your situation? They said yes. And I told them, and they said, go big or go home. I said, fine, let's do it. So I put the contract together, sent it over to them, and they signed it was a lot of fun. It wasn't. I hadn't just met these people. And obviously sales and success is a marathon, it's not a sprint. So I'd rather go slow, do it right, and not piss anybody off in the process. Uh, because if I overextend, if I get a little too greedy, I could have targeted 10 mile radius and then they would have been looking at their bank account and really feeling under the pressure. This thing's got to become self funding fast. And in good conscience. With my 36 years of experience with direct mail and dental marketing with, I knew that was too broad a net to cast. So I was only too happy to rein it in, um, for them.

Speaker C: But we say in racing, and there's a corollary for downhill skiing, in racing we say you have to go slow to go fast. And in downhill skiing it's, you have to be smooth to go fast. The same thing, right?

Speaker A: Yes, it is. You want to hit that apex just right so you can get that whip, use all that centripetal force. But that's the art of knowing when to hit it.

Speaker C: So you put yourself out there. You didn't just listen to what the customer had to say. You brought your pattern matching skills to bear and they followed your lead.

Speaker A: Right. And this was on the phone. I met them during the climb, but that was seven years ago. The fact that I'm on the phone just makes me want to share. We talked a little bit about before we started the recording. There was a professor, Albert Mehrabian. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he worked out of UCLA and he was commissioned to conduct a study on identifying the effective the components of effective communication. And he was also tasked to calculate to measure the percent that each of these components contributes to effective communication. And this is primarily first time communication. I would say not exclusively, but it primarily has to do with first contact. And he identified the verbal, vocal and visual components. And you may have heard about these. The verbal component is just the words that you use. The vocal component is the manner in which you use the words that you choose. The tone, the inflection, the resonance of the words. And the visual component is the facial expression, hand gestures, what's generally termed body language. And what Mehrabian determined was that the verbal component, that is the words that you choose, is responsible for only 7% of effective communication.

Speaker C: Well, there we go. I've always told people you create your world with your words. And I've been wrong all this time.

Speaker A: Not exactly. You're not exactly wrong, because in order to use the vocal component, you need to have the words that you choose. And the vocal component is responsible for 38%. And that leaves the visual component, which is responsible for 55%. That alone explains why a lot of caring people are having challenges conveying caring over the telephone. Because they lack the visual component. They're basically dealing with less than a full deck, so to speak. Now, that's not to say that people don't have a mind's eye and visualize the person on the other end of the phone. That's why I hasten to remind people that people can hear you smile when you're on the phone with someone. It's nice to have to be well dressed, to sit upright, maybe even have a mirror and look in the mirror and smile while you're talking, because people can pick up on that.

Speaker C: Yep. Whenever I'm on the phone with someone, I stand up. I have more energy when I'm standing than when I'm.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I often do that, too. I won't do that now because I think I. I put on a few pounds, so I don't want to show that anybody. I won't stand profile.

Speaker C: I can put a filter on. We can help you lose 22 pounds.

Speaker A: All right, that's a little more than I need, but thank you.

Speaker C: Uh, and so for the visual, is the vast majority of that eye contact?

Speaker A: Eye contact is a big part of it. It's. Here's what I say. When you're in a sales situation, eye contact is good as long as you don't make it creepy. And I think even better is taking notes and letting people know. I hope you don't mind if I'm jotting down some notes, because I want to make sure I don't miss anything that you're sharing. And when I'm done, would you mind if I confirm that I'm duplicating everything accurately? And that's a very flattering thing.

Speaker C: And when you say taking notes, you mean with a pen and a piece of paper, not typing?

Speaker A: Well, ideally, I think so, but, you know, it depends on the. On your situation. Taking notes on screen is good, too. The key is what you do with the information anyway. You know, I mean, it's irritating to hear somebody, you know, clicking away, tapping away. So that's one thing. Honestly, I haven't given a lot of thought to the, uh, relative benefit of writing in front of someone versus typing in front of them. I really don't know. It might be that. That more traditional form of communicating or of taking notes might have a calming influence on the person. I hadn't really thought about it.

Speaker C: I hadn't thought about it from the external standpoint. From an internal standpoint. My understanding is the note taker remembers stuff better. The information gets implanted more deeply than if that's no doubt true.

Speaker A: These are just notes right here that I took in part in preparation for our talk today, just to get some key points down. So that's absolutely works for me, and I bet it is a fact.

Speaker C: So let's review the notes. Danny. What? How well have we done so far against your preparation? You're my first guest that has actually shown written preparation notes. I did have Gemini run three pages of preparation for my episode, uh, with Ted McKenna, and it was great down to the minute. And I didn't use any of it. We just had a conversation.

Speaker A: He wrote the. Is he the man behind jolt in Adamson?

Speaker C: The jolt effect, and then more recently, the activator advantage.

Speaker A: Very good. Yep. Very smart man. The one thing I taught you asked me who Danny Bobro is. And part of. I shared part of my development. I've made some mistakes in my life, and I've made a lot, and I've burned bridges. And for quite some time in my life, I dwelled on that. And it held me back because really, it's not very productive to live in the past. What I came to realize was that as long as I viewed these as teachable moments where I took valuable lessons and did not repeat those mistakes, it was actually something to look back on fondly. That took quite some time for me to have that shift. But what I learned was that I've already shared that I am a persistent, tenacious, resilient individual, as evidenced. We haven't really talked about it, but I've spent some time in the mountains and I've done adventure races and ultra endurance events and summited four of the seven summits. No, three. Three of the seven summits.

Speaker C: You understand the central governor?

Speaker A: I do. That psychological fatigue barrier, the knowledge of that sort of allowed me to run amok a bit. And I've had a lot of fun. But what I realized was that there's another cliche you may have heard that I like to share is if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. As long as I was climbing by myself or doing triathlons or marathons or ultra endurance event solo activities, being blindly persistent and ungoverned, resilience, or whatever would be the proper term was fine because you're not beholden to anybody else and you're not dealing with a team dynamic. When I got involved in team sports like mountaineering expeditions and adventure races, it was a rude awakening for me at first because I felt that. And I got into trouble in business and nonprofit too when I thought that the righteousness of my cause was self evident and everybody else should hop to and get in line and uh, work at my pace because, dammit, I was doing the right thing and I was doing it for the right reason. And I learned I had to slow down, that nobody cares about your vision unless they know you care about theirs. That's been probably the biggest lesson. So what I coach people on practicing, those who can at least relate to my experience and my constitution is to be patiently persistent and respectfully resilient. So be cognizant of people around you and recognize too that when you. First of all, one thing I learned in the mountains is that when you're suffering, because everyone suffers in the mountains, if you're out there long enough, everybody on the team is going to take turns needing help.

Speaker C: And ah, the only one in the pain cave may not be there at the same time someone else is.

Speaker A: That's right. And what I learned is though, if you want to get out of your own pain, the best thing you can do is focus on somebody else's challenges. And the very act of helping somebody else, uh, makes you feel better and stronger about yourself. And it raises all boats people, it just, it turns the environment into positivity. The other thing that I think I've helped very seldom was I had the strongest team member. But what I did do was have a good attitude and with all modesty, a great sense of humor. I could find humor in any situation and boy, does that help move the action forward, especially when things are dark.

Speaker C: The original the Boys in the Boat book plays to that same theme. And then more recently, will it make the boat go faster? Also plays that same theme of together we win. Oh shit, that's the name of my book. Sorry, didn't mean to put that plug in. Anyway, together we win. Coming soon. It's the team that supports one another. And as you were talking just a minute ago, Danny, it reminded me of improv. Have you ever done any improv? You're not far from Chicago, the birthplace of improv. Right.

Speaker A: You're looking at a graduate of the players workshop of Second City.

Speaker C: Uh oh, there we go. So what are the two rules of improv?

Speaker A: Yes and yeah. Always agree with your partner.

Speaker C: Partner Right. Take care of your partner. We were in the middle of writing a letter to the customer, and I threw in a hashtag, screwyou. And my partner looked at me and essentially with dagger eyes. And all of a sudden I heard, what am I going to do with that?

Speaker A: It's nice to challenge our partners once in a while to keep it interesting.

Speaker C: The one other golden rule of improv is be present. Right.

Speaker A: That's right. I just. I'm into yoga, too. And my instructor just said that if you're depressed, you're living in the past, and if you're anxious, you're living in the future. And you've heard the gift is the present.

Speaker C: What's the best model of living in the present? What can you point to that is the epitome of living in the present?

Speaker A: For me, it's being in the mountains, climbing. Because things when the stakes are high, they get very simple, very real, and you don't have time to screw around, worry about the past or the present. So it's a real focusing exercise.

Speaker C: I was going to say a golden retriever. Retriever, but because they're pretty good about living in the present, too.

Speaker A: Oh, pets are great. I'm a birdman. We had parakeets, which people who don't have them don't realize that there's. They're really as affectionate as dogs. Definitely more so than cats. Yeah. That's the quintessential living in the present. Because they're. It's like they just. When you see them, they're so happy to see you. It's like they're seeing you for the first time every time. And all they do is, hey, what are we going to do? Let's have some fun. Let's play.

Speaker C: And dogs do the same. Yeah, let's get back to being in the mountains. It's no similar than being on a sales call. Right. I frequently watch salespeople with an agenda, with a script, with, uh. I need to say this next. And invariably, it doesn't go as well as if they are just present. If they just listen to what the customer says and they pivot with a customer and they ask the question of, why is that important to you? Or is this rock going to come out of its slice? Should I put my foot on that rock or should I find a different perch? Right. You can't be thinking about, okay, 50ft up, I'm going to have lunch. I can't wait for that salami sandwich. No, you'll think about the salami sandwich when you get to that ledge face. And you can take a minute.

Speaker A: But sometimes you have to remind yourself, hey, I paid to be here when you're suffering and you've got that rock in your shoe and it's burning a hole in it. That's absolutely right. You got to be present and you got to prepare. Preparation is critical. The higher the stakes, the more important. Look at Alex Honnold. Did you see him climb the tower? And I don't remember who was. Bahrain or Abu Dhabi, I think. But did you see that he soloed the. It was a Netflix live event last night.

Speaker C: Insane. It was insane.

Speaker A: What's insane about it is that I happen to know, uh, I don't know Alex personally. He free soloed El Capitan. This building was child's play for him because it's totally predictable. But he spent two months mapping out every step because to climb, they've likened summiting El Capitan solo. No protection. Like performing a, uh, Rachmanino's most difficult piano concerto, where if you miss a single note, you die.

Speaker C: I'm staying away from the piano, Danny.

Speaker A: And that doesn't even count for the physical fitness aspect of it.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: He's a quintessential example of someone who's in the moment and enjoying the moment too. And sales calls, back to your point about being similar to climbing, I think, if I get your meaning, you can prepare all you want, but things are not going to go as planned. They never do. And you've got to be ready for it and embrace it when it happens.

Speaker C: I used to run power hours with inside salespeople at Oracle. And we would sit and we'd prepare for an hour and then one person at a time would make calls. And one young lad made a dial and actually got someone on the phone. Uh, which we would get someone on the phone and maybe 1 in 10 dials. And this woman picked up and he started with, I'm interested in talking with you about the project that you're working on. Um, I see that you've, uh, been working on this for a while. And she stopped him and she said, well, I appreciate you having done your research. I've wrapped up that project, I've moved on to something else. And this poor young lad who didn't have enough practice pivoting said, oh, okay, thank you, goodbye.

Speaker A: I guess our work is done here.

Speaker C: Everybody else in the room, like, just side. It's like he missed the. Oh, interesting.

Speaker A: Tell me, congratulations. How did that go for you?

Speaker C: Yeah, how did that go for you? And what are you working on now? Because she rewarded him by saying, I notice you've done your homework. You saw that on LinkedIn. And so she was willing to spend another few minutes with him.

Speaker A: She was half. He was halfway there on the connection, the caring.

Speaker C: Yeah, except that he was following the script rather than being in the moment.

Speaker A: I had a, uh, somebody work for me who was a dentist who wanted to just work on selling our services to other dentists. And he was on the phone all the time. He would give a very nice presentation. And at the end of the presentation, it was, okay, thank you, goodbye. And I was like, jay, you've made a really good connection. What happened? He goes, I was done talking. And they didn't say anything. So I hung up. And he just didn't understand how to bridge. Get to the next phase, which was asking questions. He was very articulate, but he talked at people. And he was clearly a nice guy who everybody, uh, on the other end of the phone, I can only imagine, found him to be pleasant. But he didn't have the means to engage the person to find out what was important to them. So he could translate these attributes that he was throwing at people into benefits. And that process of. I talked about the sculpture analogy. Each attribute and benefit you translate, you're chipping away something, and it may wind up on the shop floor. If the person doesn't respond with, oh, that's interesting. Instead of like, huh, uh-huh. Well, then you learn, still learn something valuable. You're saying, all right, well, this benefit is not particularly important to this person. So you keep going until you find out what is.

Speaker C: There's different levels of selling from a value standpoint. A lot of salespeople, we say salespeople are coin operated. They'll do whatever maximizes their revenue. And so, you know, the standard perspective is selling is all about making money. And then my friend Jeff Lipsius says, the purpose of selling is not selling, it's buying. I get that. And then I take it one step further. The purpose of selling is to provide the resources that customers need to achieve their objectives. Right? If I'm buying a car, am I buying a car to spend weekends on the racetrack? Or am I buying a minivan to take the kids to school? Am I buying an SUV to go pull an Airstream through the woods? Three very different situations. And my goals are different. So the salesperson better know what I'm looking to do, otherwise I'm going to end up with a Miata with a trailer hitch.

Speaker A: Right. And you want to paint the picture in the mind's eye of your prospect so they can you trans. Tom Hopkins talked about that. You transport people into the future by painting a picture of the wonderful benefits that they're going to experience, how their life will be transformed by what you're offering to them. It has to truly be able to do that. That's the key. Otherwise it remains external to them. They have to internalize it.

Speaker C: Danny, this has been a fascinating conversation about selling and about the three Cs of selling, showing that you care and connecting. And then the third one is collaboration. Collaboration. Thank you.

Speaker A: Getting onto the same side of the table or in the boat with your.

Speaker C: Exactly. So walk me through, just briefly, about the persuasion blueprint. What is it? How'd you come up with it? How do people benefit from it? From the use of it?

Speaker A: I created it with busy people in mind and, uh, I like to think of myself as a busy person. So what it consists of, the core offering is seven modules of about video modules with yours truly delivering the material. And they average about 15 minutes in length, and you do them at your own pace. At the end of each module is one to three exercises that I ask you to complete. And, uh, the whole process begins by having you complete a persuasion scorecard that gives us a baseline for where you're at in terms of caring, connection and collaboration. And then we have you go through the process and I ask you to think of me as your persuasion blueprint. Sherpa. And, uh, I've worked with Sherpas on several occasions. And the Sherpa relationship, client relationship, is different than a client consultant relationship in that it's a bond based on trust. The ideal consultant should adopt a Sherpa's mindset or m footprint, really. He doesn't just drag you up the mountain or say, we're going to go this way. He gauges your progress and works accordingly. I've had guys get involved in telling me I'm not eating the right food on the mountain. And they introduced me to dal baot, which was this combination of rice and lentils. And it's like superfood. It's high calories, low fat, really good energy food. And they run the race at your pace. They know when you need their stop. And so I offer my services in that regard. So while you're doing the modules, you can reach out to me at any time. I prefer an initial chat with you to find out who are you, what communications opportunities and challenges are you facing, and I'll share that this transcends business. I'm working with people that want to do a better job communicating with their teenage daughter, with their spouse, with their nonprofit team.

Speaker C: It gets people on the same side of the table.

Speaker A: Exactly. You really need to know where people are at. I mentioned Hellerstein's book, Don't Bring Facts to a Feelings, uh, fight, and her book is largely about identifying people where they are. If they're steeped in dogma, then the best you can do is communicate with them with dignity and hope that you maintain some form of open dialogue and hope that they might be open to reconsidering their position at some point in the future. And then at the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are openly curious but just unaware. To tailor your presentation, your communication, it's really important to understand where people are on a given subject.

Speaker C: Otherwise, you're just talking at them.

Speaker A: Otherwise you're talking at them and just reinforcing it. A person who's dogmatic, their entire identity is bound up in their beliefs. So for you to question their beliefs is to question their worth. And that triggers their amygdala. That's a fight or flight impulse that you're triggering, and that's not going to get you very far.

Speaker C: And by the way, that's how most tech sales conversations go. Oh, I see you've got our competitors product installed. Well, that was a bad decision.

Speaker A: Yeah, great, great.

Speaker C: We can help you fix that. Right? Usually it's not quite that blatant, but that's what they're the implication.

Speaker A: And that's exactly right. It plugs in defense mechanism, and then you've got resistance meeting resistance. Oh, and in terms of how to get a hold of me, it's pretty easy. My name Danny Bobro. D, A N N Y b o b row.com will get you to my website. And again, the persuasion, uh, scorecard is complimentary. And speaking of complimentary, if after you go through my program, if you don't feel that you got your money's worth, I will refund your investment 100%, no questions asked. Haven't had to do that yet. I don't know that I. You know, if I do, I will, but no one's asked me so far, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Speaker C: That's awesome. Danny, this has been a fabulous conversation. You've already indicated where people can find you and offered the persuasion blueprint and that initial evaluation. Let's keep on fighting the good fight, because when people are on the same side of the table, good things happen, right?

Speaker A: Exactly. Now, this is a real cause. I enjoy digital marketing but I found my true passion when I decided to coach people on the Persuasion blueprint because every interaction is an opportunity to make the world a better place.

Speaker C: Yeah. One I'm in awe of what you've taken on, and two I'm in agreement with the mission, so I know you are.

Speaker A: Thank you for fighting the good fight.

Speaker C: Thanks Danny. This has been fabulous.

Speaker A: You're welcome. Thank you. Lee. It was a pleasure.

Speaker C: Thanks.

Speaker B: Another deep dive into the topic of sales excellence and the performance mindset. If you found this conversation interesting, I would appreciate it if you would share the podcast with a co worker or two and to explore this topic in more depth, send me a note via the contact form on podcast thoughts on selling.com or find some time for us to talk at meet.accellergroup.com Thanks.