Speaking confidently in a virtual world with Ravi RajaniQ

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, 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 InsideSalesExCexcellence 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 in these unprecedented times when the world was flipped up upside down on its head. Sorry y', all, I couldn't help it. Like I just had to be saying something here with the unprecedented times. But let's be honest y', all, things are different now. We are more virtual. Teams are virtual, meetings are virtual, Selling is virtual. Once you were able to walk into a room, read the energy, keep people's attention, read body language and present with authority. Now you're conformed. Conformed to a 4 inch window over Zoom. Which is why I'm so pumped to have Ravi Rajani on the show today. Because Ravi is the go to speaking and presenting consultant in the uk. But what's unique is he comes from a sales and leadership background as well, which makes him uniquely skilled to not only how to present better, but how to have a bigger impact and more influence as a leader and as a seller in today's virtual world. So with that I can't wait to dive in here. I hope y' all got your headphones on, because this is going to be fire. Ravi, welcome to the show.

Dude. You know, I loved about the beginning, you know, in the trailers that you get from the movies, in a world divided by fear, it was like that. I liked it.

I couldn't help it.

I appreciate the introduction, man. Good to be here. I'm glad we've got some time to chop it up. I'm looking forward to it.

Let's do it. My man. Well, that's what people tune into this show is because it's none of the fluff, none of the backstories, none of that nonsense. We get right into the good stuff. And so I'm gonna kick it off with this.

Yeah.

Why is being able to speak confidently virtually so important?

Dude, it's. It's everything. I'll give an example. I was coaching an investment bank corporate sales team in an investment bank the other week, and they. They said the number one problem that they're struggling with is before they would see clients face to face and be entertaining, they'd be able to share stories in person, see their reactions, look at the body language, understand if their humor or if their pitch or if their specific solution or story is really landing. And now somebody's got their video off, it impacts somebody's confidence when you speak at the lens. The beauty is you can speak to a thousand people by looking at one lens. That's the beautiful thing. But people can't take this. The silence, man. They can't take the silence. It's cricket. It impacts their confidence. And when it impacts your confidence and you can't speak with conviction, and then, as a result, your credibility stock goes down during any sales presentation. And then as a result, so does the prospect certainty in you as an individual and as a company to solve their problem.

And so let's. Let's double down on that there, because there's two things. There's about how to be a confident speaker, but then there's also how to maintain confidence when you don't have the same vibe. So I'm going to go that route first, because even I deal with this, right? Like, I have no problem speaking on stage, speaking virtually, leading trainings. But it is even different when you've got 500 people, but you can't hear them, you can't see them, they're not interacting with you. So let's start with that. Like, as a speaker, how do you maintain confidence through your presentation when maybe you can't see everybody or they do have their cameras off. Like how do you maintain it?

Well, is interesting thing is, is actually starts before the maintenance. It starts with the momentum. So I'll give an example. Let's take this. I'm a big Kevin Hart fan, right? I'm a huge Kevin Hart fan. So imagine this. Kevin goes out on stage, okay? Now he goes from backstage to the front of the stage and he's doing something already called building participation momentum. So the audience are going crazy, right? They're already stack that energy in the room. And then he gets to the front, he's like, hey, what's going on London? They're like, what's going on Canada? Like woo. And everybody's cheering. And what he's doing specifically is the way I like to see as is stacking the energy in the room so that he's already gotten to a certain level which is giving him the confidence and the conviction to then start with a bang and then maintain that level of energy throughout the remainder of the performance. Now the way I like to think about it in a sales presentation when it's one to many, is you need to stack the energy using the chat function. So very specifically, from a tactical perspective, there are three very specific types of questions that you can ask to stack the energy. Now the first question is very, very simple and high level. For example, something simple like, okay, what is the number one thing that all of you are going to do on this Easter weekend? Tell me, what is the number one thing that you're going to do on this Easter weekend? Now specifically, you ask for one thing. You don't ask for 50, you ask for one thing. And the reason why that question is so generic in general is it's a low pain threshold question. So what I want to do is I want to make people feel comfortable with responding in the chat. So I start stacking the energy. Ah, Clarice, you're gonna. Clarice. Is that even a name? Clarice? I don't know. Clarissa. There we go. That's the name, right? Clarissa, you're gonna be spending time with the family. Okay, where are you gonna be? Walking the dog. And as I mention people's names, I make them feel like a celebrity on their own stage. People love that. People really love that. But also what you're doing is you're making people compliant. Meaning imagine you're in school. Kevin, page number two, please. Can you read that? You're like, oh snap, you stand up in your chair, I better listen, right? I'm going to Be I'm going to. This person's paying attention, so you're setting the tone early on. Now, the second question I ask is a medium pain threshold question, and I'm going to go into why I talk about it in terms of thresholds in a second. But this specific question should be a quantitative KPI that you're measuring meaning on a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you believe storytelling is for hitting your sales quota in Q2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6? Now, the reason why I asked this question second is because now they have already put their hand forward and they feel more comfortable to be that little bit more vulnerable. Now, the beauty is they're offering a number out of 10, and people want to measure the impact of their presentation. Well, then at the end, before you wrap up with a story, you can then ask them the same question. How important do you now believe storytelling is for your success? And you can assess the impact of your presentation on the spot with a KPI. Now we get to the juice. Okay, now we get to the juice. Now we ask a high pain threshold question. Why? Because imagine, Kevin, if I meet you for the first time, dude, I'm like, yeah, so, man, what's the number one problem that you're having at the moment when it comes to your fitness? You're like, what, her? Sorry, who are. Who are you, man? Like, who are you? So now, because I've stuck the energy and I've earned some trust, I can ask, what is the number one specific problem that you're struggling with when it comes to effective storytelling in the sales process to win more revenue. Now, the beauty is I can assess if my core message is truly going to solve a problem that for my audience, as well as key influencers and decision makers in the chat, are now openly telling me what problem my presentation needs to solve. And this allows me to not only stack the energy, get momentum, keep energy high, but solve a real problem with my presentation, not just be a confident speaker, which is just a vanity metric.

I love that. I hope people rewind and listen to everything you just said there, because one is very key when you.

Well, one of the things I want.

To call out real quick was that second question where you come back to it at the end. What I hope people caught there is notice he didn't ask, scale of 1 to 10, how good was my presentation? Or scale of 1 to 10, how much now do you like my product? He asked, scale of 1 to 10, how much of a better understanding do you have of the overarching Theme of say, storytelling, which means he was focused on educating them throughout. And this is something so many salespeople miss is they think they have to educate them on the product versus you're actually needing to educate them on why the product even matters. Right. So for someone like you, your product is, let's say storytelling making people better storytellers. But in order to buy you, I need to understand why storytelling is important. That's why I love the way that you frame that. Because, hey, who believes storytelling is important? Scale of 1 to 10? 5. You spend the next hour explaining why storytelling is important.

Yes.

Oh, now it's a nine. Now I need you to teach. I love that. I hope people. I had to call that out because not most salespeople focus this. That's really, really strong. And so then let's go the opposite direction then.

Yeah.

What you just said there is relatively straightforward and very tactical. Yeah, most people still don't do it. Right. So I guess how can, how can either like a new speaker or someone who's hearing this for the first time actually implement this kind of stuff quickly? Because I talk about this with my own team too, right? Like they'll hear it in a training and like, oh, okay. And then they go to their very next demo and they go, all right, London, so who's doing something for Easter? And no one responds. And they're like, oh shit, what did I just do? So like, what are, I guess then the starting points to start implementing this and getting good at it.

So once again starts with. I'm going to tell you the unorthodox route. And then the thing that everybody probably doesn't want to hear, but may need to hear. Now the unorthodox route is it starts before the presentation because this is how most presentations begin. Kevin, is, is your, is your moot button off? Okay, great. Everybody, we have Kevin Dorsey here from. And it's just that it's so anti climactic, man. And imagine how you feel coming on after that. So what you need to think about is an effective pre demo, pre discovery call, pre presentation routine. And I talk about it in three specific ways. Okay. You need to do three things. One which focuses on the body, one which focuses on the mind. One thing and one thing which focuses on cultivating magnetic energy. Here's what I mean for the body. Take Tony Robbins before he goes out on stage, he's on a trampoline, like fist pumping you. Like he's doing all these things, right? That's an example. I've got a client that likes to do kettlebell swings. Great, whatever, whatever works for you, number two, but also doesn't get you too tired. So, you know, you know, so you blow your load in the, you know, in the pre work before you go do the actual presentation, right? And then you move to the mind. Now the number one thing that I like to do here is meditation. Because think about a boxer. When a boxer is out walking out on stage, rather getting to the center of the ring, he's not or she's not fist pumping the air, going crazy. They're trying to stay relaxed because the trainer knows the more relaxed they are, the harder the punches they can throw. And it's the same as a presenter. The more relaxed you are, the more, the less white noise you have in your mind. And then your, and then your mouth doesn't move faster than your, your mind or you don't, you know, fumbling the words like that. So focus on calming the mind. And then the final thing is cultivating magnetic energy. And here's what I mean by that. A lot of people, when they go to a party, pre pandemic, right? They go to a party and somebody's like, oh, Kevin, Kevin, Janet, I need you to meet Kevin. Kevin, come tell that story, man. And suddenly you're like, oh my God, I'm on fire, man. This is amazing. You feel invincible. That feeling we want to cultivate. Just before you deliver a presentation, hop on a discovery call. Because energy, people, people are attracted to energy, man. It either organically will attract your ideal audience or repel. So think about an effective pre presentation routine so that when you go and ask those three questions, which you will write down on a piece of paper, on a sticky note and, and have it right next to the lens so you know what to ask, when to ask. You've got the right energy and conviction, right? Because positive energy will crush any negative, right? It just will because it's going to be more overpowering. Now secondly, the next thing is, is you need to practice like there's no tomorrow. I'm talking about say one specific thing 100 times, like one specific line 100 times. And think not just about what you say, but how you say it. Most salespeople will say, okay, I'm going to ask the question, what are you doing over the Easter break? And they'll go, okay, ladies and gents, what are you doing over the Easter break? And it doesn't feel fluid. Now one way to think about it is speak to the lens as if it were your friend. Now remember, in 2015. I went on this TV presenting course before I started doing some TV. And the guy goes, okay, so, three, two, one, action. Rav. And I'm like, welcome to. And he's like, what was that? I'm like, I'm a presenter. You know, I've been a presenter. He's like, no, don't. Don't do that. Don't do that, man. I'm like, what's up? And he goes, listen, take the mask off for a second, and let's speak to the lens as if it's an individual. Because what happens is you speak with zero inhibitions, and you can sprinkle in conversational tone and language, and that's what allows you to connect with people. So think about the lens when you're asking those questions, as if you're talking to a friend. Like, right now I'm smiling. People can hear me smiling because I'm talking to Kevin, my friend, right? And now I'm saying the same thing. And I'm talking to Kevin, my friend. And it's very different energy. So think not just about what you say, but how you say it. And that comes through militant practice and also having times where you do ask those questions and you flop.

It's so key here, man. You're just dropping so much on them right now because it's so important. Like, people will say, oh, well, scripts make me sound robotic. And my pushback is always. A script doesn't sound anything. A script is words on a piece of paper. You sound robotic. It is not the script's fault. It is your fault for not making it come alive and bringing that energy and intention. And also the prep. I don't think, actually a lot of people know this is. I have everything that I'm trying to say off to the side here, right? You mentioned prep. Same thing. Because I know what I'm going to ask. That allows me to stay present, that allows me to stay in the moment. Whereas if I was sitting here thinking about, what am I going to ask next? I can't listen to you. I can't stay in the moment because I'm thinking about what has to happen next. And I can't remember his name. He was the guy. Speaking Empire was his course. You remember who did the speaking Empire? I can't remember who. I'll have to find it after this. But one of the things he said that you also touched on was he said, never let someone else introduce you because generally they're never going to do it right, or bring the energy that you want, right? And that's why I hype people up in their intros, because same idea is I want to bring that energy up. I want people feeling good going into it. Now, I have a very tactical follow up question here because, yeah, please, some of the things that you're. Some of the things that you're talking about. Body, mind, magnetic energy works really well. When I have one demo to do or I have one presentation to make as a sales rep or sales leader, I might be in back to back zoom meetings for six hours straight. How can you do this quickly, right? Like, I just got off one discovery call. I literally got five minutes to run to the restroom, grab some water, and back to the next one. How can you kind of go through that body, mind, energy, I guess, quickly if it's not something where, you know, I've got 20 minutes to prep for a call or something?

Yeah, good. Good question. Man. I get asked this all the time. I was literally coaching a sales team last week with this exact point because somebody said, hold on, I've got eight discovery calls. I don't have nine minutes to do this. How can I do that? Here's what I said. So let's take it back. I think it was 2003. Beyonce developed an alter ego after her video in Crazy in Love. Don't quote me on this. Is roughly around that time. And she named this alter ego Sasha Fierce. And she did so because Beyonce openly talks about this, especially in an Oprah interview. You should check it out on YouTube. It's amazing. And she talks about the fact that there was elements of performance anxiety for her and that she could cultivate immediate confidence and magnetic energy with when she stepped into Sasha Fierce. Now, the key is, is it's not about developing an alter ego who is some Persona who is nothing like you. What you need to think about is what are your most magnetic characteristics? Not driven from ego, Right? As in driven from true self. Like, what are my magnetic character characteristics rather, which can actually serve somebody versus serve myself 0.1 and 2. What ritual can I have that in? A light switch? Click of a finger. The association with that click of a finger is, hold on. I'm not Ravi Rajani now. I'm Rav. And that allows you to step into this individual for that call. And this individual could be the most present, they could be the most focused, they're the most empathetic. You can carve out the characteristics for this individual because you have that within you. But it's now that click of the finger actually extracts this individual. So to be clear, alter ego has a very negative connotation. People like, oh, what do you mean? You know, I ain't got an ego. Somebody once told me, ego stands for a guy called Yaya Bakar said, ego stands for everybody's got one, right? And it's. We all do. And when we think about an alter ego, it's just somebody who embodies the most. The most magnetic characteristics of who we really are.

I love that. And also the trigger. Let's touch on this real quick, because I don't want to breeze past this. Yeah, the trigger. You're like, I snap my fingers and.

I get into it.

How can people trigger it? Because I actually think this is a really good call out, right? Because people will sit there and they're like, okay, now I need to become Sasha Fierce. Sasha Fierce, where are you? Can you talk about the triggering, right, of, like, how to get into mode? Because I think that's a good call.

I love it. So I'll take you back to a quick story. So I remember my puppy, Nelly, when we brought her, brought her home the first day, I couldn't get her to do anything, man. I was like, the worst dog father in the world. I was like, what have I done, man? I was anxious. I was stressed out. What have I done? And over time, I remember there was one day where she was, like, shouting at the dog next door, and I was like, what do I do, man? What do I do? And I took a packet of treats, and I rustled. She suddenly went. She turned around. She. She came running in, and I was like, hold on. I've got something here. And over time, every time I now rustle anything, I'm upstairs rustling. She's gonna run up here because she knows something good is going to come of it. So you need to also train your mind to have a similar neuro association with a specific action. It could even be a light switch that you start practicing. Okay. My frame changes once this specific moment happens. And creating, you know, really creating that connection with one specific behavior will transform me into my ulta Persona for this specific call. But it will take time to train that right. It doesn't happen overnight.

I love that. I just wanted to call that out because it's something that, you know, you're dropping stuff at another level, and I want to try to pull some of these things out. People at that are just starting into this because that trigger, having that routine, having that shake of the bag that gets you into it. Like, people ask me, like, why, when I presented this Conference. Like, why was I the first one to start asking for walk up music? Right? Why, why, why are you having them play El Chapo? When you're walking up the stage, it's rainmaker, like, what are you doing? And you're like, like. I was like, is it to get people hype? It's like, no, it's to get me in mode. It's. That brings the best out of me. I don't care if anyone else loves that song or not me. It's my trigger to get in the mode. I need to be to step on stage. And so having a trigger and a routine I think is key there. So, okay, so let's keep going through this presentation, right? So, okay, all right, you know, you've kicked it off the right way. You, you've got some engagement, right? You have those things going, you've got them to answer those first few questions. Now you're into the presentation. How do you maintain it? Because a lot of reps are, you know, they do discovery, right? And they do their discovery and then they go into a 30, 40 minute pitch. And again, when you were in the room, it was harder for people to ignore you. To be honest, you're in the room with them. Like, it'd be super rude to pull your phone out while you're presenting. But over the zoom, you can't see my screen right now. I might have five tabs open. I might be on Facebook right now. Like, so how do you keep the engagement throughout the presentation?

Good point. So we're talking about one to many here, just to be clear, right?

I think it's, I don't, I don't know if it's actually that different. And maybe you can educate us here. To me, one to many is a lot of one to ones, right? And so whether you're presenting to one person over Zoom or 10 or 50 or 100, if you can't keep one person engaged, how do you keep 100?

Okay, good point, good point, man. And I think, okay, so the gurus, quote unquote, will say, always start with story, right? And I, and I do agree to an extent. But to contextualize it for a second, if you are browsing what to buy your wife, you know, next week for her birthday, I don't have your attention, so my story is lost. So to start with, stack the energy that gets somebody's attention. But here's the problem. Attention is short lived. It's here today, gone tomorrow. So I need to quickly transform the attention into connection. And how I do that is through story. So what I would then transition to and remember, contextualize it. Sometimes there is right times to start with story, but you know, stacking the energy is important in a virtual environment. Then I would move to a story. Now, very importantly, a lot of people would tell a story, okay? And sometimes it's six minutes long and it loses the audience. So think about how can you tell a story anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds. Now here's a really interesting tip. Once again, contextualize it for your scenario. But you know, every simplistic story arc, you know, since the beginning of time, very simple, will contain four key elements.

Okay?

Okay. Context, conflict, turning point and transformation. Now imagine if you told a story which gave the context, which gave the conflict, gave the turning point, but then didn't give the transformation at the end. Instead of leaving people with your call to action of book a discovery call, you end with a story and, and you take it back to the beginning. You close that open loop with transformation, right? And make sure that transformation is hooked to three things. In a business setting, a story makes no sense if it's a sequence of events of it's like, yeah. And yeah, so that's what happened. You know, it was really funny, right? And everyone's like, okay, I mean, where was the business value? So time, money and energy. Because those are the three things people want more of. How can you hook your transformation to those three things in a business setting? And the beauty with that as well is at the end people don't feel like, oh, he or she just pitched me. You didn't end with the cta, you ended with the story, which is what people remember last. And it will allow them to really take action on your message more effectively. So I would say the next step would be a cool story. And then I talk about something which I call, you know, you need to be quite polarizing. So if this is one to many, you speaking to 100 people, your message isn't for everybody. But our problem as salespeople and as individuals is we have a need to be liked. You know, we do have a need to be liked and validated. So we will often out of fear in a discovery call or demo inform, fear of losing that sale, craft a general message and try and be everything to everyone versus DE qualify early on and say this presentation is specifically for contact center software businesses doing eight figures a year and looking to scale to nine, for example, that DE qualifies the startup, that DE qualifies the six figure company. And what you then have is Somebody who's really aligned with your message. If people drop off at that point, great, that's a good thing. The vanity metric of I had 100 people come in and then 100 people stayed, you know? You know, they didn't leave the room, man. Okay, great. But you want to speak to one specific type of person that's going to get the attention of the right individual versus stroke our ego. And then I would move to what I call the movie trailer method. You know, like what you did at the beginning in a world divided by fear. What I'm giving here is three hooks, three to four hooks. And what I'm saying is, is I'm also incorporating a little tiny bit of loss aversion here. And what I'm saying is, is this is a sneak peek of the rest of the movie. And if you do do shop online, if you do leave the call for whatever reason, this is what you're going to have to lose. Because at the end, this is what you're going to have learned and the more tangible outcomes that you can have, you're going to get bums on seats.

I love that. Right? And it's true, like the storytelling and the hooks. I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday, so, like, I feel like I'm too long winded. Like, I'm too long winded. I think, you know, you got to. You got to remember in. In life, right, there's no such thing as long. There's only interesting and uninteresting. You can tell a very short, uninteresting story and it's still too long. Right? Or you can tell a very interesting long story, the 40 Nights of Arabia. Right? Or however that's. That was 40 days of the same story, but it incorporated what you were talking about. Hook after hook after hook, open loop after open loop after open loop. And that's what keeps people engaged throughout a presentation. So I want to take a step back. Actually, I wasn't going to talk about this, but then you said the word, so we're going to go here. So you said polarizing. And also earlier you talked about gurus. So you've been putting out some stuff on LinkedIn over the past couple of months, like calling out some of the ridiculousness that is happening with a lot of call, like the LinkedIn gurus or sales gurus or things like that. And so talk to me a little bit about, like, how to walk the line between polarizing and offensive. Right? But like, still being able to do that. Right? Because a lot of people look at Like, I could do that. I couldn't call out like the BS that I'm seeing. Like I couldn't do that. But like, you've done it in a way that I think is. It's funny. It's very truthful in a lot of ways. And so talk to me about being polarizing but in a way that is can't find the right word, like engaging is the wrong word, but like polarizing, but without being offensive. Right. Or turning people off.

Really good question, man. And I'll take it back to, you know, you won't see me talking about politics. You just won't see me. One, I don't have a formed opinion on certain things. I just don't have an interest in it. I'm not going to talk about it. So there are certain things I will stay away from. And I think when people hear the word polarizing, to be blunt, they think, oh God, you know, I'm going to put out a post about politics or race or religion. And if, if you want to, great. You know, it's contextualized for you. But when I talk about polarizing in a presentation sense, what I mean is talking to one very, very specific individual. Here's what I mean. Before any sales presentation, what I get people to look at is answering seven specific questions. Now, these seven questions can include some things like, who is the one person that I specifically want to speak to today? Number two, what are the big problems that are keeping them up at night at 1am and stopping them from sleeping? Number three, what do they want by the end of this presentation? Number four, what is my specific call to action, you know, at the end of this presentation? Number five, what is my unique mechanism to take them from pain to glory? For example, my specific methodology, my secret sauce. And number six, it was got off Tom. Oh, that's it. The unspoken and spoken objections that you will face so you can use storytelling to handle those? Number seven, I forgot it off the top of my head, but it was if. When it comes back, I'll mention it. But having those three things answered allows you to speak to one specific person. So when you get to the point where you say this presentation is specifically for, that's being polarizing. But I think the word polarizing has some aggression behind it. But we're specifically saying speak to one person. So, for example, if you're an sdr, who is speaking to and you know, an enterprise sdr, your messaging should only be for the revenue category or the specific industry or territory that you're trying to Market versus it's the end of the month, I need to hit quota. Whatever comes my way, I'm going to get it. So it's more about understanding who you're speaking to and speaking to that person so you organically repel those who are not a good fit.

And I think that's important. I think I want to back up here a little bit because there's a theme that has been in almost every single one of your answers that I want to make sure people are catching, which is how prepared you are. You're prepared. You prepared your body, mind and energy. You prepared your three questions, you prepared your stories, you prepared the seven question frameworks. And I want, I just, I don't think people understand the amount of prep that goes into when people make it look effortless because they were applying effort beforehand, they were applying efforts before they got on that stage. That's why they can make it look effortless. And it's something I talk about with my own team all the time. Like if you're not prepared to be great, you can't be great. And so I just, I want people to catch that because you have frameworks, you're prepared, you have an intention, which is like the theme of my own sales team is execute with intention.

I love that, man.

Everyone's out there executing, but without intention, right? So having that intention of like, what am I actually trying to achieve? Like, funny enough, like you stating that like, what's my call to action going to be? Most sales reps actually don't know what their call to action is going to be in the demo. They hope it's gonna be a sale, but they're not prepared to even ask for it. And so I think that's really, really important. Now when you remember number seven, you gotta come back to us. And up.

Dude, I've got it.

I was like, what is he open looping me right now? Is he trying this on me?

No, no, no. It's what has prevented them from achieving their goals thus far. So we understand that. Right? Because you know, you can really get an understanding of where they are in terms of the self awareness around the problem they have. And going back to, you know, very quickly, a really interesting point you said about the cta. A mentor of mine who I was working with last year, a guy called Scott Oldford, really cool guy, and he spoke about something he has called the SSF method. And he said that in marketing you have people who are on the sidewalk, people who are on the slow lane and the fast lane sidewalk Is, you know, the type of individual he says that may not specifically know who you are. They don't know if they've got a specific problem, they're there to learn more. The sidewalk, sorry, the slow lane, rather, is, I've got a problem. Is Kevin or Rav the right people to solve it? I don't know. Fast saying is, I've watched your content for a year. I got context. Let's go, man. You know, where's the solution? So with the CTA understanding what they've tried thus far, that hasn't worked, and where they are in those lanes, if somebody's in the slow lane, you. If you pitch a product, of course you're going to get zero conversion. You may pitch a lead magnet. If they're in the sidewalk, sorry, they're in the slow lane. Maybe a lead magnet is too light. Go for a discovery call. And then if there's, you know, enough context, are in the fast lane, great, you can go for the product. And that's what can help you with conversion as well. It's an interesting thing to think about.

No, I love that sidewalk, slow and fast lane. It's just understanding that not everyone is the same. And if you can identify where they are, your tactics change. So much of sales people, everyone's treated the same. They downloaded a white paper, they downloaded a demo request, they were at a trade show booth, they put their business card in a bowl to win some AirPods, and everything treated the same way versus, if you had the intention of just moving them from one lane to the next, your tactics change and you go through things the right way. And so that's really, really important. So, oh, man, it's gonna be tough to stop here. This is the stuff. I love this stuff. I love this stuff, right? So, okay, now we've talked prep, we've talked energy stacking, we've talked storytelling to engage, We've talked kind of the framework of, okay, here's what your intention used to be going into the demo. And we've talked practice. And so I think the last thing I want to, I think hound on here, not hound on here, is to dive into is just how to get better at this, right? So people have been listening to this and go, okay, like, how do I actually practice this? Right? Because I've actually changed. You know, funny enough, I really have tried to remove the word role play out of my dictionary, like, my vocabulary, because just the words role play make people afraid. So I really try to call it practice now. But how do you practice with intention? To get good at this. Earlier you mentioned chunking say one thing 100 times over and over again, which I firmly believe in. But how do you make this now a habit? How is this something that starts to become, become effortless as you do this, you know, day in and day out?

Dude, it's. Man, I love your questions. I feel like we could go for an hour because I still want to talk about creating the villain testimonials. I'm like, we're doing part two.

We're doing part two. I'm bringing you back. Don't worry about it. I'm bringing you back. We're gonna do a part.

I feel like I've not done the presentation justice. But yeah, we got through quarter of it. But okay, going back to the what you mentioned, really good point. So I'll give an example. I was working with a sales team about four weeks ago and what I did was I said, okay. They said, what should we prepare for this, you know, workshop 60 minutes? I said, nothing. They said, what do you mean I said nothing? I said, just come, just bring your energy, let's go. They're like, okay. So I gave them a one pager and it was a Shark Tank style simulation. They had one pager. They're the co founder of a company with X, Y, Z and there's all these different bottlenecks and they've got a pitch to the Sharks. We call it the Dragons over here in the uk, but the Dragons or the Sharks. And they have to deliver a pitch. Now what happens is, is I don't know about you, Kevin, but for me, if I have three months to do a task and practice something, I'm going to wait till lastminute.com and do it. I need urgency. And I think as humans, urgency often can really. You know, pressure creates diamonds. So in that scenario, subconsciously, you're practicing how to structure a 60 second pitch, which is what they end up doing. You're practicing how to actually construct a story arc and also an effective story within that arc. And also you're practicing delivery. And then you're like, oh, okay, I just practiced. And okay, that was. Did I do all right? Did I do not all right? Take the recording. Take the recording. And then take a look at the subtleties. Little tiny things. When you spoke about asking the Sharks for a million dollars for 1% of the business or whatever, did you have conviction in your voice or suddenly did you do this? Did you suddenly like flinch or scratch your head because actually you feel uncomfortable talking about money, which reveals Stories that were actually up here that are preventing us in the sales world. So I would say, as leaders, you know what I always think is amazing is creating scenarios where people are put in these positions in a safe environment, by the way. Not like you're gonna ruin people or grill people to the point where they never want to do it again, but safely. Every week, people have to deliver a presentation on a topic of their choice for 15 minutes, and then they then get feedback on it. Everybody listens to other people's presentations every morning. This is something that I used to do with my sales team. We would get up and everybody had to bring in an object from their desk. Some people brought in a pen, a laptop, a picture frame, and they would go out on the middle of the table. And every morning people would pick an item. They would have 30 seconds to think of a story about that Item and then 30 seconds to share a story. And then people would vote on what was the most impactful story. And guess what? When you gamify the process, salespeople want to win, right? And it becomes a game where people say, I want to improve because I want to be voted as the most impactful for today. And secretly they're learning and actually having fun in the process. It's like me, man, I hate running, but I enjoy playing, you know, tennis. I haven't done it in a while, but I enjoy playing tennis. I'm running, I'm having fun, same result, and I'm going to continue doing it.

No, I think that's so key is like, to give the framework, give the practice, the feedback, listening to themselves and going from there and having some fun with it. People take this shit way too seriously sometimes, like, way too serious. Actually, behind me, I think you can see it, right? I have my sales hat. I've got up on the corner and people are like, oh, you put your sales hat. I was like, actually, no. The reason why I have that sales hat is to tell people, take the sales hat off. Salespeople do really dumb things, right? You talk about the presenter Persona. Like all of a sudden they flip mode and we start using terms. So what are your current problems that you are forecasting in terms of your inability? We don't talk that way. And so. So I was going to rap, but you said something. So we're going to keep going because I don't care, like, whatever, it's my show, I get to do this shit. Villain, right? Let's talk about creating a villain or a common enemy because it's such a key Factor and like, tactic makes it sound weird, but, like, for creating connection and trust and influence is establishing a common enemy or creating a villain? Talk to me about this a little bit.

Well, I'll give an example. Every single Hollywood movie, Disney movie, since the beginning of time has a villain. It has an antagonist. Why? Because people need somebody to root for. Right? But also, the higher the amount of content conflict, the more emotion we can evoke in the audience. And as a result, you know, it's. It allows the hero of your story to really be. Will surface as victorious in the most impactful way. So in a sales presentation, take for example, in the 1984 Macintosh release, Steve Jobs started his presentation with IBM as the villain. And then when I tell people that they're like, okay, write down the list of our competitors and let's nail them. And I'm like, no, don't. No, I'm. Don't need to do that. But the villain can be anything, dude. It could be you as an individual getting in your own way. We all do that. Right? It could be external market, market, market conditions. Rather. It could be. It could be another company. It could be a specific bottleneck that you've noticed is a pattern with all of the different companies that you've worked with. And you're like, that's what's always stopped them from taking the next step. Because the villain in a prospect for who's just learning about your solution is the different villain to somebody who's been working with you for two years and now needs to be upsold to another solution. Two different villains. So you really need to understand the ICP is there versus okay, the villain is this. That's a great starting point, but it goes back to understanding the prospect and having the correct antagonist to ethically. Right. Keyword is ethically ensure that they're. What the next steps are is the right solution for them. And also, you're solving a real problem, not one that you just plucked out of thin air and psychologically created. Like, we've all heard the stories about old school salespeople, you know, denting the car outside. Ma', am, I've just seen you've got a dent on the car outside. Hey, we work for fix it. I explained press and we fix doors and cars. Doors for. Right. That's unethical. Right? But for example, we want to illuminate the pain, highlight it, not create it out of thin air. So that goes back to really understanding your icp.

I think that's key. And like that ad, if you, if you haven't watched the ads gone down as one of the most brilliant commercials of all time. Right. And the, that super bowl ad of destroying the computer with, you know, everything about it. And what's interesting to what you talked about, the villain, and this is really important to call out too, is Jobs didn't say IBM was the villain. Yeah, that big computer, the old dark. It didn't say IBM on it, but you knew who it was. But because it allowed the audience to label who that represented, it now becomes more believable. So if you come out and say IBM is bad, even if people agree with you, they're like, well, you said it. And so I no longer believe it. Versus if you can describe in deep descriptions of what the enemy is, kind of like, it allows the listener to believe that picture and it comes from them of like, yeah, that looks like a Macintosh, or that looks like an IBM. Oh, yeah, the IBM is old and stuffy. Right. And you never have to say it. So that descriptive language, I think is so key and it's what tied into great stories, right. If you can tell great stories, you use descriptive language. This is one of my favorite facts about storytelling, is a great story turns off the logical part of the brain.

Yeah.

And that is exactly what you want happening in a presentation or a sales deck or whatever else, because logically, if they're thinking logically, they're going to tune out. They don't want to pay attention, they don't want to buy something new. But if you can use descriptive language, they can't help it. And it lights up that part of the brain and it's just so valuable.

Dude, I love that it's so important. And I think we forget that a lot of salespeople. And I think what's interesting to note as well, you know, something from my perspective is you can have a story at the beginning which is emotional, but if your buyer Persona is a cfo, you can tell a story at the end. You know, close that loop, which is transformation, the transformation of the original story, which is then connected to data, and that is then going to appeal to the logically minded. So you close both types of buyer Personas with one story versus one which is simply tear jerking or one which is simply 5,000 people a year struggle with it, you know.

Well, so what's interesting actually about. I'm glad you brought that up because as, as humans, right. As humans, how stories affect us is actually, it's biological more than anything else. Like, it affects us the same ways. It's the types of stories. So what would trigger an emotional response in a CFO is different than what would trigger an emotional response in maybe a VP of hr? Let's, let's go here real quick. What is a CFO afraid of?

CFO is afraid of making a decision which impacts their budget that negatively works against them and doesn't produce an roi.

So telling a story about missing a decimal.

Exactly.

Telling a story about one value in a multi page Excel doc being off and impacting the operating plan for millions of dollars. Right. And so this is where people I think sometimes go wrong is they do they think of CFO or like engineers a lot? Well, they're just so logical. So you just have to give them the abcdefg.

Yeah.

Not true. You tell a story that would resonate with their emotions. What does your earlier point said Personas. What does an engineer care about? What does a CFO care about? Tell stories that resonate there. Then the transformation is the logic. The transformation is the completion of it all. So. Oh man, we're not done. We're definitely doing a part two, but I know I'm probably losing people at this point, but this is the good stuff. This is actually, this is a perfect example. We said this earlier. There's no such thing as long or short. There's interesting or uninteresting. We could keep going for you and I could riff on this probably for another good two, three hours and we would never be like that with too long. So. So let's wrap on here. I got two questions left for you to to wrap.

All right, let's do it.

So let's call this part one. We have covered a lot already in part one, and we still got more to cover in part two. If there were three things that you wanted people to remember from this conversation today, what would those three things be? We've covered a lot.

Influence and effective communication can be taught. Yes. Some people can pop out the womb naturally gifted in something just like you. Everybody has a gift, but talent alone without doing the reps is wasted. Number two would be storytelling. Presenting and speaking is a skill set just like anything else. It's not specifically reserved for the extrovert. Right. It's not. Oh, you've got gifted a gap. You'll be a good speaker. You know the classic problem? Oh, you got gifted a gap. You should be in sales versus you're a great listener, man. You should be in sales. Like what the. You know. Right. So that's another, that's another rabbit hole. And then the fight, the final thing Is storytelling isn't fluff. It's a very structured sequence. Events. Sequence of events that can influence your ideal client to take action on your message. Now I'll leave you with this. A lot of people say stories are, you know, I can't figure out a four or five line story. I can't deliver a story in that amount of time. You know, executive presence people always talk about less is more, how to deliver a sharp story. Well, imagine this. I'll give you a classic story which includes context, conflict, turning point and transformation in four lines.

Okay.

The incy wincy spider went up the water spout. Context. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Conflict. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. Turning point. Incy wincy or itsy bitsy as us would say. Yes, up the spout again. Now that's a transformation in a business setting. As I said, hook it to time, money and energy. It can be done. But remember, the ART is a 12,000 word dissertation. That's great, but the art really is. How can you convert that into a 1,000 word essay? But you can't do the 1,000 word unless you've done the 12,000 word dissertation. So something to think about now.

I love that, man. So it's so true. I think there's the classic storytelling example too. I don't remember which novelist it was, but they challenged them to write like the shortest like horror story of all time, right? The shortest horror story and took like a month or something for them to come back. And the story was baby shoes for sale unused.

Yes, I read that in Dan Kennedy's the Ultimate Sales Letter.

Is that okay? Yes, dude. Dan can. Now we're on Dan Kennedy level. Dude, this is, this is going to get troublesome for everybody else. But like the point being like that was a one sentence novel because you can piece in all the other things that may have led to that. Baby shoes. Unused. What is that? Like, it allows you to do so much from one line, but the key to it was how long it took to write that one sentence.

Dude. So we're vibe. I know that I wanted to.

Oh man.

I really want to talk about the damage limitation concept. And how do you remember that in the book that is do it.

We're not done. Go for it.

Like the interesting thing is, is startups, they are sometimes always trying to be the bigger competitor. Oh, we can't compare against the company who's doing 100 million ARR or whatever. Right. But actually damage limitation is like in 8 mile B rabbit Goes to the front. He's like, I'm this, I'm this, I'm that. Drop the mic. What else have you got to say? And it's very similar if you tell a story like, listen, we don't have a call center where we keep you waiting for eight minutes long because you're one of a hundred thousand people in the queue. We don't have a hundred offices worldwide. But actually, if having an amazing team, which is personalizing, give you a call every month is your thing, and if you have this, this, that, then maybe we're the right people for you. And it's. It's amazing, man. You're just talking about your flaws and allowing it to be magnetic to the right people. It's just amazing. But I haven't really. I haven't even finished that book. I need to go back and finish it. I got up to that point, I was like, man, this is amazing.

I think on my shelf back here, I've got ultimate sales that are. I've got Renegade Millionaire. I've got a few more from like that whole group, right? Dan Kennedy, Gary Cowler, like all. All that crew. And so funny enough, I teach 8 miling to my teams on objections.

I've seen it.

Yeah. All right, last question I got for you here, man, is, you know, the name of the podcast is live better sell Better, Right? I have this weird idea that if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more joy and fulfillment in our lives, that our sales would also improve. What would your live better advice be for people listening?

Oh, man. I think especially in the pandemic, it's really taught me that this is so classic. I know it's really boring what I'm about to say, but financial success is one element of. Of success. And I think it's important to be holistic in your view of success because that's how, you know, people talk about. In the environment that I worked in, in investment banking, you know, sometimes you would work, quote unquote, 12 to 14 hour days, whatever, you would be at your desk. But were you really working for that period of time? No, you weren't productive, but it was FaceTime to show I'm working. But actually that time you could have spent in the gym with your family, which has charged up your batteries more, holistic success, which have in turn filled up your cup financially and then overflowed in being able to take care of yourself, then the family, then other people, and then impact on a higher level. So I think, you know, thinking about success more Holistically, and I think everybody's doing that in the pandemic. They're really starting to shift what their view is of success will help you sell better.

I love that, man. I think I wrote about this a few months ago. I was like, a phone left off. The charger doesn't charge, right? And, like, you know, if your battery runs low, but you don't add energy, you don't get more energy back. And so many people, when they're tired, they don't do things that bring them energy. They just sit and it doesn't actually generate, you know, more energy for you. So, my man. So trust me when I say you're coming back for round two, because we still got more to go into this. This is such amazing. Where can people go get more of you? Where do you have courses, books, webinars? Like, where can they get more of you in their life? Because I'm convinced that people need it. So where. Where can they find you?

Thank you, brother. I say the number one place where I hang out the Most is on LinkedIn. So send me a connection request. I'd love to connect with you if you're a sales leader. I'd love to learn more about what you're doing with your company in terms of. Of your team, rather, when it comes to effective communication and storytelling. If you're an individual, I do have a boot camp called the Powerhouse Speaker Bootcamp, designed to help you speak with confidence and deliver impactful virtual presentations. So connect with me on LinkedIn if you're a leader. DM me with the word boot camp, and we can talk more. And if you're a. If you're a sales team, let's chat. I'd love to hear more about what you're doing and how you found the podcast man.

Hell, yes. Well, shoot, I'm about to DM you boot camp right now, my man, because we got more to talk about. So, Robbie, my man, great shit. Thank you for your time, energy, and insights today, man. Really enjoyed it.

Appreciate it, man.

Hell, yeah.