MBA1838 Guest Teacher – Michael Reddington – How to Incorporate Forensic Interrogator Tactics to Sell More

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hunter. Because time is money. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Michael Reddington and he'll be teaching you how to incorporate forensic interrogator tactics to sell more. This is a fascinating lesson because the same way an interrogator can get somebody to tell the truth and to open up to the authorities is the same way you can sell more products and services to learn more about what's holding them back and how to address those issues way before you ask for the sale. You're going to absolutely love today's lesson. May want to take some notes if you're not driving because this is jam packed with mind blowing stuff. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Today's guest teacher, Michael Reddington, is the founder of Inquasive, Inc. And what Michael does for a living is basically teach people how to get the truth out of people. He learned this on the job as a forensic interviewer and interrogator. Knows exactly what are some of the questions? What are the things you need to say to get people on your side and learn what their needs and desires are, how to get them to open up and share and see that it's in their best interest to work with you. In today's lesson, he's going to show you how to use the same techniques in your business conversations to close more sales, to convert more leads into customers. This is a great, great lesson. I'm going to let Michael take over now, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode. But for now, take it away, Michael.

Thank you, Omar. Hello, everyone. Thank you for sharing your time with us today. I'm Michael Reddington, and today I'm going to share five lessons I learned as a professional interrogator and that you can use to immediately improve the results of all of your business conversations. Now, I know a few of you may have just paused and thought, wait a minute. How will interrogation techniques help me with my business conversations? I'll give you two quick reasons, and then we'll jump into the lessons. First, the very best leaders and the very best interrogators capitalize on the same two core skills, vision and influence. Second, and maybe more surprising, the cognitive process that leads interrogation suspects to truthfully commit to saying I did it is nearly identical to the cognitive processes that lead customers to commit to saying I'll buy it, and employees to commit to saying I'll do it. All we're doing is moving people from resistance to. To commitment. All right, with that backdrop in mind, the first lesson, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, is to leverage your perceived weaknesses. Looking back on my interrogation career, my former teammates and I were nearly always asked to jump into aged investigations with no evidence and multiple suspects who had already been interviewed and denied any. Acknowledge your guilt. My path to success became much clearer once I accepted the fact that the overwhelming majority of suspects I spoke with had no good reason to tell me the truth. All they had to do was get through one more conversation, and they were in the clear. Thankfully, I realized when I prepared for my interrogations by asking myself why should they tell me the truth? I was transposing my perspectives onto my suspects and creating a false sense of confidence. So I flipped the script and started preparing for my conversations by asking myself why shouldn't they tell me the truth and why haven't they already told the truth? This approach immediately forced me to set aside my biases and assumptions, truly empathize with their situations and and develop strategies based on their expectations, not mine. I would literally write down all of the reasons they shouldn't and hadn't already told the truth, ask myself how can I use these reasons to my advantage and develop communication plans that allowed me to address all of these reasons in ways that helped me achieve my goals? The same exact approach applies to the entire spectrum of business conversations. Many of the people you speak with will have more motivation to protect their own interests than to help you achieve yours. If you prepare by asking yourself why should they? You're focusing on your own perspective and potentially making dangerous assumptions. When you prepare by asking yourself why shouldn't they and why haven't they already? You embrace your counterparts perspective, lay all of your weaknesses and threats on the table and give yourself an opportunity to connect with them in ways they never anticipated. Quick Bonus Lesson the answer to why they haven't already will fall into one of two categories. Either they didn't know it was an option or they didn't see the value in it. As you finalize your preparations and enter into your conversations, it is imperative that you always maintain a learning mentality. One of the worst things interrogators, business leaders and salespeople can do is go into any conversation thinking I've got it all figured out. As soon as you let that thought creep into your mindset, you're doomed. There is always something or more likely, some things that you can still learn, including your counterparts, fears, motivations, needs and decision making criteria. If you become myopically focused on one opportunity or approach, you can easily miss indications of additional unexpected opportunities and approaches. One straightforward approach to maintaining a learning mentality at the start of any conversation is just to ask yourself, what can I learn from this person? Once our mind's eye is focused on learning, instead of confirming, we are more likely to observe these new indications and understand their contextual importance. It is hard to learn if you're not listening, and it's hard to listen if you're talking. Now that you've embraced your weaknesses and and maintaining a learning mentality, it's critical to remain patient and let your conversations come to you, this involves three components. First, keep as much of what you know to yourself for as long as you can. Instead of telling your counterparts what you know, ask them questions and invite them to expand on what they know. Then only share the information that's necessary to move the conversation forward. Second, lead to your main point. Don't lead with it. The direct path is often the path of most resistance. Your counterparts will become defensive when they feel rushed, chased, cornered or threatened. They're far more likely to share much more information when you ask questions that lead towards the information you're looking for and don't interrupt them. Now, you might be thinking, I can't afford to take that much time. You can't afford not to. The third component is to value quality over time. I get it. No one, especially business leaders, has enough time anymore. We're all pulled in too many directions and have too many demands on our schedules. You've all heard the axiom, you've got to invest money to make money. Well, the same is true with time. You have to invest time to save time. Those of you with design or production backgrounds know that whenever we prioritize time over quality, quality suffers. The same principle holds true with communication. If you're focused on the ticking clock in the back of your mind, you're increasing your stress levels and you're not focused on maximizing the quality of your relationships and the information you're receiving. Investing a few extra minutes into a conversation today can save you from stress filled hours or days in the future. As you let your conversation come to you, the next step is to embrace your counterparts. Excuses. That's right, embrace their excuses. Don't challenge them. Leaders often make two key mistakes when they're confronted with excuses. First, they take it personally and become angry or offended. Second, they believe they need to correct these excuses immediately in a misguided attempt to establish accountability. Both of these reactions are counterproductive. People create excuses to protect their self images. I have great news for you. When people blame their shortfalls on something or someone else, they admit they have shortfalls. The best way to get the truth is to surprise your counterparts. Initially, accept these excuses and work backwards to the real stories. As their stories unravel, they will realize that they need to take responsibility for their actions and as a bonus, it will feel like their idea. Please remember, the most productive time to establish accountability is at the end of the conversation, not the beginning. The fifth lesson today is to ask questions based on what your counterparts need to hear, not what you want to say. Questions can be perceived as invitations or attacks and you'll be surprised with what people will tell you when you help them save face and protect their self images. The number one fear that stops most people from doing most things is not failure, it's embarrassment. Furthermore, the number one reason why most adults lie most of the time is to avoid a consequence that is either real or perceived. When leaders ask questions based on what they want to say, they run the risk of coming across as parental, condescending, or even threatening. These unintended consequences can be avoided by taking the time to consider why your counterparts may not want to share the information you need and then creating questions that reduce their fears and invite them to share it. Considering there is a direct link between the questions we ask and the results we achieve, the this will be time well spent. To quickly recap, There's a whole new world of strategic intelligence and enhanced results available to you when you embrace your weaknesses. Maintain a learning mentality. Let the conversation come to you initially. Embrace excuses and ask questions that invite your counterparts to share the information you need. People will perceive how you communicate with them as proof for how much you respect them. They will choose their words accordingly. Thank you all again for sharing your time with us Again, I'm Michael Reddington. Those of you who are interested in learning more about how to apply strategic ethical persuasion techniques in all of your business conversations can learn more@inclusive.com Stay safe out there. Take care of each other. Omar thank you for having me on your show. Back to you. O O Ozempic hi, I'm Chef Franklin Becker. You know the jingle. Now discover the facts about Ozempic, a GLP one. There's only one FDA approved Ozempic made by Novo Nordisk. Learn about the real thing.

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Semaglutide injection 0.5 milligram, 1 milligram and 2 milligrams. Love this lesson by Michael Reddington because it makes total sense and it's a great reminder when you're writing sales copy, when you're creating a sales video, when you're doing webinars, when you're on sales calls. I love this exercise. It's something that we can all do right now today. We don't have to delay. We can do it right now. Is write down what are all the reasons why somebody wouldn't buy your product or service. These are basically the reasons in their Head the customer's head. The rebuttals they have, that's holding them back from paying you money, buying your product, taking on your service. You need to address these. You gotta just deal with reality. So when you come from that place, you're like, okay, I need to make sure I put people at ease and start addressing these possible issues. This becomes your sales pitch, basically. Instead of trying to push on the product and show them all the wonderful things it does, show them how it solves for all the things that they are saying to themselves in their head, all the excuses they're saying about why they can't move forward. For example, with our company, Webinar Ninja, our webinar software, a reason why somebody might not buy could be I'm not techie and I'm nervous that I will not know how to put a webinar together. That's a valid reason why somebody wouldn't buy. So I need to address that. I need to show them or tell them. It takes 10 seconds to create a webinar with Webinar Ninja, and most of our users are not techie, and that's why they come to us. I might want to mention too, that we have 24.7live support and that they're happy to guide you through it. And I might even just say, hey, if you can do a FaceTime call on your phone, you can run a webinar. And that's just one rebuttal. So go ahead and do that right now and make the most of today's lesson. All right? If you don't have a moment right now, then commit to doing it this week. Put it in your calendar. You won't regret it. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. You can check out more of Michael's work@inquasive.com that's I N Q U A S I V E dot com. He's got some really good content over there. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I've always said that communication is the mother of all skills. If you can continually work on your communication skills, understand who you're speaking to and communicate according, it's going to be your meal ticket. It's going to be easy for you to sell, to have conversations, to close deals, to grow your business, work on these skills and you'll never go wrong. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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