by Nancy Calabrese | Jan 15, 2024 | Podcast
About Brian Ahearn: Brian Ahearn, CPCU, CTM, CPT, CMCT, is a founder of Influence People, a company where they believe that Ethical Influence is the Secret to Your Professional Success and Personal Happiness. Brian is one of only a dozen individuals in the world who currently holds the Cialdini Method Certified Trainer (CMCT) designation and one of just a handful to have earned the Cialdini Pre-suasion Trainer (CPT) designation. He is also a faculty member of the prestigious Cialdini Institute. Brian’s passion is to help you achieve greater professional success and enjoy more personal happiness. He teaches you how to ethically move others to action using the science of influence. A cum laude graduate of Miami University, Brian has been in the business arena for more than 35 years and training people for over two decades. In addition to his influence, sales, and leadership work, Brian has been a business coach to regional vice presidents, sales managers, field sales reps, and wealth advisors. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Brian.
In this episode, Nancy and Brian discuss the following:
- The concept of ethical influence
- Why ethical influence is critical for success and happiness
- Revealing the secret of ethical influence
- The uniqueness of Cialdini certification
- What differs Cialdini Training from other training organizations
- The principle of liking as a foundation of success
Key Takeaways:
- Leaders aren’t going to have success if their followers don’t say Yes to the initiative.
- Scarcity is one of the things that draws people to want to engage or make decisions.
- Persuasion is about setting up the moment so that it’s easier when you attempt to persuade somebody.
- We’re learning machines, and we can be proactive about it or reactive to it, but our brains are always pulling in information and assimilating it, so we’re learning.
“ People can get influence and manipulation mixed up. And it happens quite often where somebody, you’ll talk about influence, and they’ll say, oh, it’s just manipulation. And I think there’s a big difference between ethically influencing people into decisions that are good for them. And it may also be good for you versus just getting somebody to do something because it benefits you. So, I love it when people throw up the objection that it’s manipulation because it’s so easy to answer that and educate people at the same time.” – BRIAN.
“Well, one of the things that we talk about is that everything we do is based on research. This isn’t “Hey, Nancy, this worked for me; maybe it’ll work for you.” If it worked for me, I will tell you psychologically why and support it with the principles of persuasion. So, everything that we do is based on research. The heavy emphasis is on the ethical part. And then the third thing that we try to bring forth is practical application. When talking to an audience, I always share a little bit of research to get people excited about how this could be powerful. Okay, here’s a practical way to apply it. And I want people to leave, for example, if I do a keynote, to have at least half a dozen ideas they can start doing today to become more influential.” – BRIAN.
“I would encourage everybody to start with that principle of liking because in addition to being more successful at work, think about how much better society would be, Nancy. Everybody had this mindset: I want to get to know and like you. I will look for the things we have in common: positive qualities; I will compliment you when I see the positive; I will temper myself if I see something negative and have a constructive conversation. But the world would be such a better place if people had that mindset. So that’s what I would encourage your listeners to do today. After you hear this, the next person you look at, ask yourself, what can I do to come to know and like them more?” – BRIAN.
Connect with Brian Ahearn:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Brian Ahern, the Chief Influence Officer at Influence People, an international speaker, and consultant. He specializes in applying the science of influence in everyday business situations. Brian is one of only a dozen individuals in the world who currently holds the Cialdini Method Certified Trainer designation and one of just a handful to have earned the Cialdini Persuasion Trainer designation. His passion is to help people achieve greater professional success and enjoy more personal happiness. And he teaches how to ethically move others into action using the science of influence. Welcome to the show, Brian.
Brian Ahearn: Thank you for having me on, Nancy. It’s been a little while since we’ve been able to get this recorded, but good things come to those who wait. [1:23]
Nancy Calabrese: That’s right, here we are. So, the word influence is an interesting word, and I love how you talk about how to ethically influence. What do you mean by that?
Brian Ahearn: People can get influence and manipulation mixed up. And it happens quite often where somebody, you’ll talk about influence and they’ll say, oh, it’s just manipulation. And I think there’s a big difference between ethically influencing people into decisions that are good for them. And it may be good for you as well, versus just getting somebody to do something because it benefits you. So, I love it when people throw up the objection that it’s manipulation because it’s so easy to answer that and educate people at the same time. [2:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so you state that ethical influence is critical for success and happiness. Why is that?
Brian Ahearn: Well, whenever I speak to an audience, almost the first thing I will ask is by a show of hands, how many of you would agree that much of your professional success and personal happiness depends on getting people to say yes? And inevitably every hand goes up because, for example, salespeople, they know that they’re not going to close a deal unless they hear yes. Leaders aren’t going to have success if their followers don’t say yes to the initiative. And even those who are at the top of organizations. It doesn’t matter how good the mission, vision, and values are if you can’t get people to say yes and execute. So, everybody gets it on the business side. But then when you start talking about going home, do you have a spouse, significant other, or kids? And isn’t life a lot more peaceful and happier when they more willingly say yes to you? That’s where everybody gets it. This is a 24/7, 365 skill. [3:11]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh. And so, give me an example of ethical influence.
Brian Ahearn: Well, I’ll give you one to start with on a personal level. My daughter, who is now 27 and married, but when she was a teenager, turning into a young woman, two-hour showers, boys, all those things, the last thing she wants to do on a hot summer day is help dear old dad by cutting the grass. But I traveled a lot, and I needed help. Now, I knew Nancy that I could offer her a reward. In other words, I could say, Abigail, I will give you a raise in your allowance if you cut the grass when I want you to. Well, now she can negotiate with me, and she might have said, no thanks, Dad, I don’t like money that much or how much? And she might have negotiated me up. And I wasn’t asking her to do this every week. And the worst thing I could have done was to say, fine, now you’re going to do it because I’m your dad. And I said so. That was not the kind of relationship I wanted with her. So rather than do that, I engaged in reciprocity. That natural feeling of obligation to give back to people who first gave to us. And what I did was, I just said, we were in the car one day and I said, Abigail, I’m going to give you a raise in your allowance and dollars a week. And she said, wow, thank you so much. Do you know why? And, and I shared with her things I was genuinely proud of. But Nancy, I also knew this when the time came when I needed her help, she would be more willing. And so, it was only a few weeks later when I was getting ready to travel and I said, Hey Abigail, I’m going to go out of town. Would you mind cutting the grass? And I could see she was ready to protest a little bit, but I just said, hey, time out just gave you a raise on your allowance. Can you help me out? And she paused for a moment, and she said, okay. And she never resisted after that because she understood Dad does nice things for me, and I should do nice things in return for Dad. And that was ethically engaging, right? She was getting a $ 10-a-week raise every week, even when she didn’t have to cut the grass, I was getting the help that I needed. We were both better off and we avoided so much friction that can come with the teenage years. [5:11]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, that’s an awesome example. But why is the ethical influence such a secret?
Brian Ahearn: I think people get too focused on what they want rather than, okay, sure, especially salespeople, right? Salespeople want to make a sale. But an apparent wants their kids to do things, but you must think about, okay, what’s in it for them to, how can I make this in the language of Cubby Cubby, Stephen Cubby, a win-win? I like to put it this way I think that one of the components of being an ethical influencer is to create situations that are mutually beneficial so that if I can say, you know what, Nancy, it looks like it’s good for you and it’s good for me, that means we’re good to go. We’re both getting something out of this. And so, I think most people don’t think about how the other person can benefit from this because that begins to change how you interact with people when you’re looking to genuinely help others. [6:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, wow. Let’s talk about Cialdini. And believe it or not, I just recently heard of him. So, it’s interesting that you’re a certified trainer and a persuasion trainer. Talk about the certification and why only a few people in the world hold that.
Brian Ahearn: Well, he practices what he preaches. So, scarcity is one of the things that draws people to want to engage or make decisions. And so, when there’s only a dozen around the world, and then only five that are certified for the pre-suasion, it adds value to people like me because what I offer people can’t get, excuse me, from other places had to, excuse me, had to wet my whistle there. But people, when people realize like, for me having spent time in the insurance industry, nobody else in the insurance industry is certified to do what I do. So, they can’t get the kind of training I offer with an emphasis on insurance. So, he practices what he preaches there. They have recently though formed something called the Cialdini Institute. They formed this because as Dr. Cialdini gets older, none of us lives forever, and he’s looking at what will my legacy be. And wanting to have an even greater reach than he already had. His books have sold seven or eight million copies, but he would like the word for ethical influence to be given to everybody. And so, they formed this, the Cialdini Institute and it has him online teaching his own very words on how you engage these principles and scope. That’s shifting things a little bit, but still, a differentiator for me is I’m one of only a dozen that can like walk into an organization and do in-person training. [8:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. Yeah, but how is his training different than other training organizations?
Brian Ahearn: Well, one of the things that we talk about, everything that we do is based on research. This isn’t, hey, Nancy, this worked for me, maybe it’ll work for you. If it worked for me, I’m going to tell you psychologically why and support it with the principles of persuasion. So, everything that we do is based on research. The heavy emphasis is on the ethical part. And then the third thing that we try to bring forth is practical application. When I am talking to an audience, I always, after I share a little bit of research to get people excited about, wow, this could be powerful. Okay, here’s a practical way to put it into application. And I want people to leave, for example, if I do a keynote, to have no less than half a dozen ideas that they can start doing today to become more influential. [9:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Huh. What about the pre-suasion trainer designation? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Brian Ahearn: So, persuasion is about how you set up the moment so that when you make your ask when you attempt to persuade somebody, it’s easier. And I’ve got a wonderful story around this. I did a TEDx talk earlier this year and the opening story was me using persuasion to ask my wife to marry me. Now, I didn’t know anything about persuasion 37 years ago, but I instinctively knew I needed to do something big because I’d screwed up pretty badly. And when I asked her, I mean, I could have just done a straight-up, Hey Jane, I’m sorry for my mistakes. You know, we were on again, off again. I, so I could say, I’m sorry for my mistakes. I love you. Will you marry me? And she probably would have said no. But what I did was on her birthday on May 14th, 1987, I sent her a dozen roses to work. She liked that. I asked if I could take her to dinner. She agreed. So, I showed up at her apartment with another dozen roses and a bottle of wine. When we got ready to leave, we went downstairs and there was a silver cloud Rolls Royce and chauffeur waiting for us. We drove to one of the tallest buildings in Columbus at the time and had dinner at one of the top floors. So, it was very romantic. And then in the back of the Rolls, I asked the question. So, you know, when you set the stage romantically, right? That makes it easier for somebody to potentially say yes, but it’s not just romance, it’s business. So, in business, what can we say or do that would maybe put somebody in a mindset that’s more conducive to ultimately saying yes to us? [10:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. Well, that’s cool. So, I guess you’re a charmer, a natural charmer.
Brian Ahearn: Ha ha ha, I’m a fast learner. That’s what I was. And I was highly motivated.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. What is your unique idea that is different and sets you apart? What makes you unique?
Brian Ahearn: Well, in terms of what I do around the influence, well, I think around influence, what I have come to see over the years is the emphasis on what we call the principle of liking, which everybody gets this one, right? It’s easier for you, Nancy, to say yes to me if you know me and like me. It’s not that hard to get people to like you, but what’s the most important thing for anybody is that you get to know and like the other person. So, the more that I get to know you, Nancy, the more that I see your good qualities, the more that I find things that we have in common, that I offer genuine compliments, all of those things make me like you. And the difference there is when you begin to sense, hey, Brian really likes me, he cares for me, he has my best interests at heart. That’s what changes everything because it’s no longer a guy trying to sell you something, it’s somebody who genuinely cares and is looking to help. And even if you have to say no, your no is different than somebody who’s just trying to make a sale. So, I’m always emphasizing people, especially in relationship businesses, and insurance agents are in a relationship business with their clients, do everything you can to get to know and like the people that you are working with, the clients that you are serving the insurance carriers may be that you’re interacting with, because not only will you enjoy your days more, you will get a lot more accomplished when people recognize that you really do care about their interests and not just your own. [12:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Huh. Is there something in particular you would like me to spotlight?
Brian Ahearn: I would say that is, for me, that’s the key. Because I think that’s the foundation. Once I get to know and really like you, Nancy, then when I want to engage reciprocity, as I did with my daughter, I understand how to give to you in more beneficial ways. I’m not just offering you a pen because that’s my company. I listen to you, and I know what you like, and so I try to cater to that in terms of how I help. It begins to inform some of the other principles that we talk about. And that’s why I think it’s the foundation for the house that you’re building on that we call influence. [13:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, huh. Tell me a fun fact about you.
Brian Ahearn: I was born on April Fool’s Day in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Nancy Calabrese: Somebody had to be born that day.
Brian Ahearn: But that’s right. And everybody’s like, oh my gosh, that must have been great. No, I don’t remember any of it. I was a year and a half old when we left. My dad was in the Marines, and he was stationed there during Vietnam. So, I was born in Tripler Army Hospital. And then again, at a year and a half old, we moved back to the New York area where the family was originally from. [14:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, well, I missed it by a couple of hours. My birthday is March 31st.
Brian Ahearn: You know, that’s not a bad thing, because you get teased a lot, but I tell people, I may be a fool, but I’m not stupid.
Nancy Calabrese: I know. You’re not stupid. Tell me something true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Brian Ahearn: that I’m a fool, but I’m not stupid. No. You know, what’s interesting is that I don’t know about a Grion, but people have a misperception about me. And I have a very serious look about me. I mean, it’s just, it is what it is. But when people get to know me, they realize I have a great sense of humor. And my wife says I’m rarely serious. But I have learned that makes whatever I do that much funnier, funnier because if I’m on stage and I’ve got a serious look and then I kind of cut the grain with a funny story about me and my wife or something like that, it takes people back like, ooh, I didn’t expect that. So, I’ve learned that I don’t need to be anybody who’s any different, I just need to learn how to leverage this natural quality that I have in a way that becomes beneficial for me and the people who are listening. [15:19]
Nancy Calabrese: In your experience, so when you’re working with an organization or an individual, you know, about influence and persuasion, how long does it take for the light bulb to go off? When do you see that, okay, they get it?
Brian Ahearn: That can vary so much for different people. Some people almost intuitively do the things that I talk about. I mean, after all, it’s human behavior. And so maybe they had a parent who was good at this, and they observed, or they learned directly from them. And other people, you must hold their hand for quite some time because they can think that they understand these principles that I talk about, for example, reciprocity. And they may get into a reward negotiation, thinking that they’re engaging in reciprocity and they’re not. Reciprocity is about giving and then trusting that person will be open to doing something for you in return should you need a favor. So, it’s not a negotiation strategy, it’s engaging differently. So, there are so many little things that people can get mixed up. One of the things that we’re doing through the Cialdini Institute to help overcome that is, when people go through the online training, if an organization says, let’s say they put a dozen people through, they’ll have eight one-hour coaching sessions along the way as they’re going through to solidify with a certified individual how to put these concepts into practice. And we think that that’s going to help much more than maybe an immersive two-day workshop and then people just go about their normal lives after that. [16:59]
Nancy Calabrese: And then when they get it, is there, do you recommend ongoing training or is it like a one-and-done kind of deal?
Brian Ahearn: No, I think I think when you get it you start realizing how powerful it is and you keep looking to learn more and for more application, I’ve been associated with Dr. Cialdini for 20 years I’ve been a certified trainer for 15 of those years and I am still learning and I’m still amazed at how I can reread some of his books and go. Oh, wow. How did I miss that? That seems so important now. So, I think it’s an ongoing process we need this skill like I said, every day of our lives, so why not keep looking to perfect it? You know, for some people, just a 1% change is huge because they might already be really good. [17:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I’m a big believer in ongoing training. I mean, when I look back on my career, I was always a big fan of it. And as you said, even though I’ve been involved in training for so long, I always walk away with a new nugget of information or something’s brought up and I’ll say, oh my God, I’ve forgotten, I haven’t been doing that, you know?
Brian Ahearn: Yeah, I think we are, I mean, we’re learning machines, and we can be proactive about it or we can be reactive to it, but our brains are always pulling in information and assimilating it and so we’re learning, so why not direct how you’re going to learn. [18:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure, sure. I can’t believe we’re up in time, Brian. And last question, what is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Brian Ahearn: Well, there’s so many that I think about, you know, that influence is critical for their success that they need to know that. But I would encourage everybody to start with that principle of liking, because in addition to being more successful at work, think about how much better society would be, Nancy. Everybody had this mindset that said, I want to get to know you and like you. I’m going to choose to look for the things we have in common, positive qualities, I’m going to compliment you when I see the positive, I’m going to temper myself if I see something negative, and have a constructive conversation. But the world would be such a better place if people had that mindset. So that’s what I would encourage your listeners to do today. After you hear this, the next person you look at, ask yourself, what can I do to come to know and like them more? [19:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, I love that. How can my people find you?
Brian Ahearn: Well, two sources are the best. I’m all over LinkedIn. So, if anybody is listening to the show, if you reach out, I’m happy to connect with you. And I promise that you will get a personal reply from me. If you don’t say, I heard you on Nancy’s show, I’m going to ask you, how’d you find me? But even if you do say that you heard me on the show, I’m going to still have a personal message. I think social media should be social. And so, I always will do that with people I connect with. And then the other place is my website which is influencepeople.biz. If people go out there, there’s a wealth of information. I’ve been blogging for almost 15 years every single week. There are videos, more than 160 podcast episodes I’ve been on, videos, and links to my books. So there is a wealth of information out there on the website. [20:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Wonderful. Hey, folks, reach out to Brian. I find what you do is so fascinating. And I guess, you know, when you think about it, we all want to influence or persuade people in a way to get what we want. And you are the guy, Brian, who can teach us how to do that ethically. So, thanks so much for being on the show, Brian, and for everyone out there, and making it an awesome, influential day. See you next time. [20:52]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jan 10, 2024 | Podcast
About David D. Doerrier: David D. Doerrier founded Present Your Way To Success, specializing in transforming intelligent individuals into extraordinary speakers and facilitators. David, a premier presenter in the business world, is dedicated to helping industry leaders and trainers create captivating presentations that deeply resonate with their audiences. Drawing on his experience as a radio broadcaster, stage actor, voiceover artist, and even a professional Santa Claus, David brings a one-of-a-kind approach that combines his unique style with best practices. Having spent 28 years as an air transportation specialist and kick-starting his training career in the USAF, David has worked with numerous Fortune 15 companies. Today, he empowers speakers, trainers, and leaders to significantly elevate their presentations and achieve outstanding results. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about David.
In this episode, Nancy and David discuss the following:
- The concept of the adult learning theory
- Why should presenters be familiar with this theory
- Techniques to keep different learning types of audiences engaged
- Virtual and In-Person engagements: differences and similarities
- The tips with the camera to look more professional at the virtual presentation
- What do many presenters struggle with the most
- The definition of audience engagement
Key Takeaways:
- Presenters should be familiar with it because, going back to my tagline, talking and telling ain’t training or selling.
- Training is like running a marathon.
- One of the easiest ways of creating a connection or engagement with your virtual audience is to look into the camera.
- What you’re hoping for is for your audience to ask questions, look at you, write things down, and look like they are engaged, but the way you get them to that point is by using these adult learning theories.
“The adult learning theory, at its core, is all about creating engagement with your audience. And I believe that the more engagement you have with your audience, the more your message will resonate and stick and be memorable with your audience.” – DAVID.
“Well, there are many things, but I put three things at the top of the list that all presenters should keep in mind when presenting. The first step is to know your audience. I have seen it many times where a presenter at a networking event, for example, is talking to us in the audience as if we are experts in whatever field they are in. So, number one is to know your audience. Number two is to incorporate stories into your presentation. There is a right way and a wrong way of incorporating stories. You want to keep them short enough that you’re able to provide enough color and enough information in the story. You don’t want them to; you don’t want to ramble on about the story. So, the story should incorporate three things. What was the problem? What solution did you provide? And third, what was the outcome after your client’s solution? Now, there are many different types of stories. Now, what I described would be a business situation based on the problem, solution, and outcome. So, two of the three, number one is to know your audience, number two is to incorporate stories, and number three is to have a compelling conclusion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone give a presentation, they get to the end, and it’s just “Okay, I’m outta here, bye-bye,” some sort of conclusion, maybe a review or a call to action or a deal of some sort. So there needs to be a compelling conclusion.” – DAVID.
“If it’s a smaller audience, that gives me the luxury of maybe asking questions that can be answered, where I could ask actual questions to the audience, get them to participate through questions. I can still do that with a larger audience, but it depends on my time. This is also where the facilitator needs to be experienced enough to manage time. Asking questions of your audience and expecting feedback can set the whole presentation off the rails because now your audience could easily take over. So here, the facilitator needs to be experienced enough to keep control. So, I would say there are many more similarities than differences, where if you’re not asking actual questions of your audience, you could ask rhetorical questions. Certainly, the way you present to a larger audience must be bigger and more robust, I guess, to be able to speak to and for everyone to hear you in that entire room. And just like acting, if you’re going to be an actor on a stage, your mannerisms need to be bigger, your voice needs to be bigger, you need to project so your entire audience can hear you.” – DAVID.
Connect with David D. Doerrier:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with David D. Doerrier, a presentation skills expert with years of expertise and a passion for seeing others thrive. He is a US Air Force retiree with a highly successful career in instructional design, classroom facilitation, and corporate leadership training. Throughout his career, throughout his time coaching other presenters and trainers, he has witnessed the lack of foundational skills needed to make an impact that matters to a listener. And David believes that without proper education on engaging with your audience, you’ll overwhelm them with information they can’t even use. Talking and telling ain’t training or selling. I love that line and I agree with this David. Welcome to the show.
David D. Doerrier: Well, thank you so much, Nancy. This is certainly a pleasure to be with you today. I have been looking forward to this interview for quite some time. So, thank you. [1:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I know we had to postpone the last time. So here we are, finally. Let’s just jump into this. What is the adult learning theory?
David D. Doerrier: Well, that’s a great question right out of the gate. So the adult learning theory at the core of it, it’s all about creating engagement with your audience. And I believe that the more engagement that you have with your audience, the more that your message is going to resonate and stick and be memorable with your audience. [1:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay, why should presenters be familiar with this theory?
David D. Doerrier: Well, the reason they should be familiar with it is going back to my tagline, talking and telling ain’t training or selling. So having a basic understanding of how adults learn, how adults retain information, and understanding those processes, which come from the adult learning theory. Understanding those processes is going to give a speaker an edge over others because now you have some tools in your toolbox or your hip pocket that are going to help you not only write your material but also when you’re up on stage presenting it to your audience. After all, now you have a clear understanding of what it is your audience is looking for and how they will be able to retain that information longer. [2:53]
Nancy Calabrese: But don’t adults or people in general learn differently?
David D. Doerrier: Ah, that’s a great question. Yes, we all learn differently. The adult learning theory consists of two parts. There are eight principles that all adults are looking for to be engaged. And yes, to answer your question, we are all different. Some people will learn auditory, some are visual, some are kinesthetic, some people learn best on their own, best in groups and some people need to know the entire process or the entire everything from A to Z about the topic whereas others only need to know certain pieces so yes you have to be familiar with what is it that we’re all looking for to be engaged but also be aware of the differences. [3:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, but how do you do that? So you have an audience, you don’t know who learns what way. So how is it all tied together to keep them engaged?
David D. Doerrier: Well, this is going to come from, a great question. I’m glad you asked that question. Some of it comes from first understanding what is the current knowledge level of your audience. I know I’m getting to how everybody learns differently. This is gonna, this takes where, as a facilitator, takes practice to under, well, let me back up a minute. As a facilitator, I should bring with me into that, let’s use the example of the classroom, I need to bring with me ways that are going to be of interest to all types of learners. So, if I’m going to be training something I need to be aware that I need to train this for people that are experienced and people that are not and have different ways of disseminating that information for different ways of learning in the audience. I hope I’m making sense. My tongue is all tied around my teeth right now. [5:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, I guess, you know, my takeaway from this part of our discussion is you must put a little bit of everything for all learning types, right, in your presentation.
David D. Doerrier: Perfect. Yes. Yeah. And that’s going to take experience. So that, that brand new trainer, there’s a lot that has to be learned. You know, training is like running a marathon. It is constantly using your head to adjust to different things that are going on in the classroom or virtually however you’re, you’re training. But it’s, there’s a lot of things that have to be incorporated into that training. Going back to my tagline. Talking and telling ain’t training or selling. There’s a lot that goes into this. [5:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Holy cow. So how has your background prepared you for this business?
David D. Doerrier: Great question. So, after high school, went into the military, and I had always had a passion for radio broadcasting and eventually, I had the opportunity to get into radio broadcasting. Radio broadcasting led me into theater because one of the folks that I worked with was, was directing dinner theater. So now I got to be on stage and then through the Air Force, I was eventually asked to be a trainer back in 1995, and that is what started my 30-year career in training and development. Along the way started training trainers and training other folks within the organization to be better presenters, workshop leaders, and so on. And I’ve been a part of Toastmasters for 30 years. So, I think all those things have contributed to where I am today. [6:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. You know, so much of today, post-COVID, is virtual. So you have virtual engagements and then you have in-person engagements. Are the techniques different?
David D. Doerrier: Great question. There are many similarities between virtual and in-person. However, virtual requires cranking everything up to an 11. In both cases, the facilitator needs to set the stage. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? How are we going to do it? What can you expect from me, the facilitator? What do I expect from my audience in both cases? But in virtual, it’s so much more important to start things off from the very beginning with engagement. Now, yes, you need to do that face-to-face, but it is so much more crucial in virtual and keeping them engaged throughout the entire presentation. [8:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, so virtual, you must look at the person that you’re speaking with, right? So, is that any different than in person?
David D. Doerrier: Yes. So certainly if we are in person and here I can scan my audience, I’m standing in front of my audience, I can feel my audience, I can hear them, I can hear them breathing and if they, if they’re chuckling or if they’re, if they are laughing and so on, it certainly can experience that, but in virtual world you can’t feel all of that, but as far as looking at your audience, this takes practice to look directly into the camera. And I suggest getting a camera that you can adjust the height of it. And my particular camera is the type where I have it centered on my screen. So now I don’t have to look above my screen or at the top of my monitor. I now have, it’s still difficult. You’re not looking people in the eyes because from the user side, if I was looking at my second monitor, for example, and looking at everybody in their eyes, the people that are observing me, I’m not looking at them. So, one of the easiest ways of creating a connection or engagement with your virtual audience is to look into the camera. Now, I do know that we do virtually, we need to look away many times, but at minimum, what I would suggest is looking directly into the camera during your introduction, during transitions, when you ask questions, when you’re responding to questions, when you’re telling stories, and during your conclusion, you’re looking directly into that camera. [10:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Into the camera and not at the people. So I have found that I have to minimize the view and move the screen up right below the camera. So I’m making eye contact with them. If I don’t, it looks like I’m looking down. Is that your experience?
David D. Doerrier: Exactly. And, and what you described, you’re looking down and what I’ve seen with others, they have all the faces, all the people on a second monitor. So now they’re looking either to the right or to the left, which makes it even worse.
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, wow. So based on your experience, what do many presenters struggle with the most?
David D. Doerrier: Well, there are many things, but there are three things that I put at the top of the list that all presenters should keep in mind when presenting. And the first is to know your audience. I have seen it many times where a presenter at a networking event, for example, is talking to us in the audience as if we are experts in whatever field they are in. So number one is to know your audience. Number two is to incorporate stories into your presentation. Now there is a right way and a wrong way of incorporating stories. You want to keep them short enough that you’re able to provide enough color and enough information in the story. You don’t want them to you don’t want to ramble on about the story. So the story should incorporate three things. What was the problem? What solution did you provide? And third, what was the outcome after your client’s solution? Now there are many different types of stories. Now what I described would be a business situation based on what was the problem, solution, and outcome. So, two of the three, number one is to know your audience, number two, incorporate stories, and number three, have a compelling conclusion. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone give a presentation, they get to the end and it’s just “Okay, I’m outta here, bye-bye”, some sort of conclusion, maybe a review or a call to action or a deal of some sort. So there needs to be a compelling conclusion. [12:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah. Well, what’s the definition of audience engagement?
David D. Doerrier: That’s a great question. There are so many different ways to engage the audience. And I would say that what you’re hoping for is your audience to ask questions, to look at you, to be writing things down, to look like they are engaged. But the way that you get them to that point is by using these adult learning theories. For example, I’ll give you one of them to get your audience to take ownership in wanting to listen. And the only way that your audience is going to take ownership is that the facilitator needs to create an opening that says, why are we here? What are we doing? What’s the value that you’re going to get out of this? And if you stick with me to the end of this training or the end of this presentation, you’re going to be able to leave here with a better knowledge of X. So now your audience, if they take ownership, that’s going to get your audience to be more engaged or ask questions or to participate with the chat virtually or whiteboard virtually or polls. So, yes, you want to get them engaged but there are processes that you must put into place that’s going to get them there. [13:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Great, does it take someone to pull this together? So they become a client of yours. What’s your experience in seeing the improvement in audience engagement?
David D. Doerrier: Within a 90-minute session, I can improve there, well, it depends on what their objectives are. So if their objectives are, if they want to just take their engagement up a couple of notches, I can do that in 90 minutes. What I look at is what they are presenting. Who are they presenting it to? When are they gonna be presenting? Taking their existing presentation and reformatting it in a way that we create a compelling introduction, we create transitions, we create engagement throughout the presentation, and we create an engaging conclusion. And just by doing that, the next time they present it, I guarantee it will increase engagement. [15:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Is there a difference between speaking to a large audience versus a small audience as it relates to audience engagement?
David D. Doerrier: Yes, and no. So yes, in the way of, if it’s a smaller audience, that gives me the luxury of maybe asking questions that can be answered, where I could ask actual questions to the audience, get them to participate through questions. I can still do that with a larger audience, but a lot of it depends on how much time I have. And this also is where the facilitator needs to be experienced enough to be good at time management. Asking questions of your audience and expecting feedback can set the whole presentation off the rails because now your audience could easily take over. So here, the facilitator needs to be experienced enough to keep control. So, I would say that there are many more similarities than there are differences, where if you’re not asking actual questions of your audience, you could ask rhetorical questions. Certainly, the way that you present to a larger audience must be bigger and more robust, I guess, to be able to speak to and for everyone to be able to hear you in that entire room. And just like acting, if you’re gonna be an actor on a stage, your mannerisms need to be bigger, your voice needs to be bigger, you need to project so your entire audience can hear you. [16:54]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, well how did you end up in this business?
David D. Doerrier: Well, great question. I ended up in the business through the Air Force., I did 10 years active duty then 18 years in the reserves and the entire time in the same career field. In 1995, when I was in my reserve unit in San Antonio, Texas, my first sergeant asked, said there was an opportunity to be a trainer at Dobbins Air Force Base and Marietta, Georgia. Would you like to go? And at that point, I had a theater background. I had a radio background. And I took advantage of it. That was when I started learning the craft of training and writing training, delivering training daily, and eventually working for civilian organizations and eventually training trainers to train others within the organization, and found that I loved it. I just loved this part of what I was doing. And I knew that at some point I wanted this to be my full-time job. I had it as a side hustle for five years. And then at the end of last year, I left the corporation, and now it is my full-time business. [18:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Do what you love, love what you do, right? And just one last question, what do you love about it so much?
David D. Doerrier: Exactly. Oh, that’s a great question. You know, in my business, I’ve had an opportunity to ask this same question to hundreds of trainers. What is it that you love the most about training or coaching? And it’s the gotcha factor where I, when I see my audience, get it. You asked me the question earlier about how long I need to get someone to increase engagement in their presentation – 90 minutes. And then when they come back for their second coaching session, we evaluate how that worked and they’re telling me “Hey, this worked, this worked”. That is what feeds me. And I’ve got goosebumps right now thinking about these, these folks that I’ve worked with, and it works. [18:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, it works. You know, I love speaking to passionate people. You were passionate about what you do. We have to end our conversation, unfortunately, but how can my people find you?
David D. Doerrier: Oh, great question. Two ways. One is through my website, presentyourwaytosuccess.com/. The other is through LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviddoerrier/. So, get in touch with me through my website, get in touch with me through LinkedIn. Let me know that you heard this podcast with myself and Nancy, and I will send you a free copy of my eBook Eight Principles of Engagement.
Nancy Calabrese: Love it, love it. People take advantage of David’s offering and David you were an absolute pleasure. I hope that we’ll continue conversations in the future and make it a great presentation day. I usually say sales day, but a presentation day. Let’s get everyone engaged. So, thanks David again for coming to the show.
David D. Doerrier: Thank you. [20:09]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jan 8, 2024 | Podcast
About Clare Price: Clare Price is CEO of Octain, a marketing consultancy that is transforming the way companies do marketing. She started working remotely in the 1980s as a tech reporter for InformationWeek magazine, and later as a research director for Gartner. Before launching CFP MediaGroup (now Octain), she was Vice President of Research for Demand Metric, a strategic marketing advisory service where she led the research analysis into cloud computing applications for marketing automation, social platforms, and several other products. Clare is the author of two books and an experienced speaker with clients like the American Marketing Association, Vistage, and many others. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Clare.
In this episode, Nancy and Clare discuss the following:
- Octaine Growth Systems – the new force in modern marketing
- Ways to determine the best strategy for each company
- Transitions from trial and error to predictable revenue growth
- Encouraging sales and marketing teams to work together
- Main facts from Clare’s book “Smart Marketing Execution”
- Customer Targeting and Profiling
- AI revolution and why should we be cautious about it
Key Takeaways:
- For most small business owners and fractional consultants, the brand is your reputation.
- We recommend understanding the customer’s Why, not Who the customer is.
- You need to change the way marketing needs to redefine marketing.
- But I do think that the caution is to let AI do the work for you but don’t let it think for you.
- Challenge your assumptions.
“We start with the structure that we’ve developed is what we call a canvas model, and we start with discovery. It is understanding where that company is in terms of what we call the six areas of market acceleration, which are brand development, customer acquisition, message clarity, market expansion, sales enablement, and product innovation. So, we will do a discovery assessment of that company in those six areas to see where they are today, where are their gaps, where are their opportunities, and from that standpoint, then we do an evaluation and recommendations.” – CLARE.
“And what our sales enablement module does is bring the marketing and sales team together to create a unified team. We have a lot of tools that we use to help the team understand each other because you’re more on the sales side, and I’m more on the marketing side. We have different ways of looking at the world, right? So, the marketing person is looking at the forest, and the salesperson is looking at that one tree that is going to give them the clothes they need for that month, right? And so, we have different ways of looking at the world, and we must understand and share each other’s perspectives. So, one of the things that we recommend in the book with our sales enablement module is what we call ride-along: where the marketing person will get in the car. You want to do the physical live ride-along and drive up to the business owner’s door or the virtual ride-along where they are in the Zoom call, and they can see how the salesperson navigates through the sales call. And we feel that that’s a really good way to learn how to walk in each other’s shoes. By contrast, the sales team could also get involved with our sales enablement approach in doing some planning for a marketing event like a conference or putting together a specific piece of collateral or material so that they kind of see, well, how does that marketing person put their magic together?” – CLARE.
“I think there have been a lot of changes, but I think the biggest change is from broadcasting your offer to personalizing, individualizing, and presenting deep individual value to your target. The idea of broadcasting out, we’ve got, you know “Hey, 25% off. Will you get it now?” is not something that a lot of savvy consumers want. And particularly the younger generation, millennials and younger, don’t want to just buy a product or buy a professional service because it’s going to solve a problem. They want to be part of something that’s going to make their life, their community, and the world better. And that’s a big shift.” – CLARE.
Connect with Clare Price:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Claire Price, the CEO of Octane Growth Systems, a marketing consultancy transforming how companies do marketing. Before launching Octane, Claire was a research director for Gartner’s Internet Strategies Service. She also served as vice president of research for Demand Metric, a strategic marketing advisory service. Her new book, Smart Marketing Execution, defines the strategies, execution process, and automated systems that mid-market companies and agency owners need to use to accelerate their profits, performance, and productivity. Welcome to the show, Claire.
Clare Price: Thank you, Nancy. It’s a pleasure to be here. [1:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so let’s just jump into Octaine Growth Systems. You state that it is the new force in modern marketing. Why is that? Tell us more about it.
Clare Price: Yeah, just to kind of give you a little bit of background, I’d like to share my journey to creating the system. I was a struggling small business owner and someone with both marketing and strategy, background, and knowledge. What I found in working with so many marketing companies and also what I was doing on my own was there’s so much trial-and-error marketing happening. People would throw things out there, hope it worked, didn’t work, roll it back, shift, pivot, throw it up against the wall, see if it sticks kind of mentality. And that was costing all of us so much time and money. And it’s a business killer. It’s an absolute business killer. So over the last 10 years, beginning in 2012, I’ve been on a quest to develop a new way of approaching marketing I call it redefining your marketing engine that allows business owners and fractional consultants like myself to do marketing in a very different way and how is it different it’s different because it combines and integrates strategy what we call smart execution and automation into one marketing operating system most small businesses and don’t do strategy. They just jump in and start by ads or getting their social media out or whatever. And this is a way for them to do a strategy that’s not intimidating, not expensive, and gives them results very quickly. [3:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. But how do you determine what strategy is right for what company?
Clare Price: We start with the structure that we’ve developed is what we call a canvas model, and we start with discovery. It is understanding where that company is in terms of what we call the six areas of market acceleration, which are brand development, customer acquisition, message clarity, market expansion, sales enablement, and product innovation. So, we will do a discovery assessment of that company in those six areas to see where they are today, where are their gaps, where are their opportunities, and from that standpoint, then we do an evaluation and recommendations. [4:05]
Nancy Calabrese: So how long does it take for a company to go from trial and error to predictable revenue growth?
Clare Price: We work with them for a minimum of six months. We typically see results after the first three months because as we are developing each of the accelerators, we roll it out. So, it is not the old consulting model where you have a big discovery meeting or two, run away for six months, and then come back with them, and I know Nancy, you’ve had this experience, the THUD factor, the big plan on the desk, right? We don’t do that. We involve our clients in a collaborative, what we call collaborative consulting approach, where they’re building the strategy with us. So, they can see how it works, and what we do, and provide their values, inputs, and processes into it, so it becomes theirs. And as each accelerator rolls out, we start we start seeing results from that. So, they’re continual, it’s a build factor as opposed to waiting for the big reveal and then bringing everything out at once. [5:24]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, it’s funny when I’m listening to you and I know that in my business and I think in your business, it takes time, right, to get the attention, get the word out there. And so, after six months, you say typically they work with you for six months. What happens then? You know, are they on their own or do they continue to work with you?
Clare Price: Well, six months is usually when we complete the planning and rollout. Most of our clients are engaged with us for 12 to 18 months. Some have stayed as long as three years, but beyond that, 12 to 18 months, we want to help them develop their marketing department. We’re not there to become their marketing department. We will help them hire the right people and get the right people in the right seats. We help them automate so that they have the tools to get them out of constant manual rework and into more of an automated system that they can have someone within their company run. [6:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, sales and marketing, there’s always the misnomer that there’s a clash, but I think both teams should work together. How do you encourage that? And once they work together as a team, I’m guessing they can deliver higher revenues and profits, you know, lead gen and lead qualification as well.
Clare Price: Absolutely, Nancy. That is our philosophy. That’s why one of the accelerators that we have as part of the system is sales enablement. And what our sales enablement module does is bring the marketing and sales team together to create a unified team. We have a lot of tools that we use to help the team understand each other because you’re more on the sales side, and I’m more on the marketing side. We have different ways of looking at the world, right? So, the marketing person is looking at the forest, and the salesperson is looking at that one tree that is going to give them the clothes they need for that month, right? And so, we have different ways of looking at the world, and we must understand and share each other’s perspectives. So, one of the things that we recommend in the book with our sales enablement module is what we call ride-along. [7:54]
Nancy Calabrese: What a great example, right? It’s true.
Clare Price: where the marketing person will get in the car. You want to do the physical live ride-along and drive up to the business owner’s door or the virtual ride-along where they are in the Zoom call, and they can see how the salesperson navigates through the sales call. And we feel that that’s a really good way to learn how to walk in each other’s shoes. By contrast, the sales team could also get involved with our sales enablement approach in doing some planning for a marketing event like a conference or putting together a specific piece of collateral or material so that they kind of see, well, how does that marketing person put their magic together? [8:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I think that’s a great idea. You know, it often baffled me that there was friction between the two, whereas, you know, if you unite, I think your point is you have to look at it through their eyes, right, and see what their world is like.
Clare Price: Exactly, and I think it’s very important. I think it’s more important now. I’ll be very strong on this I think it’s more important for marketing to understand what the sales world is like Because marketing should be the front line of providing good quality leads to the salespeople. That’s the job of marketing. The job of marketing is not to create wonderful; you know branding and get brand recognition with their wonderful logos and all of that stuff. The real honest job of marketing is to provide good quality leads to the sales team that they can close. [9:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, let’s talk more about your book, Smart Marketing Execution. What motivated you to write it? And talk about the strategies that you recommend in the book.
Clare Price: Thank you, Nancy. What motivated me to write it was trying to put a lot of the tools strategies and frameworks that I’ve been using with my clients into an easy-to-digest system or book that someone could pick up and use and drive for their own business. So, what I tried to do in the book was again, lay out those key accelerator’s examples of the tools that we use. And my philosophy on this is really, it should be a guide, a guidebook. This should be a journey guide for anyone who wants to change or consider changing the old way of doing marketing. So, we try to take everyone step by step through the process. Why do you want to do this, why do you want to create a brand? A lot, there’s just one example there’s a lot of misconceptions about what is a brand and why you need one. For most small business owners and fractional consultants, the brand is your reputation. It’s not what we think of when we think of you know, Tide or Google or Apple or one of those big, you know, brands. If you’re a smaller mid-size company business owner or you’re a fractional consultant, your brand is your reputation. When you walk into a room, do people know you? When you hand your business card off to people, whether it’s digitally or in person, is it recognizable? Will people see you in the community? Those are the kinds of things that we talk to our clients about and our consultants about in building a brand. And we’ve walked through that very carefully in the book. The other thing that I think that I wanted to point out is that’s, I think, the secret sauce in the book is the way that we manage client and customer targeting and profiling. Because most of the time, the typical marketing approach to your ideal customer is, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience, Nancy, an agency, or someone will come to you who’s doing a website and say, okay, who’s your ideal client? And you give them three or four or five facts about who that ideal client is. Typically, those facts are demographics. They are, okay, that’s a certain size company, certain role in the company, certain industry, geographic location, right? Well, I have a marketing guru friend who said, I think one of the most spectacular comments about demographics you ever want to hear. Her comment was demographics are the least useful thing that you need to know about your customer. Because after all, who wants to get an email saying, dear female, 25 to 55, here is our offer? [13:11]
Nancy Calabrese: Ha Ha. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. So, yeah, what do you recommend?
Clare Price: So, what we do, what we recommend is understanding the customers why. We spend a lot of time understanding, not who that customer is. Of course, we must know that. There must be that front-line or foundational profile. But why do they buy? What motivates them? What are their true needs, desires, and wants? What do they value? because if they value something, like for example, use a typical example. If someone is motivated to lose weight, they’re going to value diet programs, diet counseling, diet, workouts, personal trainers, that whole thing. If they’re motivated to drive their business into a new geographic area, which is a plant that we’re working on. But now they value understanding that new market and how to quickly become the mayor of that new market space. [14:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, wow. You know, you talked a few minutes ago about the old way of marketing. How has marketing changed?
Clare Price: I think there have been a lot of changes, but I think the biggest change is from broadcasting your offer to personalizing, individualizing, and presenting deep individual value to your target. The idea of broadcasting out, we’ve got, you know “Hey, 25% off. Will you get it now?” is not something that a lot of savvy consumers want. And particularly the younger generation, millennials and younger, don’t want to just buy a product or buy a professional service because it’s going to solve a problem. They want to be part of something that’s going to make their life, their community, and the world better. And that’s a big shift. [15:38]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. How long has that been going on? You know, the change or the shift?
Clare Price: I would say that we’ve really been seeing the social responsibility shift heavily growing and becoming a huge trend. I’m going to guess here maybe five years, maybe longer, but five years.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay, so little change of questioning. Tell me a fun fact about you.
Clare Price: Well, we started out talking about our dogs, right? So, my fun fact is that for a good part of the last 10 years or so, I have been very active in a competitive dog sport called dog agility. I’ve taken two dogs to the master’s level in dog agility I trained with in Sacramento, California, trained with one of the top trainers in the sport and I just love dog sports. And so that was a fun thing for me. Unfortunately, like a lot of the football players and basketball players out there, I had a career-ending injury a couple of years ago and I can no longer run because I broke my knee. So, I’m working with my new puppy in obedience and rally and things that are not so athletically required. [17:08]
Nancy Calabrese: That is so cool, so cool. And folks, when you check out Claire’s website, you’re going to see which dog is on your team on the site.
Clare Price: That is ours, that’s my new puppy, Ashton. He is 14 months old, and he is our chief happiness officer.
Nancy Calabrese: I love it. All right. So, getting back to you and what you do, tell me something true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Clare Price: That is a very, very interesting question. And I would say that would be how you need to change the way marketing needs to redefine marketing. I think there’s a lot of resistance to that. People are used to doing it the way they’ve done it, especially if they’ve been profitable at it. And I think that a lot of people are used to people who are kind of stuck in that old way of doing marketing, the old way of building their business are going to get caught. The other thing, as I’m thinking about, is the other thing that I think people may not agree with me on, I think you’ve got to be very cautious about this new AI revolution. I think that there is a lot of good there. But there’s also a tendency to let it do too much of the work for you. Let it do, here’s my advice on AI. I’m doing a lot of work with AI in my own business and working with clients and been doing a ton of research on it lately. Nancy, and it’s a huge new thing, right? But I do think that the caution is to let it do the work for you but don’t let it think for you. [19:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, I like that. Yep. I mean, in thinking about what you just said, it’s true. I mean, if it’s a jumpstart, I think AI could be used as a jumpstart, right? And then you must make it your own. Yeah, wow. Listen, we’re up with our time and this has been a fascinating discussion. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Clare Price: Absolutely. Challenge your assumptions. And then I also wanted to, if it’s OK with you, offer the audience the opportunity to download a free chapter of my book. And, I have a brainstorming call with me. Yeah, they go to octaingrowth.com. And that is https://octaingrowth.com/myoffer/ .
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, well, you heard it folks. I think that’s a very generous offer. So please take advantage of it. Claire, you’re a fascinating lady. And I also know you love birds. But I thought you were going to bring that one up, but that’s for another conversation, okay? Yes, and everyone out there, make it a great sales day. And I’m going to say a sales and marketing day. See you next time. [20:32]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jan 3, 2024 | Podcast
About Barbara Spector: Barbara Spector is the Founder of Smart Moves where she is an expert in sales force retention and development. She has a degree from Boston University, has been a guest lecturer at Syracuse University and is certified in over a dozen assessment methodologies. She specializes in and speaks on helping the C-Suite make effective hiring decisions to accelerate their revenue. As a member of SHRM, ATD, AA-ISP, NAED, NAPW and the National Speakers Association, she has worked with companies such as Corning, Merrill Lynch, US Bank, Citizens Bank, Woodruff Sawyer Insurance, Samsung, NEC, Raytheon, HCA & Sun Microsystems. With over 20 years of sales success, she has been a multi-million-dollar producer in her own right and recently named the Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Barbara.
In this episode, Nancy and Barbara discuss the following:
- Challenges faced by sales leaders today.
- The impact of mindset on sales team performance.
- How to instill a growth mindset in sales leaders.
- Metrics used to measure the success of transformation initiatives.
- Barbara’s approach to sales training and coaching.
- Traits defining high-performing sales teams.
- Barbara’s perspective on the effectiveness of cold calling.
Key Takeaways:
- Rome was not built in the day, and people don’t change behavior quickly.
- It starts with the level of commitment that this is going to be something that everyone must get involved in.
- The reason that people say cold calling doesn’t work, is because they haven’t fixed what’s going on between their ears.
- Many individuals have a need to be liked and loved.
“You know that expression, there’s sort of an expression, the longer things go, the more things don’t change. So what I mean by not changing is that the majority of sales forces that are out there are really very mediocre and a large reason why they’re mediocre is because a lot of the sales managers and sales leaders were put in those roles out of being salespeople and they never quite made the psychological jump from being an individual contributor to being a somebody who has to produce results through people. So, they’re so they are still functioning with it with their own sales mindset and then expecting their salespeople to do something differently. So, one of the biggest issues that I see is if we’re going to help salespeople, we’ve got to first work with sales leaders and sales managers to kind of get their heads screwed on right in the first place.” – BARBARA.
“So, if the person at the top accepts the excuses of the next person down on the run, that gives permission, so to speak, of that individual to accept the excuses of the people below him or her. So, we’re seeing that a lot gets lost that could be taken care of because when we make excuses, we’re losing control because we’re pointing the finger sort of out there like they, it wasn’t for the competition, if it wasn’t for the economy, if it wasn’t for the fact that, you know, that they were comparison shopping, whatever it might be. We need to be able to point our thumb at ourselves and say “I forgot to do something. I didn’t, I wasn’t as effective as I could have been”. And for managers, they need to be able to hear that and then respectfully confront the salespeople that they’re managing so that the excuse making stops.” – BARBARA.
“Because we all know people buy, everything we do in sales has an emotional content to it. Whether we’re selling or buying, it’s all emotional, but we rationalize logically. So, if we can get people in sales to emotionally be connected to the amount of money that they’re asked to make or that they want to make, makes a huge difference.” – BARBARA.
Connect with Barbara Spector:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Barbara Spector, founder of Smart Moves, where she is an expert in Salesforce retention and development. Her success lies in providing critical and insightful information that enables business owners and executives to make better decisions regarding all their people issues. With over 20 years of sales success, Barbara has been a multimillion-dollar producer in her own right and recently named the woman of the year by the National Association of Professional Women. Barbara believes that if you master your mindset, you will multiply your sales and you know, so do I. This is going to be a great conversation. Welcome to the show, Barbara.
Barbara Spector: Thanks, Nancy. I’m so appreciative of being here. [1:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well first, congratulations on your award. So, what did you do to win it?
Barbara Spector: I just have a reputation out there in the universe, I guess, is probably the best way to say it. And I work with a lot of women entrepreneurs, and I just was blown away that I was voted and got that award. It’s nice.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Well, all the best. All right, so let’s start. In your experience, what are some of the biggest challenges facing sales leaders today? And how do you help them overcome these challenges to drive growth?
Barbara Spector: It’s a big question to answer, so I’m glad you asked it. The longer I do the kind of work that I’m doing, the more I see that nothing changes. You know that expression, there’s sort of an expression, the longer things go, the more things don’t change. So what I mean by not changing is that the majority of sales forces that are out there are really very mediocre and a large reason why they’re mediocre is because a lot of the sales managers and sales leaders were put in those roles out of being salespeople and they never quite made the psychological jump from being an individual contributor to being a somebody who has to produce results through people. So, they’re so they are still functioning with it with their own sales mindset and then expecting their salespeople to do something differently. So, one of the biggest issues that I see is if we’re going to help salespeople, we’ve got to first work with sales leaders and sales managers to kind of get their heads screwed on right in the first place. I can give you examples if you’d like. [3:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, sure.
Barbara Spector: Well, for instance, one of the biggest, I’m going to call it a weakness or a failing or a gap that sales leaders have is they make excuses when they need to report to a CEO or to, if they’re a manager, when they must report to a sales VP or a director. They don’t even know that they’re making the excuses, but the excuses get accepted, whatever they might be. It’s like, oh, the reason we didn’t reach our numbers this quarter was because of blah, whatever it might be, right? So, if the person at the top accepts the excuses of the next person down on the run, that gives permission, so to speak, of that individual to accept the excuses of the people below him or her. So, we’re seeing that a lot gets lost that could be taken care of because when we make excuses, we’re losing control because we’re pointing the finger sort of out there like they, it wasn’t for the competition, if it wasn’t for the economy, if it wasn’t for the fact that, you know, that they were comparison shopping, whatever it might be. We need to be able to point our thumb at ourselves and say, you know, I forgot to do something. I didn’t, I wasn’t as effective as I could have been. And for managers, they need to be able to hear that and then respectfully confront the salespeople that they’re managing so that the excuse making stops. It’s a big deal. [4:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. I mean, how do you help sales leaders develop a growth mindset, and by the way, overcome the excuses, what are some of the key strategies you use?
Barbara Spector: Very good question. So, we do take a deep dive and do a diagnostic into a number of things, what the skill sets are of each member of a team, what their mindsets are like in terms of very specific things. I can give you some examples of that in a minute. And so, if we can understand almost scientifically, when certainly objectively, what’s really going on in that organization that’s causing things to be not as strong as they would like it to be, whether it’s the revenue, whether it’s the number of deals in the pipeline, could be any number of things. Most companies look at the superficial, what’s the word I’m looking for, symptoms. They don’t look at the root cause of the problem. So, what I do in our organization is we help folks get to the root problem rather than deal with just the symptoms. And invariably that shortens the amount of time it takes for them to solve the problem because they’re really dealing with the true issue. [6:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, talk about your approach to sales training and coaching. Share with us, you know, how it contributes to improve performance and growth.
Barbara Spector: Okay. Well, when we do this sort of work, it’s not a one and done. It’s not a weekend sales training, because, you know, as the old expression goes, Rome was not built in the day, and people don’t change behavior quickly. So, when we get involved in training an organization, it’s a six-month long process. And it’s, yeah, and it’s because it takes that long for people to literally make some and how they’re performing. So, if we can work with them on two fronts, mindset and then skillset, over a course of six months, we can see dramatic change. [6:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, and what happens after the six months?
Barbara Spector: Well, sometimes some of those companies will go on and continue to work with us from the standpoint of coaching. We coach either individuals or a whole team of people. And really the bottom line, Nancy, is we’re seeing a minimum of a 17% increase in top line revenue growth. So yeah. [7:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Really? Well, I’m such a big believer in sales training. I mean, I’ve been involved in it for over a decade plus, and I can’t get enough of it. Even, you know, I walk away from every training meeting with a new nugget, right? Or it’s a reminder, oh, yeah, stop doing that. I’ve got to do that again. Yeah, it’s invaluable, I believe.
Barbara Spector: Exactly.
Nancy Calabrese: How do you measure the success of your transformation initiatives and what metrics do you typically use?
Barbara Spector: Well, we begin with the baseline. So, we look at where everyone on the team lives, so to speak, in terms of how much revenue they’ve brought in over the course of the last 12 months, whatever that 12-month period is. Then we project out, if they did the things that we would suggest from the standpoint of training and coaching, what the increase in that revenue would be. And it’s usually exponential. Not everybody on the team will come to post, so to speak. But that’s the biggest metric that we use. The other one is, what’s the pipeline looking like? Does it have real quality deals in there? Or is it still sort of just, you know, fluff? [8:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yep. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, how have you been able to consistently help organizations achieve this double-digit sales growth? You know, what are some of the key elements of your proven system that helps them overcome these challenges to drive growth?
Barbara Spector: Well, that’s a great question. It all starts with at the top, and it starts with the level of commitment that this is going to be something that everyone must get involved in. That’s critical, that’s critical. And then we keep driving that commitment level and holding people accountable throughout the six months. We’re not task masters, but they must get certain things done that are very practical tasks or activities that come out of the sales training and the learning that they received on every two-week basis over the course of six months. And when they don’t get the work done, I’m very tactfully insistent, so to speak, because I’m going to ask them what they learned, what are they going to do differently if it didn’t work out, and how are you going to do it once they decide, and they say here’s what I’m going to do differently. [9:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Barbara Spector: So, we’re playing in a very adult world here and moving people from mediocrity, hopefully, to superior performers. Hope I’m answering your question.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah. Is there a story you could share, you know, of a client that you worked with who was struggling with sales and how you were able to turn their situation around?
Barbara Spector: Yeah, I have a great one. One of my clients up in Canada, who was the executive VP of the largest privately held company in Canada, they’re a manufacturer of windows and doors. And the company hadn’t grown in terms of revenue or accounts for five years. They were still marketing to the same list of accounts for the past five years before we got involved with them. There were several things that they saw out of the diagnostics that we did that were the source of the problem. And I’m just going to talk about one of them right now because it was so dramatic from what was occurring initially to what ultimately happened. These guys didn’t know how to differentiate themselves from their competition. So that’s just one of many things. And what they ended up doing, what we did together is we brought everybody in from literally from the janitor all the way up to the CEO and sat them down in a room and had them write out a list of all the things that they had that were the same as everybody else, you know, the lack of differentiation. That was all well and good. But then what was important was for us to somehow create a list of what could they do differently. [11:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Barbara Spector: And here’s what they came up with once we cleared their heads out of all the things, you know, all the typical things that people say, oh, we’re a family-owned business. Do you think your prospects care? No. And there was a laundry list of all the things that they thought made them different, but they actually didn’t make them any different at all. So, we had to sit down and go, what’s going to really make this, make a true difference? Well, as you well know, Canada is very, very cold in the wintertime. And this company worked with large developers of subdivisions, and they were a window and door manufacturer. And what was happening previously is, you know, piecemeal, they would deliver a set of doors and windows and then another two weeks later, another set and so on and so forth. And they said to themselves, well, why don’t we deliver all the windows and all the doors for the entire subdivision in one fell swoop which means that the manufacturing arm had to really ramp up and get going, but everyone got behind it. And they did, they delivered all the windows and doors to two different subdivisions. And it was such a differentiation that nobody else was doing. And so, what was happening for this company prior to that is they were always fighting on price with their potential buyers, with the general manager of a of a subdivision. As soon as they did that, the price issue went away, and they increased their revenue within 12 months just for that one division by $20 million. [13:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow, wow. Why would they have like sporadically have delivered versus just delivering them all in one fell swoop? Oh.
Barbara Spector: Oh, that’s a super question because that’s what people, because it was comfortable. It was what everybody did. You know, it was the standard approach. And, if this put a lot, by doing it all at once, it put a tremendous amount of pressure on the manufacturing arm, where they had to do all the building of the windows and the doors, but everybody got behind it because they had strong enough leadership. We backed the leadership, and it made it just a tremendous difference. [13:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome, great story. What are some of the key traits and characteristics of high performing sales teams and how do you help develop them within the companies that you service?
Barbara Spector: Do we have a couple of days to talk about that? Just ask me the question again. What are the qualities of high performing teams and how do you do what, please?
Nancy Calabrese: No, unfortunately. How do you help to develop these within the organization?
Barbara Spector: Okay, good question. All right, so there’s a couple of things that are crucial. I’ve been doing sales training for a long, long time. And even though the industries might be different, and the type of sales might be different, one of the two things that stand out as essential is the salesperson must have a burning desire to be successful in sales. You could call it grit. But the big kahuna really is they’ve got to be committed to doing whatever it takes to be successful, as long as it’s legal and ethical, of course. So that means that they don’t quit. When they’re supposed to make 25 calls in a day, they don’t quit at 20 calls just because they’re tired or because it’s five o’clock. So, when people are super committed and really driven to succeed, guess what happens? They do. So, to get people committed and successful at sales, one of the things that we get them involved in is developing personal goals. To motivate people to succeed, just having a paycheck dangling out there like a carrot on a stick that was going to yield a certain amount, doesn’t always do the trick. What they need to do sometimes to reach their goals is they have to have what I’m calling personal goals. So, for example, let’s imagine somebody needs to earn for themselves, and I don’t know what the number might be for a particular company because every product is different, but they need to generate, or they have an opportunity to generate $200,000 in revenue to themselves. So, they’ve got corporate goals, but how do they create a personal goal? Well, maybe this family has just had another child. [16:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Barbara Spector: They’ve been living in a two-bedroom house. They need to get a bigger home. So, the personal goal becomes that larger home, which then drives the motivation of the salesperson to make more money because they need a bigger home. Because we all know people buy, everything we do in sales has an emotional content to it. Whether we’re selling or buying, it’s all emotional, but we rationalize logically. So, if we can get people in sales to emotionally be connected to the amount of money that they’re asked to make or that they want to make, makes a huge difference. [17:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, tell me something that you believe in strongly that others may not agree with you on.
Barbara Spector: Who might the others be that wouldn’t agree with me? Just give me a clue.
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. Well, like, you know, for my business, I know cold calling works. Most people say it doesn’t work. Um, something that is true that other people may not agree with you on, you know, maybe the need for sales training, for instance, um, many senior level salespeople don’t believe they need training. I believe everyone needs training.
Barbara Spector: Yeah, I agree with you. And it’s interesting, because I was going to talk about this notion you brought up, which is cold calling. And I’m going to go off on it if it’s OK with you. OK. So, the thing that doesn’t get considered, and the reason that people say cold calling doesn’t work, is because they haven’t fixed what’s going on between their ears. A lot of individuals have a need to be liked and loved. [18:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, sure.
Barbara Spector: And when somebody says no to them, they take it personally. Rather than having the, I’m going to use the word bravery, the bravery to say that’s not, to themselves, that’s not it. I am going to, I am here to serve this person. I have something that I’m pretty sure they need that will get them out of their misery, will solve their pain point. And I can’t be worrying about whether I’m going to be liked or not. [18:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Right.
Barbara Spector: I must get my own mind situated so that picking up the phone is a service to people rather than me thinking of it on a personal level as a drudgery.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. You know, for me, this is the ongoing mystery. I just don’t get it. Many people are just uncomfortable talking to strangers. That’s number one. They say it doesn’t work. It’s because it’s not done consistently enough, or maybe they don’t have the right script, you know, when they wing it. Yeah, yeah. And as you said, we call it head trash. It’s all trash in the head. [19:18]
Barbara Spector: Exactly. Exactly.
Nancy Calabrese: Finally, we’re almost up in time. What advice do you have for sales leaders who are looking to transform their teams and drive growth in the future?
Barbara Spector: Well, there’s two things. I think that they need to stop trying to figure it out on their own. I think that they must stop doing things like looking at what needs to be fixed only through observation and subjectivity. There are tools out there that can literally help them empirically and almost scientifically identify what needs to be changed and then great training programs to enable those changes to take place. [20:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, wow. Barbara, you’re great. I’m so glad that you joined us on the show. How can my people find you?
Barbara Spector: Okay, good question. Two things. If they’d like to explore further, you know, what’s going on in their organization, how we might be able to help, they can literally go to http://vipchatwithbarb.com/
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, folks, you heard it right from the expert. Pick up the phone or go to vipchatwithbarb.com. Do that. Reach out. Oh yeah, dot com. And all of you out there, I think we have an obligation to ourselves and our organizations to really look at training as a vital component for continued success. So, Barbara, I hope that you’ll come back on the show and continue to share some of your insights in the future. And everyone else, I want you to make it a sales day that you haven’t had in a long time, and we’ll see you next time.
Barbara Spector: Thanks, Nancy, so much. It was a pleasure to be with you.
Nancy Calabrese: Uh, ditto, ditto. [21:33]
by Nancy Calabrese | Dec 18, 2023 | Podcast
About Nico Verresen: Nico Verresen is a former elite-level athlete who has undergone world-class training. He is working with world-champion athletes, MDs, DEFI traders, CEOs, senior executives & top-level entrepreneurs. His top-level sporting career combined with extensive educational studies of the mind makes his approach highly effective and unique. Using the hypnosis practices and mindset strategies of world-class athletes, Nico trains high performers like you to turn your stress into a competitive advantage. With a career of over 12 years in professional fighting, Nico is a 5x Belgian, Benelux, European, and vice-world champion in Muay Thai. 4 world champions have prepared for their titles with Nico’s coaching and mentorship. Nico is an MA, former university scholar, and published researcher at The Free University Of Brussels, Belgium. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Nico.
In this episode, Nancy and Nico discuss the following:
- The truth is you don’t need less stress to achieve the life you desire.
- Ways to embrace stress to elevate your performance, health, and relationships.
- Nico’s explanation on why stress is a friend rather than an enemy.
- The impact of hypnosis on the mindset strategies of all these world-class athletes.
- Hypnotic techniques in sales.
Key Takeaways:
- Stress is there not to hurt you but to help you.
- Those people who believe that stress is good and helps them, and those who have the highest stress levels live the longest, healthiest, and most productive lives.
- The biggest challenge is not to start stressing about stress.
- if you just keep grinding forward as hard and fast as possible, you will not have space to get to effectiveness.
“So, if you do not stress about anything, the chance is very high that you have a bit of a lifeless life. What I’ve seen in research is that, well, and in my own life, the moments that I outperform myself were always the moments with the highest stress.” – NICO.
“The reason that fighting was so addictive to me and so wonderful, and I miss it still every day, is that it is make or break. You know each other right now. It’s a bit unhealthy for my body, and I learned through that process the second thing that puts the absolute top from the sub-top. You know, I was subbed up, and I had everything in me to get to the absolute top, but I forced it too much. I kept on grinding, I kept on going forward, and I lost a little bit of pleasure. That’s why my company is called Perform with Pleasure.” – NICO.
“Well, the people in sales, very often they’re a specific type of people. They love the push, they love the grind, they go hard, they need their deadlines, they need fast movements, you know. So, very often this is like a temperament that very often is much more hypnotizable. Now in sales, a lot of people use it also, hypnotic techniques to sell. The problem that I’ve often found is that in the current market, people are much more suspicious, and then when you go with traditional hypnotic language patterns, they often don’t work because it will sound weird, and people will feel something is off.” – NICO.
Connect with Nico Verresen:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Nico Verresen, founder of Perform with Pleasure LLP, using the strategies of champion fighters. Nico teaches senior executives and entrepreneurs to turn stress into their competitive advantage to ignite their next level of success with the mindset and hypnosis strategies professional athletes use to become world champions. A former professional fighter, assistant professor of methods in psychology, and published researcher Nico has been helping ambitious sales professionals and teams enjoy rising to the top without hurting their health, relationships, or enjoyment of the process. Welcome to the show, Nico.
Nico Verresen: Hi Nancy, it’s a pleasure to be here. [1:20]
Nancy Calabrese: I am excited to jump right in. You know, you have on your website, that the truth is you don’t need less stress to achieve the life you desire. What do you mean by that?
Nico Verresen: Well, I mean that you must ask yourself the question, why am I stressing? Well, because you care. So, if you do not stress about anything, the chance is very high that you have a bit of a lifeless life. What I’ve seen in research is that, well, and in my own life, is the moments that I outperform myself were always the moments with the highest stress.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay, that’s interesting.
Nico Verresen: So yeah.
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, and you say embrace stress to elevate your performance, health, and relationships. So how do you embrace it?
Nico Verresen: Well first you need to acknowledge that stress is there not to hurt you but to help you. People don’t realize it, it was used to call it the general adaptation syndrome they called it, but the key word is adaptation. It’s a system that is there to help you to handle the challenges of the environment. It makes you think sharper, makes you move faster, it helps you to do all those things. Yeah, the problem is that we make secondary stress, we start to stress about stress, and then it’s very difficult to let go. So, research has shown, very interesting, of Alia Kram and Albus from Stanford and Harvard, that you believe that stress is good for you, there to help you, and you have the highest stress levels, those people live the longest, healthiest, and most productive life. [3:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, you know, that’s kind of contrary to what we’ve always been told, right? You want to remove the stress from your life. Why are we told that?
Nico Verresen: Well, I believe that because I think at a certain moment we went overboard, it’s like when you’re an elite athlete, you want to perform at your peak. You can’t perform at your peak all the time. I made that mistake. My career was short cut because I denied my body. I over-trained all the time. My testosterone level started dropping. I had seven retinal detachments. In other words, my eyes, yes. I had three breaks. And you know, at a certain moment, nature says stop. And the same you can see in a lot of successful people; they keep on grinding. Now, the stress that we have when we are suffering with the stress, that’s the problem. Body suffering is the connotation, the story we create, oh stress is bad for us. And what happens when you look at the body, indeed, like our veins constrict, the blood pressure goes up. And we have all the negative side effects. We have a constant and then I’ll let it go after the fact but people who believe it is good for them now use the higher energy levels the better focus the higher the pain threshold. So you can keep pushing further so you can excel. However, when you believe it says it is helpful is adaptive. Well, then it’s much easier to let go after the fact and then you can pick up that stress, that challenge again tomorrow. [4:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You know, it’s funny when I get stressed, I get very focused. And usually, it’s because I want to fix the problem, or I need to achieve the goal. Is that your experience with stress?
Nico Verresen: Absolutely. Well, if you cannot start to stress about stress, that’s the biggest challenge. And so, when you see the big performers, I work with five world champions and many top, professional athletes, those are really at the absolute top. They learned two things. The first thing is they learned that stress is there to help them and that they love it. They love it because it’s exciting. Like if you go after something easy to reach where the chances of failure are very small then Getting it is pretty meaningless. The reason that fighting was so addictive to me and so wonderful and I miss it still every day is that. It is make or break. You know each other right now. It’s a bit unhealthy for my body and I learned, and I learned through that process I learned the second thing that puts the absolute top from the sub-top. You know, I was subbed up and I had everything in me to get to the absolute top, but I forced it too much. I kept on grinding, I kept on going forward, and I lost a little bit of pleasure. That’s why my company is called Perform with Pleasure, you know? [6:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about hypnosis. I’m fascinated by that. How do you use hypnosis? You know impact the mindset strategies of all these world-class athletes.
Nico Verresen: Well, the first thing is hypnosis works in different ways for different people. Some people I can just start and slow my voice and they get into a trance immediately. And in sales, you meet these people often. They are go-getters, they are doers. They can imagine something; they can envision something and then they can create it in their minds. So, most people that I work with in sales are good at what they call hypnotic subjects. It’s a communication where they just allow themselves to relax and allow me to guide them to their power. Now we have also the much more methodical, the much more strategic salespeople that come very often out of a more technical thing. Very often they are so logical that classical diagnosis in the beginning will not work for them because they are not open for them. How you must work with them is different. There it becomes a self-hypnosis. And then there are slight differences. Of course, when you give me somebody two, or three hours, which sometimes happens if I go into one deep session, you know, then I get almost everybody in because of the communication. If you look at the science of evidence-based hypnosis, like, it’s a normal distribution of people that people can be hypnotized. But of course, the problem is that when you do research, it is structured, and it leaves very little room for nuance in the communication. Like, hypnosis is that combination of scientific underpinnings, but it’s an art. It has to do with testing, seeing, feeling, and knowing where the other person is. [8:32]
Nancy Calabrese: All right, so you’re saying, and I just want to go back to something that you said, people in sales use hypnosis through communication. Did I get that right?
Nico Verresen: Yeah, well, the people in sales, very often they’re a specific type of people. They love the push, they love the grind, they go hard, they need their deadlines, they need fast movements, you know. So, very often this is like a temperament that very often is much more hypnotizable. Now in sales, a lot of people use it also, hypnotic techniques to sell. The problem that I’ve often found is that in the current market, people are much more suspicious and then when you go with traditional hypnotic language patterns they often don’t work because it will sound weird, and people will feel something is off. [9:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, wow. All right, so go ahead, finish, go ahead.
Nico Verresen: So, what I do believe is that when you… But for me, I use it for them to get ready, to get into a state where they are completely aligned with wanting to see if they have a fantastic solution for this person and to extract the depth. It’s like they become a psychologist that goes to the deep roots of emotions, the emotional motivators and drivers. And then if you put yourself in a hypnotic state, and hypnotic state is very receptive. It’s the perfect thing to put you into this state, into this trance-like state, before you go into a conversation, into a sales conversation. [10:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Huh. Are you hypnotizing me?
Nico Verresen: You never know.
Nancy Calabrese: You never know, right? All right, well, I think everybody listening in can relate to Rocky, Sylvester Stallone. So, what can Rocky teach top-of-the-leaderboard professionals?
Nico Verresen: Well, first, Rocky lied. Rocky had no idea, no. The thing is, there is something like, no matter how hard you get hit, you keep on going forward. To be honest, as advice, that’s just dumb. However, I still believe that most sales professionals and elite performers need to get punched in the face. Now, what is this paradox? Well, the paradox is that we want to create a kind of resilience whereby we don’t make mistakes, a lost prospect, or a negative after-effect personally. We can use it to get better and that is the key. But at the same time if you keep on doing the same thing and you keep on failing, well sorry that’s just dumb, it’s just not smart. And so, the rocky mindset, the just ground mindset is good to get you to the sub-top, it will get you success, much more success than if you don’t dare to go forward. However, if you just keep on grinding forward as hard and as fast as you can, you will not have space to get to effectiveness. Think about it, you have Rocky, or you have, for example, Tyson Fury. You see him, do you know Tyson Fury? He’s a heavyweight, he’s like a legend, he’s one of the best fighters ever. No, no, he’s called, his father named him after Tyson. [12:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right? No. You mean Mike Tyson?
Nico Verresen: It’s Tyson Fury, he’s a pike, he’s an English gypsy and he’s crazy. But if you look at him, he’s fat, he’s fat. But the thing is he has that relaxation, that playfulness and he is super hard. However, what you can see is that he plays. When you look at the all-time grades for me, it’s like, for example, Ali. [12:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Nico Verresen: It was flow. They enjoyed it. And he can’t flow like that. Even Tyson, trained hard, but he got trained by a hypnotist. His trainer was a hypnotist. Got him in the wrong state. Yes, absolutely. And you know, what happens is that the job of a coach, if you have a real champion in front of you, a guy or a woman that has the potential to be a great champion, it is not your job to push them forward. Mostly when you have this kind of temperament, it’s your job to slow them down. My trainer pushed me to go home and lie down because as a professional fighter, you don’t get paid just to rest. To train, of course, you get paid to train, but you get paid to rest. [13:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, wow. So how could pleasure help people outperform themselves?
Nico Verresen: Well, I always say whether you face a corporate board, whether you face a world champion ring, or whether you face your sweet, sweet love that wants to make sweet, sweet pleasure with you, but it’s your first time and you’re excited, all of the times when you have a peak performance, a peak experience like Maslow’s and Calder back in the day, it goes by itself. You know, what happens is you feel the connection between you and the rest of the world is so heightened. It’s like the division has been gone. In the brain, it causes your parietal lobes, they have lower activation. So, the break between you and the outside world disappears. It’s like you become one with whatever or whoever you’re doing. And so, if you want to become better into the flow, to flow in high-intensity situations, you can do workouts, yes you can do muscle arts, really powerful. You can do breathe work, you can do all those, you can do sprints and try to calm down your breathing. But what you also can do is you can make sweet love in a tantric way where you try to keep yourself as calm in intensity or intense lovely conversation. So, it comes down to learning how to hold, to make room, make space for all everything that happens in between. [15:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, wow. And you know, how do you turn stress, conflict, and crisis into a superpower? How do you do that?
Nico Verresen: Well first, like I said, you have to acknowledge it and make room for it. The problem, when we are suffering, we are resisting. When we are resisting, that is the core root of psychological problems, of anxiety. It’s time to run away from something, thinking we cannot handle it. And I have a secret for you. And for the entire world, we can handle so much more than we think. But in the current society you know, we hear everywhere we must take care of our words, we must be very gentle, very careful, but the problem is it doesn’t acknowledge our inherent resilience, our inherent power. We are so powerful. Look at how weak of an animal we are when you compare it with a lion or a bear or perhaps even a little ape, but how we have thrived is because we have resilience, psychological resilience, and artistic potential for artistic solutions, creative solutions in ourselves, and we don’t acknowledge this enough. Yeah, and so the first is we make room for it, so we accept it, then make room for it. You can do it simply with a technique like, imagine breathing in and growing your skin, as if you become a giant. And you just make room for the same emotion, you don’t push it away, and now, when you make room for it, it can move more freely, and when it can move more freely, you can leverage it to put into practice. [17:04]
Nancy Calabrese: This is fascinating to me. What is something you believe is true that other people don’t believe is true?
Nico Verresen: Well, I believe for example that if you’re for example a business owner and your company goes under, it can be the best thing that happened to you.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Why is that?
Nico Verresen: Because first, if you learn to see this as an experience that gives you the best lessons in the world, it will help you to make your next company thrive. And you see this many times. Many of the billionaires have made several companies that went under. All of them of course, but quite often. And with sales, the same thing. If you… Because why very often do we fail? Because we function on the level that stretches our abilities. And so, if you learn to take that punch and to play with that punch perhaps even, go against an opponent by the way, like a challenge that is just beyond what you’re currently capable of, then you will trigger flow. So very often, you know what people do realize it say I just want to relax I just want to flow yeah but you can’t get to flow if you don’t trigger your nervous system enough with enough challenge so you have a flow cycle and the flow cycle always starts with struggle and after the struggle you take a bit of a pause or rest you allow your nervous system to readjust to create those new neural pathways and they go in again and then you flow and after flow again you break that but that’s something that people don’t want to hear Because people mostly don’t want to hear, oh, I have to struggle first. Oh, that is part of the deal. Like the harder I struggle, you know, and I look for help, and I get a coach to get me focused man, then I take on the world. [19:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Great. Well. Hey, you know, we must wrap up, but the last question. What is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Nico Verresen: A life without stress is a life without meaning.
Nancy Calabrese: Ooh, love it, love it, love it. How can my people find you?
Nico Verresen: Well, I have a new website that’s coming up, which is toyourtop.com. So, I will get that in a few days. It will be, it will be published. And then, you can also go to my Instagram, which is Nico_Verresen. [20:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Listen, folks, first of all, Nico, thanks so much. I found this conversation fascinating. And I swear you hypnotize me. I know you did that. But we can take that on the sidebar. Everyone reached out to Nico. He’s fascinating. And especially if you’re in a sales function, I think what he is expert in is something that anyone in sales, maybe just in business. You know, just you need it. So, until we speak again, make it a great sales day. And Nico, I got to get you back on, okay, to officially hypnotize me next time, okay?
Nico Verresen: We can do that, no problem at all. [20:48]
