Bill Gallagher teaches entrepreneurs how to get more yeses through deep listening and bold proposals. He breaks leadership into four areas: inspiration, recruiting commitment, planning, and coaching. The workshop includes partner exercises and a 2008 jewelry business rent negotiation story.
Chapters
I'd like to start off with kind of a story that illustrates what we'll be working on today. As Jerry mentioned, we have. I have two businesses. I have this training company, and then I also have a jewelry business with my wife Lori, who's here today. And back in 2008, when the economy tanked and hit many of us in different ways, some sectors were really hard hit, and premium jewelry was a particularly hard hit sector. And our jewelry company shrank down by more than half in an instant. It was a very scary time, and we had no idea what we could do or what we'd build or exactly what would happen out of it. We knew that we had no cash coming in and we had to do some things very quickly. So the first thing we did was lay off almost all of our staff. And that's a hard thing, as you know, to do. But then we went across every single expense and started to slash expenses everywhere that we could, just to give ourselves some breathing room, some time to think. And one of the biggest expenses was our rent. Now, I don't know about you, but my lease is a long document with lots of things to sign, right? It's tied up in different ways, but it was a big number and I needed to deal with it. So I went to our landlord and I said, listen, I just have no idea what kind of. If we even have a business anymore, and I need complete rent reduction for the next year while I figure it out. And he smiled and he said that that was an awfully interesting request and that I was the first one that had approached him with such a request. And he said he wouldn't really be in business if he accepted that kind of request. And we kept talking for a little while, and one of the things that I started to hear as he spoke is that he really was committed to a quality building, quality tenants, great businesses, things like that, you know, and he was looking at it from the long haul. He didn't have to hit a particular number or do something right then and there. So balancing those two things, I countered with something right in the moment. I said, well, Lis, what if I gave you a token that showed my commitment, my good faith? And so I offered him a very small amount and he said yes. And in one single conversation, I got 90% off my rent for a year. Now, we took all of that breathing room and we did reinvent our business, and we went on to post three years of 30%. It was really an amazing thing. And that was one of the key moments. Now I Always knew that people said yes naturally to strong leaders. And I knew that I wanted to be that kind of person who got yes so easily from people. And so I spent a lot of time studying leadership skills and getting yes from people more naturally. And I trained others in doing that over time. That was a great example for me, like on the court in my life about getting a yes so easily. I was working with somebody else recently, a coaching client, and he was dealing, an entrepreneur coaching client, and he was dealing with something that was of real importance to him. And we had one call and a very related exercise to what we're going to do today. And then he turned that into a $36,000 money in his pocket two days later. So it's a very powerful. It's also, you'll see as we go through it, simple, straightforward kind of thing conceptually, but a little bit more in terms of application. So I want to leave you with a couple things. Some simple steps that you can use to get more yes in your life, in any area of your life, but particularly in your business, and ready and prepared to get yes on the thing that you need most right now. So we're going to actually work with something that each of you has and needs right now. And then I also want to leave you with some takeaway things on where you can continue to develop your skills much further than what we can do. It's a very short period of time, right, that we can actually work with this today. So we're going to do a little bit of this and I'm going to give you more to work on as you go forward that will open it up. This is intended to be applied to any kind of area. We're focused on business, but we all have things that we want in all areas. So hiring people, getting a big concession from a vendor, getting a key sale made, getting funded. But we also have things in partnerships and in romantic areas and family situations that are of interest to us. And the concepts are universal. So I'm going to give you a little overview now of the whole world of leadership. Because this, yes. Fits in with that, with that whole context of leadership. I want to start with a little bit of an inquiry with you guys first so that it's kind of in the room here with us of what it is that what are the skills and qualities of leaders? So if you would think about what do you already know about leadership and what are the skills and qualities of really great leaders? Leaders listen. They listen. Okay, good. Inspire. They inspire. Terrific. They have a vision okay, good. Confidence, confident. They have a big picture view. Okay, good. These are all good, clear communicators. They communicate clearly. Yeah. What else? Persuasive. They're persuasive. Okay, good. Yeah, that totally applies. They're humble. Aha. Interesting, right? All right, we could go on. In fact, if you Google leadership, leadership skills, leadership qualities, you will find many hundreds of thousands of entries on the thing. And if you start to dig into the specific, like text theories and models of leadership, you will find hundreds of those. So there's a lot of work and a lot of leadership. But I'm going to boil it down to four things that I've trained thousands of people on that keep it kind of simple. So here they are, and we're going to look at each one of them quickly. So the first one we talked about is. And everything kind of starts with inspiration. And then there's recruiting and commitment. That's actually the world that we're going to touch on most today. This getting yes to whatever it is, adding somebody onto your team and. And then there's planning and execution. So you've got people inspired, you've got that. Now what are you going to do with them? And then there's coaching them to higher levels of performance. So the reason that I'm going to give you an overview of this first is that yes, is most powerful, most effective when it's part of something bigger. So we're going to give a little bit of look at the kind of work that I've done, typically over four months with people. But you'll get a taste of it and that'll give you some context for it. We're going to then do an exercise as we dig into yeses here that give you a direct experience of this for yourself. First one's inspiration. Right. Everybody here has been inspired before. Some of you are inspired this morning, right now, even. So all kinds of things inspire us at different times. And. And we have the experience of, especially in a room like this, of being inspired and inspiring others. And when you do that, inspiration literally means to breathe new life into something. So when you are inspired or inspiring others, you're actually bringing new life into some situation with your ideas. It starts with a notion, then continues into some communication and flows out into actual action with people. And then there's a whole flow of those leadership skills that brings it. Now, the interesting thing is that a lot of people don't stop to think about that there's an actual process to inspiration and that you can inspire yourself because you have to inspire yourself first when you need it most. One of the things that I teach that we won't be doing today is simple steps for inspiring yourself and inspiring others. So when do you need to inspire yourself most? Well, when you're pissed off, when you're down, when you're upset, when things aren't going well, that's the time that you need to summon something. And there are actually some simple processes for bringing that when you most need it. So today we are going to actually just assume inspiration in some area to focus on the next one. This is the skill that we're most here for, that we sold you on today to come here, right, Getting yes to your proposals. And I know that it's just review for you, right? You get yes all the time to everything that you say automatically. So clearly not always or you wouldn't be here at all, right? Or you're just here to teach other people. So I want you to imagine, though, fantasize for a minute what that would look like. What would it look like if everybody said yes to you all the time? Anybody remember this movie? So in this movie, the yes man by Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey had to say yes to absolutely everything. How many of you saw this movie? Okay, so a few of you. It was pretty funny. And he went through the whole thing. And it is kind of a fun fantasy not to think about being Jim Carrey, but to have everybody in your life be like that, where you just walk around and they say yes to you everywhere, all the time. Anybody know what it took to get Jim Carrey to do that? 20 million. Huh? 20 million. How about this guy? Those of you saw the movie? Anybody remember this guy? So this was this phony, manipulative guru that put him in some groovy self help session and had him say, yes, I'm going to be a yes man from now on. So we're not going to learn how to be that guy. We're going to focus on how you could just be yourself, right, and natural and normal and so on. So I'm going to come back to that in a minute. I want to touch on those other leadership skills before we dig into the yeses. I want you though, before we get there to think about what do you need? Yes on now? What's the thing that we're going to focus on today? Who do you need to talk to? Is it a customer? Is it a business partner? Is it a vendor? We want to pick one thing that's real for you right now that we're going to use today. So does anybody. How many of you have something already? You're clear what it is. Okay, good. Could I hear from Rick? Would you tell me? It's a hotel owner that wants our services. Okay, good. And you know who that person is? No, we're, you know, the class of person. Okay, good. Carl, a key hire comp plan that I've proposed. Okay, so somebody specific, you're proposing the plan. Okay, good. It's my wife. She needs to say yes to something in her business which she hasn't done in the last 20 years. Very good. I was. When you said it's your wife, I was worried where that was gonna go. Okay, these are good things. Anything. Any other different ones? All right, so as we go through these next couple things, pick something specific for yourself, a specific person and we'll work on that. All right. The third skill of leaders. So they're inspired, they've said yes to something. Now what are you going to do? It's all about planning and execution. What do you do? What are you going to do? When do you have to do it and how are you going to handle breakdowns? If you think about it, it really is kind of simple. It's simple conceptually. Like all the things that we're talking about today, it's all much harder in practice. So one of the things that I do in the leadership training that I do is break down planning and execution from a whole different standpoint. I call it failure proof execution. And some of you may be familiar with it. We start at the end state and we work back to where you are today. And then there's a couple other aspects about time and how we put things in time and deal with other people and so on. So that's what we do in that. Then the next one is coaching. So you've got people, right. And you've got to coach them to higher levels of performance. How many of you like to coach? Anybody like to coach in this room? Okay, good. How many of you hate coaching? Okay, my wife hates coaching. So some of you like to coach. Some of you think you're good coaches, some of you would like to be better coaches. How many of you think it's an area of concern, like you're thinking about how to coach people more and more. Okay, good. And how many of you try to be like this coach, carefully explaining what's needed kindly? Right. That's the model of kid coaching. That's not my natural state, I don't think. Here's maybe what it looks like More commonly for me. Anybody else do this one? Yeah. This is what I would do had I not spent some time training myself to better coaching. It's not so fun when I revert to this one, especially around the house. Do you just call that yelling? Right. Here's another model of coaching. What do you see? This movie? Will Ferrell played a soccer coach, parental soccer coach. The movie was called Kicking and Screaming. He was insecure, ineffective, self absorbed, and mostly kind of stupid. The movie was hilarious, if you like that kind of humor, because we all recognize the coach all too well. I spent a lot of time training myself to be a coach, and it's one of the things that I do best now. But I have to think about it. I have to apply a process to it. And I actually have a webinar and an article and some live work coming up for different EO groups in the next couple months on high performance coaching, how to get higher performance out of your folks. And there's five easy steps for that. So just a quick recap. These are the core skills of leadership. And there's a kind of an order and a flow to them. Yes. Is located within this. It's part of this process. And it's good to think about how it is before we turn onto the yes portion of it. So we start with inspiration. We get people's buy into things, then we start to direct the action, and then we deal with all of their issues as they take on new things or more kinds of things. Okay, so let's talk now in greater detail about getting more yeses. Everybody here wants more yeses. Right. And if you look for each one of us, I would assert that probably every single person in this room has a notion that there's somebody out there in your world that you're acutely aware of that is much better at getting yeses that you are. It's just natural for them. And you have to work at it in some way or another. And you have strategies and techniques and things that you rely on to do it. You have the things that make you good at it to the extent that you are. But there are people who are way better. So what are the kinds of people that are better than you and what makes them better at getting yes? They don't get bogged down. Okay. So they stay high level picture. They're not bogged down to the details. What else? They're not stopped. They're not stopped. So they should just. No matter what happens, they just keep flowing. Well, they may look for different ways to get around it. But they don't just take no for an answer. So they don't take no. And they're agile in their approach. Okay, good. What are some others? Emotional space. Uh huh. What do you mean by that? So you don't take stuff personally? Uh huh. You do things on an objective level. Really good. Yeah, Maybe Focus, focus. Okay. Good listener processor. So little more of that dead air time and they're not afraid to have that dead air. All right, consider this. Nobody's saying some of the obvious or more base ones. They're more attractive, more successful, taller, better looking, more athletic. How many of you also have that somewhere in the background? Anybody? No, of course not. All right, so we're going to focus on making. And actually all the things that you touched on will either be in this first level of exercise or the subsequent ones that I'm going to give you to do right after this. So I want to just quickly touch on the couple principles for getting yes. Then I'm going to give you a little worksheet. We're going to do this exercise together. So here are the principles first of all. And they will rock your world. Right? People say yes when they hear what they want. And great leaders are simply better at offering people the things that they already want. So how do you do that? You practice listening. The listening skills that you develop are way more valuable than the kinds of the pitching or proposal things that you have to say. And no matter where you are now that in your skill set, you can elevate it from wherever it is through some intentional practice. So we're going to do one exercise today. I'm going to give you four more that you can do in like one at a time through the coming weeks. I'm going to then give you now a worksheet that you can do to work on this particular problem. And then we're going to work in some pairs to do that. And I think before I start to do that, I'm going to share with you. So I have a yes. And that'll help you to work through the whole exercise. So here's what I want. I would like to be booked as a speaker at GLC in Athens. I would like EO GLC to book me as one of their speakers at Athens in May. And my inspiration, the inspiration, the background of this is that I really love making a difference for people. And the kind of people that I love making the difference for most that I think has the biggest effect or the most fun for me to work with are entreprene so who I'm going to speak to are GLC education committee and staff members that are planning that conference. That's who I need to ask it of. And there's more than a, there's at least a couple people involved in that. What I want for them is to book me as one of the topics at the Athens GLC and what they're concerned with, what are they like, you know, well, there's the staff, people that work in a non profit staff and they're in the cubicle world and doing their thing and talking to people that are all over the world that most of whom have a little or probably for what occurs for them like a more glamorous life and they're entrepreneurial and they make more money for many of them. And then there's an entrepreneur who's heading up, who's one of the committee members who's planning the whole thing as well. And they're busy with doing things and both of them are interested in things that are fresh and novel and that will not embarrass them. So they want something reliable. Sure. Right. They want a safe bet, but they don't want to use somebody that's been done all the other EO events for the last 10 years. So that's what they're interested in. Fresh, interesting topics, reliable speakers. So my proposal to them would be something like I'm out to make an enormous difference for entrepreneurs and I've got some great fresh takes on skills that every chapter needs and I can consistently deliver topics to audiences of any size. So that would be like my thing. So I'm going to give you this now real quick. So where did. Because the whole thing in there is what they need, right? What you said they needed, what they said they needed, what they said they needed. Right now I'm speculating on what they need in the conversation. I'm going to listen for what it is, but I'm going to begin with some speculation. So here's the preparation that we're going to do. You've picked something real, not something pie in the sky or conceptual because that doesn't work so well. We want to look at what's the inspiration in the background. So you know, I'm all about making a difference for people and entrepreneurs in particular. And you want to think of who that actual person is and if you don't know the name, as close as you can to what you know about them, what you want from them, what they're like, their personality, their flavor, their temperament, you know Whatever it is and what they might be concerned with. So you know, I said they're concerned with fresh topics from safe choices and what they might be interested in respond to is very much like this. This is maybe a little bit more about the personal flavor and then digging a little bit deeper. And then try to write out your proposal to them, like what your pitch is to them from the perspective of what they're interested in. Then listen to what they say after you make the request and then thank them for considering the quest and watch and see what happens. Then very often, somewhere in here there's some other opening for something to evolve and adapt and then on the fly go back and adjust and you can repeat 2 through 4 a few times if needed in the conversation. So just roll with it and see what shows up and then say thanks. Now I'm going to give you five minutes for that and then I'm going to stop you and wherever you get is fine. And then your partner will give you some feedback. So partners tell them what was working, what wasn't working, what was missing, those kinds of things. Okay. What could they have done to make it better? Probably it's not for most of you revolutionarily new concepts and ideas, but in the application of things we often notice new things. So what did you get? What did you notice? That we take forever to get to the point. Really Good, good. What else? I get way too serious. You get serious and I think, I think that he got lost. He didn't. But I mean I'm just like. That's my concern. Great. What else did you have something. Sorry, I was. No, you don't pause. You just can't wait. You're so much focused, trained onto your own thoughts. Yeah, you don't tell me. Don't stop backtracking on the negatives instead of reiterating the positives. Uh huh, Right. Very good. What else? Not making it enough of a conversation. Too much of a. Just dumping information. Oh, right, yeah. That makes an enormous. Letting them. Giving them some room and space to actually spit something out and give you some feedback. What else? Any other things? Surprise. The real issue. It was interesting at the end she said, wow, I heard this thing and that was really the issue. And it came out at the very end. I didn't realize it until we got to the feedback. More prompting questions. More prompting and questions. Yeah, burdens. So you give them space, but if you haven't asked for something, the space can just be dead air. Right. Well in that case you have to be a little. You have to allow some thinking time. Allow some dead air. Right. Be okay with it. Good. Anything else? I notice I used to have a software consulting company many years ago, and I would apply this really conscientiously in pitching any client, and I would just let them tell me everything they want. What do you want? What do you want to pay? What are you worried about? What are your concerns about, like, the whole thing? I would just lay it out and I'd go, okay, well, if I can give you all that, do you want that? And the interesting thing about it is they would always. I would let them set the budget too, and I would always find that they would put more on the table than I might have asked for, and it made it much easier. Almost always closed sales business that I pitched that way when I really let them do the work. It's not like deep, complex, major secret reveal here. But if you take the time to just use some process, like you can use this worksheet, there's extras of these if you want them with you, with your sales folks, and just take a minute to think about especially the key things. And if you do it conscientiously, you'll start to notice that it becomes more of a background kind of a habit. And you don't have to blurt right out to your pitch that may or may not be on the mark. May or may not be. So the work that we do to prepare and think about it puts us in the frame of mind of looking at what the other person is interested in. It's not to perfect the pitch so much as it is to start to get over in their world. Okay, so just a quick recap. Here are the amazing points. Offer them what they want and they'll say yes. Now, the interesting thing we didn't really talk about here is that people don't start off always knowing what they want. What do you want for dinner? I don't know. However, the way that you help people discover what they want and get powerfully connected to them is with really deep listening. It's way more important than what you say. Your deep listening, you're getting over there. And really appreciating everything about them is what lets them sort of finally articulate what it is that they want. And then you can, you know, then it'll either be a fit or it won't be for you and what you've got to offer. So before we move on, and I tell you the things that you can do to take this much deeper, I'd like you to take this as an assignment now. So we've all worked with something that's of interest or importance to you. So take a minute now, put it in your calendar or text or email yourself some kind of a reminder and tell your partner who you're going to do and when you're going to do it so you've got some accountability and some follow up. So do that right now. I'd love it if you have some successes with this out of this session that you let me know how it went. So please send me an email, tweet me, whatever. If it was awesome and you did something cool, I'd love to hear about it. So there's a whole lot more about this and I want to give you something that can go a lot deeper with this. I want to give you four things that you can do. My recommendation is that you use this one for a week or two. The focus that we just did, the preparation, the thinking, just focus on this for a week or two with the things that you need in your life and then take each of these next things that I'm going to give you and focus on them for a week or two at a time. All right? And they'll go a lot further. So misplaced attention in our conversations to get commitments from people on things. You have worries about things and they get in the way of being effective in those conversations. Where do you think your attention is that's misplaced? Where is it the negatives? That's one. Or on the outcomes that I want. On the outcomes that you want? Fears. Your fears? Yes. So there are all kinds of fears and concerns. What do you think those fears and concerns are all about? Fear. Yeah, there are actually fears about you. So you're worried about things. You know that there are ways that you are like you're. I'm too impatient. Right. Everybody who knows me knows that I'm really impatient. I'm too bossy. Those are things I know about myself and I worry about those when I'm going to have a conversation. See me after. It's odd to do a session with my wife in the room, right. She can just bust me on anything. So our worries about ourself get totally in the way of appreciating the other person. Now all you have to do to make this one work is spend a week or two with this like, you know, tattooed on you somehow. Stick it on your rear view mirror, on your bathroom mirror, post it on your computer, do whatever you need to do to keep it alive for a couple weeks for yourself and Notice when your attention is on some fear concern you have and it's going to be about you. And then just set that aside and put your attention on the other person so you don't have to fix it, change it, or do anything, know that you'll always have that fear. I'm always worried that I'm too bossy and I'm too impatient. I'm always worried that I'm that way. But that's not the only way that I can be and it's not going to change. So I just set that aside and I put my attention on Sevin. If I'm having the conversation and I get right over there in his world and I just get everything about it. So spend a week or two noticing where your attention is one place, shift it to the other. Okay. Then the next one to do after you've done that for a couple weeks is projecting no versus yes. So you go into a conversation already expecting it to be a particular way. Right. They're going to say no, but I have to ask anyway or they're going to say maybe they're going to put me off. You know, we go in with these kinds of thoughts and again, they get in the way of appreciating and relating and being in communication with the other person. So notice the thought that you have going in that's anything other than yes, and set that aside. And then all you have to do is imagine and create a story for yourself about how and why they're going to say yes. So a real story, not a fantasy story. Well, they could say yes because of this and talk yourself into what it might look like and who you'd have to be and what it would like to be for you to have them say yes enthusiastically. Create that as a real picture for yourself. So when we're projecting no maybe or some other kind of thing, everything about us, our whole expression, our way of speaking, our way of standing, everything communicates no and the person hears no and responds with something very similar. And when you can shift it for yourself, when you can imagine for yourself authentically, credibly, in advance how and why they're going to say yes, you'll find it has an enormous difference on actually them being able to show up as a yes, then the next thing that I want to give you is being bold. Being bold is what I did with that landlord. I went to him and I asked for a stunning amount of money to be just given to me and my business. Right? I'm not going to pay you. I can't pay you. I want you to give it to me and not kick me out and not sue me and take my house and everything else. So there's a great quote on being bold that some of you may know. Daniel Burnham was this architect that redesigned the city of Chicago after they had a great fire. And he put these enormous boulevards and parks and it was going to take a lot of money and take a lot of buy in from a lot of people. And he said something roughly like this. Make no small plans for they have little power to stir the hearts of men. And I just think it's great. There's a magic in boldness. Ask people for enormous things. People are dying to be heroic. People are dying to be extraordinary. And when you ask big things of people, you require and give them an opening to show up enormous and they're hungry for that. So you can do that one. Be bold and just look at every request that you're already going to make and, and make it 10 times bigger. All right. The last focus area to work on is embracing rejection. So people tell us no all the time. You're going to get no's. And what happens when somebody says no to you? You take it personally. You take it personally. Exactly. And then what happens? Well, you have an emotional response. So you take it personally in some way and you have an emotional response. You get upset. Whether you verbalize it or not, you have some strong response to. And the more important it is to you, the bigger the negative emotional response. So what there is to do in embracing rejection is learn to roll with it. And when you put this as your focus for a couple weeks, just notice when you're having an emotional reaction. You can do a role play with this with somebody in your life as well and notice the emotional reaction that you have to something. Just roll with it. Appreciate the world that they live in that they're expressing and then see if there isn't some other way to ask for what you want or someone else to ask it of. So just take on embracing all the nos because after the final no from that person or some other person comes a maybe or a yes. And when you can roll with all of it and it doesn't feel phase you, you have a whole different kind of power with making requests of people. So I recommend you start with the one we did today, keep that as a focus area for a week or two, then take each one of these in turn for a week, program them and keep them very front and center for you while you use them. It can make an enormous difference in all of that. I want to thank you all for your. The way that you participated, doing this whole thing together. It really is great. Thank you.
