Closers Are Losers With Jeremy Miner
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Failing to close a deal as a salesperson is one of the most upsetting things that can happen to you. But what if I told you that it was actually your fault that you didn’t get the sale. Selling is about change and most salespeople sell the product, not what the product can do for the customer. Join John Livesay as he talks to Jeremy Miner about integrating human behavior into the sales process. Jeremy has been in sales for 7 years! He is the founder of 7th Level. He is the co-author of The New Model of Selling and is the host of the Closers are Losers podcast. Learn how human behavior affects your customer’s sales objections. Find out how to get people into your products with some of Jeremy’s modes of communication. Start closing all your deals today!
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Listen to the podcast here
Closers Are Losers With Jeremy Miner
Our guest on the show is Jeremy Miner, who has a book out on selling. He said, “Be a problem solver, not a product pusher.” He talks about how objections are preventable. Finally, the whole premise of selling is about change and that you need to learn how to disarm people so that they are less resistant to it. Enjoy the episode.
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Welcome to the show. Our guest is Jeremy Miner, who is Chairman of 7th Level, a global sales training company that was ranked very highly by Inc. Magazine. He is also a contributor to Inc. and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and many others. He says this great quote, “The single most effective way to sell anything to anybody is to be a problem solver, not a product pusher.” For Jeremy, the embodiment of this philosophy has made him one of the world’s wealthiest sales professionals. Not just America, the whole planet.
In his sales career, he was recognized by Direct Selling Association. His earnings as a commission-only salesperson were in the multiple seven figures every year. Clearly, he is doing something right. He is the host of the podcast, Closers Are Losers. His new book, The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation, is out now. Welcome, Jeremy.
My co-author there is Mr. Jerry Acuff, a good friend of mine. He is the CEO of Delta Point Consulting, a large sales training company on the East Coast. We wrote that together. It will be fun and games for the kiddos to read on the bookshelf. We are excited about it.
You are a big reader, but before we get into your passion for reading, take us back to your own story of origin. How did you get into the world of sales?
I was not born out of my mother’s womb with advanced questioning skills or tonality training. That is something that you have to acquire if you want to be great at what you do. I got into sales many years ago as a broke, burned-out college kid. I got my first job selling home security systems door-to-door. I was one of those guys you feel sorry for coming around in your door. I did not know what I was doing.
Eventually, when I knew what I was doing, do not feel sorry for me at that point. I was making a lot of money as a college student. I felt like I was Jeff Bezos. I was this little punk college kid. I got in. The company recruits everybody. It was a straight commission. They see who makes it. Most don’t. Eighty-nine percent do not make it. They give you a script, give you a couple of books by the sales gurus, take you out in the van, and drop you off in a neighborhood. Usually, a not so safe neighborhood
Hence, the need for security systems.
“Go make some sales, tiger. We will pick you up after dark.” That is pretty much what it was. I thought selling was going to be easy because that is what everybody in the office told me. I remember my sales manager saying, “When they open the door, be excited. Talk about how great the product is. People are going to love it.” I am like, “I will do that.” I was excited. I was telling about the features, the benefits, and all this great stuff that it was going to do, but I noticed that I started getting a lot of objections at every single door, “We cannot afford it. We do not need it. We already have somebody for that. Your price is too high. I have already talked with somebody else last year. I need to talk to my spouse. I need to think it over. Can you call me back in a week, a month, a year later?”
[bctt tweet=”Be a problem solver, not a product pusher.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I am like, “This is going to be harder than what I was told.” I remember about 7 or 8 weeks into all that rejection, barely making any sales. When you are paid straight commission, if you do not make any sales, you might as well work for minimum wage. You are going to make more money minimum wage. I remember one night in particular. I was standing on the curb. The sales manager was about to pick me up. If you have ever done door-to-door, you are walking around 10 or 12 hours, so your legs get tired. In the summer, you are sweating all the way down. I remember sitting there. I had not made any sales for the day. I had worked for twelve hours. That whole week, I had worked 60-plus hours and I made zero sales.
This is the end of the week. I had $0. I was newly married and I had a kid on the way. I barely turned 22. I was still in college. At that point, I felt broken. How am I going to go home and tell my wife at the time that we do not have enough money to pay rent? “We are going to have to move in with your parents and live in the basement.” That was going to be one of those. I thought that maybe selling was not for me. I remember that night, especially. When the manager picked me up, he plugged in a Tony Robbins CD.
This was back in the old days. I love Tony. Tony said something like this, “Most people fail for the simple reason, they do not learn the right skills that are necessary to succeed.” He went on to say that everybody is taught skills for the most part. He said, “People who fail are the ones who do not learn the right ones.” I am like, “Maybe I am not learning the right skills.” This light bulb went off like, “Maybe the company was training me and what I was learning from the gurus at the time, maybe they were not the right skills. Maybe they did not work very well anymore.”
I had this major dilemma because the company would give us all these books. They were teaching us that the most persuasive way to sell was here, but at the same time, I was in school. My degree was in Behavioral Science and Human Psychology. My professors and all the works I was reading were saying that the best way to persuade and communicate was on the other end. It was completely opposite of each other. The gurus were saying it was here. Behavioral Science and Psychology was saying it was on the other.
I am like, “What am I supposed to do? The theory with Behavioral Science and a bunch of other things with Psychology, how do I bring that into the sales process?” Once I started to do that and learn how to work with human behavior, instead of pushing like most salespeople, I learned how to get prospects to pull me in. Once I started to discover that way of communicating, selling became very easy and profitable. That is my boring background.
Closers Are Losers: Bring the theory of behavioral science and merge it into the sales process. Once you learn how to work with human behavior, instead of pushing like most salespeople, you’ll get prospects that’ll pull you in.
Is that connected to your methodology, the NEPQ?
That is where it started, Neuro-Emotional Persuasion Questioning. That methodology developed from my background in Behavioral Science and Human Psychology.
For those who are not familiar with Neuro-Linguistic Programming, most people are aware of what EQ is, but you have got the letters in a unique way. Can you tell us what that is and how somebody could start to use it?
It is much different than NLP. I like NLP. There are some things that are good in NLP, but typically, if you are using some of it in a one-to-one selling environment. It is not quite as effective, in my mind than selling one to many. It is a little bit different there. When I was in college studying Behavioral Science, it was broken down into three main categories. I am not going to give everybody the scientific terms. I am going to give you something that everybody would know on here.
Sales and communications are broken down into three forms. All of you reading this right now, once you understand where you are in these three forms, where your current sales ability is compared to where it could be, it will completely change everything for you. I do not care if you are already making $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 a month. There are ways you can make a lot more selling the exact product or service you are now. The first mode of communication, we would call this arrow one type of sales. Think boiler room selling. What is the first image that comes to your mind when I say boiler room selling?
[bctt tweet=”Most people fail for the simple reason that they don’t learn the right skills that are necessary to succeed. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
That movie and they are all, “Coffee is for closers.”
We are the least persuasive when we tell people things or we attempt to dominate them, posture them, manipulate them or push them into doing something we want to. As you said, Wolf of Wall Street. I am assuming Jordan Belfort. They portray him that way. I do not know if he was that way. That is how he is portrayed in Hollywood. Who knows? He is like, “I have got a great opportunity for you.” We talk about the features and benefits of what we do. We push them, tell them why they need to buy, and why we are the best. It is like telling your spouse that they need to do something for you and then you keep pushing them. What do they typically do back? They push back. It is human behavior 101.
If you push, people resist more. Most of the time, they push back. I will give you a few examples of the least persuasive way to sell because so many salespeople are still taught this way. Presenting. We are all taught that you have to have a great presentation. We have to show them how great our services and products are. We have to have an hour and a half pitch deck. We have got the best this. We have got the best that. Does not every single salesperson say that they have the best product and service? It is like watching The Bachelor. I do not know if you have watched The Bachelor, but they come out the host every year. They say, “This is the most dramatic Bachelor of all time.”
I am like, “You said that last year and the year before and the year before.” You stop believing it after a while. There is not going to be any salesperson who will say, “John, our service is fifth-best in the market.” Everybody says they are the best. When we hear things like that as a consumer, it goes in one ear out the other. We do not trust that. We trust people less when they say things like that or they talk down their competitors because we are used to everybody doing it.
According to the data, it is not very persuasive if your presentation is more than 10% of your entire sales process and/or conversation. The average salesperson is about 50%. That is a massive problem. “Telling is not selling.” We have all heard that saying. Telling your story is important like we talked about when I was on your show, but it has to be a structured story, not a winged story that does not have any relevance in a sales pitch. We have all been taught that we have got to give a great pitch.
Closers Are Losers: Sales and communications are broken down in three forms. And, once you understand where you currently are in these forms, everything will change for you.
According to the science, it is not a very persuasive way to do it. It is how you pitch. Do you ever watch Shark Tank on CNBC? When the entrepreneurs come out, they are excited. They are going to pitch the sharks. Watch the body language of Mark Cuban, Barbara, Mr. Wonderful, Kevin, and Daymond John. It is because of the way they are presenting that.
The big one is assuming the sale. According to the data, very low on the persuasion poll, especially if you are more of a complex selling environment that requires multiple calls and touches. I think me and you talked about that. That is the first form. The second form of communication, I will boil that down to this. I will call it consultative selling. Everybody knows what that is. We are more persuasive when we attempt to have a real discussion with the prospect.
Consultative selling, for the most part, would be known in books like SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham. The professor that came out in the mid-’80s taught that you need to ask logical based questions to find out the client’s needs. What is a potential downfall of the approach when you are only asking logical-based questions? We call those surface-level questions.
The prospect is going to give you logical-based answers in return. As you and I talked about, do people buy on emotion or logic? One hundred percent on emotion. Brain studies show that. We are more persuasive than boiler room selling, manipulating, and trying to pressure them, but you are still going to play the numbers game because you are not bringing up very much emotion by asking the same old questions. “John, what is keeping you awake at night?”
You cannot use those types of classic questions because your prospect hears them all the time or, “Who, besides you, would be involved in the decision?” It is boring surface level. Instead, re-language that. You can say this, “Sally, can you walk me through your company’s decision-making process to solve challenges like this? Walk me through.”
[bctt tweet=”It’s not very persuasive if your presentation is more than 10% of your entire sales process. Telling is not selling.” username=”John_Livesay”]
She is going to start thinking in her mind about what the decision-making process is. It causes their brain to go in a different range. The third mode of communication, everyone might know as dialogue. That is arrow three. We are the most persuasive when we allow others to persuade themselves. That is where we come in with Neuro-Emotional Persuasion Questioning. The key is where we ask certain questions and techniques that work with human behavior that get that prospect to want to open up, to want to engage and pull us in rather than us push them forward.
That is the question that everybody asks me, “How do I get somebody to persuade themselves? Can I show up and say, “Mr. Prospect, persuade yourself? By the way, here are the wiring details.” No. You have to learn the right questions to ask at the right time in a structured situation. We talked about storytelling as a structured process that gets the prospect to sell themselves and pull you in. Those are the three.
Do you think that the main reason there is such a delay and people’s sales cycles keep getting longer and longer is that everyone’s got a different reason for making a decision? What are some questions that people can ask to create some urgency?
I am always brutal in telling people what I think. When we go in and do audits with companies, it is all the same. Buying decisions only stall for the most part because sales teams are still being taught sales techniques that work against human behavior that trigger sales resistance and create uncertainty and doubt in your prospect’s mind. When your prospects have doubt and uncertainty, what are they going to do? They put on the brakes because they are uncertain. That is triggered by what we are saying and/or not asking.
I had somebody ask me at an event one time, “If you could describe selling in one word, what would that be?” It took me a few seconds and I am like, “It would be change.” That’s all that selling is. It is how good you are at getting your prospect to view, in their mind, that by changing their situation, that means purchasing your product, service, or whatever your solution is. By them doing that, that is far less risky for them than doing nothing at all. Staying in the status quo, the problem stays the same and nothing ever changes, which is more risky for them.
Closers Are Losers: You have to realize as a sales professional or as a business owner, you’re not selling the thing. Instead, you have to sell them the results of what that thing does for them.
Whether you want something better or the prospect is trying to get away from pain, it is about change. If selling is about change, here is your massive problem. Human beings do not like change. Selling is all about change, but human beings, the way we are wired, we do not like change even though we say we do. Why do we not like it? We feel unsettled. We feel a bit uncomfortable, especially when it is initiated by some pushy salesperson that is ready to pitch us in the first twenty seconds of a conversation.
Human behavior shows that we value something that is more known to us or something that is more consistent in our lives over something that is unknown. Think the battered spouse syndrome. The spouse keeps coming back and we are like, “Why do they keep coming back?” It’s because they fear the unknown over coming back to what they know even though they do not like it. Isn’t that crazy?
A lot of people are like, “Why does the wife or husband keep coming back for the verbal abuse?” You are like, “They fear the unknown, even over something that they hate.” We have to realize as a sales professional or as a business owner, you are not selling the thing. We have companies that come in and they are like, “I am in HVAC. I am competing on price because they can get the same HVAC XYZ system.” I am like, “Stop. All you are talking about is selling them the thing. You have to sell them the results of what that thing does for them. That is what you are selling.”
If you are a real estate agent, you are not selling them a home. You are selling them the results of that home and what that home will do for them. Maybe it is to get them out of a bad neighborhood into a safer neighborhood. If it is a multimillion-dollar home, you are selling them on the thing on that home that is going to give them the status in their brain to fulfill an emotional need. If you sell an insurance policy, you are not selling them a policy. You are selling them financial protection when the spouse passes away and the other spouse does not have to worry financially. That is what you are selling.
If you are selling cyber security to Wells Fargo, you are not selling the software. You are selling the results of what that does, which is going to protect their customers from fraud. We have to start thinking, “We are not selling the thing. We are selling the results of what that thing does.” You asked me a few good questions. One thing that we can do is, let’s say, we get through a first call of discovery call. Let’s say you sell B2B. You are talking to a company. Your next step would be to schedule a demo. Before you do that, let’s say you are three-fourths of the way in that conversation. You have helped them find out what their situation is. We call that their current state.
[bctt tweet=”Selling is change.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You have also found out where they want to be. We call that their objective state, like what their future looks like. What is the gap between all these problems your questions have allowed them to see and did not know they had? What I want to do is when they see what their future looks like, and they start to feel what it is going to feel like once all these problems are solved, we want to rip that feeling away from them where they emotionally have to defend themselves on why they have to change now, not later. When you start to become good at this, you hardly ever get, “We need to keep looking around. I want to think this through.” That is a trigger response.
I might ask them, “What are the possible ramifications if your company does not do anything about solving this and it keeps getting worse? What happens to you guys, then? Have you thought about what would happen if your company does not do anything about this?” Those are generic consequence questions. Whatever you sell, you would supply that in. Let’s say I sold lead generation. I am selling leads to like SMB companies that need a higher quality lead. Let’s say their problem is their salespeople are speaking to lower quality leads, they are overspending on leads, leads are stagnating, and they keep going down.
I might say something like this, “Hold on. What happens if you guys do not do anything about this? You keep getting these lower quality leads to your sales teams and your sales keep stagnating another 3, 6, even 12 months from now. What happens at that point?” That gets them to think of the consequences of what happens if they do not do anything about solving that problem now.
You started your story about talking about all the objections you got when you were doing door-to-door. You also say that there is a way to overcome objections and prevent them from ever happening.
I think people think I am crazy when I say that. They are like, “What? How do you prevent objections from happening in their mind?” It is easy. I would rather focus on preventing objections from happening and have way more laid out sales. I am assuming you are the same way, John. That is why you have structured stories because here is the thing. I am always like, “Where is the science behind where that came from? That guy is an ass.”
Closers Are Losers: Most sales objections are triggered by you, the salesperson in what you’re saying. You’re triggering uncertainty and doubt in their mind. So instead of saying “sign the contract”, say “authorize the agreement”.
When sales trainers say, “The more objections you get, the more interested they are.” What study shows that? The more objections you get, the less likely they are going to buy. If that was the case, you would not have any lay-down sales. What about the lay-down sales that had zero objections? Where does that come in? It does not make any sense.
I want to prevent the objections from happening. If they do, I know how to handle them. We call that objection prevention. Salespeople do not like it when I say this. Most objections are triggered by you, the salesperson and what you are saying. Not asking is triggering uncertainty and doubt in their mind. A lot of salespeople, and I still cannot believe they are still saying this, but they will be like, “John, I need you to go ahead and sign the contract.”
Sign and contract are two words that typically trigger sales resistance in a lot of people because no one wants to sign a contract that walks them into something they might not want down the road. If I make that languaging more neutral, I do not trigger that. If I say, “John, the next step is to authorize the agreement.” It means the same exact thing. Sign the contract, but if I say, “Authorize the agreement,” it is the same thing, but it is far more neutral.
With this concept of getting in our own way, as a sales keynote speaker, I find that audiences do not take responsibility for the reaction they get from someone. If you show some empathy and anticipate an objection, keeping in mind that most people are wondering, “Will this work for me?” If you say, “You might be wondering now if this is going to work for you,” and then you give them an answer, you have shot that objection down before they even say it.
It is exactly that. We train a lot of car dealerships too, and retail stores. What does every salesperson do when somebody walks into the store? “How can I help you?” What type of reaction did they get 95% of the time?
[bctt tweet=”Buying decisions only stall because sales teams are still being taught sales techniques that work against human behavior. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
“No, thanks. I am just looking.”
If you already know that you are going to get that, do not say, “How can I help you?” You are going to cut that objection off like you did on that stage. What you did is brilliant. You simply go into the objection and say, “Thanks for coming into the dealership today. Are you guys out looking around?” They are like, “Yes.” They say, “Do you know what you are looking for?” You are right into the conversation. It is their objection. They cannot say, “I am looking around now.” I just said, “Are you guys out looking around today?” “Yes. For sure.” “Do you know what you are looking for?” You are right into it. It is so simple. What you did there was brilliant on stage.
Let’s talk about closing. This concept of ABC, we joked about it a little bit with the boiler room mindset. I have replaced that with ABK, Always Be Kind, in the way you talk to yourself and other people because you cannot give that out. What is your alternative to the old way of Always Be Closing?
We use the ABDs. Always Be Disarming. What do I mean by disarming? Throughout all of that presentation, you do the same thing when you are on stage, John. You are disarming throughout the whole presentation. You know what objections the audience has. You know how to prevent them from the beginning of what you say on stage, all the way to the end. You are continually telling stories to disarm them to become open to what you are offering at the end. That is all you are doing.
If you are in a one-on-one sales situation, whether you sell business-to-business or business-to-consumer, your ultimate goal is to get that person to purchase what you are offering to solve their problems. You are doing them a favor by paying you to solve their problems. You have to look at yourself as that salesperson that does that.
SPIN Selling
You are continually asking the right questions in that process that continually disarms the prospect where they want to keep engaging and opening up to you. One good way to do that is if you have somebody that is closed off, let’s say that you finally weed your way throughout the organization of the company. You are selling to a Fortune 1000 company. You are talking to the division head, the main person. That is your sixth appointment. You have finally figured out how to get through.
Let’s say that person is hard as nails. They do not want to open up to any of your questions. You are going to stop that conversation halfway through. Let’s say you are on Zoom or even in person, you can lean in and say, “Me and you here, off the record, what is holding you back from being able to X, Y, and Z?”
You cannot do that in the first ten seconds because there is no trust. You cannot force your way into that conversation. You know they are not opening up. They are staying surface level with you. You simply stop. You lean in and say, “Between me and you, off the record.” People open up. You do not use it every time. You’ve got to know when to use it. You cannot use it in the first two minutes because there is no trust throughout that conversation. That is a way to disarm a prospect to get them to open up.
We have gone full circle because you talk about selling is all about change. You are disarming people. You are mitigating the risk to do that change. That is a great summary of your skillset and the training you offer and your new book that is co-authored. It is going to be something that people are going to want to run and get The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation. If people want to reach you, Jeremy, where should they go?
If they want to learn about what we do or even get some free resources from us, they can join one of our free Facebook groups. Send them to www.SalesRevolution.pro. We got about 18,000 C-level executives, salespeople, and entrepreneurs in there that want to get better and sell. Right when they join, check your Facebook Messenger because somebody on my team will message you over a free training called the NEPQ 101 Mini-Course. It is with my CEO, Matt.
Matt will break down different questions that you can use for different sales situations we know that you are going to be in on a day-to-day basis that will help you sell more. We go live in that Facebook group 3 or 4 times a week with different Q&As and different trainings for B2C and B2B. They are welcome to join that if they want to get some sources to sell more.
Thank you so much for telling us about your own story of origin and how you have learned to be prepared and even prevent objections and closing by making people feel safe to open up with, “This is off the record.” Thanks again, Jeremy.
Thanks, John, for having me on.
Important Links
- Jeremy Miner
- 7th Level
- Closers Are Losers
- SPIN Selling
- www.SalesRevolution.pro
- https://SalesTraining.ClickFunnels.com/optin164548828699
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Sell Without Selling Out With Andy Paul
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Sales isn’t a simple job; it takes a lot of skill to earn a buyer’s trust. So how do you sell without selling out? How do you earn that trust? John Livesay dives into sales with help from Andy Paul. With over three decades of experience under his belt, Andy gives us a glimpse at his sales insights. From building trust and communication to training and avoiding persuasion, this episode is one you can’t miss.
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Listen to the podcast here
Sell Without Selling Out With Andy Paul
Our guest is Andy Paul, the author of Sell Without Selling Out. He talks about how influence rules and persuasion drools and that you are either a sales boss that is commanding people or a sales leader that inspires them. Find out how to be a learn-it-all instead of a know-it-all. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest on the show is Andy Paul, who is a leading global sales expert. He has over 180,000 people following his daily posts on LinkedIn. He is the host of the top-rated sales podcast Sales Enablement with Andy Paul, with more than over 1,000 episodes and millions of downloads. His podcast is a go-to resource for sales leaders and producers. He is the author of the Amazon best-selling book Sell Without Selling Out: A Guide to Success on Your Own Terms. He has also written other books and he is the Founder of Zero-Time Selling, which is an advisory firm. Prior to that, he had a successful sales career himself in tech startups, where he sold over $600 million of complex systems and services. Andy, welcome to the show.
John, thanks for having me.
Let’s go back in time to when you knew you wanted to get into sales. Maybe you had a paper out or you sold something and you went, “I am good at this. This might be my career.”
I did not know I wanted to be in sales after I had been in it for a couple of years. Up until that, I was not too sure that I wanted to be in sales. Like a lot of people, I fell into sales. I graduated from university and did not have any concrete plans about what I wanted to do. I worked at the college I graduated from during the summer. Fall came around and my parents were urging me to get more serious about things. I went to the career placement center around campus and the jobs that were available were all the major tech companies. They were trying to recruit people into what turned out to be sales. Interestingly, none of them called it sales positions. They are all marketing management training programs, but they were nothing about marketing. They are all about sales.
Marketing people do not have quotas. That is the big distinction I tell people.
It is this whole idea that sales is dirty and, “Who wants to be a salesperson?” It was evident even then. I fell into it and as I described in my book, I was not too comfortable with what I was being taught and how I was being taught how to sell. I reached the point about year two where it started making sense to me and I started to describe or define a way to sell that worked for me. I could start to see a future in it at that point.
[bctt tweet=”A sales boss commands, and a sales leader inspires. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You and I both have a similar background in that we sold multimillion-dollar tech pieces of equipment. Tell us about that. What was that like in the ‘90s?
I started off selling roomfuls of computer equipment back in the day. They take a lot of space and a fraction of the computing power of our phones these days that major corporations are running their companies on. I swerved into the personal computer industry for a while and worked at Apple in the early days of Apple and a couple of others what we thought was going to be an interesting startup. I worked for a company that made the first battery-powered notebook computer. That was a glorious failure.
Somehow ended up, by default, I was looking for a job after the last company had been with that imploded. I saw a news article in Fortune Magazine about a company that was revolutionizing the satellite communications business with very small aperture satellite dishes for data communications. I cold-called them. That was a Friday. I called them on Monday. I did not have a job in sales. I was an account manager as a customer success person for about the first six months before I moved back over into sales. That was my introduction to the enterprise of selling large complex systems.
What would you say was your biggest challenge as a salesperson? Was it handling rejection, overcoming objections or getting the appointment? What was one challenge that you thought and you saw all the people struggling with?
I spent a big chunk of time in the satellite communications business and the wireless business and did not have a technical background. I was selling to very technical customers.
It was a different language, was it not?
For me, the challenge was internal sales. How did I rally people to support me and help make up for my deficits in a way that was still valuable for the buyer? I got pretty good at that after a while. It was matching the internal selling as well as the external selling. As in any startup, there are tons of competing priorities and people are ultra-busy doing multiple things and it is like, “How do I get this person to invest some of their time and attention in what is important to me?” That was the key for me to be able to rally support internally for big deals I was working on.
Sell Without Selling Out: A Guide to Success on Your Own Terms
How did you do that? Do you have any tips for someone who is thinking, “That sounds like my challenge, but I do not know where to start.”?
It is the same challenge you have with customers. I write about it in my book. You have to be able to connect with people on an authentic human level. You need to be able to use your curiosity and understand the most important things to them and how you can help them achieve that by working with you.
It is fascinating because you had said originally that people were like, “I am not so sure you will be good in sales because you are an introvert and an intellectual.” There are a lot of people who might identify as, “I am not extroverted. I cannot be the life of the party and entertain clients nonstop. I should not pursue this career.”
As I tell people that in the course of the first 24 years of my career when I was outselling the large 2/3 of billion dollars, I had dinner half a dozen times with clients. The opportunity presented itself. I was all over the world selling. For the most part, I had great relationships with my clients, but we did not feel like we had to have dinner with each other. It was not going to cement the relationship in a way that we were not doing in the office when we were talking with each other because their ability to trust me was based on what I was doing in the context of work more than anything else. Once I established that personal bond and rapport, I had to prove it every time I interacted with them.
How did you come up with the title of your book, Selling Without Selling Out? Do you feel like a lot of people feel like they do have to sell out in order to be successful?
They do. The simplest way to consider selling out is when you put your interests ahead of those of your customers. That is an external customer buying something from you or your internal customer. Whether you are working as part of a team or collaborating with people on things when you put yourself first, you start to sell out.
Do you have a story or example of that?
[bctt tweet=”Be a learn it all, not a know it all.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Think about it from a salesperson’s perspective. You go out at the start of the month or at some point when you start a relationship with a potential customer or client. You convince them through your actions that you are there to help them. They think you are there to help them, but then you get to that last week of the month and your boss says, “We need to bring this order in order to hit our month.” Early in my career, I was forced to go out and try to accelerate decisions that buyers were not prepared to make.
You start offering discounts and other inducements, delayed payment terms, or whatever the company does. In the mind of the buyer, suddenly, you went from being somebody that is there to help them to be purely transactional. It does not mean they will not buy from you, but they are under no illusion anymore that you are there to help them.
Once that trust is broken, it is almost impossible to get it back.
It is very difficult to get it back. They will stick with you as long as you are handy and convenient for them, but as soon as something better comes along, somebody they trust more or a product that is roughly equivalent to yours, odds are pretty high that you are going to be gone.
You talk about the difference between being a sales leader versus a sales boss. Can you give us that distinction?
A conversation that I had on my show with Stephen M.R. Covey, a great author who wrote the Speed of Trust. He has got a new book out called Trust and Inspire. It is about leadership modes. As he draws, the contrast is there are two dominant modes of leadership. There is the command and control, which we are all very familiar with because we have all been victims of it and then there is trust and inspire. That sums up the difference.
As a sales boss, it is all about command and control. Conformity and compliance are most important to me. Trust and inspire is, as a sales leader, you are going to sell to your person, “Here is your patch and territory. This could be your list of accounts of geographic territory.” I am going to support you the best way I can, but you decide the best way to get this business done in your territory. How can I help you achieve that? Trust people to continue to develop, expand, grow and learn with your support. The other is, “I know best. Do what I want you to do.”
Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything
One of the things both of you and I witnessed and experienced is a top producer is getting promoted into sales leadership without any real training and failing miserably as a leader versus a salesperson because they are different skills. Can you describe what someone should do to prepare to make that transition if they are not getting the training internally?
From my experience, I did a couple of things. I read what I could that was available about managing and leadership. I did not hesitate to ask people for guidance and mentors, internally, people that were more experienced in the role to give me some perspective on what they were doing. I asked the people that I was leading how I was doing.
It is part of your personality and it is not part of most people’s personality, the humbleness to ask for feedback, as opposed to, “I am going to pretend like I have it all together even though I had never done this before.” It is a completely different mindset to approach something with. In order to get feedback from people you are managing and/or your customers, you have to be willing to listen and not think you have all the answers all the time.
This is what I started pointing out in the book in terms of the contrast between a sales boss and a sales leader. One is a know-it-all versus one that is a learn-it-all. That is what you want to be. You want to be a learn-it-all. The humility you talk about is not just being modest and self-effacing, but it is about being intellectually humble. It is acknowledged that you do not know everything.
We put sales leaders, especially people who do not work in big companies that do not know very formal training programs and development programs, which the majority of companies out there put in tough positions. We promote them and then we do not enable them with the tools, the knowledge, and the training to have a better idea about what they are doing.
The thing that is ironic about that is that if you run polls, you look at the polls, surveys and research data, who is the single most influential in the life of an up-and-coming salesperson? It is their immediate manager. The people we should be investing in the most, we do not. According to LinkedIn, we spent roughly about $15 billion a year on sales training in the United States, of which 10% is spent on sales leaders and sales managers.
At least half of it should not be spent on sales managers. If they are the people having the most influence on the development of individual sellers, we cannot invest in them enough. Stop providing that training to sellers because they are going to get the guidance and knowledge they need from watching their sales managers.
[bctt tweet=”We are the sum of all the influences that are out there—our peers, our managers, the things we read, and the other information we absorb.” username=”John_Livesay”]
One of the things you talk about is people who say, “Let’s model what the top producer is doing. Let’s all march to that drum and say exactly what they are saying and try to be a clone.” You are saying, “That is the kiss of death. It is counterproductive.”
It is not like I was the best salesperson in the world, but no one sold like me because it was me. No one sells it like you. People did it better. That is great. I tried to learn from those people, but I had my own unique way of doing it. That has developed because we are the sum total of all the influences that are out there, our peers, our managers, the things we read, and the other information we absorb.
To force everybody into a single niche about how to sell is self-defeating. You have frameworks, you set up and you have expectations, “This is how we conduct business,” but within that framework, as a sales manager, I want to give you the freedom and the flexibility to go experiment and find out things that will work for you based on your unique strengths as a human being.
If you are going on a sales call with a boss and that boss is hyper-critical and expects you to be perfect, you do not have any room for failure trying something on your own, and then you are shutting down someone’s creativity and authenticity.
Selling is one of the most creative professions you can be in. To me, that was the one thing that has kept me in this, that in every situation, your approach is different. The way you present the solution and how you interact with the people will be necessarily different because they are also different if they are buying the same product. It is a fresh problem to solve, not solving the same problem over and over again.
I think of that as a doctor or a dentist. I thought, “How do they not get bored doing the same surgeries and over again?” I realized, much like a salesperson, in every patient and every situation, “We are putting a crown in your mouth,” or “We are removing your appendix.” Whatever it is, the outcome is the same, but there are so many unique things that require you to think, “I have never had to do it quite this way before.”
There are no small things to your customer. To your point, this is not to a patient. There are no small things when it comes to people’s health. As a seller, there are no small things in the buyer’s mind. If you try to serve to glom over those, assuming that they are like everybody else, you damage that relationship and the trust you have built.
Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others
One of the biggest reasons people are buying your book is that you have provided a guide on how to be successful on their own terms without having to fit into this mold of, “You have to be an extrovert. You have to do XYZ. You have to play golf.” All those stereotypical things of what salespeople used to have to do or would do and it is like, “I know what my terms are. This is how I entertain clients or not. This is how I sell. This is how I build rapport that might be different than you.”
It is becoming more essential because we are becoming more diverse in the people we are recruiting into sales. We are not doing enough. We could do more, but they all have different lived experiences. The perspectives people bring are what we need. We need more different perspectives. There is no one way.
You have so many great soundbites. One of my favorites is, “Influence rules, persuasion drools.” The visual on that is great. Tell us what you mean. A lot of people think, “I am going into sales. I am going to persuade you to buy this for this price.”
If you are persuasion-driven, you are putting your own interest ahead of those of the buyers. By definition, that is what you are trying to do. You are trying to persuade somebody to buy your product irrespective of their requirements, their needs and the things they want to achieve because you are in that mode where you are selling hammers and everybody is the nail. Even when you look at the definition of the word persuasion, it talks about prevailing or trying to prevail through force. In the wrong hands, persuasion is meant to be coercive and a little bit manipulative. Unfortunately, a lot of sellers are the wrong hands. That is not how buyers want to deal with the salesperson.
This is a big a-ha moment. I want to take a pause, circle it, underline it and highlight it. I am not in the persuasion business. Nothing against all the wonderful books about how to be persuasive, but let’s reshift this and start reframing how we think of ourselves.
Influence is all about having an effect on the thoughts and actions of others without the apparent use of force. That is what influence is and that is what position we are trying to get into. We are trying to build this connection with a buyer built on some level of trust that when the trust exists, they open up to us. When we bring our curiosity to bear, they will share information with us, perhaps at a deeper level than they would with someone where that trust and connection did not exist. Suddenly, we have more insight into the most important things to them in terms of the challenges they face and the outcomes they are trying to achieve by addressing those challenges.
When we have that understanding, we can work with the buyer to help shape this vision of success of what it will be like to get the value from the product or service you are selling. If you reach that point, that is something you do collaboratively with the buyer. It is not something you impose on them by trying to persuade them about it.
[bctt tweet=”Humility is not just being modest and self-effacing, but it is about being intellectually humble. It is acknowledging that you do not know everything.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I love that your definition of persuasion is, “I know better than you. I am right. You are wrong.” That is selling out. That is what this book is helping people not do. The opposite is the concept of selling which I have never heard of before. Therefore, there are no assumptions that you know more than they do or even vice versa. Think of it in terms of being a copilot with the buyer and this concept of, “Let’s make sure people feel heard and understood first before we jump into what we think they need.” It’s like when you go to a therapist, sometimes there is something called the presenting problem, which is a couple comes in and they say, “Our love life is not where we want it. That is why we are here.”
The therapist will go, “That is the presenting problem. I bet there are some reasons behind that.” As salespeople, we need to start thinking of ourselves as, “Whatever they tell you upfront, this is why we are changing, looking, upgrading or whatever the reason is for doing a proposal in the first place.” There might be other reasons they are unwilling to share yet, or maybe they do not even know yet. If you can help them discover that, then your trust factor has zoomed up.
Sometimes sellers are a little taken aback when I say this. I said, “You cannot take anything at face value that the buyer tells you.” They are not lying to you. They are not, not telling you the truth, but there is always more to it. If you accept what they tell you, you will hop down one path that is not the path the buyer wants to go down.
Building this level of trust so that they open up to you, as I write about in the book, then they give you permission to stick your nose into their business. What you are trying to get to is deeper level information that they do not readily share with everybody. I was in a conversation with someone on another podcast and they are talking about, “If you ask buyers scripted questions, you get scripted answers.”
If you are a robot, then they are going to give you robot answers.
You have trained them, not you, but sellers in general. Be the difference. This is the thing that I stress in the book. In the majority of instances, buyers oftentimes decide to buy from a seller despite the seller, not because of them.
If we flip that around and make it not in spite of but because we have a new tool in our box.
Sell Without Selling Out: In the majority of instances, buyers oftentimes decide to buy from a seller despite the seller, not because of them. In the majority of instances, buyers oftentimes decide to buy from a seller despite the seller, not because of them.
That is what you are trying to achieve. You become the reason they buy from your company. You, the individual. From supporting data from Gartner, Challenger and Forrester, we know that when customers make their decision, the majority of the criteria or factors in their minds are the experience with the salesperson.
That is everything from a home or the broker you pick to, if you are in Corporate America, deciding what vendor to make your equipment purchase from. People are buying your energy, your passion and your empathy.
How they experience you. Your understanding.
If people want to reach out to you and figure out how to get more coaching, more information and get on your email list, where should they go?
They can email me if they want to at [email protected]. They can connect with me on LinkedIn. Direct message me there. I would love to connect with people that are reading this.
Do you also have programs that you offer on your website?
If you go to AndyPaul.com and learn about the programs that I offer. You can download a free chapter of the book if you wish. We have an assessment that you can take there if you assume that selling out and selling in are polar opposite ends of a spectrum. You can start to determine where in that spectrum you sit. Are you leaning more towards selling out or selling in? It is not super scientific, but it is a fun quiz. Come buy the book on Amazon or wherever you purchase books.
[bctt tweet=”You cannot take anything at face value that the buyer tells you. They are not lying to you. They are not telling you the truth, but there is always more to it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Thank you so much for sharing your insight. We are going to all become people who learn-it-all not a know-it-all. Any last thought or a quote you want to leave us with?
One of my favorite quotes is right at the beginning of the book from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Insist on yourself. Never imitate.”
Most people think they have to become a clone in order to be successful. That is not the case at all. Thank you so much for getting us this new awareness and this new ability so that we can be ourselves and be successful at the same time. Who does not want that? Let’s go get the book, everybody. Thanks, Andy.
Thanks, John.
Important Links
- Andy Paul
- Sell Without Selling Out
- Sales Enablement with Andy Paul
- Stephen M.R. Covey – Sales Enablement with Andy Paul Episode
- Speed of Trust
- Trust and Inspire
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn – Andy Paul
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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The Narrative Gym For Business With Park Howell
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Storytelling is a universal way of getting others to understand us. If you want to take advantage of this for your business, then you want to create a narrative gym to practice in. John Livesay discusses marketing and crafting narratives with advertising expert Park Howell. Park is a veteran in the advertising game with over three decades of experience, and he’s prepared to show you the ropes. Learn how storytelling helps you grab attention and keep it and use it for business success. Everyone has a story and now is the time to use it.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Narrative Gym For Business With Park Howell
Our guest is Park Howell, who is a storytelling expert. You can imagine how much I enjoyed interviewing him. We talked about why storytelling pulls at our heartstrings so much because there are high stakes. He says, “When you tell a story, it’s potential events. Events can kill us, but numbers can’t. Numbers make us numb when we listen to them.” You won’t read many numbers on this episode. Enjoy the storytelling.
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Our guest is Park Howell, who is known as the world’s most industrious storyteller, having grown purpose-driven brands by as much as 600%. He’s a veteran of the advertising industry and consults, teaches, coaches, and speaks internationally to help businesses, sales, and marketing leaders excel through stories they tell. He is the host of the popular weekly Business of Story Podcast, which is ranked among the top 10% of downloaded podcasts in the world.
Park published Brand Bewitchery in 2020 to help you use his proven Story Cycle System to craft spellbinding stories for your brand. In 2001, he co-authored The Narrative Gym for Business, which is a short 75-page guide on how to use the foundational narrative framework of the ABT. It makes you confident, compelling, and persuasive. Park, welcome to the show.
John, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
It’s great. We have to give a shout-out to your son, Parker, for introducing us. Your son lives here in Austin, where I do. We met through mutual friends. He said, “You’re like my dad. You’re both storytelling keynote speakers. You both have an advertising background.” I said, “Parker, your dad has the skills I don’t have, which is how to create the ads. I sold them.”
It is a brothers-from-another-mother feeling. I have loved your books. I’m interested to know all your tips and techniques on storytelling from an advertising standpoint. Let’s go back a little bit before you had your children and thought, “I might want to get into the world of advertising.” What was it that made you say, “This is something I’m going to pursue?”
I got to take you back to a show that I saw when I was a little kid. My mom and dad took my two younger brothers and me. There were seven of us in the family. We were known as the little guys. We were the youngest three. My brothers, Chris and Mike, and I went and sat right up front at The 5th Avenue Theater in Downtown Seattle. We went to see a musical, the first one I’ve ever seen in my life, called Yankee Doodle Dandy. The lead was David Cassidy from The Partridge Family.
[bctt tweet=”Without conflict there is no story.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I was a huge Partridge Family watcher because I played the piano and wrote songs. I wanted to be him. He showed up and did this marvelous musical. I was blown away, not only by the music, choreography, and all that, but the stage production and what was happening backstage because I could see over on the side. I was fascinated by that. When we left there that night, I thought to myself, “I want to do something like that, not be the performer or musician but to be in the business of bringing that entertainment to the world.”
I went to Washington State University and studied Music Composition and Theory. I got a degree in that one and also a degree in Communication, figuring I could make a living in communications but not as a composer. I tried my hand at the concert promotion, and I liked it. I wasn’t particularly great at it. I thought, “What’s the next thing that I could build a career around?” It was the advertising world, “How can I take the creativity that I love to do through music and writing?” I call it creative commerce. That’s what kicked me off into the advertising world and what finds me here with you.
Did you get to use your musical talent in any of the jingles that you worked on?
When I first got into the advertising world, I was a lowly writer. They threw me in a cubicle. I was writing press releases for the PR side of it. I wasn’t particularly inspired by that. One day, the ad department got overrun and didn’t have enough writers. I volunteered. I overheard this at lunch and said, “I’ll write that ad.” I wrote a print ad, and they liked it. I wrote another one, and they liked that. I got an agency job. It just so happened I lucked out, and they brought me in. It was a small agency and they were producing a whole ton of radio commercials. Nobody wanted to do them, so they threw them on my desk. I’ll go, “I’ll write them.”
I completely got into the theater of the mind. I would write some of the music in the background for it and bring in sound effects. I was always trying to find a story that I could tell to sell this crazy product, not even knowing that the story is the thing and I’m the story guy. It came naturally to me. I wrote and produced hundreds of those spots, and it was a blast. That’s where my Music Composition and Theory came in because I was finding the rhythm of that spot, tonality, taking an audience somewhere, and how you use sound effects and music to deliver and sell a product.
One of the questions that a lot of readers will have on how you were a creative director at an advertising agency is, “Do you ever have writer’s block? How do you keep yourself staying creative?” A lot of people want to be creative, and either has a mindset that they’re not and don’t even try, or they think, “I am sometimes but not all the time.” People come sometimes struggle about, “I don’t have a story to tell.” Are there any tips that relate to storytelling you can give people on how to find their story and stay creative?
Narrative Gym: How do you use sound effects? How do you use music to deliver and sell a product?
Stop worrying about forcing it. You would have a commercial like, “I got to write this down.” I would write 3 or 4 different treatments for it. They’re all stupid and didn’t work. I would go to bed at night and worry about it. I would find if I got up the next morning and exercised or hiked and stopped thinking about it, I would get an a-ha moment. It worked almost every single time. I started saying, “I’m not going to worry about it. This is the process.” You got to give your time. The more you write and produce, the shorter that process is, and the smaller blanks you have because you’ve worked through so much material in your life.
That’s why a lot of people get their good ideas in the shower or exercising because you’re not trying to force something. I don’t think creativity or a good story can be forced.
Can I tell you about the one that came to me in the shower? It’s a cliché that comes to you in the shower, but it does because you think about other things. I will never forget this. I was newly married. Parker, our son, was new to the world. We had zero money, and we were renting this little house out in Scottsdale, Arizona. I was having to write this commercial for Robinett Roofing. Warren House was one of my favorite clients because he had this big roofing company out there. He was like, “Do whatever you want, Park. I don’t care.” I could come up with all these harebrained things. I was stumped on this one.
I wrote a bunch of different treatments for it, and nothing was working. I was in the shower thinking of water. It was monsoon season in Phoenix, Arizona. If you’ve ever been here in the monsoon season, they can come in the afternoon, drench you and take a 115-degree day down to a 95-degree day just like that. It was a monsoon spot. Here I am in the shower, water is coming down, and I thought to myself, “What if we open with this guy?”
You’re hearing the sounds of clocks going on. He’s talking and commenting about that amazing monsoon that happened the day before. Every time he throws in an expletive, you hear cuckoo when you’re expecting to blink out the expletives. He’s talking to someone in his shop. What you come to find out at the end of the spot is it’s a clock shop, and he’s fixing the guy’s clock that was damaged because of the rain the night before. All those expletives weren’t expletives. It was him dialing in the cuckoo clock, “Had you bought Robinett Roofing, you wouldn’t have this clock problem.” I thought it was funny.
We put it up there, and then the real magic happened. That’s when people started calling in and complaining that we were swearing on the radio. We said, “We’re not swearing. We don’t even suggest an expletive. You are just hearing this cuckoo clock go off where one might be, but you don’t know what the guy said.” Warren loved it because we were told to take it off. We had to take it down. We said, “We’re not going to take it down. We’re going to keep running.” We got a little press out of it. It was quite fun. It came to me in the shower.
[bctt tweet=”Events can kill us but numbers can’t.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s clearly a wonderful example of breaking through the clutter, which is what good advertising and stories do. It’s all of that. In Hollywood, there’s a saying about certain actors. No matter how talented they are, it’s not worth it. They’re too hard to work with. There’s the same concept in books. If they’re too long, people go, “It’s too long. I didn’t read it.” That was the thought behind The Narrative Gym that you co-authored, making it a great analogy of, “We know we exercise at the gym, but what are our exercises going to be for storytelling?” We hinted at it. There’s A, B, and T. Why don’t you take us through one of those first? What’s the first one that people should be thinking about?
The And, But, and Therefore is what you’re referring to there. Fast forward after I’ve got my Music Composition and Theory and Communication degrees, I teach Story Composition and Theory and Communication. I started in the complex world of looking at the hero’s journey. Our son Parker is in film school at Chapman University. I’m like, “Send me your books when you’re done with them since I’m paying for them because I want to know what they are teaching you there.” I found the complex hero’s journey and said, “That’s a beautiful thing for business.” I tried to teach in the business world, and it’s too complex.
I jumped in the Blake Snyder’s 15 Story Beats. I tried to teach that. It’s too complex, but I knew it would work. There was the Pixar way. It’s too complex, but I also knew it would work. When I was talking to sales and marketing folks, what they’re looking for is that silver bullet in the story, “Where do I start without having to be a story theorist that I could apply right away?” That’s where I learned about the And, But, and Therefore. I learned about it in a surprising place. Dr. Randy Olson, back in 2013, introduced it to me.
Randy is a Harvard PhD evolutionary biologist and the co-author of the book with me, The Narrative Gym for Business. He went on to USC film school, graduated, and produced three documentaries on climate change and global warming. His most important work is the seven odd books he has written for the science world, teaching them how to communicate using the story frameworks he learned in Hollywood. He also knew that to make it work, he had to simplify it. His a-ha moment came through, from all places, South Park.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Rule of Replacement says, “If you find a script that is boring or you’re sitting across hearing from somebody who is boring, they are and-ing you to death,” meaning they’re in exposition. They’re in act one, and they never move on. They said, “Whenever we can replace an and with a but or a therefore, we will take it out of the script and do it because it moves the story ahead.” That’s what led to the And, But, and Therefore. It uses the three forces of the story of agreements, contradiction with the buts, and the therefore consequence, which our cause and effect and pattern-seeking brain love.
We even have images of our brains responding differently to stories versus other things. That is great because we can back up with science that people buy emotionally and then back up with logic. Most people think they need more information or more exposition. Good stories have a journey and a little bit of conflict. The stakes have to be high. It’s this concept of you starting to describe something and then adding one more thing to pull them in, and little did they know.
Narrative Gym: Most executives communicate and care, but bore. Therefore, tell a story.
No conflict, no story. Without conflict, you’re boring.
It’s this concept of giving people this structure to allow them to craft a story. Let’s give an easy example of it in action.
I was doing some work at Home Depot, working with their inside sales and marketing team and teaching them the And, But, and Therefore. One of their various people there said, “What’s the shortest ABT you’ve ever written?” Here it is, “Most executives communicate and care but bore. Therefore, tell a story.” Let’s expand that and say you are a sales leader. You will kill to connect and convert your customers, but you’re not connecting because you’re boring them with logic and reason when what they want is the emotional pull of a story. Therefore, let me teach you about the And, But, and Therefore that will hack through the noise and hook your audience from the very start.
I love that there’s a short version and an expanded version. That’s the thing that I love about teaching people how to become storytellers. You need a concise one and a longer one. It depends on the time you were given and the audience you have. Most people don’t have that skill, especially in the sales world. I would go on so many sales calls, and they would say, “We’re giving you half an hour.” You walk in, and it’s like, “You only have twenty minutes.” A lot of people would completely freak out.
It has happened to me as a keynote speaker, “We want you for an hour.” You’re like, “I’ve got a great hour.” The CEO went on, “We got to keep this thing on time. We only have 45 minutes.” You got to figure out on the fly, “What slides and stories am I cutting to still come in on time?” That ABT framework can help you go, “I have a short version of that and a longer version of that. Which one am I going to tell here?” It’s ironic because we both work with a lot of salespeople. The old way of doing it was, “Always be closing.”
You remember ABC and the, “Coffee’s for closers,” from that movie. I framed it. You have ABT. I have ABK, which is Always Be Kind, because I teach people, “If you’re not saying kind things to yourself, there’s no way it can be kind to customers.” We should do a little marriage of those. ABT plus ABK is a nice little combo to take out into the world. It also impacts your personal life. I know you’re a great dad. I say, “Storytelling is not only going to help you in your career but also your personal life.” Can you give us the ABT of a parent to a child?
[bctt tweet=”The more you write, the more you produce, the shorter that process is, the smaller blanks you have because you’ve worked through so much material in your life.” username=”John_Livesay”]
“Little Johnny, you had a wonderful day on the mound in your Little League game. I know that you are so excited about one day pitching in the pros, but you’re not eating your piece. Therefore, every outstanding athlete I know places their peas at the top of their food list. If you want to be pitching in the pros, I ask that you eat your peas.”
It’s the old spinach making Popeye strong.
That’s one quick example of it.
Your other wonderful book is Brand Bewitchery. My story of origin in advertising was watching the TV show Bewitched. I thought Darrin Stephens had the coolest job in the world presenting different campaigns. First of all, I love alliterations. When I saw Brand Bewitchery, I went back to that show. I was like, “I’m in.”
Mine was The Dick Van Dyke Show. He was also in the advertising world. He was writing more for the TV show, but to me, there was always an advertising play. I loved Morey and Sally and where they could sit down, play the piano, and come up with these jingles and stuff. That was the one I loved.
It’s so much fun to think about these things. Judith Light talks about how women come up to her and say, “I decided to go into advertising because you were an advertising executive in Who’s the Boss?.” The influence of TV and how people are portrayed is quite impactful because it’s a story. When we see ourselves in stories, that’s the magic.
Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand
It is what a story does. You know this from your sales background. I tried to get an ad sales job at KNIX Radio out here because I love writing radio so much. I thought, “I could sell radio and then write these commercials.” They wouldn’t hire me. I’m like, “What the heck?” It’s hard to get in your line of work, but you know this power of storytelling when you are trying to sell this printout or radio commercial.
It’s always about the emotional pole. You will show them the numbers like, “Condé Nast is who you worked for.” You have to show them the numbers, the reach, and all that stuff. Did you ever start with that? Didn’t you always start with getting another person and telling them some connection story to get them leaning into you?
When I was calling on Lexus’ agency, they specifically would say, “Do not come in here and talk about numbers. We have already analyzed that. We don’t need you to come in and tell us what we read about circulation, readers per copy, or income.” That’s where the a-ha for me was, “Whoever tells the best story about why they have come up with this marketing idea for this particular model and audience is the one that’s going to get the ads.” It was not necessarily that people needed you to regurgitate a bunch of numbers that they could look up for themselves to see if it’s a fit.
That’s table stakes. We are only going to consider magazines that have an audience that has a certain income that could even afford our car. Otherwise, we’re throwing money in the wind. We need to get them involved. What was so interesting working with Lexus, especially at the beginning of their launch, was that they explained that people are internally or externally motivated. I’m fascinated to know your thoughts on this as a creative person as well as a storyteller. People would buy a BMW or a Mercedes, which are their big competitors, and some would buy it to show off, “I’m an agent. I’ve got a BMW. I want to drive in front of my country club.”
Some people are like, “I bought this car because I liked the craftsmanship. I’m not trying to impress anybody. I bought it for me.” That’s who they had to target to buy a Lexus versus those who love the brand for the status. They didn’t have status when they first started. This is my question to you because you are such a brand expert. Have you ever had a situation where a brand was the challenger, and it didn’t have the rich history that somebody else did, yet they still had to tell their story and figure out a way to appeal to those who are more people internally motivated?
I’m working with a medical device manufacturer out of Chicago. I will keep their name out of this. As a brand, they’re very wise about stories only after they made the big mistake of leading with data. Turn your data into drama. All you have to think about is this. What is the first syllable in the word numbers?
[bctt tweet=”It’s not about what you make. It’s what you make happen.” username=”John_Livesay”]
It’s numb.
If you’re leading with numbers, our Homo sapiens brain was never created to make any context out of numbers unless we have already put the context in play, which means you have to tell a story that demonstrates the real ramifications of what you’re talking about. The best way to demonstrate that is to pull up your iPhone or digital device and look at the weather report.
What does it tell you? It tells you the data does 1 of 3 things. It is reporting what happened, monitoring the event that’s happening, or attempting to predict an event in the future. Our brain doesn’t necessarily care about numbers. It’s a trigger for the event. Why would we care way more about the event those numbers represent than the numbers themselves?
It determines whether we should take a trip, put a coat on, bring an umbrella, and all these behavioral things.
If you were to drill that down to the most basal thing, why do you think that is?
In terms of weather, it goes back to fight or flight, “Is it safe to go out?”
Narrative Gym: Our Homo sapiens brain was never created to really make any context out of numbers, unless we have already put the context in play, which means you have to tell a story that demonstrates the real ramifications of what you’re talking about.
It’s the survival of the fittest. Events can kill us, but numbers can’t. When you are talking as a brand, your stories are not about what you make. That is typically a product or service that’s already commoditized because we live in the land of abundance. You don’t talk about what you make. You talk about what you make happen in people’s lives, like the event and outcome. When you get boiled into the trenches of what you make, you are now defaulting to logic and reason backed up by data and numbers. Your audiences don’t give a crap about that.
Let me give you a quick example. It’s one of my favorites. André-Martin Hobbs started this company up in Canada called Prêt Auto Partez. It is a used car dealership for risk-credited subprime Canadian car buyers. When I say that to you, the first thing you’re thinking is, “We see them all over the place. They’re a bunch of sharks. They’re preying on the subprime people that are going to have to pay through the nose for the loan on this car. They will make 4 or 5 payments. We’re going to go and repo it and do the whole thing all over again.”
That’s the anti-story. We talked about this. André has this most amazing thing. He goes, “I’m not so much about selling cars as I am about repairing the credit of Canadians. In doing so, I can sell cars to them.” What he does is you may not even realize that he’s going to put you through this. You show up at Prêt Auto Partez and say, “I finally got my act together. My credit is coming back. I’m tired of riding the bus. I want the freedom of owning my own car. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll make the monthly payments. Put me in a car.”
He says, “Not so fast. You first have to sit down with our financial planner. It may take three hours, but we are going to teach you what car you can afford. If indeed you can’t afford a car, how are you going to make these payments over the course of the next two years without ever missing a single payment? In doing so in the Canadian system, you will have repaired your credit and moved up a notch 2 or 3.”
He was about not just selling this car but also the outcome of helping Canadians repair their credit. Here’s the ABT for his brand narrative. It’s speaking directly to the customer, “You want the freedom of owning your own car and how it represents your self-esteem.” He knows that because that’s exactly what their research told them, but you have crappy credit, “Therefore, at Prêt Auto Partez, we are going to put you in a car you can afford to get you back on the road to financial freedom.”
It all led to the tagline that his entire company is built on, “Prêt Auto Partez, your vehicle to financial freedom.” It’s not about what you make. He sells used cars. It’s what you make happen. It’s helping Canadians reclaim their creditworthiness. He became the fastest car dealership in Quebec with that and is now taking that whole concept and franchising it throughout North America precisely because he got his brand story dialed in.
[bctt tweet=”It’s madness being a human being and stories are the only way we can create meaning out of that madness.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s such a great visual that you’re getting on the road to your financial freedom. It’s an unspoken fear back to the survival thing, “If something happens, my car is going to get repossessed.” Imagine if a brokerage company didn’t let people get loans for homes they couldn’t afford. We would have eliminated a big part of the mortgage crisis in 2008. It’s wonderful.
In your book Brand Bewitchery, one of my favorite parts is where you talk about, “Life is chaotic. Storytelling is the remedy that we seek to create meaning out of the madness of being alive. There is a science and bewitchery of storytelling.” I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard anyone talk about storytelling being a remedy to create meaning. That is needed now with all the chaos going on. How did you come up with this concept? How can people use this to get some meaning when they’re feeling overwhelmed?
I wish I could say it’s all mine and I’m so brilliant, but I’m not. I’m good at connecting dots. I was at Robert McKee’s famous four-day Story Seminar at the LAX Sheraton with my son Parker. He went for the film world. I went for the marketing world back in 2009 or 2010. I wanted to know what I could use from a screenwriting perspective in the advertising, marketing, and sales world. He stood upon the stage the first day and said, “A story is the only way we can create meaning out of the madness of being a human being.” I lifted it directly from him and thought, “If that’s good enough for Hollywood and the multibillion-dollar industry in telling that story, then it would work for us.”
In that same workshop, I’m guessing he did the same for you. He breaks down why Casablanca is such a great story and all the different levels of it. If you think about the madness going on in the world in that particular movie with the war, trying to have friendships, death could be imminent. There’s so much chaos going on, but there’s also a love story and a friendship story going on. That somehow is the remedy to all that madness. That’s another example of it coming together.
It’s a fabulous example. Hollywood used to do it well. I’m not sure if they do it quite as well as they used to only because it seems like they don’t take the time, and audiences don’t necessarily have the attention span they used to. You think about the brands or sales teams that you work with. They are all working in this chaos of the pandemic.
Our primal limbic system is all about survival and fight or flight. It was built to fend off that, “There’s a saber-toothed tiger. What the heck should I do next?” We have this killer virus that has been going on for years. There seems to be no end in sight. Our limbic system is jumping all over like, “Do I fight or flight? Do I get back or not? Do I wear a mask or don’t?” We have all of these competing stories coming in, and it’s left to our own devices what we’re going to do about it. Our limbic system is like, “I need something definite and a story that I can believe in.”
Narrative Gym: We were never meant to create great relationships in this weird virtual world we’re in because we have a hard time reading the room when you someone on a one-dimensional screen.
We’re all selling and marketing in this chaos. Let’s add to that virtual world. We were never meant to create great relationships in this weird virtual world we’re in. We have a hard time reading the room when I’ve got you one-dimensional on a screen. Add that to the chaos of what’s going on. What we’re trying to do, like Casablanca, is built somewhat of a love story between that audience or person sitting across from us and say, “I’m here to help, providing I can help you.”
Don’t waste their time if you can’t. Leave them alone, for crying out loud. If you can help them, then that’s where the ABT comes in. There’s one last thing for your audience to think about. Here’s how you write it. The ABT makes you place your audience at the center of the story. They are the protagonist or the hero. You start that statement of agreement to validate their state and what it is that they want. You identify who they are, what they want, and why it is important to them. You’re raising the stakes.
Next is, you’re going to introduce the conflict of the contradiction, but they don’t have it because of this. Therefore, the resolution is what I have to offer you to help you overcome and get what you want out of life. When you do that, you have to understand your audience. Understand who they are, appreciate what they want and why they want it, and empathize with what they don’t have. That helps you get super focused on telling a message from their point of view. I’m here to help you get it.
What great marketing advertising copy does is put words to someone’s internal thoughts. They think, “Are you in my head? How did you know I was feeling that way? I haven’t even articulated it that clearly.” That’s when you don’t have to push anymore because they feel like, “If you understand my problem, then you must have my solution,” which is what I see going on. When you said that we’re not designed for this virtual world, it’s interesting. I had an experience with my godson. I’ve watched him since he was a baby. He’s in New York, and I’m in Austin. I didn’t get to see him for years. I was in Manhattan between Christmas and New Year. I had seen him on FaceTime many times.
After I left, he said to his mom, “Uncle John is more fun in person than he is on FaceTime.” He was surprised by that. I thought, “Thank God.” Young people talk about IRL or in real life versus digital, the metaverse, and all these other things coming. You’re like, “I still think you need to be more compelling, interesting, and connected in person.” If you don’t learn how to tell stories, it’s going to be hard for you to have conversations with people because you don’t know how to connect. That’s the best way for us to connect as humans. If people want to find out about hiring you as a sales keynote speaker or have you come in as a consultant, where should they go?
Come on over to my website, BusinessOfStory.com. I’m like you. I’ve got a show every week that comes out on Monday. You can check me out on iTunes and those places. If you want to shoot me an email, send it over to [email protected].
[bctt tweet=”You have to really understand your audience, understand who they are, appreciate what it is they want and why they want it, and then have empathy for why they don’t currently have. That helps you get really super focused from telling a message from their point of view.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Thanks, Park. It has been great having you. Is there any last thought or quote you want to leave us with?
As you are working through your storytelling and trying to grow as a more confident and compelling storyteller, I’ll leave you with how I close every one of my shows. That is this. The most potent story you will ever tell is the story you tell yourself. Make sure it’s a great one. Thanks for having me here, John.
Thank you, Park. That was great.
Important Links
- Park Howell
- Business of Story Podcast
- Brand Bewitchery
- The Narrative Gym for Business
- Prêt Auto Partez
- Story Seminar
- iTunes – Business of Story
- [email protected]
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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