The System For Influence & Persuasion with Shari Alexander

Welcome to the Business Processes Simplified Podcast. I'm your host, David Jenyns. In a moment, you'll get the full bio of our guest, Shari Alexander. You'll also hear the intro from the Business Systems Summit because that's where this episode was taken, and that's where it covers the full bio. What I like to do right up front though is record a separate audio for you that gives you a top-down view of this episode so you know exactly what to expect. Now, Shari, she's an absolute master when it comes to influence and persuasion. Which filters into all parts of business. That said though, I'll put it into the category underneath sales because I think your sales team really need to influence your prospects and persuade them to buy your products and services. Obviously, when I think of influence and persuasion, I always think, "With great power comes great responsibility." You want to make sure when you're using these types of techniques that you're doing it for the right reasons, and you've always got your prospects' and your clients' best interests at heart. Influence and persuasion is great. You just want to make sure that you're helping someone make a good decision. So Shari's 3-step process she'll take you through is to first observe and understand the motivations behind the person that you're talking to, really understand them at a deeper level. Then step number 2 is to connect with them. Once you connect, you do things to make sure that you have that common ground, that bonding, and that will then enable the last step, which is influence, to really take hold because you've observed, you've connected, and now you can lead influence. It's a great tool, it's a great system that Shari shares with you. I think it's going to be really valuable for yourself and your team, and as I said, I'd put it into the sales category inside your business. Again, your business is just made up of a collection of systems, and I like to think of it in terms of the different departments. If you want to learn more about my methods and the way that I think about business, you want to check out my book. It's called Systemology. It's coming out in August 2020. So depending on when you listen to this, it may or may not be released. The exciting news is that we've just— I've got Michael Gerber to agree to write the foreword to the book. Now, Michael Gerber is considered by many as the godfather of business systems. He wrote the book The E-Myth, which had a huge impact on this space. And for him to to call the book extraordinary is a huge hat tip to the work that I'm doing. So if you want to find out more, head over to systemology.com/book. That's systemology.com/book, and make sure you grab yourself a copy of that.

And without further ado, let's go ahead and join in on the chat with Shari.

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Extracting, organizing, and optimizing their best systems and processes for rapid business growth. Now, let's get into the show.

Welcome back to the Business Systems Summit. I'm your host, David Jenyns, and in this session, we're gonna chat with a master of influence, having studied everyone from CIA agents to hostage negotiators, trial attorneys, con artists, and even pick-up artists as well. And after all that, at the core of it, she's found that they all follow the same system. And that's what she ends up teaching through her training and courses and different study programs. She's worked with CEOs and politicians, professional athletes, producers, news commentators. I suppose the takeaway here is the system is proven to work. And I think being a business owner, it's a skill that you need to be able to master because influence and persuasion just leaks into all parts of business, whether it's working with your customers, your staff, suppliers, when you're making presentations, and you need a systematic approach. So I'm looking forward to it as much as you are to finding out her approach for the way that she does this in her system, and it's with great pleasure that I get to introduce Cherie Alexander to the summit. So Cherie, thanks for making time.

Thank you for having me here. Looking forward to it.

So I know you're going to share with us your system for persuasion and influence, and there's going to be a lot to cover. So maybe the best place to start is just thinking in terms of the business owner, your framework and your system here. What is the problem or the challenge that it aims to solve for the business owner? And then we can actually go through step by step how you approach it.

Sure. So I became fascinated with the idea of language fairly early in my career. I started started out specifically coaching people on their presentation skills. And so from there, I was a speechwriter, helped politicians on numerous campaigns, as well as CEOs for their speeches. And after a period of time, there's only so much you can learn, and there's only so much you can teach about speaking on stage. It's a phenomenal topic, and I was happy to do it for a very long time, but I just felt like I hit a ceiling. At that point when I started asking myself, what else is there to learn? Who else is amazing specifically at taking their language and using it as a tool for change? Whether you're wanting to change actions, change behaviors, change minds, change emotions, lead to sales, hire better recruits, all of that is wrapped up around this uniquely human thing that we have and that we take for granted every day because we've been doing it since we were about 2 years old. And that is our mastery and our use of language. And so from there, that's when I wanted to know, well, who is the best of the best? And specifically people who face life and death situations and the outcome of those situations are determined by what somebody says and how they say it. And I'm very fortunate that I get to take what I learned from those major league influencers and bring it down to like the minor leagues where we all play, and that's we want to make more money and we want to have happier teams and we want to be more effective leaders. So that's the overall premise of what I am here for, and that is to remove the stigma around the concept of influence and then empower people to use it for the positive intentions that they have in their life, but just keep running up against a wall somewhere in their use of language that it's not being as persuasive as they want it to be.

Yeah, so it's really a framework that's robust enough to sit across any situation where influence and communication is needed. It's just a way to approach it to increase the effectiveness of your communication to get the result that you're looking to get.

Sure, and I will say I'm probably going to disappoint some of your maybe Type A learners that are watching this or listening to this at the moment, because I do want to give everyone a heads up that Yes, there is a framework for this, but successful communication is pretty much always organic. That especially when we're talking about you talking to another individual or you talking to multiple individuals, well, they have the opportunity to speak back. There's opportunities for distractions, and, and that's why you having all of those tools in your toolbox to be more influential, to be able to go with the flow and hop from one point of the framework to a different point of the framework and just slide along that scale is really what's going to serve you best. So if anybody's hopping on here thinking, okay, step 1, do this, step 2, do that. It's not really how it works when we're dealing with human beings. Yeah.

And there's always, I think that happens a lot when people think about systems and processes. I think a system and a process is a great way to understand a topic, give you something to fall back on. And the deeper you get into understanding each of those steps is it's almost like, you know, when to follow the rules and when to break the rules because this isn't quite fitting into the pattern, but I have an idea of where I should go to now. So it's like, I almost feel like that applies for every system. Like, we're not— this is not McDonald's and we're not flipping hamburgers and we haven't got 15-year-olds who have to do things down to that micro level because that turnover is so high. This is real-world communication at all different levels. You know, you can get thrown curveballs from anyone.

Absolutely. And studies just repeatedly show that the higher you climb in your organization, whether it's through the corporate ladder, if you've started your own business, the higher your position, the more important your communication is, and the more you are judged on your overall job capability based on your communication skills. So even though you might be a technical wizard, but if you're a leader that can't persuade, motivate, and communicate, then your staff, your team will regularly still rate you lower than somebody who perhaps doesn't have your technical skill set but is able to be an influential leader. So especially for the people listening and watching to this, it's way more important than perhaps some people might have even realized.

Yeah.

So what—

maybe take us through this framework. I don't know if you're gonna start off with a quick overview or if we just dive into the steps that you take people through.

Yeah, sure. So let's start where most people have their missteps. Let's go through the process of when somebody wants to be influential, what goes through their brain, and then how we can shift it a little bit. So you know that you have a difficult but important conversation to have with one of your team members, or you're pitching your product, or you're pitching for an investment, and you have that moment, you know, you're going to have this conversation. And the first question that you ask yourself when you need to be influential is, what should I say? Yes, that's where the answer is supposed to lie, right? In what we say. Well, that's already putting you on the back foot. That's already setting you up for potential failures because you trying to figure out what you should say based off of your knowledge, your perspective, your values, your background, your context. Is not going to help you compared to you figuring out what to say based off of the person you want to influence, their background, their context, their point of reference, their values. And so an influencer doesn't start by asking, what should I say? Influencers start, first step in our process, which is, what do I need to know? What do I need to know about this other person? What is important to them? What motivates them? What drives them? What puts them in a positive mood, a negative mood? Just learn everything that you can about them. And later on in our conversation, I'll give you 5 specific things to look for, but we always start our focus with the other person. So when I am doing consultations on marketing campaigns or speeches, we always ask ourselves, who is our audience? Who is our influential partner? Because this is a dance. We are dancing with the other person. If I'm doing like the samba over here and somebody else is doing ballet, That's not a great dance. And that's what it looks like when we just start off with, well, what should I say? So that leads us to the core 3-step process of influence. And that is first to observe, then connect, and then influence. So most people, when they think of influence, they think of an influential moment of, oh, that's the moment when he was able to change her mind about that thing. Well, that's the tip of the iceberg. That's what you're seeing is just that moment. That moment is the result of all the cumulative actions taken leading up to that. That person understood them, they observed them, they had a rapport, they connected with them, and then they were able to utilize perhaps some techniques, perhaps just the right words at the right time in order to create that influence.

Yeah. Is part of the process, I suppose, understanding the outcome that you're looking to achieve? Okay, there we go.

Gold star today. Gold star, sir. You nailed it. So what most business owners are familiar with is the Stephen Covey line, start with the end in mind. And that absolutely applies to influential communication. We start with the end in mind. Is communication with a goal. So you can be a great communicator, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're influential. People might enjoy your stories, enjoy your company, you might be charismatic, but if you're not creating the change you seek, then you're not influential. And for most people, they struggle with that step because they are more clear on what they don't want than what they do want. And especially when we're trying to elicit different behaviors from other people, our mindset tends to be, I wish that he would just stop doing that. I wish that she would just stop doing that. OK, great. That's what you don't want. But what do you want? What is the specific behavior? How will you know change has occurred? And then that is your influential goal. This is also a really good tip for parents as well. Instead of telling your children, stop doing this, don't touch that, tell them to, where should they move instead? What should they touch or play with instead? What do you want them to do? Not just have clarity around what you don't want them to do.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So if we get very clear on what that, what we're looking to influence, and potentially even whom in there as well, then an understanding, if that's step 1, then would then step 2 be obviously understanding them at this point? Now you want to understand, well, what motivates them? Because We know what we're trying to communicate. We now need to figure out the best way to deliver that message for the individual.

Right. So we want to find—

awkward.

Yeah. Yeah. So we want to find the smoothest path possible in order for them to both logically and emotionally agree that your idea is worth them implementing, that what you have to offer is worth compliance. And so how we do that during the observation phase is this looks like a few different ways in the real world. So what you can do is just sit at your desk and write out things that you know about the person, or if you're creating a campaign, write out what you know about your ideal target market avatar, or if you're speaking to a group, just what do you know about the culture of this group in particular? And so we are going to figure out what is important to them. And so this is the super fast crash course on what to look for in the observation phase. There's lots of layers to this. There's even processes within this process. We're not diving into that today, but we definitely have a framework that can get your audience members rock and rolling. And so that is, we're going to look for the influential vibes, V-I-B-E-S. So it's 5 different things that we can look for. You don't have to find all of these to be influential. I have been able to persuade people with just knowing 2 of their vibes. There's no set quotas, there's no set rules when it comes to this. It's a framework to work within. So we're going to start with first of the vibes is the V, and that is the values. What do they value? What's important to them? Our values are our core operating system as human beings. It's what tells us what's good, what's bad, what's right, what's wrong, what we should or what we shouldn't do. Your values are different than my values. Values, which are different than your team members' values, which are different than your spouse's values, which are different. Everyone has their own unique hierarchy. So one of the easiest, quickest ways to figure out somebody's values is to ask yourself, how do they spend their money? How do they spend their time? That's the fastest track for you to discern what is higher up in their values. Then of course you can learn more from conversations. And talking to them, but figuring out what's important to them. Next up, we're going to look for the I in the VIBES, and that is identifiers. So identifiers are how does this person talk about themselves? What labels do they gladly wear? So for myself, identifiers that I regularly use is entrepreneur, curly-headed chick, Oklahoma girl turned LA girl. Like, Just different things that I identify with. I'm not quite an Angeleno, but I'm kind of an Oklahoman. Like, it's a weird thing. Italian. All of these are identifiers that I go yes to, because if you are able to frame your influential argument around concepts that they instantly identify with and say yes to, then they are more likely to say yes to your overall concept, the thing that you're presenting to them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Cool, cool. So next in our vibes is going to be the B, and that is the beliefs. And beliefs are basically the meanings that we give to situations, meanings that we give to how we perceive what we're faced with. So for example, if somebody walks in late to a meeting, I might be like, okay, glad you made it safely. You might be like, well, that's so rude. That's so disrespectful. How do you not respect my time? How do you show up late? How— oh, now you need all the attention. Like, all of these are different ways that you could view the exact same situation of somebody shows up late. What is the meaning that you attach to that? Now, if you get upset that they show up late because that's disrespectful, now I can also learn, oh, that's a value that they have. Oh, time management and respect, very important. Maybe I can weave that into what I want to present to them. I want to respect your time, so I have presented you with this very concise project, something along those lines. So the beliefs, there's 4 things that we can look for. This is super fast crash course. I hope everybody's taking notes. So the 4 different types of beliefs that you generally want to pay attention to is what do they believe about the problem that you're solving? What do they believe about the solution that you are presenting? Positive, negative connotations. What do they believe about themselves in relation to this situation? Do they think that this is important for them? Do they think they shouldn't be bothered with this? Do they think they're an integral savior or do they think that they should be just on the sidelines? Who knows? And then lastly, what do they believe about you? Do they believe that you're a trusted source? Do they not know you from Adam? Do they, are they suspect that you're trying to sell them something? All of these beliefs help us get a better picture of what beliefs we can validate and then what beliefs we need to take head on. So as an example for that, when I first started my business, I was pretty much freshly out of college. I was very young and one of the beliefs that I knew going into sales conversations was the fact that I was young. What the heck is this young girl going to teach me? I'm a big executive person. And so instead of wondering if they had that objection, I would just take it head on and say, now I know it's probably pretty odd to be talking to a 25-year-old about this presentation, but here's what I have to offer. And they respected that because I was already in the conversation they were having in their mind. And I was able to handle those objections, which can be very influential as well. So we got the B's of beliefs. Then we're going to go to the E in the V.I.V.E.S., which is emotional triggers. This is the stimuli that puts them into a positive or negative state. So what triggers them to be in a good mood or a bad mood? For me, Godiva chocolates, really good way to put me in a positive mood. A very strong anchor for me. So what anchors your target into a positive or negative mood? And then lastly, I'll wrap it up with the secret goals and desires of the vibes. And so the secret goals and desires, I say secret because it's just more market-y that way. It absolutely can be stated goals or desires as well. One of the most influential things you can do is attach your idea or your concept to a goal that the other person has. We all have a higher self that we see for ourselves. We all have a higher self that we're reaching for, whether that's physically, emotionally, financially, as a family member, husband, any of those roles that we have. And so how can your solution help them get closer or even realize that higher self, achieve that goal of some sort? So that's the, the system. The framework broken down, and I will pause and let you ask some questions, sir.

Yeah, so that it feels like— and this would still be underneath the connect phase, isn't it? Where we're effectively in here, and it gives us a chance to look for a variety of different criteria. You would— it's broad enough that you could apply it to any situation as far as we're talking to a group or an individual, or some people you're going to have more information than others, some you'll be able to interact before, you chat with them, some you won't be able to, some you might be able to see online. The aim of the game is to get as many of these effectively data points on someone to go, "Well, I now understand what's important to them." And then that obviously becomes a way when you start to move into the next phase to then be able to tailor and tweak the message based on what you know. And you already gave a couple of examples whether that's from the point of language sort of subtleties or it might even be the way that you frame the actual idea or what idea you put forward, because you might be deciding between a couple of ideas. Like, you know, I know when I'm negotiating with my son, usually I like to try and give him two ideas that I'm both happy with. So, do you want to brush your teeth now or do you want to brush your teeth in 10 minutes? Like, either outcome I'm happy with. So, it's kind of— I'm imagining, yeah, it's all about that framing and just setting everything up, but you can't frame anything correctly unless you know the context, unless you know the person that you're focusing in on.

That was the biggest thing that I learned specifically from, I would say, mostly from the CIA agents because they spend, I mean, sometimes up to years gathering information and intel on one target that they are wanting to turn as an asset. And that's just— your influential timeline is based off of your influential goal and how big it is. The bigger the goal, the longer the timeline, which means more time is possibly needed for observation and connection before you jump into influence. The main thing with this framework as well is it forces you to get out of your head in the sense that when most people need to be influential, they scramble in their minds and they create the sense of panic of, what should I What are the perfect words? What should I do? And it's just this, this revving energy when really influencers have a much more grounded, like sustainable, stable energy because they're not putting the pressure on their shoulders to figure out the words. We actually put the pressure on everyone else. We allow other people to inform us of How can I figure out these connection points? What are the, the words that I need for this person? Our brains are association-creating machines. I have, as you can see behind me, a shelf full of positive associations, all things nerdy that I love. We have Captain America, we got D&D, we got Doctor Who, we got the Yankees. Sorry, Red Sox fans. We got a whole bunch of stuff over there and those are all positive associations. So instantly, if somebody is able to equate a business proposition to something related to D&D, I'm smiling either internally or it's also showing up on my face because that strong positive association makes this— it's the sugar that helps make the medicine go down, basically. And so we're looking for those positive associations both in values, identifiers, beliefs, emotional triggers, and secret goals and desires. Now the one flip to this is the emotional triggers, because we want to be aware of both positive emotional triggers and negative emotional triggers. So when we want to influence somebody, perhaps we want to stay away from negative emotional triggers. You mentioned your son, so let's assume you have positive associations when you think about your son and talk about your son and talk about parenting with your son. But that's not always the case with everyone. We cannot assume that our positive associations will transfer over to everyone else. There are people that they have difficult relationships with their children, that it's not an enjoyable topic. Kids could be sick, kids could be going through drug rehab, any number of things. So again, we always want to check our ego, check our value system at the door when we are in the observation phase because we never want to judge somebody else's value set as we're trying to influence them because we cannot judge them and be curious at the same time. Those two emotions cancel each other out. Cannot judge somebody and be curious at the same time. So we always want to be in that, that curious frame of mind in order to see those influential opportunities. When we judge them, we close ourselves off to how we possibly could have created a positive association. That would lead to the influence we seek.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I can now see, it's almost immediately obvious just with this first step, how it's not a step 1, step 2, step 3 situation, because observation would continue throughout the entire thing. You're going to be picking up cues and things are going to change and it's dynamic. So, and the other thing that really stood out is obviously all persuasion and influence is highly personalized. So the aim is to take it down to that situation. So how does that then transfer into that next step in the framework?

Sure. So we talked mostly about the observation phase. Connection phase is both— it's two things. One you already mentioned, and that is that we are seeking those connections between our goal and things that they have that positive association to. And we're just looking for those connective— that connective tissue between them. The other type of connect, though, that we always need to make sure about, never take for granted, is our connection to the person we want to influence. If we have not built rapport, we have not earned the right to influence them. And don't take that rapport for granted. As a married person, I'm sure you know there are days when you are in great rapport with your partner and other days when you're not really. So when you're in those not really days, that's probably not the time to talk about the new car that you want to buy. It's not going to go over well. So we always want to check and make sure that we're in rapport before we attempt our influential pitch. And so that's as simple as paying attention to body language, seeing if there's some mirroring happening. I can go into details around that if you like, but just those simple signs that say yes, okay, we're, we're in our rapport bubble, and it gives you that much smoother transition into what you want to present them.

So with this second stage around connection, part of it is picking the right time, like that would be part of it as well, just understanding what the cues are and making sure, ah, now is a good time, we can pre-frame this and we're increasing our chance of success because we've got that connection. Are there any other things in here? I know you sort of mentioned around mirroring, I'm wondering, are there certain characteristics— or not characteristics, but strategies you've got for building connection at that phase? Again, it's probably going to vary if you're speaking in front of a large audience or if it's in written copy format or you're chatting with someone, but are there any particular, almost like global rules that apply for connection?

In general, yeah. So there's— you can utilize things that you know from the vibes. And perhaps choose a topic that you know puts your mark into a positive mood. So whether it is talking about the kids or the latest Marvel movies or whatever that looks like, just to get them into that positive state and then figure out your transition into the conversation that you need to have. Now with that said, not every conversation can start off with, hey, how about them cowboys? Doesn't always work, especially when you're having to sit down perhaps with a team member and have a difficult conversation because they've let you down. And so what we can do though is still turn to the vibes. And for example, if we're sitting with a team member and say it's that person that values respect and time, so I would probably open up that conversation with, I really value— and I really value your time and I really respect the hard work that you've been putting into this organization. I just want you to know that I do see that. And give them some props that are our compliments that again align with their values, align with their identifiers, their beliefs, all of those things. And so it still is setting up a difficult conversation, but it's just going back to that adage of it's the sugar that helps make the medicine go down, that it opens them up. It makes them more open-minded. That's the word I'm looking for. It makes them more open-minded to what is about to be discussed. And I do recommend, if difficult conversations is something that your audience is wanting to solve, the very in-depth blog post about it. Just search difficult conversation on the website, breaks it all down.

Perfect. I'll put a link through to that. And the other thing as well with the connection, once you've got the data points, you're finding the data that you believe in. It's almost like with having the sugar to take the medicine down. You also want to make sure that you believe that positive comment that you're giving someone as well. You can't just say, "Oh, I think that you're fantastically skilled at the way that you do this," when secretly you think, "No, you're not." Yeah.

And so with that fantastic point that I teach people positive influence, I kind of hate that I have to put that adjective positive in front of the word influence. Influence because they're not mutually exclusive. It doesn't need that modifier. But one of the principles of positive influence is that you are still truthful, you are still ethical, you are still you. So finding those compliments, finding those props that you still feel aligned with saying out loud, that you still feel true and are able to acknowledge. This also helps with going back to the question that you just asked prior of creating that connection. One of the easiest ways that you can create connection with somebody is to be with them. And what I mean by that is be present. Actually look at them, listen to them. Don't think about what the next question is that you're going to say or what you want to say next. Be with them, see them, hear them. This is what we all strive for. This is what we are all starved for. And if you can build that capability to be present and not look at your phone, not get distracted by this, that, and the other, your computer, be thinking about your next meeting, and just be present, that is the fastest gateway to them relaxing and being present. Because we don't get that, we don't get that, that soul food very often. And that's why it's so easily accessible. In fact, it's one of the one of the more heartbreaking lessons that I learned after learning and studying con artists, and that is you never hear a victim of a long-term con artist, somebody that had a relationship with their victim for a long period of time, you never hear that victim say, "Oh, he was such a jerk. I couldn't stand him. I was waiting for him to go. Oh, the times with him were terrible." Exactly the opposite. The victims of a long con are shocked. They are gobsmacked. They're like, I can't believe it. He was such a nice guy. He would talk to me and listen to me. And that's why there are so many victims. Oh, that's because we are so starved for that kind of conversation and connection that people who are manipulative and who have ill intentions then are able to capitalize on that. And so if more of us positive, well-intentioned individuals can be present and give each other what we need to be seen, to be heard, it just makes such a big difference.

Yeah, you mentioned something earlier which caught my attention around joining the conversation that's going on in someone's mind, and I'm thinking about taking this second stage of connection into, and maybe another form as well, so let's say it was written down copy or maybe it's, you know, doing a presentation and Having all of those data points earlier and then if you know, hey, this is a pain for your person in your copy, then you're talking to that pain and then it's much easier to join the conversation. And it's almost the same as what you were saying when you're adding that compliment. If you give a true heartfelt compliment and it's true and heartfelt and then they'll resonate with it, then they'll go, "Oh yeah, that aligns with what I believe and what I understand my identity is." So we've got a click. So it's almost like— Regardless of the medium, it's almost like a way to try and have a trigger in the brain to go, this person understands me and they understand me by understanding what's going on in my head.

Yes, exactly. Once you can develop the skill set to put words to what the other person is thinking and feeling before they're able to, that's when magic happens. That's when they're like, how did you know? I just regularly hear that all the time. And people also tell me things that they don't tell other people all the time. The other phrase that I hear is, "I've never told anybody this." And it's because I'm able to, and I'm proud of the fact and love teaching people how to, just be with the other person, suspend your judgment, suspend your ego for the period of time so that you can really see this other whole complex, broken, in pain, seeking pleasure human being that we all are, that we all have these universal wants and needs and desires and fears. Just to have that opens up so many more, yes, lucrative opportunities. Let's just call a spade a spade. We're mostly here to create a better, better livelihood for ourselves and for others. And having this type of capability just brings everybody up instead of the other type of manipulative persuasion, which is pushing other people down while you try to climb up. We're not here for that game. And also, one thing I did want to mention that you talked about in regards to that, that pain point is of the vibes. And we have the— within the vibes, we have the emotional triggers, positive and negative. Talk more about the positive. We may want to stay away from sudden negative topics, but we also want to be aware of certain negative emotional triggers because we want to get very clear of how the other person experiences the pain that we are wanting to solve. So when their company systems are breaking down, how do they experience that pain? How does that fall onto their shoulders? Are they staying up till 2 in the morning doing emails that they shouldn't be? Are they struggling with their personal life at home because of this? Are they financially strapped because of— like, what, how do they view this pain point? Because that is how we're going to frame the solution is how it solves those particular pains, not the pains that we assume that they have, not the pains that our past client had right before them, and not the same pains that they're experiencing in their role, but somebody else might be experiencing pain in a different role. We focus on the person that we need to persuade and how they are experiencing it. So that way, again, association creating machines, when they are anchored to that pain, they are more likely to want your solution.

Yeah, that makes sense. And then we transition into that, that final stage. At this point, I'm imagining you've got the connection and now we're almost ready to start to influence, or I mean, the influence has already started before then, but you're making your presentation or make it a bit more overt at this point.

Right, right. So at this point, this is where it just gets super specific for the individual in that situation. There's no perfect words. There's no magical sentence that gets compliance all the time, even though everybody wants that, but they also don't want to believe that they would ever fall for that, but they seek it. I always find that very interesting. And so once we get to the influence stage, then it's It's a matter of how to frame the argument for that particular situation. There are a few influential techniques and things to keep in mind, so I'll share a few of those. This is by no means the full breadth of possible techniques, but one of the first things that I see business owners not utilize nearly enough is the word because. So when we are in a leadership position and when we are used to telling people what to do it's very easy to get lazy in our language and not consistently communicate meanings or reasonings behind requests. Now, it doesn't mean you have to do this for every single thing all the time, but you also need to be aware of if it— if the word because is not showing up in your language at all. One of the quickest ways to demotivate your employees is for them to lose sight of their significance in your company. If they don't feel significant, if they don't feel like their work is doing something, is for something, is part of the bigger picture, then those tasks fall away, they get lazy, and now you have more and more HR issues to deal with. So if you sense that that's the case, or if you sense that, oh, people aren't taking action from my request because they don't understand the fallout. If, if this doesn't happen, then how does that affect all these other people? When you do your task well, how does that support and help our customers, our company, our team, all of these things? As an example, I had a client who was a financial executive and had an individual on his team that was very quiet during their team meetings and My client was very boisterous, really liked discussion and discord, really had the belief that when you poke holes in ideas, you make the ideas stronger. And so he really wanted that from his team members, but this one person just would not speak up at all. And I asked my client, I said, "Well, did you, how have you asked him to speak up?" And he said, "Well, you know, I would have numbers of meetings with him where I said, you know, I really want to hear your opinion. I really want to hear what you got to say." And that didn't work. And so I had him back in the office again and I said, look, I really need your input on this. That didn't work. So I don't know how to get him to speak up. I'm afraid that he's not a cultural fit for our company. So I asked him, have you told him why you want him to speak up? Have you told him what that means to you? He said no. So had him do that. And he told his team members. David Jenyns said, "I need you to speak up because I appreciate when ideas can be made stronger. I appreciate the discussion in everything that I just said." Lo and behold, that's what that individual needed in order to really have the permission to speak up. Now, the layers to that is that his team member came from a culture where you are supposed to be quiet. It is disrespectful to speak up. So even though his boss was asking and telling him, "I want this from you," his culture, his values were winning that argument. But because we use the word because and gave reasons for the request, that gave that person the permission to speak up, and then he didn't have to lose his job because the leader didn't know how to communicate.

Mm-hmm. It made me think of the example Robert Cialdini uses in his book Influence, and he talks about the photocopier study. I don't know if you know any. On that.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know the statistics right off the top of my head, but basically Cialdini and his team set up a scenario in which it was during the '80s, and so people were needing to make copies at a copier. So he wanted to see how much compliance could they get by asking if somebody could cut in line. And so the first try was they walked up to the people in line and said, "do you mind if I cut in line?" And compliance was like 62%, something like that. Then they tried it again and said, "do you mind if I cut in line because I have a meeting that I need to get to that's happening right now?" Compliance went up to like 78%, maybe 80%. But the very interesting thing from that study is they did it a third time. And in the third time they asked, "do you mind if I cut in line?" because I need to make copies.

That's why we're all here. That's right.

Everybody's here. And yet the compliance was practically the same as the second group. And so even if your words after the word because is practically nonsensical, you still are likely to get more compliance clients because you are giving that reasoning.

Yes. Yeah. Are there any other strategies? I think because is a good one. Are there any other? You've got a full range in your toolkit. So I'm wondering if there's a way that we can just pick one or two that you find particularly powerful.

Sure. So for business owners, I love the bucket technique, and the bucket technique is really helpful when you're looking for ranges. Number ranges for budgets and things, or if you're looking to qualify a prospect. So let's just say we are talking to a prospect and they aren't necessarily being upfront about how much they have set aside in their budget for this project. Don't know if any other business owners have run into that type of conversation. And yet you still need to know, are we even in the same ballpark? We need to talk numbers in some form or fashion. So if you have a cagey prospect, rather than saying, do you have $100,000 in the bank at the moment to pay me whatever your project rates are, you can turn to instead the bucket technique. And for this you say something along the lines of, I totally understand if you don't have your budget entirely sorted out at the moment. I just want to make sure that we're roughly on the same page. So typically I find that when I'm in these conversations, the people that I talk to tend to fall in one of three categories. And David, I'm going to stop there and have you remind me to come back to the word typically after this example. Okay?

Yes. Yeah.

Great. Cool. So you say, uh, typically I find that people that I talk to fall under one of three categories. Either they're looking for a project that fits a particular scope A, and in, in my experience, they tend to have a budget of $5,000 to $10,000 set aside. And then there's a second group who's looking for a little bit more intensive consultative follow-up, and they tend to have a budget around $25,000 to $50,000. And lastly, there's my intensive clients where we have more of a long-term relationship. And they tend to have a budget starting around $100K. Which one of these feels like closer to you guys? So this gives your prospect the safety to self-select and giving you helpful information, but without them divulging what feels like too much information. It's just enough. It's kind of like the Goldilocks. So by using the bucket technique, you're able to to further the conversation. And oftentimes, quite frankly, once they self-select, you can get them to self-select again and self-select again. The next thing you know, you, you have the budget figured out. You can also do this for qualities whenever you're qualifying a prospect. So I find typically I— the prospects that I talk to tend to fall in one of three categories. Either their hair is on fire and they're needing to fix a problem right away, or they are looking a little bit more long-term and they have a project that they're wanting to fully flesh out, or they're looking more for personal and professional development, more of a constant learner type of frame of mind. Which one of those feels like the best fit for you? And so now I get a better sense of what, what level my prospect is at just by giving them those categories. Of course, it helps to know what are your typical categories to help you in those sales calls.

Yeah, that makes sense. So it kind of feels like we're increasing the chances for this influence bit because of the previous two steps. It's like geometrically increasing the chance, not only because we select a better mechanism or tool to use, or strategy, technique, wording— you'll select it better because of that deep understanding and you've built that connection with them. But then also you'll be able to deliver it better. Like everything just sort of raises because you've kind of ticked these couple of buckets before. Are there any— maybe we'll just finish up with one final one because this is where it's— there's probably literally going to be hundreds of strategies because it will depend in the context, you know, written, spoken stage, individual, what is the point that you're trying to influence. Is there anything again where maybe we can take something— the because is good because it also applies in many different situations, same with buckets, as long as someone takes the idea of buckets away because then you're kind of leading them closer. Do you have any other ones like that that are applicable in lots of situations?

Sure. So I'll go ahead and use—

Oh, actually, and the word typical.

I've almost forgot. It's alright. It totally works out. So I will jump into typically. I want to clarify something that you, you just mentioned as well. Let's go to the bucket technique real fast. With the bucket technique, in order to make that more effective for you, this is where the Ninja influence starts to come into play. I will probably have an idea of which bucket I want my prospect to choose, whether it's the quality or the numbers, whatever it may be. And so I will probably use more of their vibes, words from what I have gathered from their vibes in that option. That's how I make that option seem even more appealing because I'm pulling words that identify with their values, identifiers, goals, all of that. So just want to tie that in a nice bow for everybody.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So last tip technique that everybody can use in all kinds of situations is the, the premise of linguistic social proof. So we all are probably fairly familiar with, once again, Cialdini's concept of social proof. And that is, that's why we put testimonials on our websites. That's why we have recommendations with our resumes, is because we want social proof, that evidence that other people see you as a trusted source. Well, sometimes we don't have those things, or it's super awkward to just pull out a testimonial while talking to somebody. So how can we still get that conveyed? And that's when I turn to words like typically. So when you say the word typically, now you are insinuating more people, a larger group of people that has, that has taken this action in the past consistently because it's typical. So by using the word typically, you can allude to typically my clients find this coaching process to be blah, insert benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit. Typically when I'm on these calls, I notice that the people that I talk to are a little bit worried about insert pain point here. Does that seem to apply to you? So it's safer to say, yes, I am worried about that. Thank you for sharing that because now I know I'm not the only one who has had that because you said the word typically. So Yeah, that's another one that just helps smooth out those conversations.

Yeah, I love it. I like this framework because it is solid and something that can be applied in lots of different situations. So kind of that data gathering, getting the connection, and then moving into that influence part. If people want to find out more, because obviously the knowledge is very deep here, what's the best place for them to go and find out more?

Sure, absolutely. So the fastest place that I would recommend to get just a lot of really good knowledge is to go to mindreaderblueprint.com. And that is a workbook that I created to help you figure out your influential words by going through a series of questions that touch a little bit on the vibes, also touch on other areas to help you figure out how can you frame your influential argument. So with the Mind Reader Blueprint, you are reading their minds to figure out your influential blueprint. That's the concept. So if they go there, you can download that. And then if you want more knowledge, then head over to observeconnectinfluence.com, and I have a blog with oh so much information.

Yeah, there's some cool YouTube videos as well. Scroll down to the bottom and there's links over to the socials and all those sorts of things. Are there any final things on the framework or anything you want to leave people with, or probably next step is maybe just to head over to your site and start to dig in?

Yeah, yeah. I think one of the best things that you can do is to start exercising your observational muscle. And so a little bit of homework that I love giving people is rather than trying to focus on the vibes live and in person during important conversations, It's going to be difficult to suss out their vibes while you're talking, and it's a skill that you can develop. You can develop very quickly. And one of the ways that you can do that is as you're doing your next Netflix binge, if you're watching Stranger Things or whatever suits your fancy, have a notebook next to you and write out V-I-B-E-S in different rows and ask yourself, what is this main character's values, identifiers, beliefs, emotional triggers, secret goals and desires. Because that will— fiction and also reality TV help you figure out, see those more in a safe place to practice your observational muscle. And yeah, once you figure out those vibes, I swear those connections just really start to zero in.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time, Cherie, being extremely generous. And I'll put some links where people can head over to your website to find out more. And, uh, yeah, thank you again for being on the summit.

Thanks for having me here.

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