Nick Cegelski: How Slowing Down Can Speed Up Your Success

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Nick, thanks for joining us today.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

It is my pleasure to have you, my friend. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. So my name is Nick Zagielski. I'm based in Southern California, in Pasadena. So if you're a football fan, I'm right by the Rose bowl. And presently I run a organization called 30 Minutes to Presidents Club. It's a sales podcast webinar series newsletter where we only and exclusively talk about things that salespeople can do, say or write that very day. So we don't talk about stuff like you gotta have empathy, you gotta sell value. We don't talk about stuff like culture or mental health or hard work. All that stuff is very, very, very important. Do not get me wrong, but the focus of what we talk about is only and exclusively stuff that people can put into action that very day. So I'm hoping to deliver the same on this interview. My background for folks that don't know, for most of my career I sold software to law firms. So that's where a lot of the context for what I'll talk about today comes from.

This is great. And Nick, I know I'm a lawyer. I know that must have been really easy for you to do.

It was easy in some ways, it was challenging in others. With your background as being an attorney. The partnership structure of selling to a law firm sometimes lends itself to different decision making process than selling to a normal corporate entity. The partnership structure was certainly unique from a negotiation perspective in particular.

This is great. And listen, I could tell you are a smooth salesperson because I was setting you up to slam it down on my people. But you didn't do it.

Oh, it was something. I've got some stories. I've got some stories.

That's awesome. Well, cool, man. Well, today we are going to talk about what people don't understand, about what it takes to understand and listeners. Nick and I were chatting essentially just like bro ing out for a bit before the conversation, getting to know each other. And we realized that there are people. Like you said, Nick, there are some platitudes that people like to talk about. Hey, empathize, hey, seek first to understand. But then when you peel back the layers, then you start to realize just how complex that is. And so we want to go deeper into this, and Nick has some brilliant, brilliant tools that we could put into action today to make it easier for us to have these conversations and help us to be more effective. And so when you think about seeking first to understand and the challenges people have with understanding, where does your mind go to first?

Well, so that is a phrase that sounds really good, but it doesn't actually tell me what I need to do with it. And one of the things that I think most people understand in a negotiation is the more that you can understand the other party's perspective, the more information that you have that's an asset for you. And so by seeking to understand, what you're really doing is collecting more and more information that will be the foundation for how you will actually negotiate. And so I think about some tools that you can use to actually seek to understand. Because just saying, well, I'm going to seek to understand doesn't really tell you how to do it. One of the best things that you can do. My favorite, favorite phrase from a negotiation standpoint is the question, what did you have in mind? And I use that almost as my stock response to any demand or question that the other party gives to me. So if I'm in a sales context and I'm showing a demo and somebody hits me with, well, you know, what sort of reports does your program have available? My response, because in the moment, I'm like, whoa, okay, they hit me with sort of a hard question. Like, I go back and I say, well, what did you have in mind? Well, we really need to be able to see a, B and C. Now I know how to answer that question. Well, we can do a, B and C and this in a negotiation, if they hit me with something like, well, those billing terms you proposed, those aren't acceptable to us. Instead of me trying to fight that objection on the head, my simple response is going to be, well, what did you have in mind? And the intent here is I actually don't understand what they mean by billing terms. And I'm going to use billing terms in this conversation. Probably a decent amount as a proxy for a lot of asks that you might hear from another party. But. So my response in that scenario is, what did you have in mind? I'm not saying, yeah, we can do it, but I'm trying to understand more about what that specific thing means. Some other tools I could use in that scenario. Well, let's look at the phrase billing terms. What does that actually mean? I don't know yet. Are they talking about the price? Are they talking about net 30, net 60, net 90? Are they talking about it's all due upfront? Are they talking about we're invoicing them via ACH instead of a credit card? There's a lot that that could mean. And I do not want to assume the cardinal sin in a negotiation here, especially in the sales context, is I never should assume it is actually. Well, it's okay to assume. Let me correct. That is okay to assume as long as, say, hey, I'm assuming that means X. The better thing to do, however, is say, well, hey, you know what, thanks for sharing that. If I say, what do they have in mind? They say, well, the billing terms aren't right. Okay, I'm not going to say, what did you have in mind? Again, I'm going to say, well, the reason that I ask, and I often will do this when I'm asking a question, I say the reason that I ask, I want to have a reason behind every question, is I've seen the term billing terms mean different things to different people. And I want to make sure I'm accurately understanding what your ask is here. So what I, I'm doing is step one was I just hit them with the simple response of what do you have in mind? The other thing that I'm doing here is I am asking them to define the term of the ask that they threw at me. Anytime somebody uses sort of a blanket term or I've heard somebody say like euphemism before in a negotiation or sales context, I want to understand what they actually mean there. When somebody uses an analogy, well, what do you mean by that analogy? I've heard that mean different things to different people. My intent here is I actually want them to get extremely explicit in sharing what the definition of their ask is. Again, this all comes with the intent of trying to seek for more information.

Man, Nick, I feel like we could wrap up this podcast right now. You just provided so much value in such a small period of time. It's incredible. And again, before going back into the interview, just zooming out for a second and saying you're living up to your ethos there, where you're saying, I want to make sure this is practically, you put it into practice today. I mean, I'm trying to find ways for me to do this right now, like once I wrap up this podcast. This is great. And so I think, again, like you said, you're spot on. One of the biggest barriers to our understanding is the assumption that we do understand. And I think we have to be humble enough to recognize that even if we understood the words that the person said to us, that doesn't mean that we understand what the person meant, because we might understand, we might have the same word, we might understand what that means to us, but we don't know what it means to them. And so taking the time to slow down the conversation and ask and clarify, that's going to be so powerful.

Well, the other thing to consider there is, Even if you 100% understand what they mean with their ask, is it still is in your best interest to seek to ask them that question for more. And I'm not saying super obvious things like if they say, I can't figure out how to join the zoom audio, you're not going to be like, you know, what do you, what do you mean by that? Right. But what I'm signaling to the other person when I get extremely, when I ask them to be extremely explicit with their asks is that I am actually interested in understanding their point of view. And there are too many salespeople that actually don't have interest in what the other person is saying. And so when I actually am asking these follow up questions and saying, well, that means different things to different people. I'm showing them, I'm demonstrating to them that, hey, I am actually listening to you and interested in your point of view. It doesn't mean I'm going to accept your asks, by the way, but I am interested in hearing your perspective on these things. And so I think that's really important also in making the other party in a business negotiation feel like, hey, I respect your point of view and I respect your opinion and I want to understand it. The other sort of subtle thing that I'm doing here is it is really easy to get bamboozled and like thrown off by somebody who comes in really hot with a bunch of asks. And what you actually do when you ask them to get explicit around the definitions is you slow things down to your favor. And so I lean on that really, really heavily. Every time they have an ask, I'm going to take them through the sort of painful process of explaining to me, what do you mean by that? Well, what did you have in mind? Can you tell me a little more about that? You know, we don't usually have people ask for something like that, I guess. Where do you feel like that's coming from? I'm hoping to understand your point of view on things. I'm asking questions like that a lot. I'm sort of raking them through the coals of like, hey, if you're going to ask stuff of me, I really want to understand your of view. And how are they going to get mad at me for wanting to understand their thing? A quote that I sort of try to live by in a negotiation context is trade, your cleverness for bewilderment. And what that means is instead of you in understanding everything that they say, I'm bewildered. I'm a dummy, right? I need you to explain that for me. Please walk me through that. Because it's really frustrating to try to negotiate with a dummy sometimes. And I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm not trying to slow the deal down. But what I am trying to do is put myself in the most advantageous position while also understanding what the other party actually needs. Because there's different types of negotiators. There's people who just want to get a better deal. And those people, my job is to hold the line a little bit, right? But then there's people where it's like their business legitimately, like it can't function based on some of the terms that we've proposed. And it's my job to deeply understand those and see if there's a way that we can find a mutual meeting ground between the two of us. And so my job is not to be a jerk or be intentionally dull, but my job is to slow things down, to understand what actually matters here, what's necessary.

This is great. And you know, when I. When I think about some of the characteristics of great negotiators, great communicators, one of the things I realize is that they're very surgical. They're not going into these conversations like a large, blunt object, right? They're slowing things down. They have this scalpel. They're very precise. Like, this conversation's moving kind of fast. I'm going to slow it down. You said one word in that massive paragraph, I want to key in on that one word, and I want to know what that one word means to you. Interesting. Can you help me understand why that thing is so important to you?

Okay.

We're going very, very deep and methodically through the conversation. And so I think that's, again, it's something very simple to implement. But I think the biggest issue that people have with that isn't that they don't understand what to do or why they should do it. It's about having the humility to do it and ask those questions, and also the patience and discipline to actually slow things down when they themselves might want to rush through it. They have to sl down in order to have the conversation effectively.

Well, let's lean on the discipline side of that piece for a moment because that's also really important. Because if you actually think about a negotiation, there's the skill of knowing what to do, but then there's also like. Yeah, I think, I think a lot about, like a software sales context where I've worked for months and months and months showing demos and meeting with people, this organization, and we're so close to the finish line of getting a contract signed. And then we go on what I think is going to be, you know, a quick call to talk about the contract and the terms, and they start hitting you with stuff hard and you're getting punched in the face, and it is very easy to get rattled there. And one thing that has helped me a lot is prior to any negotiation, people talk about planning and like, there's these elaborate worksheets that I see people put together of your best case, their best case, your worst case, their worst case. I just try to jot down a couple bullet points of, like, things to keep in mind. So I'll literally, before every negotiation, I'll have a piece of paper in front of me and I write down the word. What did you have in mind? I write down the word. No, unilateral gives meaning. Me giving something without getting something in return. I'll write down get all asks on the table. And so I write these things down. I know them, I know them intellectually. But in the moment, when I've got a managing partner of a big law firm and she's coming in hot and tearing me apart, I look at that thing and I look at those bullets and I say, okay, I'm going to reorient around those basic principles. I don't need a fancy worksheet here. I just need to make sure I lean on those principles. Hard.

I love that. And I think that's a level of preparation that really anybody can get to in any conversation. If you're willing to take 60 seconds before the conversation and just write a couple of things down, in most situations, you'll be able to handle that. Right. And again, when we think about these tools that we're giving people, and I know I do it all the time because I. And I think it's a bit of a bias as a lawyer because I get the privilege of being able to be paid to prepare for these conversations. I'm still billing, right. And so I have a very elaborate preparation guide. And I know the listeners are saying, they're like, oh, Kwame's winding up for it. So if you go to americannegotiationinstitute.com guide, you can get access to all of our free negotiation guides. And now back to the podcast. But most people don't have the time to fill out, you know, a five or six page guide. Right. But you do have time to just write something down. And if I'm having a conversation with my wife about, you know, where our kids go to school or how we spend our money or something like that, it would be. She would be kind of freaked out if I came with five pages of preparation, you know, And I think it helps the conversation flow more organically if you have something that you can refer to very briefly just to keep you focused on doing the right thing and avoiding some of the mistakes you could make.

Like.

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Bingo. Totally agree.

Yeah, this is great. This is great. And one of the things that people struggle with is silence. Again, it becomes one of those platitudes. Hey, you know, in negotiations, you need to be silent. Okay, well, what does that mean? Do I just look at them and not say anything? When can I say something? Right? And you have a really interesting methodology for actually operationalizing that. And I think it's cool. Can you tell the listeners about that?

Yep. So on every sales call that I have, I bring either a hot cup of tea or I bring a cup of water. Got some water here today. And the reason for that is there's a joke from a movie where the guy's like, I don't know what to do with my hands. I don't know even what movie it is, but it's like. Like, you're right. I'm like, what am I supposed to do when I'm silent? Just sit there and look at them. Sorry, my zoom froze. Like, what I do is when there's a moment when I want to employ silence, what I do is I actually, I take a sip of water and I do that intentionally. Like, I think it signals to the other person, it's your turn to talk. Because I've got water in my mouth, I've got a cup in my hand. I'm not, like, trying to get a word in. And so have the cup of tea. And then you can focus your energy on, like, drinking the tea. And the bonus with this is you stay well hydrated throughout the day. But that is how I try to use silence. I think the reason silence works, right, the other person fills the void with that, and it can feel awkward. And having some tea can make it feel a little bit less awkward. But again, you're signaling to the other person, hey, I want you to talk here. You're signaling like, I'm listening. You also are soliciting more information, because by them filling the silence, you get more information out of it. And when you want to use it, I think common areas that people know to use it is okay. You just said the big pricing number, right? Or they just hit you with a really hard ask and you don't want to respond right away, so you're silent for a second to hope that they justify with more information. It can be hard to do that. And that's why I use that phrase. Well, what did you have in mind? Because that's essentially the same thing. It's me saying, okay, wait, I heard you. Well, what did you have in mind there? Now I'm asking them, hey, can you please fill the silence? But even in the beginning in the meeting, I think it's okay to come on and say, hey, so the agenda that I've got, even without silence, what I'm trying to do repeatedly in the interaction is hand them the mic, put the mic in their hand, and tell me stuff. So if you think about the context of I'm about to go over A proposal with a customer or they emailed me and they said, nick, we need to review the contract because we've got some asks here. Well, when I get onto that meeting, what I want to do is I always try to set an agenda up front where it's like, hey, I think the intent of this meeting is you had some asks around the contract. If I can. I want to get them in advance so that I can review them and sort of prepare regardless of the whether or not I get them. I go on the meeting and I say, hey, I think the intent of this meeting. I see we've got 45 minutes on the calendar. Do you have a hard stop sooner? Because if you do, I want to make sure I'm watching the clock. I always do that because you don't want to ever get in a situation where you're 18 minutes in and they're like, oh, I have to go, sorry, I've got another meeting I need to get to, because that makes things sort of feel rushed, and that can throw you off course. So I try to set a really professional agenda up front, Confirm the time, confirm the agenda, and hand them the mic. And what that looks like is, hey, I've got us down for 45 minutes. I think that puts us at a stop at 1:45 today. And then in terms of the agenda, I know you had some asks around the contract language. And so I think we're going to be reviewing those key phrase here. Is there anything else that you would really like to accomplish in today's session? And the reason I do that is, again, I want to give them the mic, give them a chance to share more information and make the other party feel like I actually care about what they have to say and what else they want to accomplish. Because one of the worst things that can happen is you make it all the way through this negotiation, and then there's other asks or are the things that they need. And so what I'm trying to do is say, hey, what else would you like to accomplish here? What else would you like to accomplish here? Is there anything else you want to make sure that gets done in this interaction? That is how you set a really professional and succinct agenda.

I love this. And the agenda is such a powerful tool, but often overlooked, I would say, more often than not. Honestly, in a lot of these conversations, it keeps you organized, helps with the pacing, helps with the flow and everything like that. And even though you're taking control of the conversation by handing them the mic and giving them the Opportunity to push, put on the agenda things that they care about. You're not making them feel controlled by you.

Bingo.

And now, and now going back to the silence part. You dropped some dimes there. The first and most important thing. And listen, listeners, I need all of you to like listen in and hear this because this is probably the most important point to make. The movie reference is Talladega Nights.

Okay. I've not actually seen the movie. My high school wrestling coach would joke about it all the time. And so I actually have never seen the movie, but I know the reference.

Your IQ will drop significantly, but you'll be, you'll be better for it.

I don't know. It's going to put me in a negative number at this point.

But yes, that is a great reference. But I love the use of the coffee or tea or water, whatever, because one of the benefits, hidden benefits is mindfulness. Mindfulness, because it slows you down a little bit and you can actually take the time to actually get the tactile feedback by the temperature of the water and the, the warmth of the tea. And it's calming, it's soothing. And you can make that a mindful exercise to kind of take you out of the moment in a good way to make you less emotionally reactive. I've never thought about it from the drinking perspective, but I usually think the same in a similar fashion when it comes to taking notes. A lot of times I take notes the whole time just, you know, because I want to know what's happening. It keeps me organized mentally. But sometimes I'm taking notes exclusively to let the silence ride and to alleviate some tension. If I'm getting a little bit stressed, I'm taking the notes and I'm really paying mindful attention. Feeling my hand dragging on the paper, feeling the tactile feedback of the pen hitting the paper and treating that as like a mini meditation in the middle of the conversation. It helps me to calm down. And then also with the benefit of having the cup is that you, even if you wanted to talk, you couldn't talk while I was there. And so for me, if I'm writing a note, I could talk any time, which is actually a liability in a sense because I might be speaking emotionally rather than strategically, but it's almost like it has a built in shot clock with the way that you're sipping. It guarantees like, you know, three to five seconds in that process of silence, which a lot of times is enough.

The notes thing is actually really brilliant because the one advantage I think that has over the cup of water is. You can extend that as long as you need versus what am I going to do? Slug my whole cup of water or, you know, a shot of the tea on the call. So what I like about the notes is I actually use it a lot in a sales discovery call context where it's earlier in the sort of interaction with the other party and I'm still learning about what they're looking for and what they need. And we're having early conversations. And so, yeah, I'll often write and then I'll sort of, you know, often my interactions are on a zoom call and they can't always see I'm writing. They think I'm just looking down. So I hold the pen up and I say, hey, I'm just taking some notes here, here. And I'll wait a second and they'll often continue. And then you're right, with the mindfulness piece, you can look up and just sort of look at them expectantly like, what's next? I'm here to take some notes. Right. So it's a really good way to prompt the other party to speak.

I like that. I like that. And, and Nick, one of the things that you mentioned earlier, and I want to go back and give you some time to really dig deeply into it because I think it's really powerful, is getting all of the asks in one place. Can you tell the listeners more about that?

Yes. So the worst thing that you could do in a negotiation is they give you three asks and they're pretty hard asks, and you've got to do some work to get them done. And you go back to your team, you have a bunch of conversations, you look at what you're able to do and what you can't do, and you come back and you say, all right, we can do those things. Here's what we need to get in return, etc. Etc. And then they say, great, now what we need is this. And the problem is you. There are. There are dependencies, right? Like if they say, hey, we need net 90 billing terms. Oh, and also, you can't bill us all up front. It's got to be in, in chunks. So you can't bill us for the year, net 90. We need quarterly installments, net 90. Well, those things might be interrelated and your finance team might be able to approve one, but not the other. Well, what happens if the second ask is a mandatory for them? And you could have given that, but not if you gave the prior thing. And so it's actually to the customer's advantage, also the other party's advantage, to give you all the asks in one place in that scenario. And so there's a couple things that I do. One, you want to get all the asks on the table, and you can phrase it the way that I did, where it's like, hey, you know, thanks for sharing those. Those are things that we can consider. Are there. Is there anything else? Are there other things that you feel like we need to take care of in order for this to work? And the reason for it is there are often dependencies between your asks that I need to be aware of so that I can make sure we're tackling this in the best way possible. Sort of an adjacent tip to this is I ask the other priority, rather the other party, to prioritize their asks. So you might say something like, okay, you've asked me for a couple things here. It sounds like billing terms is one. It sounds like the quarterly installments is something that you're interested in. You asked me to do some custom work because you need a different set of reports than our system does. Standard. I assume that some of those things are more important than others. And I suppose if you had to rank those asks in terms of priority, most important to least important, how would you do that? Again, my intent here is to understand what's most important. And what can they say, oh, yeah, we're actually not going to do that at all. Because what I don't want to do is do a ton of work on something that like, yeah, they could have cared less about and then neglect something that really needed my attention. All I'm doing when I ask them to prioritize is they're now telling me where I need to spend the most attention. Because the other thing I think, like, the reality of the situation is, is when you are in a negotiation, you don't have an endless amount of time and resources and attention and focus. And so you have to. In a perfect world, you go in depth on every single ask. And it's really easy for me to sit here on this podcast and say, oh, yeah, make sure you get explicit detail on every single term that they give you. The reality is, if you do that, your negotiation will take 18 hours. And I don't think anyone's got time for that. Maybe you have an extremely important one. Right. What I want to do is understand where should we really be focusing our attention, what's most important, what's least important, and asking. And I shouldn't have to figure it out. You tell me, Mr. Or Mrs. Prospect.

Yeah, you're right. You're so right. It makes so much sense. Again, it's one of those things that's easy to implement but often overlooked because we're rushing. But when you think about it from just an organization perspective, it makes the conversation a lot more organized. But then from a negotiation strategy perspective, we can say to ourselves, oh, okay, well, here we go. They asked for seven different things. And the way that I was thinking about it, my assumption was incorrect. So I'm glad that I took the time because now I can think more strategically about my strategy going forward. What do they need versus what do they want? And so some of those might be more costly or less costly for me. So now I can strategize more effectively. And, you know, we always want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but the reality is a lot of times we're going up against hardcore business people who are more win lose style. And one of the negotiation tactics that people often miss because it's subtle but very impactful is nibbling. So with nibbling, what you do is essentially once a deal is done, more or less done, they say, oh, you know what, by the way, I forgot something. We need this. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty small. We could do that. And then you sign and send the proposal. Oh, Nick, I am so sorry. I forgot. We need this too. Are you sure this is the last one? Yeah, this is it. Okay, cool. And then again, hey, Nick, by the way, wait a second. This nibble turned into a massive bite, right? And so by just telling them, hey, listen, for the sake of time and the sake of understanding and clear communication, can you tell me everything that you're looking for here? Because that helps to insulate you from that potential bad faith negotiation strategy as well.

One other way that I'll voice that over is. And again, I'm thinking this from a sales context where I'm going back and I've got a CEO and a CFO that I'm sort of accountable to as a salesperson, is. I'll explain to them, hey, you know, you've asked me for a bunch of these things. Here's the way that anytime we have to make adjustments to our commercial terms, here's how things work over here. What I have to do is, is I have to go back to my executive team and they will ask me to make a presentation around the conversations that you and I have had thus far. The business case around, like how you're going to be using our software and why, like, we're a good fit from an organizational perspective. And I feel like we are. And what I'll have to do in that presentation is I will have to make a, a list of your asks related to what we're able to give commercially, and they're the ones who will give me the approval on that. And this is a key point around getting all of the asks. And this is also a good way to a tool to use. If they say, ah, just give me your best price. What I do is I say I am going to look extremely junior and unprofessional if I go back to my executive team and say to my cfo, they just want our best price. What they're going to want to understand from me is what does it actually take for us to get this deal done? And if I go back to them two or three times, I'm going to lose a ton of face internally. I'm willing to go in front of that team to make the case because I think that there's, there's a business case here between us and you. I think we could be really good partners. However, what I'm not willing to do is look like sort of a dork in front of my cfo. And so it would be really helpful if you could give me all of your asks so that I can go back and ask them in front of the team. And so what I'm doing here is I'm like, I like throwing myself under the bus. I like asking them for help. Like, I'm going to look really junior if I go in front of my executive team and I don't have a clear ask or I don't have all of the asks. And when you throw yourself under the bus, when you, like, share that worry that you have, more often than not, the other party will reach to save you and help you out. And so I lean on that very, very frequently. And I try to play up, like, there's this big presentation. Most of the time it's me calling my CRO and saying, hey, here are the asks. Let's figure out what we're going to give. But, but, and so I don't want to lie to the other party, but, like, the truth of the matter is, like, there is an executive team meeting at some point and my CRO is presenting things at some point. I want to play up, however, how this is a big interaction here. Like, you've got some asks here and me standing in front of that team. My COO man, he's, he's tough and I'm Going to get ripped apart. If I go up there and say, well, the prospect wants our best price.

It makes so much sense. And it's funny, because you're 100% right. If somebody on my sales team kept on coming back to me, I'm like, we are the American Negotiation Institute. What are you doing? So that's true. And I think a lot of times, again, going back to humility there, a lot of times people are afraid of asking for that type of help. They want to look strong. But really, you are showing that strength by letting them know what your concern is and being open with it. And a lot of times people might say, well, Kwame, they might not care. But again, speaking as a lawyer, okay, Nick is negotiating with lawyers, and it's working for him. Right. And so the reality is it's a legitimate concern. Because if somebody realizes, hey, the negotiation tactic that I'm using here requires my negotiation partner to look dumb in front of their people, that's just not going to fly. Right. And so it makes a lot of sense. And I think most people can empathize with that reality that, hey, even though you might be asking for something legitimate, the way that I'm asking and the way that I'm presenting this request with multiple trips to the. To the cfo, that's just not going to fly. And I can respect their knowledge of negotiation, excellence in resisting that.

Yeah. The other sort of thing that you called out there is like you're sharing your concern with the other party. And I actually think that is another tool folks can use. Where one of the things that we were talking about in the pre call was like, if you sense something, say it. If you have a concern, call it out. And so you can often feel when the other party has reservation or hesitation about something. And so, you know, let's imagine I'm presenting a proposal to somebody, and we're going through a contract, and we just go over the billing terms. I keep using billing terms, but you sort of see a look on their face, right? You hear them sort of make a noise. You might say something like, dave, I'm sort of getting the sense that you might have some concerns around our billing terms. And what I'm doing here is I'm. If I feel it, I want to call it out. But I believe that if a tree falls in the forest, that it does make a noise, even if no one is there to hear it. And I also believe that if somebody has a reservation or hesitation or objection, but they don't say anything, it still exists. And it exists for them. And so it's my responsibility as the salesperson to call out anytime I feel a reservation or hesitation or weird feeling or concern. I need to call that out because it exists still. And I cannot deal with something that I am not aware exists that I haven't brought up. And so I. So I call that looking for trouble. Anytime you sense trouble, I want you to address it proactively. Again, what this signals to the other party is, hey, I want to hear from you. I want to hear from you. And it helps them more openly and willingly share information with you down the line.

Absolutely. And again, listeners, this is great for transactional negotiations, this is great for sales, but also in the difficult conversations we have at work with our colleagues and at home with family and friends, too, because we can get a sense of. Of what? We can get a sense that there's something, we might not know exactly what it is. I saw a little bit of a change in the body language, a change in expression. They leaned back, they cocked their head to the side and squinted. I don't know exactly what that was, but I know it was something. And so I'm going to let them know that I care enough to pay attention to the level that helps me to recognize that, and I care enough to ask, and I want you to feel safe sharing again, because this is. We have to view conflict as an opportunity. This is an opportunity to learn, understand, connect, solve problems. But we're not going to really fully avail ourselves to that opportunity if we are ignoring and choosing willful ignorance when something comes up.

Bingo. Bingo.

Yeah. Oh, man. Nick, I like you. This is good. This is good. You know what you should do? You should start a podcast or something.

Maybe I could. Maybe I could. I don't have as nice a voice as you, but maybe in the future.

No, man, you got it. You got it. So before you go, let the listeners know about how they can get in touch with you. Remind them again about your podcast and how they can connect.

Sure. So the best two places to get ahold of me, one, LinkedIn. My first name's easy. It's Nick. N I, C, K. Last name's a little tougher. It's Sigelski, spelled C, E, G, E, L, S, K I. And I accept all LinkedIn requests except the ones where people send me a spam message that say, nick, would you like to buy some Bitcoin? I usually ignore those. And then if you enjoyed hearing me talk about some of these best practices and you want to learn more about best practices for salespeople that you can actually go use Seal and put into practice today. 30 minutes to President's Club which is on all the podcast platforms is where you can find me.

Awesome. Listeners will put links in the description for all of those things. Nick thank you my friend. Really appreciate it.

I appreciate you. Thanks.

Wait, wait wait wait wait.

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