Public Speaking, Sales and PR Flashcards

Question

The Bias of Thin-slicing (NeuroMarketing)

Answer 1

Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking [69] tells curious stories in which people make seemingly absurd decisions using a limited amount of information. He calls this bias “thin-slicing” and draws examples from a wide range of situations involving scientists, doctors, executives, art experts, and more. In all these cases, logic and rationality are missing. Choices are made in the “blink of an eye” even though they may involve smart and educated decision makers. Although Gladwell does not investigate the neuroscience of “thin-slicing,” NeuroMap can explain many of the situations he describes. For instance, in the presence of too much information, the primal brain takes over while the rational brain stalls. Furthermore, when our primal brain dominates plenty of emotional factors influence our decisions beyond our level of consciousness. Although there are clear benefits from allowing the primal brain to control an enormous number of our decisions, it can lead us to make very bad choices. Remember the example of trying to find how much the candy was worth? Your primal brain took over, and most likely you did not get the right answer! Another important book discussing the faulty nature of many of our decisions is Predictably Irrational by Daniel Ariely [70]. The book presents several cognitive biases that affect many of our decisions, basically because the primal brain controls the process below our level of awareness. Following are a few cognitive biases.

Answer 2

To decide, we need to be able to contrast options that appear radically different. By offering two options that are about the same, and a third that is radically different, most people will choose the third. The primal brain is wired to make quick decisions, and contrast allows that level of efficiency. When we easily compare and contrast options, we are allowing the dominance of the primal brain to rule our choices.

Answer 3

Our first decisions may considerably influence the rest of the decisions we make regarding the same product or solution. This suggests that we are wired to repeat decisions we find satisfying. That is why habits are so addictive. We argue the reason we do that is because the primal brain wants to reduce cognitive effort by retrieving old patterns of behavior. It also explains why it is so difficult to change our behavior in general or shift to another brand of toothpaste!

Answer 4

We always prefer free options over fee options because we perceive that there is no risk when the item has no price. According to Ariely, the reason free shipping offers are so effective is that it lifts the objection of adding any cost on top of the price of an item. In fact, the zero-cost bias reflects the loss-avoidance bias of the primal brain. It is not logical and rational to wait in line for a free ice cream, yet thousands of people do it because they are under the dominance of their primal brain, which seeks instant gratification!

Answer 5

We act based on what is expected of our community of reference (social norm), and this may influence the way we respond to market offers. If the offer is aligned with the social norm, we accept the offer. If it is not, we reject it. What this explains is that incongruence between our primal brain (compliance reduces risk or regret) and the rational brain (evaluation of a market offer) disrupts the risk or regret) and the rational brain (evaluation of a market offer) disrupts the bottom-up effect. NeuroMap predicts that for messages/offers to work, they must stimulate both the primal and the rational brains.

Answer 6

According to Ariely, we pretend that we prefer more options than fewer. Paradoxically, to survive, we are better off reviewing a limited number of options. We will discuss this bias when we elaborate on contrastable as a persuasion stimulus later in this chapter. We argue that the primal brain hates too many choices. The rational brain does not mind going through an extensive evaluation process, but it may delay decisions in the process. This creates a paradox in many of our decisions. We tend to say we want options, but at a deeper level, we do not want to face the cognitive burden of choosing among many. NeuroMap posits that a persuasive message can trigger decisions when it asserts that there is only one good decision: the one you suggest!

Answer 7

What we expect influences our behavior. This bias is the direct consequence of the dominance of the primal brain over the rational brain. What we want is known to emerge in primal subcortical areas of the brain. What we want shapes what we expect, and what we expect does overrule what we logically and rationally report we need.

Answer 8

The dominance of the primal brain is based on survival priorities that are deeply anchored in our biology. Cognition came later. We are not wired to process a lot of information, spend ample time finding patterns, or agonize over decisions. Too much information freezes the primal brain.

Answer 9

Our primal brain does not have the cognitive resources to compute and resolve complex arrays of data. If the pattern of a situation is completely new, and not urgent or relevant, the primal brain will not be able to retrieve a previously stored set of commands that would accelerate the processing of the information. We love cognitive fluency because it conserves valuable energy

Answer 10

: Time is directly related to how much energy the brain needs to process information. In the primal brain, faster is always better. Therefore, situations that require time do not appeal to our older brain structures and receive low priority.

Answer 11

Our brain is not designed to store much information. The reason is simple. Encoding is costly, because of the energy required to store but also to maintain and retrieve our memories. Recent research demonstrates that memorizing attaches specific neurons to our memories. In fact, by using light to stimulate nerve connections, Dr. Malinow and his team successfully removed and reactivated memories by stimulating synapses in rats' brains [71]. This only proves further that the brain welcomes situations or events that make it easy to hold information in working memory and not highly dependent on long-term encoding. The primal brain favors such conditions over others.

Answer 12

. Make sure you put your audience, prospect, or listeners at the center of the message. So many ads or presentations forget this simple rule. Admit it: Have you not ever started a presentation by saying, “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today I would like to tell you about our company, our values, our mission statement, our technology…”? The image in Figure 4.3 is indicative of just how interested and excited the primal brains of your audience will be while listening to your introduction In a matter of a few seconds, you only prove that you have no intention of putting your audience at the center of the story because it is all about you instead of them! According to Kahneman [82], we experience 20,000 psychological “present” moments per day, each three seconds long. Since the primal brain craves input that is personal, a substantial portion of these moments is spent thinking about us!

Answer 13

Our primal brain seeks to protect us. Therefore, in your attempts to persuade, highlight, if not magnify, a threat, a risk, or a pitfall that your solution can solve. As a result, you will command immediate attention. Too often, messages focus on the solution (business centered) and not the problem (personal). NeuroMap suggests that before offering a solution, you need to remind your audience of a pain they have experienced or do not want to face. This is not to manipulate or create undue stress. It is simply to recognize that the primal brain will not dedicate energy unless your message is both urgent and relevant to the person you are trying to engage.

Answer 14

The priority of the primal brain is to accelerate decisions, and we do that best when we have limited options. This points to an important paradox in consumer behavior: customers tend to tell you they want lots of brand options, even though they subconsciously resist using valuable energy to evaluate and sort the best ones. I did not discover this paradox by practicing conventional marketing. Rather, I detected this puzzling contradiction nearly 20 years ago by observing shoppers in grocery stores. At the time, I was the vice president of marketing of a grocery chain called Grocery Outlet. Grocery Outlet sold top brands at bargain prices in 12 US states. Our products' variety was somewhat limited given the nature of our retail concept, so I wanted to know if we could increase our sales by adding additional brands for certain categories of products. I conducted focus groups, and sure enough, when I asked customers if they wanted more choices, they always said yes. However, when I observed them shopping in the stores, they systematically froze in front of too many possible choices. When faced with too many options that were not immediately contrastable with one another, customers were unable to quickly and easily differentiate among assorted brands. This explained why our category sales did not move quickly when we added brands. Customers were overwhelmed by being in front of so many options.

Answer 15

The most common use of contrastable in advertising is comparative advertising, where one brand compares itself to another. There are many research papers on the effect of comparative advertising, but few make any reference to consumer neuroscience and none provide a brain-based interpretation of its results. According to Professor Fred Beard, a general conclusion we can draw, though, is that comparative advertising works! – especially for “products of high quality,” where claims are well substantiated and focused on salient benefits that are believable [86]. Beard explains that comparative advertising works especially well for companies that have a smaller market share. This makes perfect sense! How can you convince anyone to buy your product unless you do the challenging work of finding what your unique differentiators are first?

Answer 16

The primal brain will not accept the burden of making complicated decisions. Too often, sales messages spew a list of reasons that customers should consider a solution. However, these reasons do little to motivate the primal brain to commit the energy required to consider them all. Therefore, you need to distill a limited number of benefits, and then demonstrate that no other brand or company can deliver a solution that is as unique and as effective as yours. Later in this book, we will elaborate further on how you can find your claims. Claims represent the compact list of the top benefits you offer. They can accelerate the decision and create contrastable situations that make immediate sense for the primal brain. Typically, claims will provide direct solutions to pains and grab attention to make your message completely relevant to an urgent threat or risk that your audience faces. Once you magnify a pain and show how your solution can solve it, customers will beg to buy your solution. As David Ogilvy famously suggested, selling is easy: “Just light a fire under people's chairs, and then present the extinguisher!”

Answer 17

Contrasting your product or solution with that of a competitor is a good strategy. “Before and after” stories can do that as well. Show the life of one of your customers before they own your product or solution – it should be painful to see! – and then show the relief of their pain as the contrast. This scenario is the typical story that you see in an infomercial and for a good reason: it works!

Answer 18

Despite what we say, we do not like multiple buying options because it overwhelms our primal inclination to decide quickly and to do so with the least amount of brain energy. Comparing two situations makes decisions easy for the primal brain. Rather than stating: “Choose us because we are one of the leading companies in the XYZ industry,” highlight only a few unique benefits (claims). Contrast stories of before and after, or your brand against the competition, to help your customers decide.

Answer 19

Making something tangible means to achieve simplicity and minimize the cognitive energy necessary to process your message. The primal brain does not have the cognitive resources offered by the rational brain, yet it dominates the initial review process of any persuasive message. So, the quality of making things tangible is the quality of serving information to the brain that does not require much mental effort. We welcome speed and simplicity because we welcome the opportunity to not waste cognitive energy. Let's simply reflect on one idiom that says it all: paying attention. What does this expression imply? That you are asking people to “spend something,” which is effectively brain energy. The reason we are so bad about consciously controlling our attention is that the primal brain is the guardian of that spending. Before you can even think of selling anything, you must sell the value of using your audience's energy to process your message.

Answer 20

The Power of Cognitive Fluency The value of making your message more tangible is supported by the study of how much we enjoy cognitive fluency. Cognitive fluency is the subjective experience of ease or difficulty to complete a mental task. It is a well-researched bias that explains how much we favor processing information that is easy to understand. For example, we prefer people whose names are easier to pronounce than others [91]. Also, we remember better what is easier to learn [92]. Shares in companies that have easy-to‐pronounce names tend to outperform others. The fluency of many cognitive processes is “pre-assessed” by the primal brain. Anything that appears complicated within the first few milliseconds is likely to be rejected by the rest of the brain. For instance, whenever I talk about our persuasion model, I hold a brain in my hand to establish that I am passionate about the topic. Doing so increases people's attention and reinforces the perception that I am competent to talk about neuroscience! More importantly, it makes the SalesBrain model easier to understand because I am not just relying on words to explain it. It makes a complex topic more cognitively fluent

Answer 21

The primal brain is the guardian of our cognitive energy. Don't expect messages that create cognitive effort to persuade. Making a message complicated is easy but achieving cognitive fluency is difficult. You need to work hard to create a simple, yet persuasive message.

Answer 22

Memory, or how information is encoded, is a complicated function of the brain. First, it is largely distributed across many brain areas, some located in the primal brain (hippocampus, amygdala), but also in newer cortical areas like the temporal lobes or the prefrontal lobes. A full discussion on memory is beyond the scope of this book but discussing short-term memory and how you can improve your ability to impress upon your audience to make your messages more memorable is extremely important

Answer 23

The concept of working memory is critical to how you can make your message more memorable. Working memory holds information in our brains for a short period (short-term memory), and transforms the information to guide a decision, a thought, or a movement. Working memory can be stimulated by input coming from your senses (the ringing of your alarm clock), or from your long-term memory (retrieving the address of the restaurant where you are meeting a friend). As you realize by now, the whole point of presenting a persuasive message is to make sure it is easy for people's brains to manipulate the information they receive. Therefore, your ability to persuade is completely dependent on the activation of your audience's working memory. Studies prove that the frontal lobes are extensively involved in activating the process by which we hold and manipulate short-term information we receive. And SalesBrain's research shows that only messages that engage the primal brain first are successfully processed by our working memory.

Answer 24

To make your message memorable, create a narrative that will have limited and short attention dips. Narratives that work on the brain grab attention at the beginning and the end of each segment

Answer 25

We are wired to remember basic information to guide our short-term actions. Message recall is affected by sensory memory, which further influences both short-term and working memory. Both are critical systems that make encoding fragile. The primal brain needs a solid narrative structure with a strong beginning and strong end to create attention and retention. Messages imprint better in the brain if they focus on the pain first.

Answer 26

Maximizing the visual appeal of your message is a priority. There are many ways to apply this core stimulus when you craft an ad, a corporate video, a commercial, a web page, and, of course, a face-to‐face presentation. First, always remind yourself that your audience will not process the entire visual stimuli. Only a fraction of what you show will be seen. Less is more. Eyetracking studies confirm that only a fraction of a web page or a packaging label will be processed by most people, regardless of age, gender, or education. There are 100 million receptors in the eye, but only a few million fibers in the optic nerve. Fifty percent of our visual brain is directed to process less than 5% of the visual world. It is as if our eye movements curiously help us see more of small areas, not more of big areas. Second, focus on improving the saliency of your images. Visual saliency is the inherent quality your visual stimuli must have to capture and captivate your audience. We typically process details in the center of the visual field, but the contrast between an object and its surroundings makes it more salient

Answer 27

The visual sense dominates all other senses. It takes only 13 milliseconds to process an image, but about 10 times more to process a word and nearly 500 milliseconds to process a decision that engages the rational brain. Making a message visual delivers the fastest and most important persuasive stimulus of all. Objects in movement attract the most attention. Saliency of objects is key.

Answer 28

To ensure that you properly guide your audience to the behaviors you want, your message should first activate negative emotions that prompt us to avoid a situation. For instance, a negative surprise is one the most commonly used avoidance emotion to sell products or solutions that reduce risk or uncertainty, like insurance. If this negative emotion is relevant to your audience, then it will grab their attention and prime people to ask for a solution. In fact, at best, their mirror neurons will kick in to sample the stress that this situation may represent for them. Neuroscientists consider the existence of mirror neurons a crucial step toward understanding the basis of empathy and learning functions in humans [135]. It is now widely accepted that mirror neurons help us learn and sample people's emotions by simply observing their behavior. Later you will learn that one of the most effective ways to stimulate mirror neurons is to act out the pain of your prospects so they can personally relive it for just a few seconds. Once you have done that, simply activate an approach emotion by presenting your solution to their pain. This, of course, will liberate your audience from the tension you created by re-enacting their fears. The emotional lift will produce more trust, more sense of safety, more joy, more love, or more excitement for the value you can bring. Never forget that a good emotional lift directly impacts the chemical balance of the brain. Stress or fear may indeed raise levels of noradrenaline, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and cortisol in the brain and throughout the body. Love and trust may produce elevated levels of oxytocin; laughter will raise levels of endorphins; happiness may raise serotonin levels; and anticipation will boost dopamine. Making your message emotional means using the power of brain chemicals to make your message more persuasive

Answer 29

To improve your ability to persuade, you need to use six stimuli that speak to the primal brain first and can ultimately engage the rational brain as well. 1. The message must be personal and able to relate quickly to a relevant frustration or pain. 2. The message needs to be contrastable, so that a decision can be accelerated by comparing two situations that make the best choice obvious. 3. The message must be tangible to achieve cognitive fluency and allow the primal brain to accept the truth of the argument. 4. The message must be memorable so that retention is done effortlessly and designed to encode the part of the message that will trigger a decision. 5. The message should be visual because the primal brain is visually dominant in the way information is first considered and integrated into our decision-making process. 6. The message must produce a positive emotional uplift, to reach the higher cognitive areas and trigger a decision. 7. Together, the six stimuli can propel your message to success, achieving the optimum path of persuasion, as explained by NeuroMap.

Answer 30

The four steps are the fundamental pillars of your persuasive strategy. They ensure a proper articulation of your message by: 1. Diagnosing the top pains of your customers 2. Differentiating from your competition by identifying unique claims 3. Demonstrating the gain of each claim 4. Delivering to their primal brain by following the blueprint of a killer presentation, a sticky website, a stunning ad, or a compelling video.

Answer 31

First, your message must target the elimination of fears, threats, or risks that the primal brain prioritizes to eliminate. As humans, we aspire to reduce or remove anxiety to survive and to feel safe. As we learned in the section on personal, our brain has evolved over millions of years. Even today, we need to pay attention to events that matter most to our survival so that we can thrive as a species. According to Stanislas Dehaene, a foremost expert on the neuroscience of consciousness, our ability to navigate a complex array of decisions is driven by the level of vigilance we apply to critical states of consciousness. As vigilance rises (as threats increase), the brain recruits more brain areas in a bottom-up process that results in recruiting more cerebral blood flow [136].

Answer 32

The iceberg of decision drivers is a powerful metaphor to explain how critical psychological and neurophysiological states affect our response to persuasive stimuli. Traditionally, marketing research has focused on what people say they like or think they want. However, neuromarketing studies have now proven that customers cannot be trusted to articulate or even confirm what they like or want. That is why both likes and wants are poor predictors of buying behavior. Likes and wants are vague conscious interpretations of what we think we need to be happy and safe. They tend to shift over short periods based on lifestyle changes, trends, and even moods. On the other hand, our core fears and pains are more permanent. As such, they become the best predictors of how people make decisions.

Answer 33

According to Ledoux, fear is associated with emotional events for which we can identify a specific threat. The semantic difference between both terms may appear pointless until you realize that anxiety is more diffuse and more permanent than fear, while fear is more precise and typically more imminent than anxiety. Ledoux argues: “To experience fear is to know that YOU are in a dangerous situation, and to experience anxiety is to worry about whether future threats may harm YOU”

Answer 34

We understand that in most cases, it is very difficult if not awkward, to discuss anxiety and fears with your customers directly. When we conduct a neuromarketing experiment, we can assess the level of arousal and fear that people may experience watching an ad without requiring conscious feedback. However, for many of SalesBrain's clients, identifying the neurophysiological basis of fears associated with the purchase of a product or a solution is both costly and challenging to execute. On the other hand, engaging in PAIN dialogues that can specifically focus on what people consider their biggest frustrations associated with the purchase of a solution is relatively easy to do. Diagnosing the top pains is a critical step because it will later help you select a few benefits of your value proposition that can directly eliminate the top sources of frustrations. It is like putting the dozens of reasons why customers should buy from you through a strainer. Only those that offer a direct, unique, and credible solution to the top pains should stay in the strainer!

Answer 35

Often, pains are simply correlated to complaints, pet peeves, or grievances that customers have once they have purchased or used a product or a solution. When you sell something new, pains can predict future complaints. Here is some valuable data to help you further understand the power of diagnosing the top pains to increase customer satisfaction [138]. Sixty-six percent of customers switch to another brand because of receiving poor service. Fifty-eight percent will never use a company again after they experience a negative experience. Forty-eight percent of customers with negative experiences will tell ten people or more, whereas good experiences are shared with five or fewer. These data points stress something obvious: we are more affected by negative customer experiences events than we are by positive ones. This is why we tend to spend more time sharing our customer nightmares than we do sharing our pleasant experiences.

Answer 36

The process of how consumers assess, respond, and eventually decide after they are exposed to persuasive messages is complex and the source of extensive debate among scholars and researchers. Our proposal for an integrated view of decision drivers considers neurophysiological research and traditional research performed on a wide range of products and industries, as well as over 20 countries. We believe that decisions are influenced by the dominance of the primal brain and especially the pains we strive to eliminate. Buyers typically start their journey in a basic state of ignorance or anxiety about a product or solution, a situation in which risk is potentially high (the fear of regret), and the cognitive involvement is typically low. However, to the extent that a product or solution is made relevant, urgent, and useful by re-awakening pains, specific fears become activated. For instance, if a message is making you realize that you could die abruptly and leave your loved ones with massive debt by not having life insurance, you face multiple fears you feel you need to address quickly. By considering the value of having life insurance, you now move from a neutral state to a state of interest. Two possibilities happen next. If you are not willing to engage cognitively with the topic, you will choose to forego a decision, which means do nothing or else evaluate another option. However, if the message or the value proposition is successful at activating cognitive engagement, you will move to a “want” state and feel the motivation to buy (anticipation), rewarded by a nice dose of dopamine in your brain. So, as you can see, diagnosing pain is a central construct persuasion step that increases the likelihood you can create effective messages. Know the pains you need to eliminate, and you have the script of your best selling arguments!

Answer 37

Pain always falls into three main categories: financial, strategic, or personal. 1. Financial pain pertains to economic factors such as the loss of revenue, low profitability, or bad ROI. Financial pain is typically highly visible and easy to measure. 2. Strategic pain includes issues that affect key business risks that can compromise the development, manufacturing, marketing, or delivery of products and services. Typical types of strategic pains are poor product quality, production inefficiencies, high customer complaints, and poor brand recognition. Strategic pain is not always as visible as financial pain and cannot always be easily measured. 3. Personal pain is made up of the negative feelings and emotions affecting those who are involved in the buying decisions. Examples include elevated levels of stress, job insecurity, or working longer hours.

Answer 38

Diagnosing pains helps you unveil the most critical decision drivers out of the many psychological factors that may influence your customer's behavior. Humans aspire to eliminate worries to survive and thrive. Our nature is to orient our attention to messages that awaken our fears, which is why a product or solution that can clearly articulate which pains it can eliminate first will receive more consideration and create higher urgency. There are three types of pains that can explain how and why people become attracted to a specific value proposition: financial pains, strategic pains, and personal pains. They all point to either material, emotional, and psychological needs we want to satisfy. Once you have successfully diagnosed the top pains by conducting pain dialogues, quantify the importance of the pains as well as consider creating segments or clusters of your top customers who share common pains.

Answer 39

Defining your claims is a rather simple theoretical process, but it can be challenging. Here are three critical steps: 1. Make sure each claim is a TOP claim; TOP is an acronym for: Therapeutic: Your claims should provide a cure for a pain experienced by your prospects. Original: Your claims should provide enough differentiation between you and any of your competitors. To ensure your claims display enough contrast, you need to know intimately the reason your prospects would want to buy from your competitors. Provable: You need to support your claims with strong proofs. 2. You should wordsmith your claim(s), so they become mnemonic, that is, they become easily memorable; one of the six stimuli! 3. When they are put together in one sentence, your claims should support your mission statement: “We are the first/best/only company to offer claim 1, claim 2, and claim 3.” At SalesBrain, we coach many companies to make sure their mission statement includes their three claims and nothing else!

Answer 40

You should remember that the primal brain will favor information that Claims give your prospects the solution to their top pains Uses short and simple words that are easy to pronounce [157]. Do not use more than 3 claims to not overload the working memory of your prospects Reads easily with fonts that are processed with maximum processing fluency and in color, which offer a pleasing contrast with their background. Verdana, Tahoma, Times are always good choices for fonts [158]. Is pleasing to the ear, so wordsmith your claims using: A repetition of the same word as in “protect, protect, protect.” This creates a META-claim, a claim above all claims. An alliteration (the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent words) as in “Diagnose, differentiate, demonstrate, and deliver.” A rhyme as in “Protect your time, protect your dime, protect your peace of mind” (or pain, claim, gain). In the book titled Pre-Suasion, Professor Robert Cialdini reports, “The statement Caution and measure will bring you riches is seen as truer when changed to Caution and measure win you treasure.” There is a lesson here for persuasive success: “To make it climb, make it rhyme” [159]. Any other technique that creates a pleasing sound in the expression of your claims.

Answer 41

Gain is the difference between value and cost. Gain proofing is critical to make sure your value proposition is not only clear but credible. It is your burden to prove that the gain is believable. Break down your gain in terms of financial value, strategic value, and personal value. There are four ways to prove the gain. The most effective way is to use customer testimonials, then a demo, then data, and finally a vision. Now you have: Diagnosed the pain Differentiated your claims Demonstrated the gain Now that the content of your message is defined, it is time to work on the delivery of your message, and you need to Deliver to the primal brain.

Answer 42

When no other proofs are available, there is still a way to persuade: by using the power of your vision or belief. You surely have heard this kind of proof when a power of your vision or belief. You surely have heard this kind of proof when a seller says: “Trust me, we'll save you $1,000!” Because of the absence of actual proof, the seller needs to make the vision bold and impressive. Such an aspirational proof typically requires telling a story, an analogy or using a metaphor to get your prospects to trust the value they will receive.

Answer 43

“In god we trust…all other please bring data!” is the motto of the skeptics. Despite that skeptic opinion, data are abstract and provide weaker proof than a customer testimonial or a demo. However, you can still prove your value using data. When using data as a proof, research shows that the credibility of the source of the data impacts the persuasion effect [170]. Furthermore, studies have shown that quantification of the data always brings some persuasion benefit. The exception to this rule states that quantification might put more reliance on the fact that the source of information needs to be perceived as an expert for the persuasion effect to occur [171]. Note that the diagnostic phase of NeuroMap serves to unveil the pain of your customers and provides an opportunity to establish your expertise in the domain. Imagine you are selling manufacturing equipment. To prove your value, you could say, “Our new machines would save you $240,000 per year on your manufacturing cost.” Note that such a statement is not using data to prove the value, it's just a quantification of the value but the proof is aspirational, it's your hope that you would save them that amount. Now imagine if you were saying, “Our machines will shorten your manufacturing time by 10%. Your plant is running 2,400 hours a year, so as a result you will save 240 hours per year. Since you mentioned that your production cost is $1,000 per hour, you will save $240,000.” Notice that although the savings presented in the two examples above are identical, the first one requires a total act of faith in what the vendor says (the identical, the first one requires a total act of faith in what the vendor says (the $240,000), whereas the second requires two assumptions: 1. Your prospect believes you will shorten the manufacturing time by 10%. The rest of the numbers will be easily accepted because they came from them. 2. Your prospect understands the logic of your argument. For that, he needs to comprehend how you came up with the $240,000 savings. The current example is obvious but in most B2B situations these calculations can be very complex, and they will inevitably lead to a major cognitive load on the brain of your audience, a task that is energetically taxing and is often conducive to confusion, not persuasion. Therefore, your objective is to arrive at quantification of the value – financial, strategic, or personal – by using the simplest possible formula compatible with your audience's level of comprehension of mathematical or abstract concepts. For example, if you sell a complex solution that will be reviewed by a CFO, it would be relevant to use a sophisticated ROI model. But if you are in a B2C situation, the use of data to build your proof should be simple to understand. Remember, even the simplest data are not appealing to the primal brain!

Answer 44

Observable Proof: Demo A demonstration (or demo) uses a prop, a visual, or a sequence of logical steps to prove a value statement in the present. Think about Domino's Pizza slogan: “30 minutes or less or it's free.” The “or it's free” is a strong demonstration that the pizza will arrive on time.

Answer 45

In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini identifies six laws of influence [167]: Social proof: The more people behave one way, the more it will incent others to match that behavior. Consistency and commitment: Once people make a statement in one direction in the future they will be psychologically motivated to remain consistent with the original statement. Reciprocity: When you do something nice to people, they will want to reciprocate. Liking: The more you have a positive rapport with people the more chances you have to influence them. Authority: People perceived as expert or in charge are more influential. Scarcity: The rarer an item, the more valuable it becomes. A simple example of the impact of the law of social proof – which we want to use here to strongly demonstrate your value – is “canned laugher,” which has proven to cause the audience to laugh longer and more often and to rate the comedy as funnier [168]. Cialdini states that we define as correct behavior what we see other people do. Other manifestations of this phenomenon can be seen when bartenders prime their tip jar with a few dollars, when car manufacturers claim “the number 1 selling truck in America” or when companies are eager to communicate the long list of customers who use their solution. Remember, our primal brain will make us behave like sheeps. The more we believe people behave one way, the more we will want to conform. In a business setting, how can you use this law to your advantage? The answer is by using one or more customer testimonials.

Answer 46

The financial value refers to the creation of measurable wealth, either by increasing savings or bringing additional revenues. Keep in mind that because of the loss aversion bias, helping your customers save $1 has a greater psychological value – in average about 2.3 times more – than helping them make an additional $1 [164, 165]. In a B2B context, the financial value is often labeled ROI (return on investment) or TCO (total cost of ownership) and it should be carefully quantified. For example, rather than saying “My solution will save you money,” you should say, “You will save 12% of your manufacturing cost with my solution.” Or even better, “You will save $58,000 annually with my solution.” Note how a precise quantification of the value makes it more tangible than a vague and less convincing statement like “we will save you money” [166]. Also quantifying the value with an actual dollar amount as opposed to a percentage will reduce your prospect's cognitive effort. It makes it simpler to compare the value with your cost. If your solution has a price tag of $50,000, then your prospects will instantly understand that they can recoup their investment in less than one year. The gain calculation becomes obvious, even for their primal brains!

Answer 47

The strategic value refers to a business value your prospect would experience with the understanding that this value cannot be translated into a credible financial quantification but offers nonetheless tangible benefits. For example, imagine you are selling a new type of seat belt to Volvo that offers a higher safety rating than the ones Volvo currently uses. Because safety is central to the value proposition of Volvo (it is, in fact, their main claim!) the increase of safety provided by your solution represents a strategic value. Note that translating this into a financial value would be challenging. Although an overall increase in safety of the Volvo cars is valuable, claiming it would help Volvo sell more cars would be a stretch because it would be difficult if not impossible to make a direct link between higher safety and additional sales. Similar to the financial value, the strategic value should be quantified with an exact number. In the Volvo example instead of saying, “Our new seat belts will make your cars safer,” say, “Your car safety index will increase from 88 to 91 thanks to our new seat belts.” Note that in this case quantifying the value makes it more tangible and therefore more appealing to the primal brain. Other examples of strategic value include less business risk, opportunity to diversify, increased quality, better differentiation, and so forth. All these examples point to a reduction of risk and uncertainty, which are crucial factors for the primal brain.

Answer 48

The personal value refers to the psychological or physical benefits your customers would experience because of your solution. Personal value includes less stress, pride of ownership, reduced work burden, being promoted, becoming a hero, feeling more secure or more empowered in the job, getting a bonus, receiving company or external recognition, etc. Unlike the financial and strategic type of value, personal value is difficult to quantify other than by using psychological constructs. Nevertheless, if your solution allows your customers to work less, you should try to quantify how much less: is it just five minutes per week or one hour per day? Notice that if the benefit of working less implies that your customers could, in turn, decrease the cost of their solution, it would then be wise to quantify that financial component of the value. Instead of saying “Our solution will save you time,” say, “You will save five minutes on the assembly time of each of your machines, which means you will no longer have to do extra hours on Fridays (personal value) and it will result in production cost savings of $27 per machine (financial value).” Even in large B2B transactions, the personal value should not be underestimated. For example, for years when IBM was selling large computers, their motto was “Nobody ever got fired from choosing IBM.” The objective of an effective persuader should always be to maximize the amount of value presented and not to leave it open to the imagination of the audience.

Answer 49

Value (often called value proposition) is a favorite topic in the world of marketing. Of the roughly 200,000 books written on marketing about 1,000 focus specifically on the subject of the value proposition. By comparison, less than about 60 books have been written on neuromarketing so far, and over 1,000,000 books have been written on sales! Fundamentally, when you are trying to sell or market a product or a service (or even an idea) your objective at any given price point should always be to maximize the value your prospects will perceive they receive. In other words, regardless of your price, you should attempt to maximize the value you present, and by doing so, you will maximize the GAIN defined as: value minus cost. Imagine you are selling a car for $50,000. If you can create the perception in the brain of your prospects that the value of your car is comparable to that of a Bentley, a Ferrari or a Tesla, it will become easier to sell than if the perceived value is comparable to a Fiat or a Hyundai. The perception of value is key!

Answer 50

Using questions forces answers. Remember that when you ask a question, you are in control of the thought processes of the other person. You can control and direct him by asking the right questions.

Answer 51

As she traces just how reliant cults like Synanon and Heaven’s Gate were on jargon and invented language (the latter referred to people as “containers” and parking lots as “docking stations”), Montell concludes that language is the primary means by which any group, and not just a cult, establishes a sense of shared purpose and identity. Specialized terminology allows adherents to feel they have unique access to something. “Whether wicked or well-intentioned,” she explains, “language is a way to get members of a community on the same ideological page. To help them feel like they belong to something big.” In this way, most organizations are cult-ish (her term), and indeed, Montell prefers to see the term cult as something that operates on a continuum, with language alerting us that a popular fitness trend or a company we work for has teetered across a boundary into something dangerously exploitative. After all, most cults do not start off as such. Their respective paths to the dark side though, Montell tell us, often begin with increased levels of esoteric terminology and choice epithets for outsiders. “Language,” she explains, “can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.”

Answer 52

“Jim Jones,” writes Montell, “was a linguistic chameleon.” His message and style of address drew on the Black Power movement (he called the massacre in Guyana an act of “revolutionary suicide”). He labeled his white followers “bourgeois bitches” and used the term “churchianity” to dismiss hypocritical white Christians. With this kind of language, writes Montell, “[Jones] created the illusion that the Black majority had more privilege than they did.” By the 1970s, his congregation had attracted a large proportion of Black women who felt sidelined by second-wave white feminists. Montell takes care to note that Black women were not somehow more susceptible to brainwashing, but as people facing racist economic barriers, they had genuine reasons to be compelled by Jones’s unique message of socialist communalism. So did many others: Jones’s vision appealed to women of all races. Montell located a People’s Temple member named Laura Johnston Kohl, a white woman who survived Jonestown only to join Synanon, so strong was her belief in basic tenets of collectivism that she could find nowhere else in American society. “In the seventies we had a saying,” Kohl tells Montell. “One person can only whisper. You need to be in a group to stay strong.”

Answer 53

Some cults, on the other hand, try to convince followers that they can beat capitalism at its own game, as long as they possess a billionaire mentality and sell enough essential oils and diet supplements to their Facebook friends. Montell spends a sizable portion of Cultish discussing the history of multilevel marketing schemes, from early successes like Tupperware to billion-dollar companies like Amway (the source of the DeVos family’s fortunes), to more recent entries on the scene, such as doTerra and Arbonne. These companies, Montell writes, “target non-working wives and moms, and they have since the dawn of the modern direct sales industry in the 1940s.”

Answer 54

After World War II, millions of white American women who had joined the labor force to fill in for men were suddenly ousted from their jobs. Earl Tupper and his most successful recruit, a single mom from Detroit named Brownie Wise, found a way to take advantage of this surplus of women looking for ways to make money doing something that felt professional but not in a way that encroached on their husband’s territory. Selling Tupperware mostly to friends and family was not a job as much as it was an exciting opportunity, “the sort that wouldn’t threaten their traditionally feminine, wifely image.” Yet despite the promises of financial independence, most MLMs require sellers to buy a large amount of inventory up front, sometimes costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and according to multiple studies, 99 percent of recruits never make a profit. “Like most destructive ‘cults,’” observes Montell, “they’re in the business of selling the transcendent promise of something that doesn’t actually exist.” Their real product, Montell insists, “isn’t merchandise, it’s rhetoric.” Today’s MLMs use the language of empowerment to entice women to join. Phrases like “Build a fempire” and “Be a mompreneur” and other “faux-spirational lingo of commodified fourth wave feminism,” Montell writes, abound in their promotional materials. Like cults, they utilize terminology that distinguishes and elevates their business model compared to traditional employers’. For instance, you will not have a boss but rather “an upline mentor,” and sellers are not employees but rather “entrepreneurs.” People with salaried positions, benefits, and other basic labor protections, on the other hand, are said, with derision, to possess a “J.O.B.” (jackass of a boss). In this way, sellers aren’t buying oils or diet pills but life rafts. With enough esoteric Facebook posts about “opportunities” and creepy D.M.s to old high school classmates, they believe they can transcend the conditions of the working poor to become “boss babes.”

Answer 55

When a blog is starting, there’s no steady flow of page views, this becomes their goal. Any profit they are going to make is going to come from these impressions. All bloggers want to do is to increase their audience and be able to reach larger publishers. Help them out in the early stages, they will be appreciative of any freebies and advice. Ryan explains that by being there in the early stages they will remember your generosity, and this may just work in your favour when they’ve taken off and have an influential voice.

Answer 56

Bloggers don’t really look at facts. Indeed, sometimes they start with a story already in mind and are only looking to cherry-pick quotes to fit their narratives. If you want to be cited and quoted, don’t tell them facts: tell them what they want to hear. Another technique is to pass them something that looks and seems juicy, like a (fake) “leaked document”.

Answer 57

The news you publish and the information you pass to bloggers must not be good or, God forbid, true. It must be “shareable”. Gloom doesn’t get shared, but anger does. Positive and surprising emotions shares. Reasonableness and neutral emotions don’t get scared. If an article or quote doesn’t get shared, does it even exist?

Answer 58

This technique is basically what’s today called “clickbait“. Clickbait means using an attention-grabbing headline which might or might not be connected to the full article. However, once the click has happened, the ad impression has been delivered and the blogger is happy. As a media manipulator, you should approach bloggers the same way they approach their readers. Give them a sense of mystery, raise a feather-ruffling question, and see them do the same as their readers. A great article is no more valuable than a clickable poor one

Answer 59

The rules have changed in online media. Bloggers are not looking anymore for loyal readers: they are after the ad impression’s “smash and grab”. Sensationalism and scoop are the new keywords and golden graals of modern digital publishing. Sex, scandal, hatred, extremism, sensationalism… This is what sells, and this is what you must give them. Bloggers steal your time to sell it to advertisers

Answer 60

Headlines are the equivalent of first impressions. Actually, even more: with the news you don’t get a chance of changing anyone’s mind if they don’t click first. Information that can’t be turned into a killer headline is not worth publishing, so you must help the blogger make a killer headline. Persuasive readers are no better than accidental readers

Answer 61

Bloggers and journalists are under pressure to produce as much content as possible. They are low paid, and often their pay is tied to how much revenue and clicks they can generate. It’s a hard and difficult pressure environment to work on, and that means they will really appreciate it if you can help them get some traffic. So when they write about you, share their news on your personal and company’s blog.

Answer 62

Bloggers need a high churn of information. That means that deep and well-thought information does not work: you must share with them sound bites. Bloggers take the audience at their worst and make them worse

Answer 63

HARO is a tool to connect journalists with expert resources. In theory. In practice, Ryan Holiday says, it’s a tool for self-promotion that looks like research. It’s also the perfect tool to cherry-pick quotes from experts -or so-called experts- to fit the journalist’s narrative. The blogger receives a lot of quotes and opinions and he can just sift through them to pick the ones he likes the most to reverse-engineer the piece that he had already decided to write.

Answer 64

From a psychological and sociological point of view, Ryan Holiday raises a few important points on the darker drives of human nature that lead people to gang up, bully, harass, and abuse others. He calls them “degradation ceremonies”, and people find a perverse sense of joy and accomplishment in tearing apart someone else. By building a monster, it makes us feel better to be “normal” or “better than them”. Snarky writers, says Ryan Holiday, are afraid of being criticized and laughed at, so they lash out first. Attacking makes them feel stronger and in control. And, of course, jealousy also plays a role. But hitting back at snarks is difficult because the moment you hit back you descend at their level, show they got to you and give them importance. So they are free to spread their gall and hatred.

Answer 65

Ryan Holiday quotes the creator of the expression “link economy” and he says that guy is an idiot. The link economy is one of the main drives of rubbish journalism. It creates a system of distributed responsibility similar to the subprime mortgage crisis, where everyone takes care of short-term gains while producing rubbish content. “Don’t believe me? Here is a link, go check the resources”. But nobody checks them and the rubbish piles up. The link economy is designed to confirm and support, not to question and correct The link economy has changed the system from what’s happened to what someone has said. Google’s Backlink System is Bogus Here Holiday makes a great point I wholeheartedly agree with. One of the biggest contributing factors for Google’s SERP position is backlinks. The idea is that if a page gets linked to a lot, then it’s high quality. But there is nobody to check and ensure quality, so you can get pages with nice pictrues to attract a lot of backlinks, which in turn help the whole website. But, at the core, the backlink system is not based on quality but on what’s shareable.

Answer 66

Ryan Holiday lists many instances in which unscrupulous bloggers published wrong information and later refused to withdraw the article. Often the correction comes in a new post that only a fraction of the readers who read the initial wrong information read. Or it becomes an update at the bottom of the article with the wrong headline staying exactly the same. From a psychology point of view which is most interesting to this website, however, I learned of a study showing that corrections often reinforce the original mistaken article. Those who saw the correction remembered and believed even more strongly in the initial mistaken claim. This is because the correction re-introduces the initial claim into readers’ minds and forces them to re-run it, which reinforces the association. We’re not only bad at remaining skeptical, but we are also bad at correcting plainly wrong information.

Answer 67

… Or someone else might, and you never know what they are going to write. And just so you know, journalists all rely on Wikipedia.

Answer 68

When you see “leaked” or “official document”, know that some random guy or a media manipulator emailed the blogger with a probably fake or made up document. When you see “breaking” or “we’ll have more details as the story develops” know that what’s in the news has not been double checked and it’s the equivalent of made-up rumors. When you read “sources tell us”, know that those sources are rarely vetted and they are desperate for attention. When you read “exclusive” know that the source has cut a deal for favorable coverage. And that he probably gave that “exclusive” to other websites as well. When you read “we reached to so and so”, know that they sent an email 2 minutes before publishing long after they had already prepared and finalized the article. When you see “updated” know that there has likely been very little editing and someone just copy-pasted some new lines from some other random sources (see link economy)

Answer 69

In this section of the book, Ryan outlines the tactics he has used for deceiving bloggers and publishers to get them to write what he wants and promote his brands. Warning: these techniques are not necessarily encouraged, but Ryan illustrates what he has found to be most successful when it comes to manipulating the media. Help pay bloggers bills. When a blog is starting, there’s no steady flow of page views, this becomes their goal. Any profit they are going to make is going to come from these impressions. All bloggers want to do is to increase their audience and be able to reach larger publishers. Help them out in the early stages, they will be appreciative of any freebies and advice. Ryan explains that by being there in the early stages they will remember your generosity, and this may just work in your favour when they’ve taken off and have an influential voice. Tell bloggers exactly what they want to hear Something bloggers are renowned for is their lack of attention to the facts. They often hear a snippet of information and the race is on to publish content. Bloggers are short on time and therefore source checking and fact verification often is ignored. Ryan explains that you can use this to your advantage, if you want them to publish something in your favour, simply tell them the information they want to hear. Ryan suggests acting like an expert or offering up a document that can be leaked will excite a blogger and they are likely to hit publish before they follow up on any credibility. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be shareable Ryan’s rule of thumb is that if something is not worthwhile of social sharing, there is little point in publishing. If people aren’t going to feel passionate about your content enough to share it on their Facebook page or talk about it on public media then there is little point. Ryan emphasises the importance of sharing content that can evoke strong emotions such as anger and passion, and more often than not being controversial is key. ”If it’s not going to get shared socially, it may as well not exist.”

Answer 70

JOURNALISTS ARE POOR To help you understand the motivations of many of these journalists, Holiday points out this: They might have gone to an expensive grad school, and now live in a big, expensive city, such as NYC, San Francisco, or Washington D.C. They’ve been close enough to taste a $200,000-a-year journalism job. But now they’re churning out articles at a breakneck pace, without even getting health insurance. Meanwhile, the people they cover are rich and successful, and may include talentless reality TV stars. New York magazine called the result “the rage of the creative underclass.” JOURNALISTS ARE BUSY These bloggers have to write a face-melting amount of content. When journalist Bekah Grant left VentureBeat, she wrote a post saying she averaged five posts a day – more than 1,700 articles in twenty months. Henry Blodget, founder of Business Insider, said his bloggers need to generate three times their salary, benefits, and overhead costs to be worth hiring. So, an employee making sixty-thousand dollars a year needs to produce 1.8 million page views a month, every month. (1.8 million page views is a lot. At my current traffic, it takes me about a decade to generate that much on my blog, and I make more than sixty-thousand dollars a year.) JOURNALISTS ARE DESPERATE FOR A STORY Most sites that journalists write for make their money from ads, and the way to make money from ads is to generate page views. As such, many journalists are paid by the page view. I’ve personally heard this from a friend who worked for a newspaper with a good reputation, covering news for a major city. So, journalists are desperate for a story that will generate page views. So, if you give them a juicy story that will generate page views, they will generally publish it. They’re too busy to fact check it, and since they’re compensated by the page view, they aren’t motivated to care whether or not it’s true.

Answer 71

IQ – How innately smart you are AQ – How much you know TQ – How fast you assimilate and leverage technology for low-value tasks. EQ – How you relate, respond to, influence and persuade humans.

Answer 72

Prospect Fanatically. They have the luxury of spending their limited time on the most qualified deals with the highest win probabilities. Qualify with discipline. They have the courage to walk away or detach emotionally from low-probability prospects, because they have a full pipeline and emotional discipline. Map stakeholders. Buyers, Amplifiers, Seekers, Influencers and Coaches (BASIC). They understand the role of potential stakeholders in the buying process. Align 3 processes of sales. They align Sales, Buying and Decision process. Develop sales-specific EQ. They never forget they’re dealing with fallible, irrational and emotional human beings. They work hard to gain a deep understanding of the motivations, desires, needs, wants, fears, aspirations and problems of each stakeholder.

Answer 73

Situational attribution: A person is angry. You interpret this to mean he is having a bad day. Dispositional attribution: A person is angry. You believe that he is a jerk. People who interpret human heavier based on situational attribution tend to be more empathetic.

Answer 74

Psychometric assessments (such as DISC or Myer-Briggs) Coaching or mentoring Direct feedback Writing down my goals 360-degree review Self-reflection (sit in silence, think, listen to your inner voice, heed your intuition, take stock of where you’re and where you’re going, become aware of what’s holding you back)

Answer 75

Simply pause before you speak. When you feel emotions taking over, slow your breathing and count to five. This simple pause allows time for adrenaline to dissipate and your rational brain to catch up.

Answer 76

Same effect as pause, it gives your rational brain the magic quarter second to catch up. Instead of stumbling through a nonsensical answer, coming off as defensive and weak. Say: That’s interesting – can you tell me why this is important to you? How so? Would you tell me more? Just to be sure I understand your question, could you elaborate a little more?

Answer 77

Budget – Does the prospect have the budget? Authority – Does the prospect have an authority to make a decision? Need – Does the prospect have a need for my product? Timeline – Does the prospect have an urgent need?

Answer 78

Pain – Does the prospect have a level of pain to ease that pain? Authority – Does the prospect have the authority to decide? Consequence – Does the prospect know the consequence for not action on the pain? Target profile – Does the prospect fit my IQP profile?

Answer 79

You should consistently ask for micro-commitments and the next steps. Always test the stakeholder engagement.

Answer 80

Just checking in. It adds no value fails to engage stakeholders. It’s a passive way to follow up.

Answer 81

What are their motivations? What’s the risk to them personally for choosing us? What’s the risk of not choosing us? Why would they advocate for us? Why would they disrupt us? What are their emotional hot buttons? How can I speak so it makes them feel like one? their language? What makes them feel important? What do they fear?

Answer 82

Ask: Tell me about your buying policies? Could you walk me through the buying process? How does you company typically make decisions about bringing in new vendors like us? How did you make the decision on this service the last time you signed a contract?

Answer 83

#1 Greet Thank you for meeting with me. I know how valuable your time is and appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me to learn more about you. Just to confirm, I have us down for thirty minutes. Is that good for you? (If he says quick…) Five minutes is not nearly enough time for me to learn about you and your company. Pitching my product without understanding your issues would be a disservice to you and waste your time. You deserve better than that. Why don’t we reschedule for Wednesday afternoon at 2PM? (notice the assumptive ask- always offer a time)

Answer 84

What I’d like to accomplish today is to learn more about you and your organization, in particular, how you currently manage compliance reporting. While I don’t know whether it makes sense for our companies to work together, I thought that might be the best place to start. Then if we find common ground we can reschedule a meeting with your IT team to take a closer look at your current data management system.

Answer 85

Before we get started, is there anything else you want to be sure we cover (mostly they’ll say “I’m good”)

Answer 86

If it’s okay with you, why don’t we start off with a few questions that’ll help me learn about your unique situation? Then we can talk a little bit about our service. From there we can decide together if it makes sense to move to the next step.

Answer 87

Your Sales Call Agenda #1 Greet Thank you for meeting with me. I know how valuable your time is and appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me to learn more about you. Just to confirm, I have us down for thirty minutes. Is that good for you? (If he says quick…) Five minutes is not nearly enough time for me to learn about you and your company. Pitching my product without understanding your issues would be a disservice to you and waste your time. You deserve better than that. Why don’t we reschedule for Wednesday afternoon at 2PM? (notice the assumptive ask- always offer a time) #2 Call Objective What I’d like to accomplish today is to learn more about you and your organization, in particular, how you currently manage compliance reporting. While I don’t know whether it makes sense for our companies to work together, I thought that might be the best place to start. Then if we find common ground we can reschedule a meeting with your IT team to take a closer look at your current data management system. #3 Check your Stakeholder’s Agenda Before we get started, is there anything else you want to be sure we cover (mostly they’ll say “I’m good”) #4 Frame the Conversation If it’s okay with you, why don’t we start off with a few questions that’ll help me learn about your unique situation? Then we can talk a little bit about our service. From there we can decide together if it makes sense to move to the next step.

Answer 88

People respond in kind. People communicate in stories. Questions control the conversation flow. Listening builds deep emotional connections.

Answer 89

Begin with easy open question Reward him for talking through listening and interest Avoid interrupting Pause 3-5 seconds before speaking (allow him to fill in silence) Once the loop is running, center your follow-up questions on his disclosures to unearth his real pain

Answer 90

(He says 20) Congratulations that’s quite an achievement. I bet you’ve seen a lot of changes around here. (He says 6 months) What made you decide to work here?

Answer 91

on’t pounce and start pitching the solution. Make note of this potential opportunity and based on your call objective, follow the path and ask deeper follow-up questions to get full story of the issue (for a future meeting).

Answer 92

Situation – gather and qualify facts Problem – uncover prospect problems Implication – uncover the pain the problem is causing Need-payoff – uncover the benefit of solving the problem

Answer 93

Always tailor the benefits to stakeholder unique situations. Our customer satisfaction rate is 96.7 percent. So, What? Our implementation process is seamless and hassle-free. So, What? Our product will save you up to 30 percent over what you’re spending now. So, What?

Answer 94

Amygdala holds key to the cognitive gate. If it refuses to open the gate, it doesn’t matter how well you crafted your message, you’re not getting in. Activate your stakeholder’s brain and pull their attention towards you first by engaging amygdala. Amygdala is hardwired to person to threats and pains. So, begin with a problem of pain.

Answer 95

Don’t dilute your authority with more passive phrases like my company offers or we provide.

Answer 96

Relate (acknowledge and relate to objection) Clarify (ask questions to isolate real objection) Minimize (remind the stakeholder of their problems and yeses I’ve collected) Ask (ask again and assume the yes) Fall back (offer alternative commitment)

Answer 97

Your prices are high compared to your competitors. I get how you might feel that way. They sometimes do seem a little higher than our competitors, and no one wants to pay more than they should.

Answer 98

I’m just curious. When you say our prices are too high, from your standpoint what does that mean? It’s the monthly rate. You are 10 percent higher than what we’re paying now. Okay got it. Other than that, is anything else bothering you about our proposal? That’s it. I’m going to have a hard time justifying the increase in monthly relate to my boss. I also heard from our current vendor that we’re facing a significant cost to make a change. Your cost is already too much and I’m not sure I can justify to my boss a change is worth it.

Answer 99

When I do that math, you’re losing $63,600 a year by stick with your current vendor. Of course, you’re right working with us does mean you need to build a little bit more into your monthly budget. However,

Answer 100

Based on these numbers, it doesn’t make sense to wait, so why don’t we go ahead and get this started I agree. What are our next steps?

Answer 101

It sounds good, I think we’re almost there. But I need to go over the math one more time before we make this big of a commitment. Give me a week or so and I’ll get back to you. I’m going to be back ore this way next Thursday. Why don’t we get together at 11AM and make a thumbs-up or thumbs-down decision then? Sounds good.

Answer 102

“Smile” – This makes a positive first impression. “Voice tone” – Maintain a “neutral, friendly” and “upbeat” tone. Regional dialects don’t help salespeople. If you have one, work to eliminate it. Unless you are talking to those from similar backgrounds. “Be polite” – Rudeness drives away clients. You know good manners; use them. “Dress” – Never let your appearance sabotage your sales success. Always dress to impress. “Grooming” – Look sharp. Cut your hair neatly and manicure your nails. “Attention focus” – Strive to remain fully engaged and present. Keep your mind on the buyer in front of you. He or she wants and deserves your undivided attention. (Read – OUR CURIOUS WANDERING MIND AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT) “Style” – People like people who are similar to them. Match your style to your buyers. So, research them first. “Language” – Speak the way your buyers speak; match their “words, jargon, and approach.” “Enthusiasm” – Everyone likes high-energy people, so show your passion. “Confidence” – Self-assurance is contagious. Be confident, but never arrogant.

Answer 103

“Buyers” – An organization’s purchasing decision makers can approve a purchase but may lack authority to dispense funds. “Amplifiers” – Some people within your buyer’s firm are good at identifying internal problems that your product or service could solve. They broadcast information about the problem to others in the firm in the hopes of buying a product or making a change that will fix the issue. Amplifiers have varying degrees of influence on the purchase decision. “Seekers” – Some employees inside your customer’s organization conduct research to learn about available resources and vendor options to fix the problem amplifiers target. Seekers have minimal influence on purchase decisions. “Influencers” – Some managers and executives have major clout as to whether the company will buy what you’re selling. Seek advocates among them, get the fence-sitters on your side and nullify the naysayers. “Coaches” – Specialized employees can support your sales effort and give you valuable internal information to help you close the deal.

Public Speaking, Sales and PR Flashcards

(127 cards)