What You Need To Know To Be Better At Sales—There's A Science To It

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Aladdin geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I have to tell you before we get into today's guest, which I've been excited about this guest for since I've read the book the Science of selling proven strategies to make your pitch influence decisions, close a deal. But I don't want to forget about my six Sigma, geeky automation based, zapier loving co host Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist postings, posting domination.com landgeek Scott Todd, how are you?

Mark I am fantastic and I am ready to put on my learning cap today and talk about a topic that I don't think enough of, the land geekers really understand what's involved with this aspect of the business. So I'm excited to talk to our guests today.

Yeah, I'm excited as well because it's one of those things and we're going to get into it that you know, you go to university, you go to business school, whatever it is, and it's arguably the most important function of business and yet the least sort of talked about, right? And it's selling. Our guest today is going to help you make money, right? Because at the or I mean if you're not, you know, money motivated, that's fine. But the science of persuasion, whether it's, you know, selling a piece of raw land or whether it's selling your teenager to be a responsible driver or it's selling your spouse to, you know, don't over the credit card this month, whatever it is in your life. David Hoffeld, the chief behavioral strategist at Hoffeld Group, a research based sales training, coaching and consulting firm, is going to help you move the needle in your life, in your business, in everything. Because it all comes down to selling. David works with companies throughout North America, showing them how to align their sales message with the findings of behavioral science. Very Dan Ariely.

Ish.

Love Dan Ariely. He is a respected thought leader who's widely regarded as the number one authority on integrating behavioral science and skills. So it's not, it's not just like those hardcore used car salesman guys. Sales, this is geeky. Sales, this is behavioral science and sales. David has also been featured in little known magazines like, I don't know, you might have heard of Fortune or U.S. news and World Report, CBS Radio, Fox News Radio and more. He's also teaching at Harvard Business school on the class that everybody should be taking, but no one takes selling. David Hoffeld.

How are you? Hey, great to be here. Mark and Scott, I'm looking forward to this. This is gonna be fun.

No, it really is. So David, kind of tell us like how did you get started in becoming like a sales trainer?

You know, I have been in sales for many years as a salesperson, sales manager, director of sales, VP of sales. And I've always been a student of wanting to learn my craft, wanting to get better. And really the way I got into the science of it was I stumbled on an academic journal about 12 years ago in social psychology, which is defined as the scientific study of how human beings are influenced in a social setting. And one of the articles in the journal I thought was so applicable to what I did every day as a sales professional. And so I applied it. I got some decent results from just that one piece of information. And so I started sharing it with my team. And then I began to adopt the oddest hobby probably of anyone that's ever been on your show, which is I became obsessed with reading academic journals in this area. And so I threw myself into it. And in 2009 I launched my firm, the Huffle Group, which is focused on research backed sales strategies that literally show salespeople how to align how they sell with how our brains are wired to make buying decisions. And here we are a couple of years later. We got a book that just came out and we're helping companies all around the world right now. So it's exciting.

I know, I'm excited. I know Scott, Todd's excited because, you know, if you don't come from a sales background, this is really hard. There's a lot of stuff in your head, right, about selling. David, kind of share with us sort of the sales stereotypes.

Yeah. And you're exactly right. Oftentimes we get intimidated by selling. If we're not in the profession. It can be difficult. You think either you have it or you don't. Many of us think that you're born a salesperson or you're born, you just can't do it. It's not for you. And here's the reality, that's not true. I mean, science has decoded what makes a great salesperson. Now we know the specific behaviors that when you utilize them, you're instantly more influential. And isn't that what all of us want? Regardless of what we do for a living? All of us want more influence. We want to hear, yes, more often, what is influence? I define it as, it's what guides people in taking what you say seriously and being willing to act on it. And so that's what we're all about. And there's a science to it. We now know the specific behaviors that enable and generate influence. And when you leverage this, regardless of your profession, you instantly become more influential. And influence is the currency of success. Those who are influential are far more likely to become successful. And there's a science to it. So anyone can get better. Regardless of your natural ability or your starting place or where you are today, anyone can be improved. So whether you're good or you're horrible at selling doesn't matter. You can always get better by applying this science.

Let's talk about the science. Scott. Todd, you ready to get geeky?

Yeah. So, I mean, I agree. I think that no matter what you're weak at, you do it enough times, you can get better at it. And I really think that. I think that it's funny because you see people who have never sold in their lives and they try to start selling and the first thing they do is they start to sound like a used car salesman. You know, like, what do I have to do to get you to do this today? And that's like the wrong thing to say, right? Like it's about relationships. So what is the science?

Yeah, there's a lot I'll tell you.

Right now, by the way. Sorry to take your thunder, David.

Go ahead, go ahead.

To answer your question, it's BD equals F, parentheses, comma, es. David Hoffeld, what is a science based selling methodology?

Oh, you're speaking my language now. So that is an equation from the book. Do not let the word equation throw you, because this is practical, easy to execute stuff. So what Mark was so wonderfully sharing, is that a buying decision? What is it? We've actually decoded it through now decades of research, and what it is we found is two things, which is what that equation that Mark was just sharing illustrates. Number one, we have found that a buying decision is made up of certain incremental commitments that guide our potential customers on a progression of consent and naturally advance the sale. This is a huge breakthrough. In fact, I say it's one of the biggest breakthroughs in the last hundred years in selling. And because it tells us what a sales process should be doing, we should guide people in making certain. There's six of them, six commitments that if they don't make, they'll never buy. Meaning these six commitments will show you how should you sell instead of trying to Guess your way to success. Man, that's expensive, Right? You want to guess your way. Oftentimes you try stuff out in the world of selling. By the time you figure it out, whoops, you're out of a job, Right? Why do that? The science shows us exactly what we should do. So there's certain commitments. You get them, you're going to be very successful, because that's how our brains make a buying decision. The second thing, though, that you were sharing, Mark, the two letters, ES says emotional state. Oh, boy. This is powerful because emotions matter, right? We all know that in selling, emotions matter. Everyone said that for decades. How do they matter and how do you know? Some breakthrough research in neuroscience that we talk about in the book shows us exactly what emotions do it. Equally important, how should we leverage them in the sale? Powerful stuff. When you learn this, you're instantly more successful as soon as you put that book down. Not that you want to do that, but whenever you have to. Instantly more successful.

Let's get granular, David.

All right.

All right. I got 40 acres in Nevada. Road access, mountain views. It's 30 miles, the nearest town.

Sell it to me.

Sell it to me.

You want me to sell it to you? All right, let's apply some of the things we just talked about here. So the first thing we want to do is anytime we talk to anyone, one of our the biggest commitment, we want to get one of the biggest six, and often the hardest one to get is why change? So why should someone even consider a property like that or anything else, regardless of what you're selling? And this is our biggest competitor, and this is where most sales are lost. We lose as professionals. If you're a salesperson or a business owner, you've lost more business to nothing than to someone, right? We lose. People don't always choose a competitor or choose another piece of property. In your analogy, they say, I'm just going to stay where I am. I'm not doing anything. So how do you break through that? We got to break through and get them to commit to why change? Because until I get that, me showing a property, you're trying to sell you something you don't want, it's irrelevant. So I got to generate. Why should you even consider this? I got to break through what researchers call a status quo bias, which means the tendency for us to assign a high level of risk to doing something as opposed to nothing. How do I do that? There's a number of ways. One of the easiest and most influential is I got to disrupt your status quo. Bias with insights or what kind of insight can I leverage that I know would matter to you? Right around that piece of property that's going to at least incite some interest? You're like, okay, I like that. I want to know a little more and then I can get into it because I got to break through that firewall, right? I got to break through that of that status quo bias. I have to say I have to open you up to change. And this is the biggest problem in selling. We're not doing this effectively and it's going to cost us a lot of money. Or in your case, if you don't do this, you're not going to sell that property, my friend.

Okay, so how do I find that out?

How do you find out the insight? So let's apply to the person you're talking to. So we'll do a little sales coaching. So if. Why would someone want to consider that property? What is it about the property that would be appealing?

It's rural. There's no restrictions. I've got clean air. I can use it recreationally. I can camp on it. I can hunt on it. I can, you know, fishing's nearby.

It's a trophy for me. I mean, 40 acres, man. Like, it's a lot of property, a lot of land. I own 40 acres. It's a long term investment.

My banker's gonna love me because my net worth just went up substantially on paper because now I own this asset.

Excellent. Okay, so you've got a lot of value propositions, right? But rather than just pitch them out, right. I want to try to connect the dots for my buyer. And this is something else we talk about in the book. So I want to try to understand what is it that motivating every buyer is going to be a little different. So some of those things you mentioned are going to be irrelevant. I care less about my banker. I got clean air everywhere I go. I got that at home right now. So some of those are other things might be, man, having 40 acres in the middle of nowhere, that sounds awesome to me. I want to know what matters, right? So I got to understand my potential customer. Enough. We talk about this in the book. We call them primary buying motivators. So I got to know certain things about my customer. So in sales, we always talk about listening a lot, listening to our customer. Understanding. We say that's fine. But more important than listening is what am I listening for? Once I know certain pieces of information, then I connect the dots, right? So if I was trying to. If I knew that having a lot of land was important to you, Mark? Right. And I'm trying to sell this property. Rather than throwing out all kind of things that you probably don't care about, I'm going to focus on that. So, Mark, a few minutes ago you mentioned how you want to have a lot of acres. You want to be out in the country, have a lot of acres with this property. I want to show you 40 acres, pristine. You're going to be all yours. You're going to have that peace of quiet that you send you want. So I'm going to connect the dots, make it easy for your brain to see value, because this is an important point. Value is always created the buyers minds, not in theirs. And sometimes too often in sales, we kind of try to push value on people. We say, here's what I would like about this piece of property and I assume you're the same way as me and that's not the case. So rather than just throw out value propositions, we want to say, okay, most of them, they're not going to care about. So I want to find out, what do you care about? Because if I start talking about things you don't care about, I'm irrelevant. And I don't ever want to do that because then people shut you out. Boom, I'm done. I'm injecting from the conversation mentally. So I got to find out what matters to you and then I want to connect the dots. We call it a primary buying motivator statement. We actually trademark that term. Yep.

All right, fantastic.

So really, it's really about in the beginning of that relationship or in the beginning there. It's really about a lot of asking questions, looking, hunting. It's not really about selling at that point. It's the why. Trying to understand their why and then trying to figure out what, what is it? What characteristic of this property do I, do I have that I can connect to something that David is of interest? That's of interest to David?

Exactly. Yeah. It's very hard to persuade people that you don't understand. And when we try to do that, what we do is we just throw out ideas at them. And here's what I always say, we call it feature dumps and selling. I'm sure you guys have heard the term. And the problem with it is if I throw out 10 value propositions, you might care about number seven, but by the time I got to number four, you stopped listening, right? And you're like, well, you know, I gave you 10 value propositions. One of them you cared about, but nine of them you didn't. So I just gave you nine reasons why you shouldn't buy my product or service. So you're exactly right. But what a lot of companies face, and I guess I didn't bring it out in the analogy I was given here about the property, but a lot of people face is how do I get an audience with someone? That's always a big issue for a lot of companies. How do I break through the noise in the marketplace and get you to give me a few minutes so I can ask you some questions? What we say in, that we talk about in the book is we want to leverage something called reciprocity. Reciprocity is a scientific principle. It's been studied for about 80 years in depth. And what it says is that people should repay others for what they have been given. So if you give me something, I feel indebted to you and I'm more likely to respond to your request. So what do we do? If I want to, let's say I'm cold calling somebody, right? I'm trying to call them up and I know I can help them, but I got to break through. So. Or I'm trying to meet them at an event, what do I do? I want to interrupt with value, right? I want to give them value right away. Because if I go in and say, hey, Mark Scott, we have an amazing product that I love to share with you. If I can have a few minutes of your time to ask you some questions, we can find out if we can be of service to you. You're going to say no. You're going to be like, I'm busy, man. I don't got time to go fishing for value with you, right? Instead I got to interrupt you and I got to know, what is it you care about? So let's say I do some research and I know your company's hiring some people. So I would interrupt you and say, you know, we just put together a white paper with five science based strategies that are proven to reduce the likelihood of a mishre. And I want to give that to you because rather than me telling you how we can help you with your hiring choices, I'd rather just show you so you can see for yourself. Mark, where would you like me to send that white paper to? Boom. And now once you accept it, you're far more likely now to answer my questions. Why? Because you owe me. You just accepted something that's a real value to you. And if I'm selling, let's say, a hiring Process or a testing for hiring. I just demonstrated that value as well. And hopefully you'll read it, you'll enjoy it, you'll pass it on, the colleagues. So it's an advertising tool, was me. But it's a way I break through that status quo bias. I got an. It's a way for me to knock on the door and I do it with value.

I love it. Scott, if I told you that David Hoffeld is going to be training you one on one and is going to improve your sales conversion ratio by three times by the end of the year, would you be interested in spending an hour with him?

Yes.

That is an incremental commitment. What is the power of incremental commitment, David?

Mmm. It is the sale. The research shows us, pretty conclusively, decades of research, that the easiest way to get someone to make a big decision is to first get them to make a small decision that's consistent with it. This is the key to selling. Great salespeople do is they get commitments. Commitments are the building blocks of the sale. Reality is there are certain commitments that if people don't make that are relatively small, if they won't make them, they'll never commit to buying your product or service. So what is the goal of every sales process? To make certain incremental commitments that guide our potential customers on a progression of a consent, naturally advancing the sale. The reality is this is the way our brains make buying decisions. We don't just make one big commitment at the end of a sale.

We.

When I'm listening to a sales call, I'm saying yes to some things, no to some things. I'm making commitments in my hand left and right now. How much more effective would it be if salespeople guide potential customers in making these commitments, make it easy for them, because if they don't, they can't say yes at the end. And so we want to align our sales processes with these commitments. So incremental commitments are literally the building blocks of the sale.

Scott, when I asked you that question, how did you feel?

A little cautious, but, you know, it led me to a yes, and then I felt a little relieved, like, what do I have to lose?

David, how'd you feel when asking that question?

You could have set it up a little better. Let me show you what you can do here because you raise a good point. Commitments matter, but they're often, sometimes there's still a little bit of rub there, right? You still got, again, it's less than at the end of the sale when you ask for One at the close, but it's still a little bit rough. So what do you do research on this too? You want to prepare people for commitments. What comes directly before a commitment matters. So what we say is, before I ask, we call it in the book and commitment trial close. I want to ask an involvement trial close. What does that look like? I want to get Scott to affirm the value that the commitment is based on, help him think through it. So let's say I just presented. To go with what you just described, Mark, let's say I just presented my products or services. And, and Scott right now is. He's in awe. I can see it in his eyes. He's loving every second of it. And so I would say, Scott, does it make sense why so many people, when they learn about the Huffville Group and our science backed approach, choose to do business with us? Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense.

Scott, would you want to spend one hour with me just exploring how we can help you and improve your business by over 300%?

I.

Maybe, you know, sure.

Okay, that's good. My credit card. Yeah, let's talk, we'll talk about. We said, Mamie, he didn't give me a commitment, which I'm not gonna let go. I'm gonna come back to that in a second, Scott, so you're not off the hook. But you see what I did there? I'm preparing him for it. Now, for Scott not to give me a commitment, he has to go against what he just said. Makes sense that so many people are doing okay. Scott is like a lot of people and he wasn't ready yet. Right. I mean, I haven't presented all this to him and this doesn't happen to me in real life, obviously, but in this case it didn't. Right. So he said, I'm not sure yet, so what do I want to do? Scott's not saying no to me. He's saying, well, I'm not ready yet. He's still not there mentally. He's still processing it. So what do I want to do? I want to help him think through it. I want to help Scott defend where he's at, but in my favor. So I would say this. So, Scott, it sounds like you're definitely considering spending some time with me and kind of looking at how you're selling currently. If we were to spend some time together, what do you think some of the advantages would be in that?

Well, I think I would learn something new. I think. I'm not sure I would get three times my annual Sales increase in an hour. That seems a little far fetched, but I think I could learn something new.

Okay, that being the case, then would you like to spend an hour together just to see if we can learn something new and see how much we can help you in sales? Maybe you're right. Maybe it won't be three times. But even if it was, if we got you by 5% increase, wouldn't that be worth an hour of your time? Okay.

All right.

Mark oversold it three times in one hour.

But what, you know, I made that situation very awkward because I fast forwarded through so many pieces of sales process to get to my incremental commitment just to illustrate it. But I think the way that you did it was much smoother and less, you know, I think what I was trying to get out of both of you is the way I said it was manipulative versus the way you said it, which is more of a guiding helping. Let's connect the dots and let's make these trial commitments, these small little trial commitments to guide Scott towards what would we could all agree is going to benefit him. Right. It's not going to benefit David necessarily. It's not for him, it's for Scott. It's David helping Scott make a good decision for Scott. And clearly if you didn't think it was a good decision for Scott, you wouldn't do it.

Right, Exactly. That's a very important point as well. Yeah. And that is everything we do, everything we're talking about here is always focused on the buyer. It's extremely buyer centric. So a science backed way of selling is the most buyer centric approach there is because everything is about the buyer. It's how does the buyer's brain work? What is matters to the buyer, what's their perspective, what's their belief system? So I'm so focused on my buyer and everything I do is for them and it's all about them. And it's great because it removes a lot of my biases and my opinions and things that can get in the way of the sale, out of the arena. And I can really focus on my buyer in this case, Scott. So yeah, the commitments like I demonstrated there would come after I've presented about it. So and me, we went a little bit out of order, but you can see how we, we want to guide people and make commitments, so we say how can we help people? And there's a whole science to that called choice architecture, which is really cool. Which is a little bit of what I just demonstrated there. Kind of cold on Scott, but it's very non confrontational and it guides people in making some pretty big choices very easily and confidently.

I think a lot of people have a hard time, David, and let me know if you think I'm wrong from a science based perspective. I'm just saying this anecdotally asking for the sale, right. So they can go through the questioning, Right. They can get the trial commitments, but then when it comes to ask for the actual sale, they tense up. The buyer feels it.

Right.

And they react to that.

Yeah.

Is this, is this a real thing or is this me?

It's a real thing. In fact, there's science to validate what you just said. We talk about it in the latter part of the book that people vastly underestimate compliance rates. They've done studies on this where when they say, you know, when you make a certain request, this request of a person, you ask 100 people, what do you think the percentage are that are going to say yes to you? People vastly underestimate it by multiple times, hundreds of percent. So we vastly underestimate. We think, you know, a lot of that fear is on us. But when you adopt two things, when you adopt this science back way of selling with these incremental commitments, it makes the close easier. Why? Because they've already made certain commitments. So they've gone on this progression of consent that's advanced the sale and they're ready to say yes to you at the end of it. They're prepared. And if they're not, you know it. So the close isn't this roller coaster ride that it historically has been where we ask for these big commitments and we don't know what's going to happen and they say objections. It doesn't have to be that way. When you align how you sell with how people buy, it's usually not. The close is very drama free. Why? Because I did all the heavy lifting earlier. I didn't wait till the end when I don't have the time. I do it throughout the sale. So if there's issues, I can correct them. So number one, if you adopt that the close is easy. Number two, understanding that the fear is misplaced, that's our biases, it's not reality. So people are far more likely to comply with requests, even crazy requests than we believe. So it's, we don't have to be afraid of closing if you sell correctly. The close is relatively straightforward and can be very, very simple.

What about, you know, like what, what about following up? Okay, like that's another Area I think that people struggle with is like, maybe my, maybe I haven't executed on the formula correctly. I haven't done this and I, I miss the opportunity for the sale. Someone says, oh, I got a. Here, just send me the information. I'll look over it. I'll get back to you. You know what I find is that people struggle with knowing how soon to follow up because they don't want to appear too pushy. But in today's market, and you start off the podcast by saying they're not choosing someone else, they're choosing nothing.

Right.

Like they're, they're not choosing. So if I let them go for a week, two weeks, a month, month, they're not going to choose me. They're not going to choose anything because that desire that they had at that moment moved on. So when should I follow up?

Yeah, it depends on the context. There's no hard and fast answer like follow up within. You know, obviously you want to do it as soon as possible. It depends what's going on. So what I'd recommend is this. At the end of the sales call, if you have multiple steps in your sales call, which most people do. Right. You're not selling all at once. So if you're doing a one call close, that's different. But if you're doing multiple steps, you have a longer sales cycle. At the end of the sales call, you want to set up what happens next. So if they need to talk to someone else in their company, when will you be doing that? So I got to talk to my VP of sales before you know, about when we've talked. Okay. When would you be doing that? I'll do that on Monday. Great. So let's touch base again on Tuesday. Scott, what does your afternoon look like on Tuesday for a call? I'm available after 3. I could do a 3:30. Does that work for you? Absolutely. Okay, great. Well, I will give you a call at 3:30. Any reason why 3:30 wouldn't work on Tuesday, Scott? And if something does come up, Scott, would you give me a call and we can reschedule or send me an email? Sure. That's how I'm setting up follow up calls. Right. So I'm structuring them, I'm scheduling them because. Yeah, if you leave it to chance and try to get a hold of people, people are busy. It's hard to get a hold of people on the phone or even via email. People get hundreds of emails a day. So you got to set it up so you want to do it as soon as possible. But I want to structure it so that I have more of a likelihood of getting a hold of them and then talk about what's going to happen next. I got to continue that sale, that momentum. You're exactly right.

So what happens, you know, like, today? Today, there's a lot of communication that's not happening on the phone or face to face. It's happening. It's happening electronically. It's happening in an email. It's happening across other platforms. How do I make that decision on or how do I get that commitment of where I'm going to follow up next? Or how do I get them to move from email to a phone? I mean, because that's where things happen.

Is on the phone. Yeah. So it depends, again, on the context of this. But what I want to do is I got to give enough value to earn a right to talk to you. Right. So how do I do that? Number of different ways. One of the ways we talk about in the book, that's really powerful, and this is a huge deal when you want to create a competitive advantage. So you're going against all of us. There's a lot of competitors in the marketplace. How do you differentiate? Because that's where we're all living. Right? How do I differentiate? How do I build value? We say you want to look for what's called distinct value. What is distinct value? It's two things. Number one, it's something that my potential customer cares about. They have to care about it or it doesn't matter. Second, in some way that I'm different than my direct competitors. Right. If I'm different but you don't care. I don't care. Right. If, if. If you care about when I'm not different, it doesn't apply. It has to be both those things. I'm different, you care about it. I got to leverage that. Right. I got to earn. I got to give value to you, Scott, if I'm selling you at every stage of the sales call, because to your point, as soon as I stop giving value, you're going to drop off. It used to be people expected value when they bought your product or service. Not anymore. They want value at every stage. As soon as I stop giving you value, you're disconnected. Right. You're gonna go with someone else, or you're just gonna push the whole decision off. Forget about it. Enjoy the holidays and move on with your life. And so I'm relentless about value. I want, every time you and I interact that you're getting more than you're giving up. Right? I want, I want you to feel like, man, every time I talk to that guy, I get something. I'm gonna come with an insight. I'm gonna come with an article. Hey, Scott, I read an article yesterday on forms I think you might like. I'm going to send it to you. I mean, I'm going to do relentless. I'm giving value constantly. Because then you're going to reciprocate with time. As soon as you stop giving value, you're going to have a hard time getting a hold of people. They're just not going to. They don't care because they don't see enough value in you to get on the phone. They're like, I don't care. You got to break through that. You got that apathy that our buyers have. You got to break through that with value.

Yeah, I love it. And something that, you know, we're kind of getting into the podcast here. But, you know, one of the great things in the book that's really applicable to our sales cycle, David, is anchoring. Right. I have a 40 acre parcel.

Right.

And values are all over the place. Anchor that price is so, so powerful. And so can you kind of explain to everybody what anchoring means?

Anchoring, you're exactly right. Anchoring, we call it sometimes in sales we'll call it price conditioning. But there's all kind of research on anchoring. What is anchoring? Our brains are comparison machines. So if I'm thinking about a piece of property, I'm comparing it to other pieces of properties. What someone told me something like this would cost. That's how I determine if your price is too high or too low. Or this property is, do I like it or not? Is it a good value? I'm comparing it. So you have. We have two options. The brain is doing this automatically. We can just hope that it falls in our favor or we can create the anchor. What is an anchor? It's the starting point of the comparison. So what I would do is if I'm selling a piece of property, 40 acres, I don't know what the price is. Let's just say a million dollars. Right? Keep it simple for me. And let's say that's the price of the property. I'm going to anchor a higher price than that before I disclose the price, before we get into talking about price. So I'm going to say, you know, a lot of properties around this area similar to this in the last few years have actually gone for, well, almost $2 million. Or I can Even do an irrelevant anchor. I could say, you know, I have a friend in Washington state who looked at a property just like this. Now this is out in Washington state, of course, but he paid over $3 million for it. So I know the prices are a little less here, which is good in your favor. You can get a lot of land here for a lot less than you can on the places. Now you might say, what does that do? I just put $3 million in their mind, right? And then the research shows anchors are covert ways of influence. People vastly underestimate the impact that they have. I mean, I'll give you an example. We had worked with one nonprofit a while ago. We were able to double their giving rates from their website. Here's how we did it. When they won the website, if you asked for a donation, you'd have a drop down and it would have 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and so on. Dollars. We said, why are you doing that? Because what are you anchoring? 5, 10, 15, 20. These are low numbers. No one wants a $5. We don't want a $5 donation. Let's change it up. So we threw that out, went to 25, 50, 100, 200, 500. Donations skyrocketed. Why? Because we anchored higher numbers. Right? If you see 5, 10, 15, 20, you're going to go, oh, I'll give 20 bucks. When you see 25, 50, 100, you'll go, oh, get 50 bucks. Right. We just, we just doubled sales just like that. So that's an example of an anchor. You always want to create these in your sales process. So before you show price, or even if they know price beforehand, always anchor numbers so they compare your price to something else that's favorable for you.

I love it. I love it. Well, David, we're at that point in the podcast now where I'm going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable. You've given so many tips, so much value on this podcast, but I'm going to ask you for one more piece. All right.

I am going to recommend our Twitter feed, avidhoffeld. You can follow me. We post all kind of stuff, I mean, all throughout the day, every single day. A lot of science based ideas from myself as well as many other thought leaders too. We have 102,000 followers on Twitter, so I'd love to connect with you there. I know you're going to find a lot of value, what we offer. So that's Avidhoffeld and I will see you on Twitter, I love it.

Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Wow, 102 followers. 102,000 followers. Make that 100 2001. All right, all right, Mark, So you know, people, people within our community, they will use Google Voice for different parts of their business, you know, to have a second phone number. I've been playing with this new, new app. It's called listen. It's@ uselessen.com uselessen.com and it's really, really cool because think of like a Google voice, but, but not cloud based. It's phone based. And what's cool is I can set up like whitelist. So, Mark, you know, I like you, David, I like you. I could give you my phone number and you get whitelisted right to my regular phone. Whereas maybe if you're not whitelisted, then you don't, you don't even get through. It just goes right to voicemail. When I get messages, I can set up auto replies. So for text and stuff, you can auto reply. I mean, think about letting, letting your phone and an app, for Pete's sake, work for you as opposed to you having to sit there and compose a reply. You can use kind of keywords and just keep the conversation going and you're not even doing it.

I love it. I've downloaded it. I have not played with it yet, but it is on my phone.

I like it.

And I'm going to delve deeper into it. My tip of the week going to be learn more about David Hoffeld at. Com and pick up on. Is it I can. Can I get this on Amazon? David? The Science of Selling.

Absolutely. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere fine books are sold, you'll see copies of the Science of Selling just waiting to be bought.

Well, I want to thank you for taking valuable, your valuable time out to really educate us because at the end of the day, the importance of selling cannot be overstated. I remember, you know, hearing this, this podcast with the founder of Sam Adams, and he said, you know, he was like a Harvard grad and, you know, the guy's like, look, you got to go out door to door and sell. He's like, he thought it was beneath him, right? And he had a really, really hard time with it. But then he realized, like, this is what fuels my business. You could have the greatest strategy in the world, but you're not getting any sales. It doesn't matter. So, David, I want to thank you, Scott. Thank you. And I want to thank the listeners, please. The only way we're going to get the quality of guests like David Hoffel from the Hoffel Group to come on the podcast is if you subscribe, rate and view the podcast. And if you do so, we're going to give you some free. Free. The $97 passive income launch kit. See how I anchored that, David? It's $97.

Excellent. That's right. Don't call it free. Always assign a monetary value. You read the book. I know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I'm applying, so I want to thank everybody and let freedom ring. Thanks, David. Thank you.