When Interesting becomes intensified, now that’s Intriguing.
Let’s head back to the bar. You’re dressed to the nines and you’ve approached that attractive person. You’re past Invisible and you’re breaking through Insignificant.
You say, “If we were to go out, here’s what I’d like to do on our first date. I’ll have a car pick you up and we will meet at one of Los Angeles’ most sought-after restaurants. After that, we’ll head to Griffith Park where I’ve arranged for a private tour of the Observatory. Does that sound like something you’d be interested in? Are you intrigued a little more knowing what our date could look like?”
Attractive person replies, “Are you free this Saturday night?”
Not only did you become Interesting, you shifted swiftly to Intriguing.
Transition tips to take you from Interesting to Intriguing:
Remember the story of how I helped Cole Smith get funded? When potential clients call me and ask what I do, I tell them the Cole Smith story. I paint the picture of what his life was like before he worked with me and how I helped him get funding offers for his start-up. Then I tell them what his life is like now after funding. This is called future pacing.
Future pacing shows a potential client what the ideal scenario will look and feel like. You get them to imagine how great they will feel after hiring you and how much better their life would be. Future pacing taps into an emotional state where people say that is what I want to feel. When the future looks better than the present, it motivates them to act. Then I ask potential clients, “Is this the type of journey you’d like to go on?” This is a great way to ask a closing question. They see themselves in the story and want my help as their mentor, or sherpa, in the same way they now see that I helped Cole.
Future pacing was another tool I used during that “shoot-out” for the Anthem keynote speaking engagement. As mentioned, it came down to me and another speaker. In our conversations, I asked the Anthem team what they wanted to see or experience with their sales team one month after the event to feel they hired a successful keynote speaker. The indicators of success could include great feedback from that session, the keynote setting the tone for the following two days and giving people content they referenced as a new way to solve problems. Success markers might be congratulations from their boss on a great event, including the speaker. Longer term indicators could be team members not only being inspired after the event, but using new ways to drive sales, collaborating and supporting each other when one needs help getting past a barrier to sales or an objection.
By future pacing them and painting a picture of what happens when other companies hire me, they could start to see why I was a great fit now and after the event. Future pacing is a great way to get people to lean in.
What does this look like when you are trying to Intrigue a billion-dollar firm?
After delivering my keynote speech to several Gensler offices (the architectural firm mentioned in previous chapters) and working with them on several multi-million dollar new business pitches, I identified another opportunity for them.
I knew that they wanted to expand to new areas beyond law firms and retail to include sports arenas and healthcare. I also knew they didn’t have a way to develop relationships with key decision-makers at these types of companies prior to them posting new project requests for proposals. When Gensler would pitch, there was no prior relationship or rapport in place for familiarity with the firm they were pitching. They would go in as a completely unknown entity. As a way to overcome this challenge, I pitched the idea of producing a Gensler podcast where we invited top decision-makers across multiple industries to be guests on the show. Interview topics could reveal business insights and challenges months before requests for proposals were issued. Gensler was immediately intrigued.
Today, the Gensler podcast is live with a unique brand proposition that was first to market. Additionally, I was able to build a unique category for myself that no one else fit into and win more business from this client.
The above is an excellent example of the “what if” scenario mentioned in Chapter 4. This example put me into a different category and got me to “yes.” It is also an example of getting what Robert Cialdini refers to as a “warm introduction” or “pre-suasion.” When going into a pitch, if the person you are presenting to has a history with you or knows of you or your company on some level, you start the meeting slightly elevated above someone coming in cold. In the case of the podcast, it allowed Gensler’s brand to be associated with innovation and their team members to interact with prospective clients prior to pitches.
When I interviewed Robert on my podcast, he talked about the benefits of being a known entity going into a pitch. Similarly, he spoke about having somebody else edify you, or “talk you up,” as they introduce you as a speaker or in a pitch. This type of introduction plants a seed of familiarity with your audience. What Robert defines as a warm introduction is not just “Hey, meet so-and-so.” It is telling a prospect why you like this person, why you think they’d be a good person to invest in or work with, so that person doesn’t have to “start from ground zero.”
Robert used this tactic throughout the organization. He experimented in their United Kingdom office with a realty firm. The firm was having trouble converting callers into customers. Robert took a look at what the receptionist said when she received a call. Typically, she asked, “Are you interested in commercial real estate or residential real estate? In what part of London, is it Knightsbridge or Bloomsbury?” After getting that information, she simply said, “Let me connect you to one of our realtors.” Robert changed her dialogue to: “Let me connect you to Clive who’s our expert in commercial real estate in Knightsbridge.” or “Let me connect you to Sarah who’s had fifteen years of experience with residential real estate in Bloomsbury.” Those “warm introductions” produced a 16% increase in conversion from callers to customers.
This tactic can be used for introducing business colleagues, a presenter or even friends. “I want you to meet my dear friend John, we’ve known each other for ten years. We met partnering on a new business pitch, and since then have enjoyed amazing dinners, been on some crazy travel adventures together and our dogs love to play together on Sundays.” In that introduction, you just learned that I love good food, travel and have dogs. Now it’s much easier to create and continue dialogue when a first-time meeting starts off with a warm introduction like that, right?
Whenever you are presenting to get hired there is competition. Clients see presentation after presentation, back to back. In Chapter 4, we talked about how these presentations can blur from one into the next and that you have to find a way to stand out. Edification is another way to make yourself more memorable than another firm.
Perkins+Will is an architecture firm in Washington, D.C. They designed Barack and Michelle Obama’s offices after they left the White House. They hired me to help improve their pitches because they were coming in second too many times when pitching against other firms for new business.
One key area I worked on was how they introduced individual team members. In their original presentations, there was a slide with all the employees who would work on the potential project. In the presentation, each person would tell the prospective clients how long they had worked at Perkins+Will and what their job was. It was boring at best.
I worked with each team member to craft their own story of what made them become an architect or what they did before joining Perkins+Will. One of my favorite in-person pitches became:
“Before coming to Perkins+Will, I was in the Israeli army and I bring that same military discipline and focus to ensuring that your project will come in on time and on or under budget.”
That was a vast improvement, and then I added one more secret sauce to the mix. Remember the edification from above with Robert Cialdini’s “pre-suasion?” I had each team member edify the next person as if they were in a relay race. They handed off the presentation to the next presenter like runners handing off the baton in a relay race. It is another warm welcome for each team member.
When Bob introduces Sue now, he says, “Sue and I have worked together for years, and she is the best at making things run smoothly.”
Once they made my recommended changes to becoming storytellers, they went on to win three new business presentations in a row.
Going into a pitch or a conversation with a warm introduction like that starts you off on the right foot, but you still need to have logical confidence before you start talking. American professional tennis player Arthur Ashe said, “The key to success is confidence, and the key to confidence is preparation.” If you are winging it and not doing your homework to find out what a client needs, who they are or if you have connections in common, you are going in cold. You will also just be giving a presentation not customized to them and won’t have much confidence that you’re going to get a “yes.” You will likely stumble through any questions asked, or they will ask something you can’t answer, and you’re dead in the water because you lack the confidence to handle that kind of a question.
I work with clients on their preparation which builds their confidence going into the pitch. In this work, I also teach them the importance of stacking their moments of certainty. To do this, think of moments in your life when you felt confident, times where you could say, “That was a moment where I knew I nailed it.”
For example, write down three to five times when you got a “yes.” Maybe it was to a business proposal, passing an exam, getting a pitch meeting set, asking someone out on a date, or being hired at a new company. How did each of those moments feel? Write that emotion next to each moment: “amazing,” “totally confident,” or “rock star!”
You should re-read this list regularly to remind yourself and put these thoughts in your head before you pick up the phone, send an email or go make a live presentation. Because when you stack these moments of certainty up, and you list the feelings that go with them, your confidence goes up and it will show in your demeanor. Your nonverbal communication (what you say with your face and body) is the first thing people notice about you. Psychological studies indicate that it can take as little as one-tenth of a second to form an unconscious evaluation of the trustworthiness of someone you meet.
All it takes is one moment in your life to not be fully prepared and you will do anything to not repeat that mistake. Let me tell you about my most humiliating moment and how I ended up embarrassing myself on national television.
When I was in my suburban Chicago high school’s marching band, I played the French horn. Normally, the French horn is best used for an orchestra, but in my school, if you wanted to play in the orchestra, you needed to be in the marching band. The French horn, unlike the trumpets, rarely had the melody and instead just played a series of after beats.
As a high school kid, I didn’t think my role was important. As an adult, I learned how integral it was. While you are marching down the street in the band, people listen to the heavy downbeat coming from the brass section, but without a solid upbeat, one that is clear and concise, the march drags. That upbeat is necessary to pick the band up and keep them moving. It is hard to describe but imagine marching with just a downbeat. After a few bars, you are dragging. Add the upbeat and it picks the music up and keeps you going.
It is almost always the horns that provide those very important upbeats. It works because horns are clear and concise, as well as in the middle range easily heard by everyone in the band. Sure, the saxophones are in the middle, too, but they aren’t as clear and concise as a horn.
So playing the French horn is a real badge of honor. Without the horn section, all bands would march into the ground, but it takes a village, or entire band, to create the whole melody. This proved a life lesson for me in my sales career as well.
My friend Freddie Ravel, the “Keynote Maestro,” is a Grammy-nominated artist who has performed with many bands including Earth, Wind & Fire, Madonna, and Carlos Santana. He has performed across seventy-four countries and now gives talks on the topic “What Is Your Score?”
In business, everyone is always keeping score.
Who is the market leader?
Who is the best salesperson?
Who just got promoted?
“Score” is the desired outcome in both business and music.
Freddie Ravel is uniquely qualified to connect the dots between music and apply them to business. With this background, he created the four steps to help businesses get the right melody, rhythm, and harmony to manifest the score (outcome) needed. There are so many similarities between conducting an orchestra and how you conduct your company. Even if you are not the CEO of your company, you are the CEO of your life and career.
Ravel shared with me the same secrets to getting music into your business that he has delivered to the executives of Apple, Blue Shield, NASA, and Microsoft.
The next time you find your “score” not hitting the numbers you desire, take a look at what melody you are singing internally and externally in the world. Whether it is a melody or a story, everyone needs to be on the same page and singing the same tune.
How do you stand out in the noise that is constantly hitting your client’s senses?
Stories are the MUSIC that make your message sing and become memorable.
Now back to my story of not being prepared. I never felt comfortable in my uniform; it took me thirty minutes to get into it with the vinyl snap spats on the shoes and complicated crisscross straps around my chest and a hat so tight it barely snapped under my chin (I have a big head and look horrible in hats). After many halftime performances at my local high school suburban field, we were selected to play at a Chicago Bears game.
We took the forty-five minute bus ride to the National Football League stadium, which was ten times bigger than our high school field. My heart was pounding as we started marching down the field. The crowd was cheering and I took my thoughts off the music for a moment to look at the crowd, missing my cue to do a pinwheel (when the band splits in half in a semi-circle). I was now two beats behind and I was left standing alone on the 50-yard line on national television! My parents saw it, as did the rest of the world. As I ran to catch up with my squad, the guy in line next to me stopped playing long enough to call me a name I will not repeat here, but you can imagine it. I had let myself and the band down and made all of us look bad. All because I was not prepared for the new bigger field and the larger, distracting crowds.
How many times in your life are you asked to play a bigger role or step up your game? If you don’t prepare for the different demands of the new environment you may also find yourself a step (or two) behind and never catch up. Today, when I give a keynote speech, which is usually at 8:00 AM, you can be sure I am standing on that empty stage the night before to get a “feel” for the room. Our fight or flight instinct kicks in when we are in a new situation. If you make yourself comfortable and confident with preparation, then when you do stand on the stage in front of a crowd or at a table with investors or new clients, you are more confident because you prepared for it.
Another tip I like to share to build self-confidence is the use of the “superhero” pose before going into a pitch or a big meeting. Social psychologist, author, and speaker, Amy Cuddy, talks about this in her wonderful TED talk. Stand like a superhero with your legs spread apart, hands on hips, with your elbows bent (remember how Superman used to stand?). This superhero stance not only projects power, it is also what psychologists call an open posture, in which limbs are spread out in a way to take up more space—such as legs apart. When you hold your head up, your testosterone level goes up, even if you’re a woman, and your cortisol stress level goes down. Doctors do this before surgery and you may see basketball players do it before a free throw shot for the same reasons. I recommend holding this for two minutes as you mentally prep for a big meeting. My secret sauce is to stack your moments of certainty during those two minutes for a great combination.
In Chapter 2, I gave you the steps to put together a solid pitch which will also give you logical confidence going into the room. Now you have to put that together in the presentation.
In thinking of your pitch, remember to consider the left brain/right brain. When you start talking about numbers and how something works, you’re tapping into the left brain/analytical side and prospects may start critiquing your pitch. But if you say, “Let me tell you a story,” they relax. They’re in their right brain, their imagination, and suddenly you are making an emotional as well as a logical connection with them. The stories told in your presentation should inform, inspire, and entertain while being both pertinent and persuasive. People buy transformation, not information.
To help better understand the left brain/right brain connection, try crossing your arms like your mom used to do when she was mad at you. This action allows you to experience this left brain/right brain connection. When you cross them, your arms automatically go into this position one way, right? Now, try to cross them the other way. It’s awkward, isn’t it?
Our brains are wired to function one way or the other. We often think of ourselves as, “I’m a numbers person, I’m analytical.” What I’m challenging you to do in this book is to get into the right side of your brain, where storytelling lives. That’s where imagination lives. This is important to tap into because people buy emotionally and then back it up with logic.
If you’re buying a fancy sports car, I can assure you the salesperson is not talking about how many miles per gallon it gets (left brain). They’re telling you how sexy you will look and that you’re going to feel fantastic driving this fast car. That’s the importance of making sure your conversations, presentations, emails, and everything in between have enough right brain storytelling to pull people in.
Telling stories creates emotional connections and people focus on what you are saying. When you can accomplish this, people will be inspired to work with you. One of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs is, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Once you capture people’s attention and focus, you need to give them as many benefit statements as possible. One of the best ways to start a benefit statement is to use this phrase: “What this means to you is…” It forces you to follow that with something people care about and they will lean in. When I give a keynote speech, I will say, “If you only remember one thing from today, I want you to remember that whoever tells the best story gets the sale. Not who has the best product, not who has the lower price, the person with the best story gets the ‘yes.’”
Now, as you put together your pitch, remember you have to sell these three things:
Most people skip the first two steps and go right to the product, but these first two are essential. You sell yourself first. When you market yourself, you are not selling the details of your background or your image, but your identity and your compassion. When you sell your company, whether you own the company or not, you are selling its integrity. After your compassion and the company’s integrity are established, you’ve laid the groundwork to sell your specific product or idea. Your passion is what makes the sale happen.
Sell yourself first, then the company, and then you sell the product or service through what this means to you benefit statements. See how I repeated myself there? It’s that important.
Another question your presentation should answer is “why now?” Timing is important. If so many people didn’t have smartphones by 2009, Uber would not have worked. If the economy hadn’t been in trouble in 2008, a lot fewer people would have been open to renting a room or their home to strangers to get more income and Airbnb would never have been viable. It is important to address why now is the perfect time for your idea—not too early or too late.
This book is all about storytelling and the concept of becoming a storyteller to sell more efficiently and to sell more. In Chapter 1, I provided the elements of a good story: exposition, conflict, problem-solving and resolution. In the next sections, you learned the tools and components to lay the groundwork for what the story needs to be for a pitch. Now it is time to put it all together.
Insight + Passion = Presentations with Impact
A great way to be successful in sales is to focus on how you sell. A champion golfer focuses on their golf swing, a world-class singer practices scales before a performance, a renowned doctor continues to study the latest techniques, and an award-winning actor rehearses their lines over and over again until they become a character. You need the same level of focus, practice, and passion for taking your selling to the level of soaring above the radar.
For selling purposes, passion can be defined (Merriam-Webster) as “boundless enthusiasm.” You need this passion to break through the clutter of the other presentations buyers will hear. You want the buyer to not only share information with you but also to share in your passion for what you are selling.
As an example of how passion makes all the difference in the world, let’s start with the basics and look at what you need to do to get hired for a job—in sales or elsewhere. Landing a new gig is probably the one time where everybody has to sell themselves, no matter what their chosen career. Therefore, in the job interview, you must be passionate about wanting the job you’re seeking and not just desperate to get hired. You have to remember that you are the product and you have to show the people hiring you that your passion for that product (your drive and self-esteem) will fit seamlessly into their company culture. So what can you do to make yourself stand out? How can you keep cool and confident in what can be an intensely nerve-wracking process?
As I said above, to effectively sell your assets, you must first be sold on yourself. You have to believe in your heart that you deserve the job and, moreover, that you deserve the best that life has to offer—prosperity, good friends, loving relationships, and work that brings you joy.
If we all deserve a job we enjoy, why does one person get chosen over another? From my experience, what differentiates a successful job candidate from an unsuccessful one is an awareness and belief in your own infinite abilities. From this emotional place of strength, you can prepare yourself for an interview, knowing you are just as good as other candidates and as good as the person doing the hiring. A simple, helpful trick of putting the interview process in perspective is to always remember that you are interviewing the company as much as the company is interviewing you.
Here is how I handled one interview for a sales job. After several individual interviews, all within the same day, I reached the position of being one of two final candidates who would meet with the top decision-maker. This position was his first hire since joining the company and I knew he had been regularly rejecting final candidates for months. Meeting with him felt like going in to see the wizard in The Wizard of Oz. The big corner office in New York could have been intimidating, but I chose to remain centered and believe that if I were supposed to have this job, it would be evident to us both. He told me he asked all the salespeople he interviewed the same question and that he was not happy with any of their answers. The question was, “What makes you different from everyone else? Everyone says they have great relationships with his or her clients, so give me something else.”
After thinking for a moment, I said, “I enjoy the thrill of getting people excited about saying ‘yes’ to what I am selling. I know how to make this easy for the buyer because they feel like they are getting a good product at a fair price and treated with respect.”
I found out later that the other finalist froze and couldn’t come up with an answer. I merely answered from my heart, without thought as to what the correct answer might be, and I got the offer.
If you are not comfortable thinking on your feet because you get knotted up under pressure, practice this ten second affirmation. It will allow you to tap into the basic truth that the only right answer is the one that comes straight from the heart. Here is the self-talk I use:
“When I speak from my heart, I say the right thing, in the right tone, at the right time.”
As the interview wound down, I summarized what the decision-maker said he was looking for and how I fit his criteria. Since we both were aware of the selling process, I laughingly said, “Here’s my favorite part. What else, if anything, do you need to know to feel comfortable hiring me?” Note my use of the word “feel.” I knew to use this kind of “feeling” questioning because the interviewer (the buyer, if you will in this case) had expressed in multiple ways that he made his decisions from his gut. For example, at one point, he said, “I want to wake up in the morning and feel comfortable that the person I hire is taking initiative without my having to micromanage them.”
Regardless of whether your buyer is a “feeling” person or not, as I mentioned before, we all make decisions emotionally and then back them up with logic. Even if we are not aware of that being our process.
When I was working on my TEDx talk, I reverse engineered it. I started with the end in mind. You can do the same.
When you are working on your next sales presentation, answer these three questions: How do I want the audience to feel? What do I want the audience to know? What do I want the audience to do? In the case of my TEDx talk, “Be the Lifeguard of Your Own Life,” I want the audience to feel that they are not alone in being afraid of change, but that they have to embrace it or they will “drown.” I want the audience to know there is no such thing as a comfort zone anymore and they have to get in the learning zone. I want the audience to remember to not panic and stay calm no matter what is happening to them in any one moment because who they are is bigger than any one event.
Once you have these three questions answered, you have a clear path on how to engage people with stories that support your objectives. For a sales presentation, you want them to feel you understand their problem better than anyone else. You want them to know (through storytelling) that you are like Yoda in Star Wars and will help them be the hero at their job. You want them to see you and your solution as so valuable they are Irresistible.
Similarly, spas don’t tell you about the credentials of their masseuses or their manicurists. They sell you on how amazing and relaxed you will feel after spending an afternoon with them. When you sell with stories that tap into emotions and give benefits, you have a winning, and proven, road map.
As a sales professional, you need to ask for the business. In any situation where you are asked to prove that you’re the right choice, you need to ask for the job. If that man had any objections to hiring me, now was the time to find out what they were and respond to them. Noting that if more time was needed to discuss my hire with his staff, then asking, “What is the next step?” would have become the key question. Instead, I asked for the job by posing this question, “If everyone else agrees on hiring me, can I count on your support, too?” He happily told me, “Yes,” and that his search was over. He now had the peace of mind that he had found someone with passion and persistence, not to mention the skills and confidence to close the deal.
Sometimes the “yes” doesn’t happen at the pitch… what then? Remember I mentioned five principles to getting to “yes” and gave you three in the last chapter? The first three were knowing and understanding the client’s vision, the strength of your team and what the connection is between your own company culture and your potential client’s. Here are the final two principles to help you close the sale.
You have done the background work, put together the pitch, presented and are waiting for the “yes.” How do you gain and maintain traction? What is going on with the service or a product that’s either in development or coming soon? Keeping prospects updated on elements like this builds the relationships overall. However, more importantly, what’s the traction you have with them on that Invisible-to-Irresistible ladder?
Traction on the ladder can sound like, “I’m intrigued, tell me more.” This traction can come from a big idea like launching the Gensler podcast or suggesting to Guess Jeans to do a joint anniversary celebration with W magazine.
More importantly, what is the traction you have on the ladder? What is a crucial differentiator for you over your competition? You need to come up with value-added ideas like I did with offering to stay and help Anthem during their improv session on objections.
Speaking of objections, you will rarely get a “yes” in the pitch. Even if someone is Irresistible, clients still ask questions. I’ve given you ways to get from Invisible to Intriguing, but this process provides a roadmap and you have to be ready for speed bumps. Many call them objections, but I call them buying signals and welcome them.