Improve Your Communication to Double Sales with Phil M. Jones | #neelhomepod ep. 12

Everything you say is either helping or hurting. And it taught me to understand that there must be some skill around this because we know that if you do not ask, you do not get. Yet we still find ourselves not asking for the things that we want in life. So it's not this desire to ask that stands in our way. It's the skills around how you can ask.

Honestly, guys, this might be the most impactful episode we've ever done.

I don't believe that there is a problem that cannot be solved or helped in any area of life without being able to find the right words at the right time. It's the most important skill to have in the world.

When I've learned to communicate better, it's helped me in all areas. In events, speaking on video, making content, and it's probably my number one skill in terms of roi.

Curiosity is a superpower. And in all areas of communication, you're just trying to help somebody else find clarity on what their next step is, clarity on what their belief is, clarity on what the outcome is they're looking to try and achieve.

Everyone's trying to become a better communicator. What are the biggest mistakes people are making when they're in those conversations?

I've learned that if there's a hard way of doing something in an easy way, I'd rather do it the easy way. And the easiest way that I've learned to achieve results without friction, where both parties feel like they're winning, is to.

So have you ever noticed that people within an industry, they're offering a product or service and some people within that industry make 10 times the money than somebody else in the same industry offering the same exact thing? Why is it like, why does that happen? What are the traits of those people who are ultra successful? Well, if you look deeper, they know exactly what to say and how to say it. It's. It's communication skills and it's actually effective communication skills. And so for today's episode, what I wanted to do is bring on somebody and do a masterclass in exactly what to say. And so our guest today is a seven time over bestselling author. He speaks around the world on this exact topic. He actually has one of the most listened to books on audible of all time and he literally wrote the book on exactly what to say. Our guest today is Phil Jones. Thanks so much for being here, man.

Hey, a joy to be here.

Yeah, we have an event coming up this weekend and we decided to shoot this episode. You just randomly were in town and jumped in here so it turns out great.

It's a. Yeah, it's a delight to be here.

Yeah. Thanks for making the time. So what I wanted to do is really just jump right in today in terms of, you know, like, you talk a lot about this. You talk about change your words, change your world. Right. And the effect that knowing how to do this. And so, honestly, guys, when we're watching this episode today and listening, this might be the most impactful episode we've ever done. Because I've noticed in my own life, Phil, when I've learned to communicate better, it's helped me all. All areas. On camera, in events, speaking on video, making content. And it's probably my number one skill in terms of roi.

Well, it's the only differentiator. Right. Is what happens is that everybody can have a version of the same value proposition. Some of the same services, same offerings. The moments that matter is finding the right words at the right time to communicate what it is that makes you different to the person you're looking to help.

Yeah.

As easy said, in theory, it's more challenging to be able to get it right. And what we're really keen to try and help people understand more about is how you can learn the skills around communication, the skills around how you can be more influential and persuasive in the moments that matter. And let's bring some intention back to what comes out of your mouth.

Yeah.

Because I've learned that everything you say is either helping or hurting. Let me repeat that again. Everything you say is either helping or hurting. Nothing is neutral. And if it was neutral, then it probably didn't need to be there.

Yeah, that's huge. And so when you talk about communication, we're going to get into the specifics and tactics and things people can do. But first and foremost, why do you focus on communication? Like, how did you even get into that? And then we can get into it more.

Why do I focus? Or how did this become an early part of my work?

Yeah, just like, how did you get into this being your niche? Because now you're the guy for this. Right.

Well, I started in business way, way back when I was tiny. And I had my first business at 14. I was knocking on doors of neighbors, asking them if they wanted to have their cars washed. Some said yes, some said no. Most just asked me how much money I would charge, which I very quickly realized meant they were remarkably interested, providing my prices were kind of reasonable. And I did okay with that business. So much so that by the age of 15, I wasn't going to school as often as I should. And I remember getting invited in by school teachers and I would question the school teacher back and, and ask them how much money they were making. They'd refuse to tell me. But at 15 years of age is I was already generating really solid revenues from this tiny little car cleaning business. Had kids in the year below that were doing some of the work. And it taught me the power of asking for things. And then what happened as I worked through other corporate careers in my life, I worked through other businesses that I've built, is I've learned that if you do not ask, you do not receive. We know that's true. Yet still we live in fear of asking for the things that we want because we're fearful of rejection. And it taught me to understand that there must be some skill around this because we know that if you do not ask, you do not get. Yet we still find ourselves not asking for the things that we want in life. So it's not this desire to ask that stands in our way. It's the skills around how you can ask. And this just had me studying human behavior, studying the top performers in any industry, any business I could be attached towards and learning from them success language that was achieving bigger results for them. And what starts to happen is a pattern appears. You start to realize that the people are crushing it regardless of industry, are focused on their word tracks. They know exactly what to say, when to say, and how to make it count. And as somebody who was in leadership roles very young in my career, what I quickly realized was that if I wanted somebody to see something from a different point of view, I was looking for them to change. Well, what I couldn't do is give them my ideas, my advice. I couldn't tell them what I thought they should do. So in studying other people's behavior, it allowed me to be able to present ideas as to how somebody can improve themselves by saying like, not here's what I think you should do. But it could be more. I've been watching what Neil's doing and what Neil's achieving is blank, blank and blank. And those are some of the results that you've said that you'd like to be able to achieve. So. So be more like Neil. And they're like, whoa, that's a reasonable idea.

Yeah.

So all of this has just had me obsessing about how you can use words to influence the behavior of others. And then it's sprinkled into sales training programs. When I started a sales training company, it's Then been a leave behind from corporate events. It's then become something I would speak about and now it's really an obsession.

Yeah. And when you talked about your journey initially with creating content and creating books and all these things to help people, I remember you started with Words. Like, wasn't one of the books the magic words?

Magic Words was one of my early books and that was a book that I turned around very quickly really to meet the demands of being in a mastermind group where people were saying how hard it was to publish a book. And I let my big mouth get me into trouble and say, you could probably turn a book around in three, four weeks.

And you did it.

Yeah. Boys in the, in the meeting said, put your money where your mouth is. And I had to turn that around. And the little book, Magic Words was in fact the expansion of a two page PDF that I'd written prior to help train a telecommunications company in their customer service department to deal with complaints. So that was a two page PDF of 17 sequences of magic words to help you influence and persuade without sounding salesy. And we went from that to then turn that into the book Magic Words. I then plugged that into Amazon's KDP program just as a fun experiment. Woke up seven days later to 120,000 downloads.

Wow, this is crazy. And so this is the effect. I think right now we're seeing this everywhere. Everyone's trying to become a better communicator.

Right.

Not just for making more money in sales.

Sure.

But like maybe for you want to have your team more cohesive and you want to be working towards your goal. Like I'm always trying to inspire my team. Also maybe want to have a better relationship with your spouse. Like all these things, it comes into effect and helping you in all areas of life. And as I've gotten more into it, it also pains me because I realized how bad of a communicator I was.

You know, how much you've left on the table in the past.

And so now I'm, you know, in my 40s, I'm like, well, I got plenty of time. No, no problem. There's never a better time to improve than now.

But.

But looking back, like it's something that traditionally is ignored. Would you agree?

I don't know if it's ignored or.

People just don't pay attention to like.

Improving there or they're given the easy button or they've learned to speak, I. E. Somebody taught them to speak from when they were two years of age, three years of age, four years of age. And then they've grown up through schooling and high school and college and learnt more about communication in those environments. And then they found themselves in the workplace and they've been on one presentation skills course and one persuasive language and negotiation course and they think they're done.

Yeah. And so you talked a lot about like every problem or you know, every solution in this case comes from some. Like some either inability to communicate or ability to communicate properly.

100. 100 and. And our ability to be able to help people see things from different points of view. Our ability to be able to help translate ideas to other people so that they can capture them quickly. What else have we got? Right. It's the most important skill to have in the world. And I don't believe that there is a problem that cannot be solved or helped in any area of life without being able to find the right words at the right time. I think it helps everything, everywhere, all the time and should be something that we are all consciously looking to improve. And what I find interesting Neil is we bring people to New York and I do a two day certification program around exactly what to say. And often people are coming because they want to master the magic words. That's what they're saying coming in. And I try and share with them that you can't. Like this isn't a body of work that you get to a finish line with. You're not going to get to a point that you're done. And I view it like it's a practice just like you would yoga or meditation. This is something you choose to focus on, on repeat, on repeat, on repeat. Because it's the most important muscle for us to flex if we're in the business of changing people's perspectives or changing their behaviors.

Yeah. And if you think about like most people in sales who are watching and listening to this, they want to basically get an outcome from a conversation whether it's a sales call or a conversation with whomever. And what like just starting this off. What are the biggest mistakes people are making when they're in those conversations?

I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they decide ahead of time what they want the outcome to be and then they force or push towards that outcome. Take that in a sales scenario is often results in people showing up and throwing up as to why what they have to offer the other person is, is the ultimate thing they need. They've been trained to do things like find the features and, and turn them into benefits and then let me share with you, all the features and all the benefits of why this is going to be useful to you. This is a giant mistake. And it's to understand that in most conversations you have content that you'd like to deliver. But if you try to deliver content before you've earned the other person's context, then what you did is you just made a noisy situation noisier. So I invite people to think about slowing the process down. You shouldn't show up with a predetermined idea, perhaps a goal or an outcome or an ambition you're hoping to achieve. But what you're really looking to try to do is to just to understand the other person's perspective. Is there a problem that's big enough to be worth solving? Will it be worth it? If they're to move forward with your idea, is it something that they're going to go on to choose and then wake up tomorrow still happy with that choice, Wake up six months in the future still happy with that choice? If not, we're going to shoot to miss.

Yeah. And even if you get people to move forward, it ends up blowing up along the way.

You're going to get buyers remorse, you're going to get rejection, you're going to get some form of pushback.

And that's why people ghost you a lot. Right? A lot of people talk about in sales, like, hey, I'm talking to this client, they ghosted me.

Yeah.

That's the number one thing I hear about.

It's a funny thing in language though, right. And I'm quite brutal sometimes of what I say to audiences. And I was with a group of realtors just the last couple of days ago in a big conference, a few thousand people in the room and they were talking about ghosting and I, and I shared my view on this is that they didn't ghost you. You just weren't valuable enough or important enough to be responded to.

Dang.

And that's the truth. Because quite often what happens is in a ghosting environment, say it's a text message or an email or an insta DM that somebody didn't reply to. There's a strong possibility they did reply. They just didn't choose to share that reply with you.

Wow. Right.

Is what happened, is it? It happened in the mind of the other person and they didn't feel it necessary to be able to script that answer to your ask and, and, and present it back to you. So understand that if people aren't replying to you, that's all your fault.

Yeah. That's huge. Like people are thinking that, you know, this is. They're blaming the leads, they're blaming the customer. Always. I hear this over and over. And it's basically traced back to your first conversation. And so getting into that part, you talk a lot about these moments.

That's right.

Right. And mastering the moment. So can you talk about that? Because there's different moments where it's like, it seems like a fork in the road. We're either going to do business together or not. And I think people are missing. They. They've passed that point. Yeah. And we don't even know it. Right.

Everyone's playing so hard to try and win a single point in a game of tennis as opposed to try and win Wimbledon. Right. Is we should be playing a longer game. We should be realizing that there is way more at stake than did I win or did I lose? It should really be more of how much did I win by. And that allows you to be able to isolate where are the moments that you're capable of being able to make influence. People might say things like it's, you know, in my discovery call or in my buyers consultation or in my listing presentation. That's too big of a moment for the majority of people. Say, for example, in a listing presentation, they might be hyper focused on their ability to build rapport or to showcase why their marketing credentials are better than somebody else's marketing credentials. But what often happens is there's a moment where they lose control of the conversation. They don't have the ability to be able to get full buy in. They're not leading the dance in that conversation towards where the next steps might be able to go. So I invite people to try and think about where are the little cogs in the machine, the small cogs in the conversational framework where you have the ability to have the biggest impact and find the cog that isn't working for you and put hyper focus in how you can make that cog work better, turn faster, help have more leverage. Whatever it might mean in your world. Get after that and keep looking for the moments where you have obnoxious inefficiencies. And I know many people listening to us right now will have a lot of focus on maybe their sales funnel or their online lead generation. They're looking at where there's drop off. Right. They're looking at like I had 100 there and that 100 dropped to 62 here and that 62 dropped to 12 here. And we're looking at those waterfall points where we're losing opportunity. Why would you not do the same in your spoken word? Why would you not have the same level of engineering around what comes out of your mouth when it's working towards converting for a meaningful outcome?

Yeah, that's a great point because we look at our landing pages and we're literally changing the headline A, B, testing the headline to get more opt ins. And then you kind of take for granted, oh, we've got them on the line now, which is the bottom of the funnel.

Right.

And we're losing people there as well.

Correct.

Right. And then we're blaming the leads, their Internet leads, you know, and so I think, you know, when you talk about this as a concept, getting specific, like let's just say, for example, in the niche of real estate, mortgage, these types of industries, people are reaching out because they've expressed interest in owning a home perhaps. Yeah. Right. And so they want to look at a property or they've raised their hand that they want some resource. Right. From us. And so practically, like getting into tactics here, like what can people do on that first conversation? So they've gone through the online funnels, maybe they've reached out. We're now on the phone. Yeah. Like what are, what is something that somebody watching, listening can practically do to improve that conversation?

So let's view this real simple. Right. Somebody showed some interest in a particular piece of real estate.

Yeah.

That said 1, 2, 3 Main street is something they'd like more information on. They've left their email address, they've left their phone number and you're now picking up the phone to them. Is that the scenario we're talking about?

100%.

Well, firstly, let's look at what not to do. See, what the majority of people do when they're stepping into these phone calls is they start with words like I was just or they're apologizing for the call or they're asking things like do you have a few minutes to talk? These are all great tactics. If it was 1996, we've moved on a little from right now, hence why we're in this conversation. And people watching it are in a different conversation too. So there needs to be a more sophisticated approach to even getting into that phone call in the first place. We have to stop checking in, following up and touching people's bases. Like that's inappropriate too. Language needs to be improved. And the structure we teach, we talk about this in exactly what to say for real estate agents, in fact, is a structure I call opening fact question or ofq.

Okay.

And if you're looking to get into conversations with more confidence, you want to apply opening a mutually agreeable fact or a series of mutually agreeable facts and then an easy to answer question. So what would that look like in this conversation? It could look something as simple as like, hi, it's Phil calling from ABC Realty. I'd suggest people probably use their own name.

Yeah.

And the facts you'd share is, I could see that you're on our website recently looking for some more information around 123 Main street and they'd be like, yes, I was. I would then say, is that the only home you're interested in?

Why would you that?

Because what I've now done is I've got permission to be on the call in the way that they would answer it. Because if you're really, really honest, how likely is that person going to be to buy that home?

It's not that likely.

Like close to zero.

Yeah.

And what everybody else tries to be able to do is to rush that person to an appointment to go to potentially go see a home that we both know they're not going to buy.

Yeah. That's crazy.

It's stupid. Whole industry does it. What you're better to be able to do is to help the person not sell the property. See, when I say, is that the only home you're interested in? What most people say back is, they say, no. I say, how long have you been looking? They say, well, we've been looking for the last six months or so. I say, well, where are you folks living right now? And they tell me where they're living. I say, how long have you been there? I say, do you own it or do you rent it? They say, no, we own it. I say, I could see that you're just looking and browsing and that's why you showed some interest in 123 Main Street. Are you ready to go see homes yet or were you just looking for some more information, like. And they'll say, well, we might want to go see it. But right now I'm just looking for some pricing information and. And maybe some further photographs or got some questions about blank. And see, I'm meeting the client where they're at. The whole industry wants to run them towards an appointment.

Yeah, I noticed that the whole industry, the way it's structured is ISA will call you.

Yeah.

And tell you to book. They want to book the showing.

Sure.

Get them to the property right now as quickly as possible.

Sure. And if you're in the business of selling leads, that's a good thing to train people to do because now I can sell that lead on multiple occasions.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. It's just broken system though.

It depends on the who is somebody's winning from that system, but it isn't the consumer nor is it often the agent. Yeah, but someone's winning and I can understand completely why they would do it. What I'd be looking to try and get to for many of those inbound calls is what people fail to understand is a. An online lead inquiry for somebody wanting to go and see a piece of real estate is a listing appointment.

Yeah.

In many scenarios it's a chance to go meet somebody at their home, not the home that they're trying to go see, the home they're currently living in to help them navigate how they're going to get out of that one before they get into something new.

And so this whole concept that we're going over right now is really important. This is your question stack.

Like it's before we even get into a question stack. This is just getting you permission to have a bigger conversation because this is opening start.

This is question. Okay.

And the second I get to that and they give me a response, then I build a question stack. And what is important for me for people to understand that listening right now is think of the number of conversations that you need to start on a regular basis. Could even be a. An underperforming team member in your organization and you'd like to talk to them about what's going on. And what we typically tend to do here is we'll sneak attack them. We'll just say, have you got a minute? And then pull them into a quiet corner and tell them about all the things they're doing wrong and tell them how they should probably change it and then pat them on the back and say, good luck. What would be better to do is to use opening fact question again. Could look like this. It could be like, hey, Neil, I know a few weeks back that you mentioned that what you were looking to be able to work on was blank and blank and blank and blank. And together we set some goals that were around blank and blank and blank and blank. Was that all still true to you or something changed? See how now that's an easy to answer question on the back of it. It saves space for them to be able to maybe say, well, with all that's going on in the market right now, I've been meaning to tell you I've had to take my foot off the gas on the production side. Of things because I need some regular money and I've taken a part time job over here to be able to make sure we can make rent this month. And yeah, I'm still super committed to being able to achieve these results in my business. Just maybe need to lower the bar a little in line with the fact that I need some steady income. So you might get some truth back or you might get them to say, yeah, they're still exactly the results that we're looking for and I'm real sorry boss, is my action plan to change.

It without you even having to tell them what they did wrong?

Well, that's the goal.

Yeah.

The goal is to be able to never tell anybody anything.

Really.

Correct.

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So you.

This, we were talking about this before the podcast. You recently gave a talk at my friend Irwin's event and you said you sold a lot of books at the event and you said you never sold the book. You never pitched it correct. So how did they buy the book?

How do they buy the book? Is is you are so useful with the information and the examples that you're sharing that also happen to be in the book. The easiest way that somebody could further understand the principles and application is to go by the book, right? If something is a fantastic restaurant in a small location out in Europe somewhere, and now what they do to entice people in is they open the doors up and they let you smell what the food smells like so that you think about coming inside, this is what we can be doing more of, is to attract and not chase. It's what we can be doing more of to help people come and want a little bit more from you as Opposed to you trying to force it down their throat. And I know that there are other ways of selling that work. I know that what you can do is rapidly qualify, push somebody towards a close tackle and overcome the objections that they throw you. Enjoy the struggle match. To be able to come away from that and say, I won the deal, I won the business, I won the argument, I won the result. And I understand that drives results, yet it is a very hard way to get there. And I've learned that if there's a hard way of doing something in an easy way, I'd rather do it the easy way. And the easiest way that I've learned to achieve results without friction, where both parties feel like they're winning, is to let the other person always believe it was their idea.

That's amazing.

And you do it by asking questions. And a challenge that I would encourage everybody listening in to right now is, is could you live an entire day of your life delivering approximately zero advice? No advice at all. Only talking in questions, Helping other people to be able to reach their own conclusions on the outcomes they're trying to find clarity around.

That'd be a tough, tough job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yet if you can live in that space for a while, you'll unlock some superpowers. Because my belief is that curiosity is a superpower, and strategic curiosity is a superpower. Amplified it. It allows you to garner information. And we think we're convincing people to do things. We're not. We're helping people make their mind up. And indecision is, in fact, the enemy. That's what we're trying to resolve. And in all areas of communication, you're just trying to help somebody else find clarity on what their next step is, clarity on what their belief is, clarity on what the outcome is they're looking to try and achieve.

Yeah. And so this is something interesting I'm finding right now, given where we're at in the current market cycle with the economy. Not just real estate, but just in general.

Yeah.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

Correct.

And it used to be that people. A few years ago, there was money everywhere. It seemed like it was falling from the sky. Right. And people were jumping out of their seat to buy whatever it is you're selling, whether it's real estate, cryptocurrency, NFTs. People were selling, literally pictures of.

Well, they're selling nothing.

Nothing. Air. And people would buy it, like. And you didn't have to sell. Right. And so what I found now is people are very reluctant because they're scared of making the wrong decision. They're scared of the economy, maybe, maybe politics and what's going on in the market. All these things. Inflation.

Right.

And so there I found that people are in this mode of indecision. They're not sure and they're getting conflicting advice.

Okay.

And so, like, what's our role in that and how do we move people forward? Because I see so many people who won't make a decision. They won't tell you no, right? They won't tell you yes, either.

Well, people are always in indecision. People are always uncertain. In fact, the only thing I'm certain of is uncertainty. I know that for sure is that we're always going to be uncertain. And when you revert back to those times that you mentioned about where people were making decisions so quickly, the only reason they were doing that is because they were uncertain. They were fearful of missing out.

Yeah, fomo, Right.

That's what they were doing, was chasing something they didn't want to get left behind on. So to help people create a position of certainty, you just need to get them to be able to see the truth and feel good about the decision they're making. That's what it comes down to. We make decisions based on feelings. Do I feel like now is a good time to buy. Do I feel like this is a smart decision? Do I feel like that I won't regret this in the long term?

So do people make decisions based on logic or is it based on feeling? Or is it both?

It's both, yet it comes in a certain order. It has to feel right in here in your heart before it makes sense up here in your head. And people will often try to use rationale or logic to help somebody make a decision, but they haven't yet moved to that space in their heart yet they haven't given consideration as does this feel right? And I find an example of that for the real estate metaphor that maybe we carry through some of this, this interview is people go see a house. They then step out of that house, and what the realtor will ask them is, what did you think of the house? Well, that's a logic based question. It's a logic based question asking them to add numbers and statistics in their mind as to saying, like, is this house a good house on paper?

Yeah.

Would be better to ask them, is, is how do you feel about a house like this being somewhere you could live and access an emotive side of their brain and emotive side of their nervous system and see if they can Respond to that question before we get into the nuts and bolts of whether this is a good house to make a good offer on.

Yeah. It's almost like, can you picture yourself living here? You know, and it seems, like, interesting in the real estate niche, people will tell us and the financing, the numbers they want. Right? They'll tell us the numbers. They're looking for everything. Logic, Right? Then when they see the house they wanted, the wife loves the house, all this shit's gone out the window. It doesn't matter anymore.

And look at that question, right? There are so many questions that are taught at scale that a solid six and a half out of ten questions like, can you picture yourself living there? It's a closed question that creates a lot of friction inside them, the. The heart of the other person.

So that's a bad question to ask.

Yeah.

Okay, it is.

Because what it's doing is. It's feeling like it's forcing me into a situation of you're trying to sneak me into saying, I'd like to buy this house. Wouldn't it make more sense that you just created a hypothetical scenario? Like, so if you folks were to live in a house like this one here is. Is. Then how would you live in it differently to the way that it's laid out right now? See, if I created that as a hypothetical scenario, people would tell me the story as to potentially how they might live in it. What are they doing? They're picturing themselves living in the house.

Yeah. Just a different way of asking.

Correct. It's the same question rewritten.

Yeah. That's huge. And so I've also found this. There's two ideas that come to mind. So one is, we talked about trust.

Yes.

And so I've noticed this. Like, how do you effectively get people to feel safe, like, comfortable? Right. And so I realized a long time ago that I wasn't selling mortgages, I wasn't selling real estate, I wasn't selling programs. When I started doing education, I was selling trust. Do they trust what I'm saying? Do they trust that I'll help them get that. What. What they need done?

Okay.

And so I wanted to dive deeper on, like, how do you create that trust with strangers? Because sometimes you're meeting these people for the first time. They're prospects.

Sure. And let's come at this from the other side of things and look at what people do that. Sabotage also.

Okay.

Is. Is if I was to say to you, look, Neil, you can trust me. I promise you can trust me.

I don't trust you right, yeah.

So if we're labeling the fact that you can trust me, what we're doing is actually decreasing trust. It's a negative effect. And I see agents and lots of folks in all areas of different businesses say things like, we are trusted advisors to our clients. I'm like, you don't get to call yourself that. That's something somebody else should call you. So how do you get to trust? The math equation in my mind to get to trust is curiosity plus empathy. See if you're curious enough to understand somebody else's context, start to see the world through their eyes and empathetic enough to be truly relatable. We are on the same side where it's not me versus you, it's me and you versus it. So going back to your mortgage background, right? Nobody wanted a 30 year loan. There is nobody as a child that says I cannot wait till I can have a 30 year month to month relationship with a financial institution. Yeah, nobody wanted that. And in fact, they didn't even want the house. They wanted what that house meant to them and what that house is going to enable them to do with their life and the story they tell themselves about themselves because of the fact they have that house. That's what they wanted. So what we should be looking to be able to do to increase trust is just to understand the other person's scenario. Probably. See, if I understand your problems fully, you will trust me with the solution. If I try to sell you on my solution, you'll work to say that's not quite the problem.

Wow. Okay. So it's spending more time in the beginning with these questions.

Right. It's getting into the mess and then building efficiencies with the questions that you ask that help us get to a period of clarity in a short enough period of time where the other person doesn't feel like they're under interrogation.

Yeah, that makes sense. So this is also I noticed, like I talked about earlier with relationships with your employees, all these kinds of things, it works everywhere. Correct. And so, you know, you talk about people rushing this process, people trying to go in with the outcome in mind.

Yeah.

I recently saw this. It's kind of a, it's kind of a weird tangent, but I saw this guy who is in our network, he does real estate mortgage content, but he also helps people with the relationship advice.

Okay.

And he was helping married men basically get back into a good relationship with their spouse and he was trying to help them. Why? And he said something to me, he said, hey, when the trust Goes up, the lust goes up.

Oh, I bet.

And I was like, man, how would you get like, more trust with your spouse? It's by you being curious about what's on their plate, how can you help them? And really being like, like into what they're into, basically.

And let's catch nuances again, right? You're saying the question is how can you help them? The mistake many of us make is we take that, we turn that into the question, and we then ask that question.

Yeah.

So like, like how can I help with blank. If you're asking a how can I help you Question, that's not very helpful. That's the question you should be asking yourself as to what could be helpful. And if you don't know what could be helpful, ask a series of questions to learn what could be helpful and then just do that. I give an example of in relationships how we are terrible at questions when the desire is to be helpful. Let's deal with the most difficult conversation on the planet. Would you like to know what the most difficult conversation on the planet is?

Yeah, what's that?

It's what would you like for dinner? There's no harder conversation to have in life than to deal with the what would you like to have for dinner for supper, etc question. Because what happens is we find ourselves in a debate, right? What do you want for dinner? I don't know. Like, I don't know. What do you want?

Yeah, let me go back and forth.

We'll go back and forth on this forever in a day. And. And then I say, well, like, how about we do Chinese food? And then you give me three reasons why you don't want Chinese food. And then you make a suggestion. I give you three reasons why that's not the right idea either. And then you say, well, why don't we just cook here? And then I say, well, have you seen what's in the fridge?

Yeah.

And here we are, 47 minutes of our life go by and we've made no progress. This is how many people show up when they're trying to be helpful is they just ask dumb questions that get dumb questions back in the other direction that leave us in a stalemate. We took that same scenario of what would you like for dinner? And you responded with a more intelligent question, like, how hungry are you?

Yeah, a lot.

And you say, like, I'm a lot hungry. You say, well, would it help if I just chose something for the pair of us then? And you say, yeah, sure. I say, is there anything you definitely don't Want you say, no, no, no, no. I'm good with anything. Yeah. I say, I got this.

Yeah. It'd be a lot easier.

It would be a lot easier for life. Right. We just saved together right now. We just saved hundreds of thousands of households.

Yeah.

A lot of, like, a lot of dramatic conversations week in, week out by owning the elephant in the room and somebody having enough responsibility just to know that the person who's asking the questions controls the conversation.

Yeah. And so this is a. This is like an unlock for people, and it also provides a lot of clarity. You talk about clear beats clever.

Right.

A lot. What do you mean by this? And, like, how are people doing it? Wrong.

Clear beats clever is a. A quote that was said to me the first time by a dear friend of mine called Rory Vaden. And what he's getting to is that when you're making an offer in any given environment, the other person needs to understand exactly what you're providing for them, exactly what you're looking to better deliver. And I. I think we've all done it in our own lives. Right. We've tried to over package something, over, embellish something. We've made something sound like the best thing ever, and nobody knows what it is.

Yeah.

Because we've put too many ingredients into it instead of just simplifying and helping the other person have ultimate clarity in what it is that they're looking for.

Yeah. And so this is another way of, like, being clear also allows this process to go forward and build trust and all these things.

That's right.

One thing I noticed, and I talk a lot about this, is people don't have a step in the middle. So I feel like there's, you know, you're getting people's attention.

Right.

And you want to get them to make a decision.

Right.

And there's this space in between.

Yes.

And so I always talk about, like, okay, people in our industry, they want to get someone to buy a home. Right. Or get a loan, and they want them to make that whole journey right now, let me help you close this thing right now. They want to close, close, close. And I think about it like, going back to relationship advice. Like, I remember meeting my wife at a company event in Vegas the first time I met her. And I imagine just if I walked up to her at the bar and said, you want to go upstairs?

Right.

Like, I probably wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't have a family right now. Right, right. And so creating some step in the middle and, you know, for us, that's been Lead magnets or some guide or some helpful advice.

Yeah.

And it could be this conversation that you're having with them. And so can you talk about this like, I know you talk about, you know, getting a customer from no to yes.

Yeah.

You want to get them from no to maybe.

Right. And then maybe to yes. Right?

Yeah.

And finding ways of being able to sit in maybe together and then find the right path forward from there is an imperative set of skills. And we describe this to people as to say, can you create a gray space? Because that is a. Both the play space and a safe space. In that kind of environment, you can create new versions of reality. Those new versions of reality are things that people might want to step into. If you use the scenario, like, say, for example, somebody looking to buy a house, people think qualification or qualifying somebody is checking that they have the right means of being able to make a down payment and that a lender is highly likely to be able to provide them with a mortgage. They think that's what qualifying is. The ones that think they elevate their qualifying further are the ones that do some due diligence, like how many bedrooms and how many bathrooms and what kind of acreage and like this box ticking exercise of does it meet criteria? And then they say they're qualified. That isn't qualification. Qualification is getting to the reasons behind why this could be worth it. And is today a good day to buy a house, for example?

Depends on the person.

I asked 15,000 realtors this weekend and most of them said yes.

Right.

And I did a big mortgage event a few weeks back and I asked them, is now a good time to sell a house to enable other people to buy? And they just all said yes. And this is the miss. It depends. People are trying to lead people with decisions based on the market and what's the right thing we should do in the market. Yet the only market that matters is the one that exists in that individual's real world circumstances. Because how many things have you sold for less than you paid for them?

You mean in, like, where you take a loss? Yeah, not that many. Nothing I have done. It has happened. Oh, you mean like. Yeah, on the second resale market? Yeah, it happens all the time.

All the time?

Yeah. Right.

Not necessarily a piece of real estate, but something that you've purchased and you like. I used to own a Bentley Continental GT in the UK and I loved it. And then when I became living here in the United States, my car was still back in the UK and I found myself worried about a piece of metal with rubber tires whilst I was waking up here with my wife, like, is the car okay? And that, to me, terrified me. I'm like, what a horrible thing to think to be worried about that.

It is a nice car, though.

Lovely car.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I called the guy that I bought it for him, asked him if he'd take it back, and he was happy to take it back for significantly less than I'd only paid him for it for a year earlier. And I was delighted. Why? Because my market conditions meant that that decision was right for me. I got a huge amount of love out of ownership of that car. I was also darn happy to get rid of it when it was gone. And realizing that you can make people feel good and that winning means different things to different people in different ways is the joy to be able to get into a position of alignment with somebody. That's how you know you're going to win. Trust is how you know you're going to be able to help somebody is if you know what puzzle you're actually trying to solve. If you just try to sell them on your thing, you're serving your interest and not theirs. When you understand what truly is important to them, you can show them how your product or service or idea is going to help them achieve the thing that they just told you is important to them. I'm going to make this super simple. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever invite somebody to do something or buy something unless you can say these words first. And the words you should look to say first are the words because of the fact that you said because of the fact that you said blank, blank. And for that reason, I'd recommend you do blank, blank, and blank.

That's huge. Yeah.

It's a remarkably easy framework to think about in theory. It's a touch more challenging to deliver in practice because you have to collect the blanks. But if I got to a point with somebody that was in a rental property right now and looking to be able to make a decision of shall I buy my first home or not, I want to be able to say, because of the fact that you said owning your own home is important to you and you see yourself living in this neighborhood for at least the next decade, and you've done the hard work to be able to save a down payment so you're ready to be able to make a purchase and you're stable in your career. And if anything you see like your career is. Is on the upward trajectory, so your likelihood is that you're going to be making more money in the future than you are today. So your payment is only going to become more affordable to you. And because of the fact that you said that you'd like to get to a point where you've controlled your own living expenses and that you, you don't have a rent payment or a mortgage payment for those reasons, what you may want to consider is, is buying in this market right now while you're in a very strong buying position, don't be like most people and wait for the rates to drop and think that that's going to save you money in the long run.

Yeah.

And you see how much smarter and empowered this person would feel about the decision than you trying to force ideas upon them.

And the other cool thing is, like, now they're more committed to the process.

Correct?

Yeah.

Because what you've done is you've helped them work through the decisions in their head. They're like, yeah, I am going to be here for 10 years. Yes, I do home ownership. Yes, I am going to be earning more money in the future. Yes, I can afford my payment. Yes, I have done the work to be able to save a down payment. Like, this is feeling like a decision with momentum and wind at my back as opposed to, oh, it's frightening.

Yeah. And so I want to thank you for this conversation because I've just realized in the past 40 minutes that I have two businesses. Real estate, mortgage, and then also education.

Right.

I've been doing these conversations all wrong. We've been messing them all up. I mean, not as bad as some people, but we haven't been asking nearly enough questions.

Okay.

And we haven't been understanding the customers. And then when there's that lack of understanding and lack of trust, like these are why people ghost you and they disappear on us.

Yeah. And you can still win without doing what I'm talking about doing.

Yeah.

Because there are a lot of people that were already pre sold by the time they got to you. You just needed to assist.

That gives you like a false sense of confidence.

Correct.

Because I see people who are winning in an easy market. Right. And I have this saying, like, everyone's a genius in a bull market. Yeah. Because you're literally just sitting there collecting business. Like people already made the decision to purchase.

And then there's the other thing that stands in your way, which is the thing called your experience, because you're pretty good at what you do, is when things go off the rails, you've got the ability to better pull them back. On the rails. You've got the ability to overcome the objection. You've got the ability to be able to help navigate and pivot from when they didn't say the thing back you wanted them to. You could stay in the tussle and the struggle a little longer. And your experience allows you to do that.

Yeah.

And sometimes you allow your experience to let you do that because it makes it more fun. Making it harder keeps it more interesting.

Yeah.

Instead, when you can simplify and do the work to earn the right to make a recommendation, what you now have is high levels of certainty in the outcome. It's just slower. However, it's safer. And if you slow the process down, you can often speed the outcome up. How many people are forcing folks into appointments and trying to close and see if they want to make offers? And they still have to work with that person for 18 months, but it's sprint, stop, sprint stop, Sprint stop, Sprint stop, sprint stop. And it's exhausting for everybody involved.

Yeah.

Why not just set up the journey and learn how you can help people? And we seem to be forgetting one of the most important things about any type of business is you get paid based on your appreciating value. And that means that your value needs to be appreciated. You cannot give your value and tell them it was valuable. We see it with content creators all the time. Right. I'm putting so much value out into the world, you don't decide if it's valuable. They do. This is how we need to be showing up when we're looking to influence other people to make decision. We need to be helpful, and we get to be helpful by understanding what's really going on in their world. And then we have to simply communicate how we can help them achieve the thing that's helpful to them. That easy and is that hard?

Yeah. It's difficult on content because we're telling people to market themselves online. And we're constantly telling people to. To put themselves out there with helpful advice, provide value.

Okay.

And I noticed this, Phil. Some people are able to reach and help a lot of people.

Yeah.

Other people saying the same words, but maybe different. Right. The vibe is off. They're failing. Like, frankly, they're like, man, I'm doing everything you said, but nobody's watching my videos.

Okay.

And so, like, what advice do you have for. I'm sure you consume a lot of content on Instagram and YouTube and all these things. You know, people who are putting out content. Why does it work for some people? And it doesn't work for others.

Well, one big reason is some people are really good on camera and have great tone and are very likable in the way they come across and other people aren't. And, and sometimes you have to accept that and learn to be able to play your strengths. Right? Is I am not musically gifted in any way, shape or form. I love music, I love going to shows, but I will never, ever play an instrument with any level of competence whatsoever. You have to learn where your gifts are. So sometimes you might need to decide that, sure, videos work, but I'm better on written word.

Yeah.

Or sure, I should be doing more from a, a say, like email marketing point of view, but I. I just can't wrap my head around how to produce copy and content in that way. So I'm going to show up and produce audio content because when I speak it or when I say it, it flows better than when I write it. So I would play to your strengths in content is do the thing that you're good at that the marketplace appreciates that you're good at. Do more of that and then find ways to repurpose it into the other channels. That's going to be helpful for starters. But when it comes down to the conversational piece, it comes down to the words that come out of your mouth is note this. You cannot write, perform, and edit at the same time. You cannot write, perform, and edit at the same time. So that means that if you want to up your level of performance, then you need to get better at writing and better at editing. Better at writing and better at editing. And when I say editing, I don't mean how you chop a video up.

Yeah.

I mean how you learn from why what you did didn't work so that for next time you can elevate your performance. What I've learned about anybody who's any good at anything is there was also a period of time where they sucked at it 100% and they took the time to go again and work out how to get better and go again and then work out how to get better and then go again and then work out how to go better. And what I keep learning about life is you can't skip the levels. You can only just decide how quickly you work through the levels, but you can't skip any levels on your way up. So when it comes down to conversation, remember the worst time to think about the thing you're going to say is in the moment you're saying it. So put the work in before the work to be ready, ready, ready. For that moment and then bring your best performance to that performance and then sit down after that performance once you've got the feedback of your audience. And that could be a live audience, or it could be the fact that 17 people viewed what you laid down and 13 of them were family members and the other four look like they're in a foreign country. And maybe we're just lost.

Yeah.

But like, take the data from the audience and then ask yourself what needs to change. And then trial and error. Trial and error. Trial and error. Trial and error.

Yeah. And this is how people can improve. Right. We talk about people who are putting out videos or who are having sales conversations and not getting the result, but then they just keep doing the same shit, you know, like it never changes.

Right.

And so I, when we're doing marketing, we were looking at, why did this video do better? Why did this one fail? You know, maybe we said it in a different way. You know, why did this connect with people?

Right.

And how can we do more of that? Correct. And so when you talk about edit, it's like, really just like, watch the film.

Yeah.

Like, watch back your stuff and see how you could improve.

And I would watch it back, transcribe it for the transcription, look at the language, Give the language to another stranger, have them read what you said word for word back to you and see if you like how it sounds when it's in somebody else's voice.

Would you encourage people to do this with their phone calls, too?

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And. And have somebody else listening in.

Yeah.

Take the recording and then jam on it with three, four, five of your friends. Be brave enough to understand that it's not going to get better unless you take a decent enough look at it and you start to give some consideration to making it better. And let's come back to the structure I gave earlier of opening fact question.

Yeah.

If you're looking to do more with your videos, why can't you use OFQ as a video? Opening. Blight. Opening. Hey, it's Phil. The mutually agreeable facts are now what you want somebody to understand. So one thing I know about you is that you're definitely trying to understand about whether now is a great time to be able to buy a home. And what are the top questions that you should be asking yourself and your lender to help navigate how to make the best path forward. Right. So there's some mutually agreeable facts.

Yeah.

If that's you, then you're probably going to want to watch the next six and a half minutes that's another fact. Are you ready?

Yeah. Right.

That's an easy to answer question. Are you ready? Yeah. Ready. Okay. Now we just did the setup for the video.

So getting them on the same page, meeting them where they're at.

Correct.

Yeah.

And you just got permission. And when we're teaching people to get success on the telephone for years, the way I would teach it is your first three seconds are to buy you the next 15 seconds. The 12 seconds between three and 15 seconds, it'll buy you the next 45 seconds. Those 45 seconds are to buy you the next three minutes. And those three minutes are to buy you whatever else you then need.

Yeah.

But you have to think about it in those chunks if you're going to carry people towards the end.

And the big mistake is people are thinking 40, 50 steps ahead. Yeah. That outcome.

And let's talk about this from the book and exactly what to say. Point of view. Right. You can read it cover to cover in 72 minutes. Is it has plenty of white space around it. Font is giant big. And we've got dozens and dozens, hundreds and thousands of five star reviews and a handful of one star reviews. And I learned so much from the one star reviews because there's just somebody who decided to hate on something.

Yeah.

But what you learn is people say it's not a real book. It's not big enough to be a book. Like it should have more pages and more words in it. And then you look at the richness of all of the solid reviews that we have and people are grateful for the fact it has brevity, none of the fluff, straight to the good stuff. So there are learning points that come from everything everywhere as to how much information somebody's looking to better get to Audible taught me a massive lesson. Is that one of the most important criteria for Audible when they're looking at the success of an audiobook is length of time. Somebody chose to be able to listen to the audiobook.

Yeah.

And their goal was to get it over 51%. They even accepted across the board that people don't listen to the whole thing. Yet. My little book has a 7.2 times average listen. So across the board on all nonfiction audiobooks, people are happy if they get to over half mine has repeat listens. Which one would you rather be?

Yeah.

Seven plus times on. On average. So give thought to if you want somebody to get to the end of whatever it is that you're sharing. What are you putting in place to encourage them that getting to the end might be worth It.

Yeah, that's great. And so you can talk about things along the way to keep them engaged and do all these things.

Right. And.

And we can be intentional about that.

And you can also make all of it valuable. So there's no low points. Yeah, like, if it's like, that helps. Oh, that helps. Oh, that helps. Yeah, I can use that. Oh, that'll work. There's no time to think about whether I'm hanging around or not.

Yeah. So we call that old killer no filler.

Okay.

Yeah, there we go.

I like that.

So just wrapping up here, Phil. There's been so much information I think, that people can use to implement and in their communication. And I'm always a student of this because I see it have the ma. The most impact on my business, you know, as I communicate with. With people in all different aspects of business and in life. You said something about this power of knowing what to say and all this, and I didn't understand what you meant. So I hope you can add clarity here. You said, the second mouse gets the cheese. Okay, so what does that mean and how can I help people?

That old saying was shared with me by a guy called Tom Webster in a. In a bar about eight years ago in Boston. And it. It made me stop dead in my tracks. I couldn't unhear it. Because you think about that saying for a second. The second mouse gets the cheese. What happens to the first mouse?

You got the cheese, right? No, he got smoked.

Got caught in the mousetrap. Right. That's got like a piece of cantilevered steel crushing his neck down to nothing. That's what's happened to that mouse. Yeah. The magic, though, in that phrase, though, is it's the second mouse. Not the third or the fourth or the fifth or the sixth. Is how do you, on purpose come second? That is one of the hardest things that you could ever possibly do. That was the intelligence in that phrase that made me not stop thinking about it for weeks. Is, could you imagine, like, deliberately coming second in the 100 meter sprint in the Olympics?

No.

How skilled would you have to be to win the silver medal on purpose? So, yes, the outcome that we're looking for in sales conversations is to get to the. The finish line, the win line, whatever that win checkpoint is just a micro moment after the first person, that is the customer, the individual you're looking to help gets there. But also no one else gets in there behind you. That's where I'm looking at here is how do you get to the point that you know Neil thinks it's a good idea. Just after I present it's a good idea and without anybody else in this conversation suggesting other ideas.

That's the sweet spot.

That's the magic spot. That's where you're in a marketplace of one.

Yeah. That's huge. And so for people want to get your book. I know it's still. This has been a bestseller for years. Yeah, yeah.

I still do interviews every single week about my brand new book that I wrote in 2017.

Wow.

Like we're writing this thing like, like I know, Cy Rides Gangnam Style or Rick Astley's relating. Never gonna give you up. Right. That's what we're doing with this book. And it's as relevant today as it was the day I wrote it. It will continually be relevant into the future. And if people are wondering where to get it, just type the words, exactly what to say into wherever it is that you buy books, consume content, realize information and you'll find a format that works for you.

Yeah, I love that. And so this is timeless information. Guys, I think you should. If you haven't got the book, go ahead, just literally go to Google, type in exactly what to say and you'll see a ton of content from Phil. Thank you so much for being here, man. I really appreciate the conversation.

Hey, huge pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.

We could do some bonus content. I'm going to ask you really quick. I didn't know if this would go in the episode or not. We could maybe put it in, but. So I want to ask you a process. I just did it practically and you could kind of give me your feedback. Okay. So this week I did a webinar for people in real estate and mortgage.

Right.

And I presented them a bunch of information on content marketing that you can use to get business. Different tactics I'm using, why they should be doing it. And at the end, I gave like kind of emotional close of like, man, I used to be on this. Kind of felt like I was on a hamster wheel, like in the rat race, running and doing these sales calls and talking to people primarily didn't want to talk to me. And then I started doing marketing, content marketing. And it truly changed the game for me because I was attracting people and I was getting my best customers and it allowed me to scale up and it was tough, but I stuck with it. And I show images of like me struggling with it to now me doing this, me speaking to a room of six people in some broken real estate office, me speaking on A stage with a thousand people. And. And it truly transformed my life. So I said, man, if I don't want to spend another year doing the same shit, you know, I want to do something different. So if that's you, if you're watching this, if you're listening and watching this and you want to do something new, whether you join this program or something else, I think you should definitely do something new this year. Because if nothing changes, nothing changes. Okay, so here's my offer to help you. And I had the thing closed. And so we had at this point about 300 people on this call. About like eight of them bought my thing. It was like a $5,000 program. Okay, it's an eight week program. And then I noticed there wasn't more sales coming in. So we started asking, you know, doing question answer, couple sales trickling as we stick around because they want more clarity on the offer. But then I said, you know what, if you are like a couple steps away from, from joining and we'd love to have you just drop your phone number in the chat and our team will reach out to you.

Right.

And we can answer any questions. Maybe you have a, a one on one question you want, you don't want to ask it in a public forum, that's cool. Just drop your cell number and we'll do it. We got like, I think it was 30 plus people dropped the number in. So there's a lot of people interested. And then we text and call those people, almost all of them. Like I think there are three or four of them got information, one bot. But everybody else ghosts, like no response. Okay, so what should we. If you're talking about exactly what to say when we reach out to these people, what should we be saying?

Okay, you say they ghosted. Did you have you got the telephone numbers correct? And they are likely to respond like pick up.

Yeah, we call, we get to sell their voicemail and then we text. And I don't know what the team was texting, but like I'm guessing whatever they texted wasn't the right.

You don't need to guess that. Yeah, the results telling you the Exactly. Definitely. Right. Like you're right.

I started to text people and I started to go to. Because they were not getting the results. So then yesterday I started texting them saying, hey, it's Neil from Forward. Thanks for joining us on the call. Wanted to answer any questions you had about the program.

Right.

And then a couple people responded to that. Most people did not.

Okay, so look what you've said. Hey, It's Neil. It was great to see on the webinar the other day. I wanted to see if I could help answer any of your questions. Right.

Yes.

And that's putting a lot of onus back on them to walk themselves into a cul de sac for them being sold. Instead, if you just said, hey, it's Neil, it was great to see you on the webinar the other day and I'd like to believe that you got at least one thing from it that was useful for you. And what was it that prompted you to join the webinar in the first place?

Make it easier.

Their insoid voice says, I know that one. And they say, well, you know, I'm running a mortgage team right now and as you probably know, like it's a more challenging time than it has been and we've been trying to do so many different things with content and I'm putting hours into this and I'm not seeing the results or the returns. And I thought I might learn something on this webinar that I could start to be able to use straight away. So they gush out all the reasons of what they were actually looking for help with in the first place.

Yeah.

Do you say, well, did the webinar provide you any value at all? And they say, yeah, yeah, I got plenty from it. So you then text back and say, so you're looking to get even better results over a sustained period of time? They say, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You say, well, would that be something that you'd be happy for me and my team to be able to help work on with you? And they say, yeah, what would that look like? And now you've got permission to then reintroduce the product that you're looking for. And don't pitch it like I'm on a mission to ban the word pitch.

You don't like that?

Well, if you're pitching at somebody, chances are it might hurt.

That's true. Right.

Just the language around it has an unnecessary level of aggression attached to it. That's self serving on your side. You're delivering a gift, my friend. Like inside that course for $5,000 is half a million dollars a year worth of additional revenue for that individual.

Yeah.

We need to present our information and present our offers to people like we believe we are delivering a gift, a beautiful gift wrapped gift that they understand is going to have tremendous value to them if we're pitching it at them. What we're trying to do is to pin them down, to force them into something and, and this is the type of communication that is making everybody hate salespeople.

Because those people aren't responding because they think it's a sales call.

Correct. And you're behaving like it's a sales call.

Yeah. They're scared.

So. Because you're behaving like it's a sales call, they are responding like it's a sales call. Because there's no emotional intelligence in there.

Yeah.

There's no humanity in there. And you're sounding like you care about trying to sell your program.

Yeah.

As opposed to sounding like you're trying to help them solve the puzzle of how do they get an abundance of inbound leads.

Yeah. That's. That's the real problem.

Correct.

Yeah.

And you've got the answer to that. Like, you put the work into the answer to that. And what they could do is they could hire you independently to be able to help work through what that content structure would be. You could bring them in here and record stuff, could sit down with them and craft out their copy differently. You could build a content map and a strategy for them, and they could pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that. And to help them not have to spend hundred thousands of dollars to go through the same pain that you went through, to learn all that you've learned for you, to be able to craft it for them, you put it all into a simple course that they can work through in eight weeks for just five grand. What a gift.

Yeah. So it's framing, correct? Yeah. Not pitching.

Correct. And it's. It's checking. Is it helpful? Because I promise you this is. If that dude is like, got two nickels to rub together at this moment in time and is three months behind on his car payment and two months behind on his mortgage payment. And. And he's looking for the answer. You showing up and saying, I got a five grand course is possibly not all that helpful.

Yeah.

If it's someone in that scenario, find out what scenario they're in. And if they are somebody who's in that scenario, that could actually be a raving superfan of yours and your work, then you can make a choice and a decision as to how you might best help them.

Yeah.

And it might not be. I'm not saying give them the five grand course. I'm saying point them to two videos on your YouTube channel that are remarkably easy. Give one real simple piece of advice that is the quickest or fastest route for them to be able to turn that scenario around. And if you do that, in that scenario, three Months in, when that dude's gone out and got himself a couple of big pieces of business in and some cash coming back into the pocket, and they've cleaned up those early debts, who's the next person he's calling?

Yeah, for sure.

So I'm trying to reinvent what winning looks like by going back to what winning has always looked like, which is helping people solve real problems and then communicating why you're the person that is best positioned to help them solve them.

Yeah. And what you said earlier is actually a big unlock of, like, making sure they understand that the value in what you're offering.

Correct.

Because I think people. Gary Keller just said this at the event. He said that. And if you don't have a value proposition, you're dead. Like.

Correct.

We're in a market now where people are leaving the industry.

If you cannot communicate your value proposition.

They have a value they just can't communicate.

Correct, Correct.

And so that's where, like, these kind of skills and coming up with your elevator pitch without being salesy, essentially.

Right. And we're going to ban elevator pitches, too.

The. No more pitches, no elevator, no more elevated pitches.

We're looking to change words so that they can have more meaning and help people understand what we're really trying to do. And, yeah, we're not looking for an elevator pitch. You're looking for a better answer to the so what do you do?

Question. Yeah. Or like, you guys have a. You have a different sales guy. Right. So you don't see the conversations. But it made me think, like, how are we. What kind of questions are we asking these prospects? You know? And.

Well, I think.

I think what's now working better is like, my salesperson, he's like. He's like a friend. And he always says, he's like, I don't feel like I'm selling anything. I'm just telling people about you.

Right. You're just guiding. Yeah.

And like, people are buying things for other reasons. Like for. For who I am. Reputation. And then.

And then also.

Yeah.

The offer is. Right. Yeah. And they believe that what you have will help them achieve something that you both understand is important to them.

Right. I do have a funny question.

Yeah.

It's because you're so good at this stuff. Like, I'm not asking you where you draw the line, but what do you say about people who use it to manipulate.

Yeah. Persuade. Because persuasion has a negative connotation, too, potentially.

Or hypnotism.

I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

People can use it.

There's a. There's A difference between something you do to somebody and something you do for somebody.

Yeah.

And using your skills in language, persuasion and influence is laced with integrity. Stepping towards manipulation is where that integrity gap falls apart. And with everything that is powerful is. It's like the great Peter Parker once said, Right. With great power comes great responsibility. That's how we should show up when we have the ability to be able to lead. And as a leader in an organization, you have the ability to be able to grow people or destroy people. The same is true when you're leading a conversation in a sales environment, in a family environment, in a relationship environment. Is if you have the skills to be able to lead, are you leading for positive change? Are you leading for good? Are you leading for shared beneficial outcomes, or are you leading for selfish reasons? Yeah, that's a choice. And what I choose to be able to do is to keep delivering the skills out in the world knowing that I cannot decide exactly how everybody else is going to be able to use them. But if I can equip enough people with the skills to win in a very ethical way, the goal I'm looking to create is that nice guys can win ball games.

Right.

Like, that's where we're looking to get to. And in a. In a sales environment, there's been so much of a monster created in that. What a winner in sales looks like is somebody is gregarious and super macho and.

Andy Elliott. Yeah. You know Andy Elliott.

I do, yes.

But that's the sales advice, you know.

And it can be. And it can work for some of the people some of the time. It just doesn't have to be the only way.

It feels like a bulldozer.

Correct. You know, some people are all into that.

Well, he said something at an event and I was like, man, I kind of agreed. But then at the same time. So it's like if you believe in the product or service you offer.

Yes.

And the customer didn't see that and they were going to get off the phone. Like, why would you just let them off the phone? Would you let your son walk into the oncoming traffic? He said, right. And it was like, no, you would. You would probably passionately stop them. And so why are you just letting these people go without closing them?

Right.

And I was like, I guess I could see, you know, I mean, but.

That'S a shock and all tactic. Right? That's what that's about. That's.

And the video goes viral and all that, you know.

Correct.

Yeah, but.

But it also isn't true. Like is the problem is not believing in your product and service. It's more than that. Is if you're not convinced, you cannot convince. This is nothing to do with you believing in your product or service. It's you having enough understanding about that other person's circumstances. Is that your product or service is going to be the right fit for them. Like that's where you're not out with that guy on the webinars for your five grand products.

Yeah.

I don't care how good you think your product is or how amazing the information is inside it, that has no value unless the other person can contextualize that value.

Yeah.

So that's what we should be looking to be able to do, work on. And you can bully people into buying stuff that is not that hard to be able to do. And the mistake that many sales trainers and busy macho sales led organizations forget is there isn't a finite number of opportunities. There isn't an infinite sorry number of opportunities. So sure, push and push and push and push. Assuming there's more and more and more and more and more. And we're living in a world now that's globalized and the opportunities that we now have are way more abundant than they were 25, 30 years ago because of the fact that we don't have the same borders that we once had in order to do business with. But we are now back to a finite pot of people again. Like we've, we've hit the edges now in globalization and I know we're printing new people every year, but not enough for everybody to believe that they can burn through all the opportunities and not have obnoxious levels of conversion.

Yeah.

And my route from a sales point of view is I want to win every piece of business that I believe that I was the right person to win. And sometimes that means that you get to points in conversation where you realize that you can with grace, say like because of the fact that you've said that you only think that you're going to be staying in the neighborhood for the next 12 months or so and you really haven't managed to save for a down payment and you quite like your rental apartment and you don't even know if you're going to be in this neighborhood or even in this state 18 months on from now, then my best recommendation wouldn't be to buy a home here.

Yeah.

If you're committed to being able to buy real estate, wouldn't it make more sense that what you do is you buy an investment property, keep renting where you're at right now. And perhaps that rental investment property would have the ability to be able to fund some of your dreams as to where you want to go next. And that's way more helpful than trying to convince that person to buy a home. Because you'd like the commission on the home sale.

Yeah.

And I see even with that navigation, I'm still going to sell a piece of property just for a different purpose. To help to get where they're going, not to trap them in a cage. That was wrong for them.

Yeah. And people can sense that vibe in all the content and all the conversations.

Everything you're doing and note something also in the way that I speak. Right. There are. There are a few different ways that you can have influence in communication. And one easy way is just to be hyper enthusiastic and super confident and bulldoze straight through anything that you're looking to be able to deliver upon. And it works. There are many examples of where that works. It doesn't work as well as being curious with your tone. It doesn't work as well as being pully with your questions to get versions of absolute truth off the person you're looking to help. And I'd rather a 98.64% conversion from the 64 people that I come into contact with. And to need to create a boiler room environment where we're just going to churn and trash through a ton of stuff and then think that we're a hero because we made a ton of money the other side of it, forgetting all the collateral damage that we created along the way.

Yeah. It's a totally different business plan. And it's so me hearing this makes me say I just need to make a better webinar. Right. We don't need to get. I mean we could do some things tactically with word choice on follow up and all. But it's main thing is like how do you get more people to just buy without having to be closed? Well.

Yes. And because this is a digital product, right?

Yeah, it's a digital like it's life. So it's coaching great instruction on Zoom plus a course.

Okay. And the people that they're live on Zoom, are they in a one to one environment or one too many group?

Like 50 people.

Okay. And the 50 people see each other.

Yep.

So I tell you what you want to be darn sure on is there's not one of the wrong people in that group.

Yeah. We've done that before too.

Right. Because they will ruin the experience.

Yeah. Really bad questions or they don't proceed.

And then, and then what they do is they create a distraction. They are losing the momentum. Momentum from the other 49 that are there. And I'd even be looking to say that there's a conversational step in play the decides whether they actually qualify to be in the event.

Yeah.

Like even if they swipe their credit card for the $5,000 is that they still come through a conversation to be able to pre qual them for what they're getting into. And that if you have got a cray cray in there, that what you can do is you can volunteer them their money back.

Yep.

And tell them they don't get a.

Seat on the bus because not a good fit.

Right.

Yeah.

But if you put the step in that says a conversation is a waterproofing step. Well, now what you've got is a no risk guarantee too. Because what you're saying is sure you've reserved your spot with your credit card. However, you're going to have a conversation with one of our coaches, one of our consultants, etc. To just 100% check that there's a fit and that you're gonna rely.

Yeah. Because a lot of people would have swiped then because they would have been like, at least I have an out on the call and they're not scared.

Correct.

And then most likely it's gonna be a fit.

Correct.

For the weird ones, we would say no.

Correct.

But we'd have way more people on there.

Correct. And even the. The framing on this isn't, I hope I can get to 50. It's. There's gonna be 50 seats on the bus that are taken. You're just gonna confirm your spot.

Yeah.

And you're now not trying to. Trying to drag.

That's huge. I think. Yeah. It makes it more attractive. Correct. It's going. We're moving anyways.

Yes. This is happening. And. And you've got the gold. There's a seat at the table if you want to come and sit with the gold.

Yeah.

But we got the gold and we're going to give the gold away.

That's huge. Yeah. I think the. What. What just shocked me was, you know, I did it earlier. I did the same program earlier at a lower price point to test it. Yeah. And it sold out. No problem. And then I raised the price this time. I don't know if my pitch was as good. This not pitch. My presentation was not as good this time. So I'm like, man, I gotta go back and watch the film and see. But what do you think about this last question being when you're presenting like a program offering it to people, do you think it's good to. After you've. You've framed everything you've done your offer properly, you know, they realize this is great value, hopefully. Is it good to maybe use the qual. Who's this for and who's this not for? Like using the disqualifying thing, like. So I'm gonna tell you guys who this program is not for. If you're this person. If you're. And almost like excluding people from it. Okay.

I think you can say things like there are three big reasons that would mean that this would not be a fit for you.

Okay.

If you're this, this, or this.

If you want results overnight, if you are, you know, if you're not committed to marketing as a long term strategy, if you are terrified of. Absolutely terrified of shooting that first video, like, right, the. This may not be the program. Okay. And then that way, I think it does that make people feel like more qualified who aren't in those categories.

It does. But the framing, again, needs to be really clean that it doesn't feel salesy. So if we were to say like there are three reasons or five reasons or, you know, any odd number up to seven, that would have people qualifying out, they need, they need to feel like it's the fullest.

Okay.

So if you give people reasons why it's not right, but there are other reasons why it's not right, then you leave a mystery gap in, in the mind of the other person and then they are confused.

So you'd have to be comprehensive, has.

To be fully comprehensive.

Got it.

So the list is, yeah, it's exhausted to the nth degree, but they've been compartmentalized in a way that they're still. Still tight.

Got it. Good stuff, man. This is awesome fun.