How to Nudge Without the Noodge #50

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor, where Gary and I are discussing how to nudge without the nudge. Nudging, chasing, prodding— however you refer to the act of following something up— is an undeniably difficult dance which, if done incorrectly, can sour relationships and cost you business. Luckily, Gary has some first-class advice on how to navigate the nudge like a pro without coming across passive, pushy, or annoying, AKA a nudge. Hello, Gary.

George, it's been so long.

I know, it's been, it's been literally minutes since we last spoke.

Ah yes, there is that. But, uh, you know, us doing an episode, there's a lot of call for us. Yes, people are calling. Yeah, where are you? We love your guests, but we need— we love George, we need more George.

Yeah, I get that a lot.

I can imagine. I've told you this before, haven't I, by the way, before we kick off? I think we've mentioned this, but people always say to me, it's a fantastic podcast. We're going to talk about how we're doing at the moment, but they say, and Gary, you're great, but George, you're amazing. And I go, yes, thanks. He is.

Lucky that people can't see me blushing, but maybe, maybe I'm the reason that this podcast happens to be number 40 in the UK entrepreneurial charts.

Unbelievable. It's going, you know, in fact, last time we looked, it was 40, gone up from 45.

We're on the rise. Our star is rising.

The star is rising, but let's not get excited because we need to keep going. But thank you everyone for your support. We love you. Absolutely. We love you more if you give us comments as well. And reviews, favorable ones. And reviews.

What are we talking about today, Gary?

Well, today, due to popular demand, the title is How to Nudge Without the Nudge. Yeah. How to Nudge Without the Nudge. You're supposed to ask me what the hell does that mean?

Yeah, well, I have no idea. And I told my wife that we were talking about this and she said, What on earth is that? And I said, I don't know, we're going to find out. So what is the nudge?

Well, you know what the nudge is, right?

I know the nudge.

Okay, good. Well, the nudge, you know, if you think of the nudge, by the way, the reason for this is that I used to be a senior guy in a corporate job with a big title and a company name that people knew of. And so if I tried to arrange for a meeting or ask for a response, people were like instant. It was amazing. I thought it was me, but clearly it wasn't. And then when I left corporate life, I realized that no one cares. Right. And in generally in life, people don't phone back. People don't want to know. I'm not being nasty, but just generally it's harder to, to get things moving on in any walk of life when you're trying to chase up something or someone said they'd phone you back and all that stuff. So the nudge is to mildly poke gently in the ribs. Yeah, maybe with the elbow. Mm-hmm.

Maybe sometimes.

Whereas the nudge is actually a Yiddish word. For being a pest or being annoying or being a persistent complainer, really, to be honest. Got you. And nudging is where you're kind of poking a little bit too hard and like, yeah, being annoying. Done it yet?

Have you done it?

Yeah, just being annoying.

Right.

Okay, great. Today's— now this makes sense, right? So today's episode is how to nudge with the elbow. Yeah. Without the nudge poke in the eye.

Great.

I love it.

And that's a really important skill, I think, because you're right, everyone needs nudging and everyone hates being nudged.

So I think if you can get that balance, then You're on to a winner. Yeah. So what we want to do today is talk about all walks of life to give you some really practical examples and some ideas which will come at the end of the podcast, of course. Of course. But we want to just kick off. But I just want to kind of set the scene a bit because life is busy. We don't have enough time to do what we need to do and we forget things. And there's loads of things going on. It would be easy if I only had one thing to nudge. Yeah. But there's loads of things to nudge. Sometimes I feel like an airline pilot, mainly because I'm not one and I'm really jealous of that. But if you're in a— imagine you're in a cockpit and there's all these buttons in front of you. Yeah. Hopefully you know what you're flicking and turning on and off. You can tell I'm not a pilot. But I think life feels a little bit like that. It's like an airplane cockpit. There's so many things going on and how do you keep track of it? And where do you nudge and nudge and poke and what, you know, how do you remember all these things? So, This is my first point is, think about suspended animation. Okay. I don't know if it was in a, sometimes in a cartoon, I think it was Top Cat or something like that where you kind of go, he spins his little wheels before he kind of moved on, or maybe The Matrix where before they kind of do their, I'm doing these moves, but I'm not sure anyone's seen my video, but you're in suspended animation, or I saw a movie once where someone had a remote control and they just stopped where you, what were you doing that second? Oh yeah. That's where I'm at. Okay.

So you're pausing time.

Pause time. And, you know, what we've got to do is you've got to, you've got to kind of track what's going on and what's important and almost plan the things you want to nudge. Yeah. And how you might nudge them. And I know it sounds odd, but I'm actually conscious of doing— I do that intentionally. I've had to do that since I realized that no one cared about me anymore. I wasn't as important as I thought I was when I had a VP title. Yeah, I had to find different methods and different ideas to get people to— they still love me, of course. They just— I'm just not on the radar. So it's just trying to keep things on the radar. That makes sense.

Yeah. So what, taking a minute and being like, right, sort of these are the priorities and these are the things that I need to chase and these are the things which can sort of go to the bottom of the pile. Is it that sort of thing?

Absolutely. Because part of the problem is, yeah, I'm, I'm focused on, yeah, we're all killed by time or lack of it and inertia and complexity. Those are the things. Yeah. You know what I mean by inertia?

Just sort of flatness.

Well, it's just slowness, actually. It's a bit like, you know, it's like, uh, it's to think of it as an oil tanker. Getting the oil tanker to turn around, it's a pretty difficult thing. You're like, sometimes you feel like you're walking through treacle. You've got lots of things going on, no one's responding. Things aren't happening the way you want them to happen. You send out a proposal and they didn't even say thank you. There's all that kind of stuff going on. Yeah. And that's because time is killed by inertia. People are busy getting people to get going on things, if you like. Yeah. If it's not as important to them, it might, you know, it's likely it's more important to you than it is to them.

That's the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we take one example that you mentioned there, like a proposal, they probably receive loads of proposals. So it's, you know, you want to get a response, but equally you don't want to put yourself in a bad light, I suppose, by chasing up and saying, come on, where's your reaction?

Exactly. And we had, you know, on our Interview Genius episode where we were talking about, you know, should I follow up? You know, I've been to the interview, do I kind of contact them again? Yeah, it's another example of a nudge, and that's what we want to talk about today. And so the first thing I would say, and I think, you know, it's been a while, George, since we had a t-shirt, right? Yeah, it has. Here's a— I mean, I'm going out there, but I think here's a t-shirt moment. The most important thing is you've got to control the controllables.

Nice.

Yeah, it's a t-shirt.

You know, you're not— I think so. I like the graphic. I can imagine cogs and things.

Yeah. So 1980s. A lot of people worry about things they can't control. I'm not saying you shouldn't do anything about them, but from this conversation, you've got to focus on things that you can, you can do something about. And most of the things you can, that's the point. Yeah. Just for the moment, just, you know, bear with me. Don't worry about things you can't control. Just not for now anyway, not for this episode. Maybe it's another episode. And so, so what I do is I do kind of based— I know that one size doesn't fit all, you know, so the same approach isn't relevant for everything. So my starting point is, is to kind of map out things that are important. So, you know, things— if you just do it a week at a time, things that are going on, you know, you might send out a proposal, you might have applied for a job, whatever it is you've done that's important that you want a response on. You might have, you know, made a— put a post on LinkedIn and no one responded. Whatever it is, like mine, then basically keep a list of, you know, it's, I call it discovery mapping, but just keep a list of the things that are important to you. And then what we're going to do is work on, on those things individually so that you can kind of have a bit of an idea of how to deal with those in part 3.

Okay. That sounds great. So it is just so I know it is literally writing like a physical list of, of these things that you want to chase up.

Yeah. Or, you know, you might have a to-do list or something electronic, but it doesn't really matter. But the main thing is you've got to track them because you'll forget them. Some things are more obvious than others, but the idea is that I work on a list because I want to work on a strategy for each. And by the way, just a bit of advance notice to the third section. There's a psychology to this, weirdly. Who'd have thought?

Well, that's good. We're not just making this up as we go along.

Well, no, not entirely. So here goes. So that's part one, suspended animation. Just stop for a minute. You know, we always like to do this. Stop and think and sharpen your axe. So if you were a lumberjack, which I find hard to believe, but if you were and you chopped down more trees than anyone else, George, you were the best, fastest lumberjack in town.

I would be.

You might, you would be. But the thing is that if you didn't stop and sharpen your axe, you'd be less effective. Would you agree? I agree. Yeah. Even if you're the super guy. And that's the same for people. It's like you're— we're busy, we're plowing ahead. We doing the best we can, we're getting frustrated and annoyed, but that's not going to help. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you've got to just stop, suspend animation, stand back from it, and decide what's important and what isn't, and then work on those.

Yeah, I am. And just as an aside, I'm really impressed by people that can do this. And we have at my work, we have project managers who are just amazing at this sort of thing, and they can really see the wood for the trees and they can—

and they can— from the trees.

Yeah, yeah, it's all, it's all tying in. Um, and they're just, uh, just so organized and so good at prioritizing and making sure that other people like me are doing the things. They're sort of master nudgers.

Master nudgers.

Yeah, they're just excellent at it. If they're listening, which I'm sure they're not, but if they are, thanks.

If they are, big up to those guys. Yeah. Just as you were talking about nudging, I was thinking about the old pinball machines. Do you remember those? Oh yeah. And that's what you're doing. You're like, the ball's coming down, you're pushing it. Yeah. Not too hard, you get tilt, but you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's the balance we're trying to get. It's like, Can you nudge it along? Can you? And we'll talk about it in a minute. Absolutely. So that's the first one. Number 2 is I call snakes and ladders. Okay. What does that conjure up?

A great sort of early '80s board game.

I'm pleased you said it's the '80s because it's really not the '80s. It goes back much further. But anyway, yes, in your time, I guess it was the '80s. But the principle of snakes and ladders is you either go up or you go down. Remember that? You go up the ladder and slippery down the snake. Yeah.

That's it.

And sometimes, have you ever been in a situation where you think, I've gone 2 steps forward and 3 steps backwards, or maybe 5 steps backwards? Yeah. So how do we turn the snake into a ladder?

Nice. I don't know how we do that.

No, but, uh, I think it's a little bit like a horse race. Okay. Because, you know, you're— you've got to keep— you've got to keep momentum, you've got to keep it going. The biggest problem is— and I'm just— my last analogy on the tree chopping I'm gonna give you my personal psyche, how I think, because if you don't think like this, then you're the sort of person that's standing there during the falls in your head and you don't know what happened. Here's my 3 things I think about that'll keep me sane. You ready for them? Yeah. The first one is life isn't fair, George. Life is just not fair. Life's not fair. The second one is the goalposts keep moving. The bloody goalposts keep moving. And the third one is there are no guarantees. There are no guarantees. Yeah. And if you think about those three things, life is unfair. The goalposts move and there are no guarantees. You'll never get fazed. If you can get your head around those three things, you're never going to be fazed. Yeah. You won't be hit by a tree on the way down. You'll move out the way. You're right.

And a friend of mine used to say, I think he used to say all the time, and it was something just like whenever anything happened, he was always just saying, adapt and move on. And that was sort of how he lived his life. And I guess that's a similar sort of thing in that things are going to change all the time and you just have to adapt to that and just get on with it.

So you just can't get bitter and twisted. You've got to get bitter or better, as they say. And I think the getting control— and the reason I say control the controllables, because I genuinely think there are things, and we're going to give examples in part 3, that you can grab hold of in your hands and make a difference. No guarantees, as we say here, but you're in a much better position that you can move things forward. You're not leaving it to chance or leaving it to someone else. Yeah.

So turning that, um, turning that snake into a ladder, is that how you do it? Is it the mindset shift?

Yes. Right. Yes, George. Okay, exactly. I'm giving you a turbo-shafted axe. Great, right? Yeah, an electric axe. I'm stopping with these. Yes, exactly. And this is the reason, you know, we talked about inertia, and, and the reason inertia is the biggest problem, it's the biggest issue that people have that need to overcome is that the status quo bias means that most people would rather stick to their current situation even if it isn't beneficial to them. Yeah. Sometimes you think, what? Why? Why? Why? And it's because people, you know, the lack of attention to detail sometimes means that it's a kind of the path of least resistance. And I've seen so many people— I do it myself, I'm not perfect. But the status quo thing, I'd rather, you know, sometimes it's like it's a bit too painful to change. There's a story about the dog and the nail. There's a dog sitting by the fire and it's sitting on a nail, and every now and then it howls because it hurts. Someone said, why doesn't the dog move off the nail? He said, because it doesn't hurt that much. Yeah, it's the inertia, it's the path of least resistance. So, you know, this isn't for everyone. So for people that are happy to sit on the nail, then knock yourself out.

Fantastic.

But for the people that want to find a little bit of a clue as to how to move up the ladder, here, this is what we want to share with you. Uh-huh. You like it?

Yeah, I like a lot. I like the, I like that. The story of the dog and the nail. I think you may have told me that before, not on the podcast, and I think it's, yeah, it rings true.

Yeah. So here's an interesting thing. So this, I'm going to throw in some situations. That, you know, some going up the, up the ladder situations. Okay. Which I guess I'm breaching into the nudge, but I'm just going to give you a kind of a, an intro to the nudge, and going up the ladders is my intro. So let's think through some different situations. How would you respond? And I think the important thing is that the number one thing and bit of advice I give you is you've got to look through the lens of the person you're trying to nudge. Yeah. Because they're different people with different personalities and different issues or requirements or values or goals. And I think people don't do that as much as they should because they think, why should I? You don't have to. But if you want a nudge or you want to get up the ladder, yeah, you've got to look through the lens of the different people.

Well, that's good advice because I think a lot of people, as you say, would be like, well, this is my personality and this is how I'm going to act. But actually, that's not always the best way.

Exactly. So, so therefore we just need to adjust a little bit. So here's some situations, right? Sending an email. Have you ever sent an email that just didn't get responded to at all?

Yes, loads.

So annoying.

It is.

It's rude. It's kind of rude. Exactly. Or have you ever sent a proposal that didn't get a response?

Yep.

Done that too. Job application. Yeah. Here's a big one. Getting people to come to an event.

Yeah, that can be crushing if that doesn't happen.

Well, it's even more crushing if it's your own party. Yeah. Have you ever had someone that just didn't respond and didn't turn up to a party or did respond and didn't turn up to a party?

I guess. Yeah, I think I've had all of this. I'm making myself out to sound like a real lonely, sad loser.

Excuse me. I think everyone listening will be nodding to this point.

Yeah.

And then here's my biggest bugbear. Getting people to call you back. It's my biggest bugbear. You know, the number one skill of someone in customer service is to phone someone back.

Yeah.

Is to say the problem's not solved, but I'm working on it. It doesn't happen. If someone does that, you just think, I had a great experience the other day. Just reminded me, I had a great experience the other day from that very well-known company. Again, remember the company we talked about? I'm going to talk about it again. AO did it again. They said that they would sort out my problem and phone me back. And guess what? They actually phoned me back and I was so excited. I didn't care if they fixed it or not.

Just the fact they phoned me back. Yeah. And that shouldn't be the anomaly, should it?

But it is, sadly. It is. Yeah. So phone back, turn up, respond. All those things are really important. And one of the ways of getting around this is a small little step on the ladder is to find someone, a warm contact who can help. To be honest, I'm probably being disingenuous, but I guess the majority of time people are busy and you're not. And this is how I would explain it. We're not on their radar. Yeah, it's just dropped off the radar most of the time. It's not that people are lazy or Listen, you know, they're generally really nice people. They're busy and you're off their radar. It's not their job to put me on the radar. It's my job to put them on the radar. So if you can have someone who's a warm contact, they can help remind them about you somehow, subtly. Yeah. Because remember, we're nudging, not nudging. You don't want to be annoying, you know. And also things like the words are important. And because it's not what you say, it's how you say it. So if you do respond to someone and you want to chase them up, you've got to really choose your words carefully. Again, another bit of psychology. So if you are— and we're going to give some examples about how to kind of either respond back or chase someone up politely. There's a really interesting bit of psychology. There's a word that has the— one word that has the most effect either face to face, in an email, to get someone to respond. It's one word. Have you— do you know what it is?

I have no idea.

There's this one word and it triggers an automatic compliance response. If people feel like I have to be compliant to this word. Really? Yes.

What is it?

I tried it. It's amazing, right? Yeah. Are you ready for it? We should have done a eureka moment on this.

Well, we still can.

Here's the word: because. Because. Because is the word that triggers an automatic compliance response. I'm in the queue at the airport and someone comes behind me and says, can you let me through because my flight's leaving in half an hour and I've got to get through? In fact, you could say because anything, any old rubbish, and people go, okay.

People don't listen to what the actual because is, but it's the word.

Word because it's an automatic compliant response.

It's like there's a reason for this.

And so therefore get out of my way.

That's very interesting.

Just because I said so.

Yeah. Yeah. How cool is that?

You've got to listen to this podcast because we're in the top 40. All right.

So you actually, you've tried this out and it's—

I use it all the time.

Really?

It's not 100%, but maybe 50, 60% of the time it works.

That's great. I'm going to definitely start using that.

And put that in your emails. Yeah, because, because, because I start singing. But yeah, anyway, so it's— that's the secret word that has the most effect. Great. The other trick is you ultimately need to get people in the, in the rhythm of saying yes. A lot of people would know this. So you, you know, through your conversations, through your emails, through your letters, you just need to get people to say yes. But the most important thing is that you've got to keep momentum, because again, never underestimate the power of inertia. So in the third section when we talk about nudge, uh, we'll give you examples of some things that you can do. But I'm just kind of trying to take people through. It's like, yeah, all those examples I've given you, what can you do? And I'll ask you, you know, what can you do to, to move it along a little bit more? That's the things to think about. And I've got a little example. When, when my kids were younger and I couldn't— I just used it then when I couldn't get them to eat. I just think, what's the way to get the kids to eat? I realized that if I cut sausages into little pieces, I put them in a circle and put ketchup in the middle, they eat everything. It's a bit like leaving a breadcrumb trail. And the other thing was, I remembered my kids like to go to a buffet, so I just created a buffet in my kitchen.

They ate everything.

That's great. There's different ways, right? You've got to try and be creative. I'm not saying you should offer your customers sausages in a circle. I don't think it'll go down that well. But, you know, it's interesting, isn't it, how It just takes a little bit of trying it a little bit differently. Yeah.

And it's also not just assuming that, you know, not giving up, as you say, but also actually seeing this as a challenge to be overcome and sort of creatively dealt with as opposed to, oh, I'm being ignored.

You know, it's not— don't take it personally and be bitter. I mean, they might be ignoring you, by the way, but at least have a go because it's in your control. If it's in your control, then you need to listen to this section because it's section 3 right now, George. Excellent. Guess what it's called? It's called The Nudge, George.

The Nudge.

The Nudge. Yeah, that makes sense. So we're there. The nudge is here finally. How do we nudge things along without being annoying? That's what this section's about. And interestingly enough, I think the key skill isn't selling, selling your idea, selling the concepts. It's actually marketing.

Yeah, I was going to mention marketing just quickly because I think they— marketers generally use this really, really well and even sort of push notifications on your phone. Is a nudge in a way. There's a whole sort of nudge theory around it. So yeah, you're right.

I agree. Thank you. And I know absolutely very little about marketing. You probably know a lot more than me, but the key skill in marketing is getting people to hear and take action. You're going to hear your message and take action. And there's a thing called AIDA, which you may have come across before. A-I-D-A. I haven't. Oh, okay. It's not ADHD or anything like that. A-I-D-A. What does A stand for, do you think? Answer. Well, not quite. You're a bit— you've gone straight to the, the last A, but the first one is attention. So it's like you're trying to get attention. What is it? What is it? What is this thing? And the I is interest. So I like it, it's the interest, I like it. And D is desire. I want it, I want it. And the A, the last A is action. I'm getting it. Yeah, it's a call to action. And I think if you think in terms of that, so this is a marketing skill We're not trying to sell people. You've got to get their attention, you've got to get their interest, you've got to get them to think it's important enough compared to what their day is. And then you've got to give them a call to action. And so if I translate the word nudge to a chess move, would it make more sense?

Possibly.

Let's give it a go. You don't seem convinced by this, George. I thought that was a eureka right there.

No, no, I like it. And I'm a chess player as well, so I think this is going to relate to me.

Nudging is about just chess moves. It's like, what's the next move I need to make on the journey? And the reason I'm talking about chess moves is what people generally do when they're not getting responses. They'll send someone an email and say, I wrote to you 3 times, you haven't responded to me yet. Yeah, that's going straight to action. If you're making a chess move, I want you to think of it in terms of that. What's the next piece on the board you're going to move in the right direction so that I'm not nudging you? Yes. If you send me that email, you're nudging me, and I think, you know what, I'll come back to you when I'm ready. Yeah.

Or that I'm just going to ignore you forever.

Yeah. Or I'm just ignoring you. And sometimes you'll do a turbo nudge, which is the horse jumps over the pond, wherever it is. You can tell I don't play. Does the horse jump over the pond?

It can do.

Okay, there you go.

See?

Yeah. But yeah, we want to do nudges. So part of the nudge, and this is, I want people to stand back a little bit, is to mirror the language and style of the person. On the other end of this, either in conversation or in emails or in meetings, whatever it is, you've got to be able to mirror the style of the person you're trying to nudge. Interesting.

And is that just a subconscious thing that they respond to, do you think?

Yeah, they won't notice you're doing it. No, I mean, there's a lot of talk about mirroring body language. I'm not talking about they lift their arm and you lift your arm. Yeah, yeah, you can do that, but you look a bit weird. But this is more— if you think about it, as one size doesn't fit all, You might be a very directive person. You're like, don't give me the fluff, get to the point, blah, blah, blah. If I write you a fluffy email, it's not going to land very well. On the other hand, you might be a sort of person that you're very into the detail and you need to know how it works before you can make a decision. And I'm a slow processor. I'm going to sleep on it tonight and I don't make impulsive decisions. There's no point getting to the point with someone like that. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the key principle is to be able to mirror the language and the style. And I'm going to give you some examples of those things in a minute. And then the other thing connected to it is because I'm trying to— it's a chess move. You've got to think of softness. Can you soften your message? Not so it's wet, but soften it so that— because it's a chess move. This is not the final move. Yeah, it might go straight to the final move, but it doesn't normally go. It might take 2 or 3 nudges before you get to the final move. So whatever you write, re— or you're about to talk to someone about, think if you can soften it to get a better response. Yeah, I'm going to share the psychology with you in a minute, and you know, that will make the difference as to whether people will respond to you or not. Okay, great. Yeah. Okay, here we go. So there's something known in— actually, let me talk about some of the softeners. So I wonder if you would use a softener, uh, maybe 'When you've got a minute, if you wouldn't mind.' Yeah. 'Might we suggest that something? Perhaps next time you're in London, we can meet up.' Yeah. So, examples—

suggesting things sort of collaboratively rather than 'do this.' Yes.

Okay. Again, this isn't right for all situations, but if you want to nudge someone, you need to nudge politely. You might get— if you've been nudging someone for 2 years, you might want to get straight to the point. I'm not saying you do this forever, right? No, sure.

But there's nothing— I find it— I've been nudged recently quite aggressively on the same day every week for about 6 weeks, and it's just, "Hi, any update on this please?" Yeah, exactly.

That's like, if there was an update, I'll let you know, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I think the softening of this is—

I've got an example of a 2-year nudge. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but I was trying to get some work from a particular company, and I've told this story before, but I went to meet the directors of a company, and the boss said, if you get on with everyone, there's some work for you. Anyway, I was a bit of a smart aleck. It was my first gig and I was a bit pushy and didn't work very well. But I stayed in touch with one particular guy in this group and we've been friends ever since. And over 2 years I stayed politely in touch with him. Every now and then we went out for lunch and sort of sent him an article. I'm going to give you some examples in a minute of what I did. And 2 years later he asked me something and I said, oh, I've had a eureka moment, actually. I've got an idea. Why don't we do this and I help you do that and blah, blah, blah. And he said, okay, I end up getting some work. Okay. And when I met up with him, he said, you know, you, you kept so politely in touch with me, I've never seen anyone do that before.

Right. So that really worked.

It really worked. Now you may say, I don't wait 2 years for someone to come back to me. I'm not saying you should, but that's just an example of a longer nudge than I would probably want. But it does absolutely work. Yeah. So I'm going to give you some examples of different nudges. Before I do, I just need to share something with people listening that there's something called diffusion of responsibility. Any ideas? No. Diffusion of responsibility is that people work better when you request to them directly rather than in a group, because psychologically, if you get invited to something in a group, it's them, not me.

As in it's the other people that are also being invited, right?

Yeah. Like, think about you get an email, it's been sent to 10 people, right? I want you all to and I need to know as soon as possible. Yeah, that doesn't, doesn't race you into action.

No. And you were thinking someone else will deal with that.

Exactly. Whereas if I said, George, um, these are the things I need you to do, if I'm your boss or something, right? George, these are the things I need you to do, I need to do them by Friday. Or even, I've seen this even in a party invitation. So when I was at an age, a certain age, I invited people to a party and I was a bit lazy, so I sent a very nice invitation, but I sent it to a group email list and I didn't get many responses straight away because it's sent to a group, right? And that's why a lot of marketing companies will— they over, over-abuse it. And so yeah, it doesn't, doesn't work either. They go, George, yeah, I got stuck on a list. People keep phoning me on my mobile saying, hello, Mr. Gary, because I think they've got me. But yeah, no, I'm not Mr. Gary. But so diffusion of responsibility is requesting help from individuals, not groups. Right. So it's something to consider. So if you're— even if you're sending a proposal and you're trying to chase it up, don't chase up the three, you know, chase up the individual or the person who's more responsible. Yeah.

Or could you just send—

point out people? Could you send each one? Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Okay.

Or just have an email that talks to each. So, you know, I've done that when I had people working for me. So I say, 'Right, George, point 3 on the email is for you and point 4 is for you, Mary,' and just working away through.

Yeah. So personalising it.

Personalise it, makes a big difference. So the goal of these chess moves is to keep politely in touch. And so here's some ideas. One of my favourite ideas, and this works a lot for me, is I send books all the time from Amazon to people, not randomly. So if I've sent out a proposal to someone and they're not responding to me, I've done this recently. I sent— someone said, I'd like you to coach my team. And I gave him a proposal and it worked really well. But he didn't respond. He said he did say thank you for the proposal. And then about 4 weeks later, I hadn't heard anything. Yeah. And I remember him telling me that they were going through quite a lot of organizational change. So I found a book that I knew really well on Amazon. But the secret is I get it gift wrapped. Okay. Because everyone receives Jeff. Jeff turns up. Jeff Bezos turns up at my house because we buy more than anyone else. He personally delivers. Yeah. But you get the bland brown box, right? And there is a way of putting a gift message in. Yeah, but you don't normally see it. And then you get a random book and you think, well, I didn't order this. So I actually gift wrap the book. So basically people get a gift and it's got the note inside. So I say, yeah, we were talking about— this is a, this is a chess move— we were talking about, you were talking about organizational change. This is my favorite book and I thought you'd really appreciate it.

And with no mention of the proposal. Nothing at all. It's just as an aside.

I had a message back saying, thank you very much for that surprise gift. By the way, you need to get this proposal sorted out. Great. It's not magic because it doesn't always work. No, sure.

But it's a good example.

It's a chess move, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. Boom. Number 1. Love it. Thank you. Next one, posting an article. Well, I don't mean posting, you know, so I'm saying that, thank you for posting. I don't mean posting an article online. I mean posting in the post.

Oh, okay. Old school posting.

Well, yeah, just think about this. Most people have got emails, right? How often do you get something in the post these days?

Hardly ever. And it's wonderful when you do.

If I found an article that I could have emailed to you, but I send it to you by post, and I appreciate I may not know your address and you may not be in the office anymore, but if you can, I, because I've got a Christmas card list, so I've got lists where to send the Christmas card gift to. So I will send them an article by post with a sticky sticky note on top saying, I thought of you when I saw this.

That's great. It's the same principle. Yeah, yeah.

No, I like that. Number 3, I'm very generous introducing people to my network. So, you know, that's a good nudge because basically I can say, you know, I know you mentioned the other— it's nothing to do with me or anything I do. I won't get anything out of it. But remember, I know quite a lot of people, so I introduce people to my network. It's just a reminder.

Keeps you on their radar.

Yep. Yeah. And then you're following up on emails using the approach that we discussed. So, you know, being direct, subject line matters, absolutely imperative. Yeah. Don't say follow up in your email.

I think that's a good— that could be a good Eureka moment episode, you know, how to craft the perfect subject line, because I'm terrible at that.

Yeah. And then, and then, you know, we'll talk about the frequency in a minute, but, you know, the email, the way you write the email, when you soften the email You direct to the person. Subject line's really important, is a must. But you know, not too frequently, and don't say, 'Can I have the work yet?' The other thing I do is a day in the life, right? A day in the life is I say, 'You know, I'd really like to get to know you guys a bit better. Would you mind if I kind of came out for the day with—' I did this, uh, Travis Perkins was one of my customers. I went out in the truck with Dave Greeks, and we spent the whole day, and we went to different, uh, different sites and different places. They didn't pay me for Just spend a day in life. They love that. That's great. So can you do a day in the life? I appreciate you can't do it everywhere and you probably haven't got time to do it everywhere, but can you do a half day, a 2-hour? Can you do one? Yeah. Sometimes I say, can I sit in the back of the room on your meetings so I can learn more about you? It just shows that you're invested.

Yeah. So nice. Yeah, that's really good.

So, you know, those are some of the ideas. But the most important thing is to know that you need to nudge and the frequency of nudging. What do you think it might be?

Uh, well, from experience, once a week.

Yeah, I think it's probably too much actually, once a week. I would— yeah, not more than 2 weeks. Yeah, because you know, people are busy, you've got to give them time to respond to things. But I do nudge. But you know, so it doesn't matter if it's a customer service person that didn't phone me back, or I won't wait 2 weeks for that. Yeah, that would be more frequent. But if you're right, if you've sent out a proposal or your CV's gone somewhere or something like that I wouldn't do it less than, you know, wait 2 weeks. But if it's, you know, if it's a customer service call, just think about the person on the other end of it. They're getting lots of calls, and one of the, uh, the ways you can get is to empathize where they're coming from. Yeah, listen, I can imagine, you know, it must be a difficult job doing what you're doing. No, I really appreciate your help. And one of my famous lines that gets the best response that people will find very hard to say is that, that I understand if you can't, but I appreciate if you can.

That is, that is a golden one.

It absolutely works. I understand if you can't, but I appreciate if you can.

Yeah, that's a really good one. And I've heard you say that and I've seen it work.

I see it in action. So I'm just— before I get to the takeaways, I'm just going to recommend a book to people that are listening. Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. It's one of my favorite books. The 6 things that, that Robert talks about is reciprocity. Zakantsev. You give, you get back. Commitment and consistency, which is basically if someone commits to something in writing, they're more likely to follow through. So get people to give you something back in writing. Don't make it bureaucratic. Number 3, social proof. People tend to do things that they see other people doing. So if you've got someone's done something, you can say it's amazing. Some of my other colleagues have done the same thing and it's really working for them. Number 4 is authority. That because word works. Yeah. And if people also find out if you've got credibility, people follow people that wear the doctor's white coat, they feel knowledgeable. People, if you demonstrate authority, people more likely to respond to you. Number 5 is liking. People first say yes to people they like. And maybe people aren't responding because you're not as likable as you normally are. So could you be more— what can you do to be more likable? And the final one is scarcity. Opportunities are more valuable when there's less available. So here's my takeaways, George. I'm in danger of running over. First of all, look through the lens of others. Think AIDA, A-I-D-A. Number 2, never underestimate the power of inertia. Think life slows people down. You've got to get on the radar. And number 3, think chess moves. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Don't forget the diffusion of responsibility. So direct it to people rather than to groups. And don't forget, there's a psychology in nudging. Keep it smooth. Consider others. Understand they're busy. You're not the most important person in the world, but generally, if you keep going, you're on a journey. It's not destination. You'll never get to the destination unless you nudge nicely.

Love it. Thank you, Gary. That's, well, it's fascinating stuff as always. And also, you know, there's lots to sort of unpack. But I do think that the idea of seeing this as a skill in itself is really interesting and really useful. So thank you. Thank you for the t-shirt idea. I'll get working on getting those printed. Control the controllable. Is that what it was? Yes, that's right. Yeah, great. And thank you to you all for listening, and we will see you next time.

See you soon.

Thanks for listening. I'd like to take this moment to subtly and gently prod you over to thecompanydoctor.com, where you can hear previous episodes, including our newly launched Eureka Moments series. We'd love Do it if you could, but we understand if you can't. See you next time!