This is an excerpt from a YouTube live podcast (Inside Sales Excellence) where host Kevin Dorsey introduces guest Belal Batrawy. Batrawy explains how sellers should frame messaging to make the prospect the hero—shift social paradigm to signal in-group membership, avoid seller-centric phrasing ("I help...") and instead ask buyer-focused questions ("Do you struggle with...?"), and use his "mic drop" method (20-second framing to step off-stage and get the prospect talking). He gives concrete examples and a retail analogy to show why unsolicited help turns people off.
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One subtle thing that I didn't point out so far is that when you make this shift into thinking about how do I show my prospects and buyers that I'm part of the in group? How do I change the social paradigm? How do I create this compelling, provocative messaging that's going to invoke the limbic brain and cause my prospect to choose to show me that they can either embrace the problem or reject it. Part of this is this idea of who's the hero? Who's the center of the story? Okay, when I call up Katie and I mention that Trinet script and I'm talking about CFOs like yourself are dealing with rises in health care costs of 9 to 15% year over year. Am I the center of that story? Or is Katie's tribe of CFOs and him the center of that story? Who's the hero? Who am I talking about? I could easily have said, hey Katie, I'm part of Trinet. China is a PEO that helps CFOs save on rising costs of 9 to 15% with health benefits. Who's the center of that sentence? I help my company. We do this. We help people like you that are struggling in the water, that never asked for help. We throw out free life rafts and buoys to save you. Oh, you're not drowning. Oh, you don't want help? No. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. I always wonder those people when we used to have malls open, right when I go into the store and they'd be like, can I help you? Like, why do you lead with that? It's such a stupid question, right? Instead you should say something like, who are you shopping for today? Yourself or someone else? That's a great opener, right? You walked into the store for a reason. I'm assuming you're here for someone. Must have someone in mind. Is it you or someone else? That's a great opener. I'm looking for me. Okay, men's section is over there. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm looking for my wife. Okay, women's sections over there. I don't know if you have any questions. We have, we have some deals on X, Y, Z. Right? Like people don't want unsolicited help. We're not interested in that. It's a turn off for us. So you look at your sales copy, you look at your messages, your emails, your demo, your disco questions. Who is it about? Who's the center of the sentence? Is it your buyer or is it you? Because the buyer is supposed to be the knight in shining armor and you're supposed to be Merlin. The whole point of what you're doing is to give the magic sword that's going to help that knight slay the evil dragon. Your job is not to be the hero. Don't be the hero. You know, step out. That's why I call it the mic drop method. In 20 seconds or less, I can go from getting a hello on the phone to getting the other person talking myself off center stage. I want to drop the mic. I want you to speak. So I'm going to ask, I'm going to frame a problem that I know you have and I'm going to ask you a question, how you handle it. I'm going to take a step back and let you take the floor and address it. I don't want to talk. I'm not the hero. So that's a huge part of this, right? So the classic line that I see on all the LinkedIn profiles, like all these sellers, like the most generic profile tagline that I see is I, we help or I help blink with blink. I help CFO struggling with rising benefit costs. You know, I help, I help. You know, doctors get more appointments. Okay, who's the hero in that sentence? Seller. The seller, not the buyer. Who's supposed to be the hero? Supposed to be the buyer. Seller. Play your part. Instead of saying, I help blank with blank. Be like, do you struggle with. Have you found that? What issue are? Have you had enough of. Now you're talking about me. Got to make it about them, not you.
