Let's get Provocative with Belal Batrawy

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions. Especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings with close more deals faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we're getting provocative, seductive, alluring, some may even say sexy. We're getting into provocative messaging with my good friend Bilal Batrawy. And oh my goodness are we going to get after today. So now why Bilal? So Bilal is an up and comer in this game, but I don't even like the term up and comer because he's been in this game for a bit. He already has seven startups under his belt, some good, some bad. Which is also why he's been able to give such great advice. He's not a one trick, one industry pony. He has sold and led across multiple industries, different products, leaders and teams. And it's that sort of range and breadth of experience that I believe allows him to give such great sales advice and build such provocative messaging that works across industries. Now everyone listening knows how I feel about fluff and Bilal feels the same way. He runs a channel called Death2Fluff Bilal, welcome to the show. Let's go, my man.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And for all those listening, KD was somebody that I followed that very early on, almost a year ago, I reached out to and I was like, why can't I get any traction on LinkedIn? And Katie gave me a school. And this guy went six months back into my posts and wrote me a very thorough breakdown that completely changed the trajectory of how I posted. And now here I am on his show as a guest. Crazy.

See, and I love that story too, because I love that it's crazy because you did it right. You're not the only one that I've given that advice to, but you are one of the only ones that went and did it. And here you are almost a year later. Rev Star, LinkedIn, Top Voices, a list. Like, you got all these things, man. You're coming after my titles right now, dude. So I'm gonna need you actually to tone down a little bit. So anyway, the reason why people love this show is because we don't do. Don't do stuff. We backstories, we get right into it. And so we're going to dive right in here. What is provocative messaging and why does it matter?

Yeah, you know, okay, look, as sellers, one of the hardest things to realize when you're new and you might not have good management or good training. So you're graded on a curve. Every message that you send is graded against all the other messages that that buyer is going to receive, not just that day, that week, that month, that entire year. The good news is the curve is very gracious. People send horrible messaging every single day, thousands and tens of thousands of times. And if you can get above that bar, you can jump that high, you're gonna get noticed. And the best way to do that is being provocative by doing something that is thought provoking to the buyer, that makes them go, you know what? People don't challenge me that way. I don't get messages like that very often. It stands out and you spike their attention. You break the forgetting curve, because that's what they want to do. They just want to move on and just forget about the whole thing that happened. And if you can break that norm, right, we call it pattern interruption. That's a popular term now. But that's not new. Like, that's been around for decades and decades. We're just kind of bringing it back to the forefront. That's the core provocative message.

And so because I love this word provocative because, you know, everyone Says, you know, lead with value or even like, pattern breaking. But most people that say pattern breaking don't actually know what it is. They give one example, and they don't know actually how to use it. This word provocative, what I like is some of the emotion that it pulls out of the word. So what's your take on emotion in messaging? How do you view that?

Yeah, that's a great point. Provocative leads to something very core, which is limbic brain messaging. Right. You want to solicit an emotional reaction to people and where they get that reaction and you elicit an emotion from them that then they say. And what you want to really do, what provocative messaging implies is that you want to create a fork in the road. We're governed by social paradigms as people. Like, for example, we're in a social paradigm of guests and hosts. It would be rude of me to take a phone call right now. I don't need anyone to explain that to me. You didn't need to send me rules before I'm back. Here's the rules of my podcast. Don't take a phone call, right? But if you and I stop recording right now and the phone rang, I'm like, hey, Katie, my wife's gone.

You got.

Didn't mind if I take it. But yeah, that's fine. Right? We're governed by these social paradigms all around us. And the one of buyer, seller is one of conflict. It's one of conflict. So when you write a provocative message, you're breaking that social paradigm because sellers don't do that. Right. That's not what we expect from sellers to do. Sellers we expect just to want from us and want to take from us. And the other thing that we do with provocative messaging is create a fork in road of like, by the way, if you're not interested in this, let me know. It's okay. But this is the way people are going. This is the way forward. There's this new thing happening here, and you got to make a decision. My message is going to force you to make a decision. It's okay either way. Don't feel bad about yourself, but just know something is happening. I'm going to challenge you on that. I'm going to make sure that you have to decide left or right.

I love this. I love this. I was Talking with Patricia McLaren on earlier podcasts, and one of the things that dropped in that one was like, before you write any email, if you thought about what you wanted them to feel from that email, your email game would step up and you brought up like you're eliciting emotions. So we're gonna keep going on this because this is where it gets good. What emotions should we be trying to elicit from a prospect or someone that we're selling to? What emotions should we be trying to elicit? Because there's a breadth of emotions, right? Like, am I trying to make them happy with my message? Am I trying to make them excited? What emotions should I be trying to elicit? And let's split this prospecting emotion demo close.

Emotion.

What emotion should I be going for?

Yeah, it's an important distinction. Yeah, definitely important distinction. And let's trace it to, like, the buyer's journey. I'm a big fan of this because I didn't get taught it. And I was like, why didn't anyone teach me this thing? The universal buyer's journey. Unaware, aware, consideration, evaluation, decision. Whether it's a stick of gum, a house, a piece of software, we go through these five stages. And the sooner you acknowledge what stage your buyer is in as a seller, the more you can tailor the message. So why would I message somebody who's in the unaware stages if they're considering my product, which is what many sellers do when they talk about features and benefits, they don't even know you exist. Right, right. So what are the emotions that I want to get when I'm prospecting? I want curiosity. I want a little bit of anxiety. Think about it like this. All of us know that feeling. Being like the last kid on the bus, right. The one to miss out, to show up to a party too late and then you missed all the events. Right. We all know that feeling. Again, that's a social paradigm that you don't have to explain to somebody. We all know what it's like to miss out. None of us want to miss out. We don't want to be last. So if I can create messaging that creates that emotion and people are like, oh, am I missing out? Wait, has something been going on that I don't know about? Now I'm interested. What is it? Just tell me so I can at least be at peace of mind that I'm not the last of the party right now. Because I didn't even know there was a party going on before you reached out. So that's a very good thing. Your provocation should be spiking their curiosity, creating a little bit of anxiety.

Creating.

Creating some. Because if I'm an earlier mid stage adopter of technology, I don't want to miss out on the cool stuff. If I'M a laggard or a late stage adopter of technology. I'll let you know. Or like, man, I don't really care. It's like, cool, thanks. You just saved me a cycle of selling you. You just saved me so much time on a path that was gonna lead to a dead end anyways, and you gave it to me in the first few seconds, so fantastic.

I love it. I love it. Okay, so let's get tactical here now, right? So let's say, let's say you're going after a VP of sales, right? You're going after a VP of sales and you have a, I don't know, an email tool that does something different than all these other email tools, right? What would be a way to have a provocative message to me, right? You're coming, you come, you're coming after me, right? We'll make this straightforward. It's kd. You've got a tool that does something cool for emails, for sales leaders. What would be a way to build a provocative messaging around that?

Yeah. So this starts by thinking about what do VPs of sales talk to other VPs of sales about? It's like, if a third person joined this podcast right now and they're like, are you guys curious how to create provocative messaging? We'll be like, oh, shit, how do they know what we talk about? How do they know what we talk about when we podcast with each other, right? Like, how can I get in the room? And I call it like a peer question. It's called different things and it's not common to any one sales methodology. Some have this thing, but like, can I create that peer question that lets somebody know I know exactly what they're talking about? Chorus was brilliant in coming up with that, right? They're like, how do you clone your top producers? Right? How do you know what your top producers are doing so that your middle and bottom producers can replicate their work, right? Because that's the exact sort of question another VP would ask, like, how do you do it, man? How do I get these? I need my 50th percentile to increase their output 10% and I'd hit my goal. I can't get these guys to do it. That's a peer to peer question. And you as a seller asking that completely breaks the pattern and gets in their head. I'll give you some examples, actually. So I'll get really tactical with Katie because I thought ahead. I've got five different examples for your listeners.

Hell yeah.

All right, so let's start off with Trinet, that's where the first company is sold for HR company. Right. Average company. Their top two costs. Costs are payroll and then benefits. So people costs. So we used to call CFOs that never wanted to talk about HR services. They wanted OS push to the HR director who had no budget, had no authority and couldn't get it. And what we would tell them was this. We'd say, on average benefit costs increase 9 to 15% year over year. Most people fall in the 12% range. How do you handle your second largest cost increasing that much year over year? Right?

I love it. I love it.

They were like, you know, like, shit, that's like, you know my world. That was very specific. Yes. It's ridiculous that my number two cost would. Nothing under nothing in their cost table would go up that high. Only. Only benefits would increase that much year over year. Double digit increases year over year. It's insane. And so that was the question that we would say that make him go, wait, you're with what again? I'm like, oh yeah, I'm with Trinet. We're a peo. And I was just curious. And I'd repeat the question again. That was actually the number one response. We were like, what? Because they were so caught off guard by the quality of the question.

Real quick, I want to call out something. He just did there, by the way. So notice he asked the question. The person came back with a what? He gave an answer, but came back to the question. So often sales reps, they ask that first question, the prospect. We give you a deflection, right? We say, I'm sorry, wait, what is this about? And then that's when reps will go into a pitch and then that allows me to say, not interested. So I hope y' all caught what he said there. He asked the question, prospect comes back and goes, wait, what is this about? Oh, you know, I work with, try to like, you know, we're a poe. But how are you handling the fact that your benefit cost is going to continue to rise by 12% every year moving forward? How? Like you got to come back to the question. So I hope you all caught that. So, you know, I just wanted to jump in because that's a very subtle thing that most reps don't do. They just. Now they start to answer the question. They feel like that was their invitation to pitch and it's not. So. Okay, I'm backing off again. All right, so we got one provocative message. Keep it going.

Yeah. So that you're right. And that is it because you want them to get talking the first 15 seconds of the call. You want it to be a two way dialogue. And you just showed authority by asking an intelligent question. Let them answer it at FullStory. So at FullStory, we had a ton of competitors. I think it was like 12 competitors is insane. It's such a noisy environment. And what my founders didn't understand was nothing was sacred. Yeah, we were better in this, that and the other. But there was no reason why our competitors couldn't claim the same. So I was like, the more we distill this down to its easiest, simplest letter, the more we're going to stand out because everyone's trying to complicate everything. So we had this idea that we termed called a rage click. When you click on something on a website and it sucks and you find yourself smashing your mouse, what'd you call that?

A rage click. That's amazing. Okay, good.

It was genius, right? So here was the pitch. It was like, have you ever been on the Internet, find yourself on a shitty website and you're just kind of smashing your mouse and finding frustration with a bad navigation or something like that? And everyone's like, yeah, of course, Michael. We call that a rage click. Call that a rage click. And we allow for you to see when your customers are doing that on your product. Do you have a way to see that today?

No, no, I like that.

Would you want to?

Yeah.

Right. Because it was like, yeah, I know that emotion. I just made you concede the emotion of like, yeah, it's super frustrating. You probably had something occur in your mind, a visual image of like, the last time it happened to you. Like, yeah, I remember when I was like on the DMV website and it sucked or something like that, Right. So I just elicited the emotion and I'm like, wouldn't you want to see when your customers are doing that on your product, your baby, the thing you work on all day? Yeah, I would.

I love it. I love it. Now that one's a little bit different too, because it's not necessarily going, it's educating a little bit, but it's not as open ended. Right. The other one was like, how are you gonna deal with this 12%? This one's like, would you like to know this about your, your website visitors? Right. So it's a little bit more, I'm quite sure what the word I'm looking for, but a little bit more to the point of like, hey, like I. You pre educated, you were like, hey, have you ever done this. This is called a rage click. We've all been there. Would you like to know if your customers are doing the same thing? So, okay, I like that one. Let's get one more. This is good. I hope y' all are taking notes on the framework here, how there's always a piece of education, because also, too, there is a chance that that CFO didn't know that benefits go up by 12% every single year. And so now they have to make a choice, too, between, am I going to look uneducated, or am I just going to agree right now back to that fork in the road that he said before. Now it's like, either I have to say, well, yeah, it sucks. I'm not sure how to deal with it, or I have to say, wait, I didn't know that. And now you can educate, right? So that's part of this provocative messaging. So let's get one more in here. I'm loving these frameworks.

So the third one here, we got Stratify, which sells to wealth advisors, independent wealth advisors. And these guys are typically very unsophisticated compared to, like, the investment side, like the pimcos of the world and so on. Those guys are like rocket scientists using data left and right. And then the retail side are just typically amateurs. So we were trying to come up with a pitch that would engage these people, and they typically are very hacky, trying to get risk profiling done for their clients and get them the right investments. And they're always competing with each other because it's like a noisy world. There's, like, thousands of wealth advisors. Why would you pick one over another? I don't know. That's the struggle that they have. So in our pitch at Stratify, what we do is we list our top five competitors right in the first five seconds. So we go straight into the pitch of, like, a lot of wealth advisors cobble together tools like X, Y, Z, 1, 2, and 3, all for a goal of trying to create a comprehensive risk profile for their. For their clients. Have you found any challenges trying to create risk profiling? And people are immediately like, yeah, I've used so and so. Yeah, I know those tools. I hate them. Or no, we just gave up on risk profiling because it was so frustrating. People just go straight into an answer as if we're, like, midway in a conversation.

And what's great on that one, too, this is Belle, and I chat about this stuff all the time, too. It's subtle language things, and I hope you guys caught this. He didn't say a lot of people use these tools, said cobble together these tools, right? It's putting a doubt or a negative connotation to the status quo. Right. This is important. It's a subtle change. But when someone agrees, like, yeah, we do, that they are agreeing to that they are cobbling together that it is not an efficient way of doing things and having those subtle, not like, jabs at the status quo. But making the status quo feel less than ideal is very important, especially when we get into things like the law of consistency. Right? Now they've agreed that they're cobbling. Now they've agreed that they're cobbling. Well, that's now law of consistency. Like, well, you don't want to keep cobbling, do you? Yep, you're better than cobbling. Cobbling should now be a word that shows up everywhere, which actually is the segue to the next topic. Because when it comes to prospecting, I think there's actually more provocative messaging happening. Because you have to, right? Like just to break through the noise. People are getting sharper and sharper here. But then so often it gets to the demo and it turns right back into this bland, cookie cutter everything else, right? Like this. This just happened to me recently. Got a phenomenal prospecting email. Phenomenal prospecting email. One of the best I've gotten in a long time. And then got to the demo and it was almost like the bars weren't matched. Like, I got this really good provocative messaging at the beginning. But then I got into the demo and I was like, well, this isn't provocative, you know, like, I wasn't using that word then. Cause that's your word, not mine, but you get what I'm saying. Like, it was like all of a sudden, wait, where. Where were the pattern breaks? Where was the eliciting the emotion? Where was the buyer's journey? Where is the curiosity? Where is the anxiety? Right? Like, all the things we're talking about in prospecting don't seem to make it to the demo. So how can we carry those same things into the demo now?

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. It's a tough one too. Now here I'm a lean on Todd Capone. I didn't know I was doing this. I was doing it without knowing what it was. And he broke down the psychology for me, bless his heart. I always used to lead with what my product is not, right? So I want you to think of a strategic narrative. A strategic narrative is there's a change in the world. We're going to go kind of Andy Raskin style. Big change in the world. There's going to be winners or losers from it. I'm going to tease you about a promised land. I'm going to show you the path others took to reach that promised land. Then I'm going to demo you. Okay. And I'm going to do it in such a way where I just completely break the pattern of what you're expecting. I'm going to lull you out of that sleep. I'm going to do some things that you just, you're not going to see coming. They're just going to be out of left field. Because I'm going to take ownership of a few things that are going to happen. Number one, I'm not. I'm not letting anyone poke holes in my product. I'm going to poke holes in my product. I'm going to do it. You don't get a chance to do it. I'm going to take all the sale out of the window. The skeptic. You know, when you're, whenever you're doing a demo for a group, there's the characters, you know, there's the champion, the influencer, decision maker. There's always a skeptic, right? You always have one. I want to take all their words out of their mouth before they can even speak. Like, here, let me, let me do it for you. We do it for you. So I'll list all the problems. Here's what we're not. We're not going to be this, we're not going to be that. Nor are we trying to be the reason why we found the special sauce. We got something magical over here and we put all our time and attention into that one thing. If you care about that kind of stuff, what I'm about to show you is going to blow your mind. If you don't care about that stuff. And the stuff I just listed does matter, please let me know and I can give you back the hour that we had.

Love it.

People don't expect that. That's very unusual. The second thing I do is I talk about my competition openly. There a Google search away. I mean, most, most. This is the weirdest thing. I've had so many founders that were frustrated by me that used to talk about competition. I'm like, you do realize they buy our AdWords, right? Like when you search our company name, we're not the first result, right? Like, why are you so confused? This is a Google search away. I'm not giving like proprietary knowledge here. You know, it's it's not hard to find competitors. It's one search away. So why don't I just take that on and show them something that they can't find? They can't find. And in many companies, I actually used the investor deck that my founders would use to raise a Series A because oftentimes they give an industry or competitive landscape overview to the investors. And I'm like, if an investor can benefit from that, my buyer can too. That's knowledge my buyer can benefit from.

So real quick, we're going to backtrack here. What emotions do you think this is causing in the buyer?

Right.

We're going to keep coming back to emotions because that's what provocative is all about. So when you are leading with the holes in your product, when you are talking openly about your competition, when you are calling out the whole, you know, like the issues that, you know, someone's thinking, what emotions does that build in the buyer?

This, this is where I want them to feel delighted. Okay, well Bilal gets it. This guy is like, I don't even have to ask. He's just, he's just giving. And in. What happens is this is the, you know, the first law of, of influencing others from Dr. Cialdini. Right. Of six influencers is reciprocity. I do it and I don't ask for anything back. But people feel obligated to give back because they're like, he did me a solid here. I didn't even have to ask him about the competition. He just, it was just one of his slides, like it was ready to go. He was like, you want to talk about competition? I was like, of course I do. I thought you wouldn't touch that. I thought I had to figure that out on my own. Can you send me this afterwards? Of course. This is going to be included in my follow up email. You know, so it's delight and it's unexpected delight. And that's the thing, because sellers, the social paradigm of buyer, seller, that's not what sellers do. Sellers don't educate their prospects around their competition in a fair, meaningful manner the way they would an investor. No way. Sellers aren't trying to do. Sellers trying to get my money. Sellers trying to sell me shit.

I can't remember the last time I sat in a demo where they openly brought up the competition. Right. And just so everyone knows that's listening. Because, you know, I always think this is just ridiculous. Sellers don't know what it's like to buy. Okay, what do you think I do? Right after your demo Right. I'm a buyer. Right. I have a large sales team. I am a buyer. I control my budget. I can make most of those decisions. Right after that demo, what do you think I do? I go back to work. Okay. I go back to work. I go back to work and I forget probably 90% of what you told me. And then I see a follow up email. I go, oh, yeah, that's right. I did talk to these people. And that follow up email is like, here's what we discussed. And then I'm gonna go Google you and I'm gonna find your reviews, I'm gonna find out where you are, I'm gonna throw you into the revenue collective. I'm gonna ask what people are saying about you. I'm gonna go look at your competitors and then start to figure out if I'm going to move forward. So if you do that up front for me, like you said, delight. I think it also builds trust. Right. Because you're doing something that the other salespeople wouldn't.

Right.

The example that I always give with some of these is like, if I were walking out the door and my wife said, where are you going?

I said, out.

Just going out. She goes, well, who are you going out with? Just a friend. Who's this friend? You wouldn't know her. Right. Like that is gonna cause so many issues. But that's how salespeople sell, right? Is they either try to just sneak through the door.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Or like, who are your main competitions? Oh, they're not worth talking about. That's only gonna make me wanna do it more. Right. So then let's bring this back to, you know, because I'm a believer that the same you said that were so important in prospecting are just as important in the closing process. Right. You brought up curiosity, you brought up anxiety a little bit. You brought up this idea of missing out. How do I weave that into the demo? Right. Because that's honestly, like in this industry right now, it's missing a lot in prospecting. It's missing completely in this closing process. So how do I build? Anxiety feels like such a strong word. But that idea of missing out or being not okay anymore with the status quo. Whoa, how do I do that in the demo process? Yeah.

Way to rope us back, Katie. I'm glad you did. So you surprise them and delight them with this, what my product's not. You show them some competition and now they're just completely, you know, they're just off balance. They're like, I don't know what this guy's gonna do next. And I'm a big believer of selling proof points, not value props. This is how you create that anxiety if they, if you want to create that film of like, if you didn't do this, like I said, there's a fork in road. I wasn't playing. If you go down the right path versus the left path, it's very different paths. And you're just going to have to come to terms that whichever you choose, you're going to miss out on the other. Which one are you more afraid of missing out on? So I give you an example of a proof point versus a value prop. At FullStory, we were the only competitor of the 12 that was backed by Google Ventures. Now that's not a value problem. That doesn't help the client at all that we're backed by Google Ventures. But this was the story that I gave him. I said, we're back. We're the only company that Google Ventures is taking a bet on in this industry. We're created by a team of ex Googlers that worked on things like AdWords, Chrome and Sheets. And on top of it, we looked at Google and said, if Google can index the entire Internet in a single simple little search box, why can't we do the same for your customer experience? And that's what we did. So if you go down my path, you're going down the world of this Google like experience for customer search. That's our magic sauce in building this. We forego building heat maps and click maps and this, that and the other. And if that's your game, you're gonna go down the other path. But if you believe that this progression is right, let me show you what we built. That's a proof point. It's not a value prop. And it caters into the strategic message around that whole idea of like rage clicks and understanding your customer experience. Similarly, we did something at, with, with, with Clearbit. So clearbit sold against ZoomInfo. All right, now Clearbit was an API first company. That was our strategic story. We started as an API company that has data. ZoomInfo started as a data company that decided to build an API. So I looked for the proof point in that we could refresh a Salesforce instance in one second. So you could put a new record in salesforce, click refresh and it would instantly be, it would have the data put into it. Right? Be fully enriched. Zoom info would take two and a half minutes. Now, two and a half minutes versus a couple seconds. Isn't that Big of a deal, especially cost millions of records. But it was a proof point that we were API first. So what I do on the demo right now, I got into the demo, I'd be like, let's put in a record live. And I'd refresh it instantly. I beg, by the way, do you see how fast that took? So, Katie, that speed is only, only Clearbit can do that because we're an API first company. Only our APIs fast enough to do it in real time. And I challenge you to ask the Zoom info rep, when you do a demo with them to show you a refresh live. They won't be able to because it takes about two and a half to three minutes. Now, that might not be a big deal for you, but when I think about buying technology, personally, I like future proofing. I like technology that's built on the modern platform. APIs are the future. So when I want data, where I want it, how I want it, I need an API that can handle it.

I love it. And there's so many ways you can build off of this, right? So, like, one of the things that he's doing very well, y', all, as you're listening, is he's doing a phenomenal job of creating an either or or black and white. It's either you're gonna do the right thing or you're gonna do the wrong thing. There's no gray area in between, right? So it's called a separator, right? He's separating it. This is what either you're choosing to go this path or you're choosing to go this path. But there isn't an in between here, right? And then building on top of it is taking it and making it work for the buyer. Right? Because those, that's when I love those follow up questions, right? It's like, so let's, let's see here. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but which do you think your Reps would prefer? 1 second or 2 minutes? Right now you don't even make it about the buyer. You make it about their people. You're saying, like, you and I can chat all day, but you and I aren't the ones working 50 leads per day. Which one do you think your teams would prefer? I know, like the teams that I've led, every 30 seconds causes them to lose minutes of productivity because they get distracted or they get frustrated or it times out and they walk away and they do something else, right? And so being able to bring that emotion back into everything else and so something that you've been hitting on throughout all of this is like Bilal's been dropping some massive psychology on y'.

All.

We've talked law of consistency. We've talked reciprocity. We've talked eliciting emotion. We've talked us versus them. We've talked separators. We've talked about building. Like, we've been doing a lot here. So let's dive into this a little bit. Right. What are some of your favorite. God, this sounds deep. Like, psychological techniques. There's gotta be a better way to say that. I'm sorry, Y', all, like, rules or laws of psychology that you do insert into the sales process. Right. Like, we've talked reciprocity, We've talked consistency. We've talked, like, eliciting emotions, social proofing, hurting, all those things. What are some of your favorite kind of, like, laws of influence that you really like to make sure that you're coming back to?

Yeah, you're right. There's a ton of psychology behind all of this. Like, it is premeditated. It's not accidental. Like, the word cobbling together like that sort of stuff. Using negative versus positive connotation words. You know, if my competitor is less than me, they're cheap. If I'm less than my competitor, I'm economical, right?

Yes. Affordable. Right.

So, yeah, these words really do matter because they elicit emotions from us. They elicit a response from us. So I make everybody I've ever managed or worked with, I have a cheat sheet on Dr. Cialdini, six influencers. I'm like, you gotta read these things.

Yes.

They will impact everything you say or do. Are you talking from a position of authority? Are you trying to get them to like you? Are you looking for reciprocity? And so on and so forth. And in different stages, I try to implement all six wherever I can. And there's opportunity abound. From the first hello to them signing the dotted line, there's opportunity abound to get all six in. And all six impact your positioning in their mind of who you are. So I think that's really important. I think about things like foot and door technique. It's so important to get those mini contracts of agreement with people. I called you that first time and Cole called you, and I told you that peer review question. You told me that was a thing. And then we talked about it, and then we set a meeting, and then we did some discovery and. And I was really open with some stuff on you. And I told you that there's a fork in the road. And you agreed and you said that going right was better than going left. Now we're on the demo and I'm showing you the right path. Are you still with me? Do you still believe in the fork in the road and seeing that, Let me get these mini contracts of agreement with you because then when I ask you for the big thing at the end, which is a decoy pricing based proposal where I've got an option A and an option B and I want you to go option B. And I know option B is outside your budget because I made it that way. I made it slightly painful for you. You wanted to pay me 20k and I quoted you 26. And you're like, I told you my budget's 20. But I love everything you showed me. Can you get it down to 23 for me? Can you do me a solid? Yeah, if you sign today. Okay, sure. I'll make it happen for you. I'll give you that. When really the true price is 17. So I'm winning no matter what they bring me down to.

And also I got to jump in there because it's one of my favorite things to do with this too, is when you get to that point now you're only selling the difference. You're no longer trying to sell a $20,000 package. You're only trying to prove it's worth the $6,000 more than they wanted to spend. So now you took that, the 20 is a given. 20 is now. Like, oh, like, I know I could do this. Like, all right, well, let's talk about why it's worth $6,000 more than what? Now you're only talking about six grand, right? And that's a much easier thing to prove than the full 26. I hope y' all caught that. Right? Like it's like, alright, budgets, 20ish. 26. Ooh, can we do 23? And this is the beauty. If they come down to 23, now all you have to sell is 3,000. You only have to show it's worth the $3,000 more than what they wanted to spend. And then at the end of the day, come down to 23, you get something either the timeline you want, referrals, testimonial, Right. Faster onboarding. Right. Sometimes you can even upsell. Ooh, I can't do, I can't bring you 23, but I could throw in this for 25. So now they actually spend 25 when they said they could only spend 20, but they feel like they're getting more out of it. And now your Margins are so much better too. So. So I just had to. I love pricing. Like, I love pricing, right? Because like, no one studies consumer psychology, no one studies consumer behaviors, right? How people actually buy. Cause it's very illogical. Very illogical, right? And this is why so many sellers struggle, is they take a logic approach to selling and they wonder why it doesn't work. So sorry I had to jump in there. I threw you off.

Sorry. No. You know what opened my eyes to it? I had a realtor once tell me very early on in my sales career, because they're sellers too. They had a. They had a, like, I think it was like a $750,000 home talking about a quarter of a million dollars. And the deal was done and the buyer and the seller started arguing about a particular set of drapes in one of the rooms. And the seller didn't want it to leave them and the buyer wanted the seller to replace it. It was like less than $1,000 to do it. And the buyer was ready to walk away from the deal because the seller was being so hard headed about changing those. And you know what happened? The two realtors were like, let's do it ourselves. And just. But we're crazy like that, right? We're like crazy. We're like, hell, I will burn that house down before I change. You know? And the other one's like, I will literally start my whole house search again rather than give that a hole the money and have those sheets staring at me in the face when I walk in. You know what I mean?

Like, we're crazy where we're in. We're insane. But we try to sell like we're not. Yeah, we try to sell like we're not insane. Right? So now. So, okay, she said reciprocity was a good one. You have that cheat sheet. Is there a place people can go to get that cheat sheet from you?

Oh, no. I should post that.

Yeah, yeah, you should. You should. You should put, you should put that out there, the little landing page and go, go put that out there for people. Because that's, that's some gold right there. Because it's like, this is the hard part with books. And it'll be a segue to our last couple questions. Here is. Unfortunately, not a lot of people read. Of the subset that people that do read, even fewer actually finish the book. Out of the subset of people that actually finish the book, even fewer do anything with it. You read Influence, which is a classic, but then did something with it. You created a cheat sheet on how to apply, apply it, right? So when we talk, you know, we were talking, it was about two weeks ago, actually only about a week ago, you know, talking about like what sort of topic and the way you phrase it said like provocative messaging, like, that's my superpower. And I was like, ooh, I like that. Like that's my superpower, right? How did you develop this superpower, right? Because like you're, you haven't been in the, let's call it like in the game that long. Like you're not 35, 40 years old. Like you're, you're in this and you already have your miles years ahead of most people when it comes to messaging. How did you develop this superpower? Or have you just always been this way?

That's a good question. It's two. Part one is because I'm a practicing Muslim. And the interesting thing about faith is it's very story based. Faith is expressed through the stories of the prophetic examples throughout every major religion, whether it's Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, you name it, it's all expressed through story. And anthropology has found that the basis of all language is storytelling. You cannot have culture without language and you cannot have language without storytelling. That I knew going into sales, so that I knew going into sales because I had studied that university and I had a basic idea of that when I got into sales and they started training me on all the wrong stuff, right? They were giving me product vomit, they were cursing me with knowledge and I couldn't escape it. And I sounded dumb because I was talking to people. I'm like, but they've not seen what I saw. So when I tell them about all the time savings and shit, they're like, but who the hell are you? Why'd you just call me, right? And I just sound like a GEICO ad, like it's annoying. And that's when I realized I have to separate from the product's value and all that shit and get into the part that matters, which is, can I distill this down in a very simple version that tells them what you're doing today isn't going to work. It's just not going to work. Here's why. There's a group of people who found a better way and they're going to blow you out of the water if you don't keep up with that. Okay? We all know that feeling, right? That's what makes us, that's what motivates us to get the new phone every year. That's what motivates us to upgrade Our cars. Like, what car on the planet doesn't have Bluetooth now and some sort of Android or Apple CarPlay in it? Why? Because we got to keep up. Things change. We got to keep up. So we're already conditioned from the world around us in this thing. So the superpower of the storytelling came out of that. And then because of startup wise, that's the second thing. Startup life necessitated it because oftentimes I was one of the first, if not the first, sales hire, and there's no way I can talk about the product the way the founder does. They talk about it like it's their child. It's not my child.

Right.

Like, yeah, of course you think your child is the most beautiful, amazing and special one in the world. But guess what? I don't really see it that way. I just see it like another kid. Right? And it's not going to work for me to get on the phone and try to talk about it the way you do. Right? So I got it. I got to disrespect your child a little bit. I got to bring it. I got to bring them down to like, average class level and be like, but here's, here's what this kid's really good at. Right? This kid's not. You know, they're not a superstar. They might not be a genius, they might not be President of the United States, but they're really good at this one thing. And if you care about that, you should check it out. And that's what necessitated that of realizing the more I drill down into its essence, the more I just break it down to its simplest. I cut through the noise, I beat the curve. I'm better than the average seller, and that's all I need to be. I don't need to be a genius. I just need to be better than the average and I will stand out.

So I'm only going to challenge you there a little bit because, you know, yes, you were at startups and yes, you learned storytelling, but most everyone's aware of storytelling, right? And people are in startups all day long. I don't talk to many people that get messaging the way that you do. So the situations you were in maybe built your awareness that you needed to get good at this. But how did you actually get good at it? Because there are AES and SDRs and sales managers and sales directors out there listening right now going like, yeah, dude, our messaging sucks. Yeah, like, it's awful, but they don't know what to do about it. You do. How did you develop the what to do about it. Right, like you mentioned a couple books so far, but like, how did you actually develop this skill? Right, because the awareness is one part. There's plenty of people out there that know their messaging sucks, but there's probably less than 1% of people that go, okay, I'm going to use a status quo diminisher followed by a peer relating authority building quote question with three strategic leads that will elicit a law of consistency response so that I am then going to leverage with reciprocity with value. And then I'm going to follow up with a social herding technique to ensure that when they come in, no one out there is talking like that but you and me. So how did you develop that?

That's a great question.

See, I'm not gonna let you off the hook. I'm not gonna Death to fluff, my man. I'm not gonna let you.

I'm God in the fluff. Let's see. That's a great question. Let me think about it for a second here because now I gotta go a little bit deeper and try to think back on how that happened. Look, let's take it like this. I realized very early on in my sales career that I was getting more no's than yeses like any other seller, right? And I have some very, very basic rudimentary understanding of six and Six Sigma considers things like that as waste. And the Six Sigma methodology is cut waste, right? So I kept seeing my sales leader obsess over how do I get more yeses? I'm like, well, how do I just get less no's? Because it takes a long amount of time to get these no's. And I called this person like 16 times over two weeks just to finally get them on the phone and find out they're like gonna close up shop and move to like Havana. I'm like, what the hell that was? Could I have known that earlier? Is there anything I could have done to not waste my time? And that's the biggest thing that I think I've done different over my career than any of my peers is that I view my time with such like, I'm, I'm, I'm like, I'm really, really aggressive over my time. Like, please don't waste it. Please don't waste it. You're not going to hurt my feelings if you tell me no, you're not going to hurt my feelings if you hang up. You're not going to hurt my feelings if you unsubscribe. But you will hurt my Feelings. If I spend three weeks with provocative messaging on you and you don't respond, you will piss me off. It's like, why'd you make me go through that, man? All you had to do is tell me yes or no. I would have gone, I'm okay with it. I'm a big boy. There's like a world of opportunity out there. Just tell me what I need to know. Just give me an answer and I'll move on. I'll make it easier for you to say no. I'll give you the no. I'll give you the out. Just take it. But don't, don't, don't waste my time.

So there's two things there. One of my top reps, David Karch, he always used to say on his deals, he's like, I love yeses, I'm okay with no's. But I hate the chase. Can we at least agree to never turn it into a chase? Like he'd say the same thing, I'm a big boy. Like that. No doesn't hurt my feelings. I've been getting told no for 22 years in this game. But it's that chase, it's that doubt, it's that uncertainty. Like, let's just avoid that, could we? That was his upfront contract. Not if we agree today that this is gonna do X, like we can take next steps, right? Like no. He really humanized it. But also the way that you've talked about this a few times of like taking, giving them the out, right? If you're not interested, let me know. But the tweak I put on the, like, you know, if this isn't for you is I make them agree there's not a problem if you're not struggling with this. Let me know if you've already got this buttoned up, right? Like if you already got all the leads you could possibly want and they refresh instantly and you don't even have to think twice about where it's coming from. Just tell me. I make them agree that they either don't have a problem or that they haven't. Perfect. Because I know that's gonna be very hard for them to do, right? So. Alright, we got two questions left here, my man. Two questions.

Okay?

And they're my two favorite. We gotta end on like the high note. Not that this hasn't been great. I've already got two pages of notes just going through this. So the first one is actually a segue off that. We've been going for about 45 minutes now. And you have dropped some, like, serious stuff on people, right? Like let's say they forget everything, right? They forget everything we've talked about, except for three things when it comes to provocative messaging. Right. I call this question the big three. What are the three things that you would want people to walk away with when it comes to provocative messaging if they forgot everything? Elana?

Okay, yeah, that's a great question. Okay. Number one in my mind is understand that universal buyers journey, your messaging will always, always fail when you send the inappropriate message to the stage the buyer's in. If they're considering your product, do not speak to them like they're unaware. If they're evaluating your product, do not speak to them like they're aware. And if they're unaware, do not speak to them like they're considering your product. Don't mix those up. Okay? It's the same thing. Unaware, aware, consideration, evaluation, decision. Just, you know, put it, put it like on your laptop or whatever you got to do. Just get that there and be like, who am I talking to right now? You will see a difference when you go back in your message back. Wait, they're unaware. Why am I sending a bullet point list of features? They don't even know I exist. I'm in fifth gear, I need to be in first, so forth. That's, that's a huge thing. I wish I'd learned that early on in my sales career.

Can I add one thing in there? One. There's only one part in that journey that I think people need to be aware of. You got to insert somewhere in there, self doubt and fear. Before making any large purchase, there is always this doubt or self doubt that shows up of like, am I going to get this wrong? And so if you can remember that too, even though they loved you two weeks ago before you sign a six figure contract, there's always that. Oh boy. So remembering that somewhere in there there's going to be some doubt and fear that shows up and to make sure that you address that in that journey as well. So that'd just be one addition I have there. So we have the universal buyer journey. You got two more reminders. What do we got?

The second one is this in. In all of my provocative messaging and you pointed it out with the word cobble. I am attacking the status quo. I'm not asking them what tools they use. I'm not getting into, you know, KPIs and metrics and making money or saving time or any of that bullshit. I'm not talking about outcomes or desired outcomes. Or any of those fancy words. I'm just going after the status quo, right? I want to assault it. I want to belittle it. I want to put it in its place and be like, you can keep doing this. It's fine. You're getting the job done. I acknowledge that. I appreciate it. In fact, I'll be the first one to say it. You're getting the job done today. But here's what's happened, right? Here's the fork in the rope. Keep doing it or go my way. And there's some people have gone my way, and they're seeing better results. Are you the person that's comfortable being last on the bus, or are you the sort of person that wants to be part of the party, wants to get in there early, wants to see what's going on, and it's okay either way, Right? You just let me know who you are. Who are you? Right. Tell me about you before I tell you about me. I won't tell you too much about me unless you tell me about you. Because I might be wasting your time and mine if I start telling you about me.

Love it. And what's number three?

I think the third biggest thing is that you've got to. In any sort of really good provocative messaging, you cannot just call someone up and just challenge them without showing the authority. Right. In every case that I did, I showed that, yes, I know what's going on. I know what your balance sheet looks like, Mr. CFO. You know, I know what your product experience like, Ms. Product Manager. I know what's going on in your world, wealth advisor. Like, I know these things. I took the time to figure it out. These things, they sound simple as an end product. This is hours upon hours of research and understanding. Some of these cases, like the one for the wealth advisors, Katie, we literally called wealth advisors and just talked to them. Not about our products, just interviewed them. Yeah, that's it. And we just were like, we will never sell these people. There's no pitch at the end of the interview. We never told them who we were from. Or just like, can I just learn about how you run business? I'll pay you money for an hour of your time. That was.

It's gold. That is gold.

You can't. You have to have that authority because that's what makes it so relevant. Because, like, call me up and challenge me. I'm hang up on you all up and challenge me and show me that you know what you're doing. I'll talk to you. Clearly, you know something about me because you got it right. And it seems like you know what you're doing. Seems like you do this all day.

Oh, strangely enough, I do. That's all I do all day, is talk to your type of people. And I hope you guys have been catching how much he's been challenging through questions, not through statements. He's not saying you're losing money. He's not saying you're wasting time. He's saying how are you handling the time slippage that's caused by this? How are you handling the increase in budget that's coming from this? It's a challenge through a question, not just through a call out. That's where so many people get the challenger sale wrong. Most people actually don't know what it means to be a challenger seller. If they had named that book education seller, more people would understand what it means, but then no one would have bought the book. So we got our big three here and then this is what we end with. Right. So the name of the podcast is Live better Sell better. Right. Focusing on the person in salesperson. Right. It's not just about sales because I believe, and I believe you believe this too. Can I say believe one more time, that if we take care of ourselves, if we live better, our results also go up. Right. So. And I know you're a huge proponent of this in terms of self care and also companies, but taking care of their employees. But what would be your parting advice for everyone listening to live better? How can they get more out of life, more out of themselves? More fulfillment, more joy? Like, what would be your live better tip for everyone listening?

Yeah, this. Can I give two?

Yeah. Yes. Yes, you can. I'm never going to limit this. Let's go two.

I'll say the first one for me is detach from the outcomes. I know we're blasted by it. As you know, every salesfor you go has the dashboards everywhere letting you know where you stack. Or again, every time, every huddle reminds you whether you're first or last place. Every pipeline review is just another either honoring your work or letting you know what a failure you've been over the past three, four weeks. I know it. And it's super frustrating and it starts taking a toll. Maybe you even start believing in affecting your own self worth when you just solely focus on the outcome. But it's about the journey, not the destination. So much goes into a sale. So much goes into a sale. So many people get lucky. So many people don't. There's so many circumstances that will Affect your deal, detach from the outcome. Just realize that there's more to it than what you're doing. You can nail every bit of provoking messaging and still lose the deal. Everything we talked about today, you could, I've done it to the T. And still lost. Still lost because it turned out the, you know, brother in law's sister worked at the company, the competitor. And I was like, thanks for telling me that.

Right?

You know, so just detach from the outcomes. You're going to be better off in the long term for doing so. And the second thing is that I pray five times a day. Some people meditate, some people do walks outside. Whatever your thing is, there has to be a moment every day when you're a seller that you just walk away from the thing because it becomes so consuming. That pipeline, those numbers, those metrics, those calls, the expectations, the quality quota resetting, it's just like it builds like a residue on you. It really does. And you have to have a moment to cleanse it. Like, take a breath to back up and realize, wait, there's like a world outside. Like there's birds chirping out there. Like that squirrel that's like looking for a nut. Doesn't give a shit about my quota, right? It's like living its life out there. So obsessed with what I'm doing that I'm getting this tunnel vision. So for me, it's prayer. You know, I take that five minute break to go pray and I'd leave my phone at my desk. People like, I'm just gone, right? I'm just in the zone and it feels good. I come back to my desk, I'm like, that's not so bad now, right? Like, that's what really mattered was that I prayed today, not that I closed this deal or not, because there's going.

To be many deals, I love it, that refresh, that cleanse multiple times per day I think is so missed out for so many people, right? I try to encourage my reps, like, take, take a real break, like a real break. Not just sit back in your chair and now scroll social media. Go take a real break. Do something intentionally that brings you joy. Do something that intentionally refreshes you or allows you to reset or to calm. And I think that's a phenomenal tip to end with. So my man, like, whoo, whoo, boy, we went deep on this one. Death to fluff. Mr. Provocative messaging. That might be my nickname for you moving forward. Belela, my man, thank you so much. Where can people find you? Where can they get more of this no fluff. Where can they get more of this provocative messaging? Where can they see you, find you.

Reach out if you're lazy? I'm on LinkedIn, so just follow me on LinkedIn if you want to get into it. The death of fluff community on bravado. There's 800 plus sellers already in there. Same tribe, same language. You'll find a lot of like minded people in there that are in the struggle, that are in the game, that are looking for people that get it. That's the spot for it.

Hell yeah. Well, my man, thank you so much. I know our listeners got so much value out of this. Love you, respect you. Thank you for my time, my dude.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, kd. It's my honor.

Hell yeah.