[QUOTE]
INTRODUCTION
A book with a great framework used for persuasion.
There’s lots more detail in the book so if you’re interested in learning more I’d recommend finding a copy.
FUTURENATIVE - THINK BETTER. BUILD BETTER.
I very occasionally send out an email recapping some thoughts, learnings and ideas typically centred around a thesis & approach I call being “FUTURENATIVE”.
In short, the thesis states: FUTURENATIVE individuals and organization find a unique way to leverage apparent tensions and blend both discovery & execution work, in order to unlock massive impact.
You can sign up here to learn more:
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Here's the big idea in 81 words:
- I don't like being pressured into making a purchase. And I'm not alone. Over decades of being marketed, pitched, sold, and lied to, we've all grown resistant to sales persuasion. The moment we feel pressured to buy, we pull away. And if we're told what to do or what to think, our defenses go up. In other words, buyers don't put much trust in you and your ideas. However, everyone trusts their own ideas. Accordingly, today, products are bought, not sold.
- Instead of pushing your idea on the buyer, it's a better move to guide them to discover it on their own, so they believe it, trust it, and get excited about it. Then they'll want to buy it and will feel good about the chance to work with you.
- Buyers buy how they want to buy, not how you want to sell. This is why today most things are bought; they aren't sold.
- Anything new and foreign is untested and, therefore, not to be trusted. The human brain is thus wired by evolution to distrust any information from the outside world and to greatly favor that which originates inside us.
- Inception is the allegedly impossible implantation of an idea in someone's mind so that they think it's their own. It involves the ability to introduce parts of an idea to someone and create the perfect conditions for the whole idea to "surface" as if it were.
- you've probably experienced a moment like this, when a solution to the problem you're working on suddenly materializes in your mind. Something just clicks and you see the answer. It feels almost like divine inspiration. You don't doubt it. You don't second-guess it. You trust it, believe in it, and act on it immediately-because it was your idea. We don't just find it satisfying when our brain comes up with ideas on its own, we also value those ideas more highly.
- You cannot get the full attention of a decision maker to listen idea if they think you're on a different level of the dominance hierarchy than they are. Status Alignment comes when you're in front of a decision maker and you have perfectly raised or lowered your own status to match the decision maker's view of himself.
- Influence, and particularly Inception, is most effective when the person you are speaking to feels like he or she is on the same level of the hierarchy as you. This is where Inception is strongest and works the best. Before you can implant an idea in someone else's mind, you need to create a feeling of Status Alignment.
- These are Status Tip-Offs, or pieces of information that, in the eyes of others in the know, immediately cement your status as an in-group member. A Status Tip-Off is like a password muttered through a slit in the door that signals you are OK to be let inside.
- The best way to find a Status Tip-Off is to interview three people who are the same level as the person you are trying to influence. What would they say to each other, to catch up on each other's business, peer-to-peer? three key elements that make up a successful Tip-Off:
- 1. Use Specific Industry Lingo
- 2. Describe a Recent Action You Have Taken
- 3. Mention a Real Situation Everyone in the Industry Cares About
- Today, almost every transaction has inherent uncertainty, which makes us uncomfortable because our brains are wired to expect the type of total certainty our species experienced for a million years in equal barter. Whenever your mind desires 100 percent certainty about a deal but your gut says it's got a 50 percent chance to work out, you're mentally experiencing a Certainty Gap. The larger this gap gets, the more you will start to feel psychological anxiety and even physical distress--causing you to back away from the deal. The goal of every sales presentation is to reduce the Certainty Gap in the buyer's mind-improving the chance of getting to yes.
- This is a classic Flash Roll a linguistic fireworks display of pure technical mastery over a complex subject. A Flash Roll is specially designed so that no matter how skeptical your listeners are when you start talking, by the end they'll be convinced you're a total expert and you know your industry and your craft cold-down to the finest detail.
- What you want to create is an action sequence delivered in highly technical language, which does something special to establish you as an expert. It must be completely stripped of all editorial, emotional, and extraneous details; it is literally just a list of technical actions that can be taken to solve a very difficult problem. Without ego or pride or even charisma, it should explain exactly what you did to solve a specific problem and then what the outcome was. And, of course, what makes the Flash Roll fun to perform is that you are going to purposely use dense, technical jargon that most people will tell you to avoid using. For about ninety seconds you're flipping the script. You start a Flash Roll by making the problem seem simple, routine, or trivial to you, it's something so basic, you hardly think about it.
- [...] answering technical questions is an inefficient way to close the ‣ and rarely works with sophisticated buyers.
- Information doesn't just magically move from the outside world into your brain. There's a process. You have to perceive something in your environment using your senses (input the data), make sense of what you are seeing (process the data), and remember it for later (save the data). And before your brain can perceive, process, and save a new idea, you need to have the right type of idea receptor waiting for that information, or it will pass through you, completely unremembered or quickly disregarded.
- it's a biology problem: If your brain doesn't have receptors for information, the information is meaningless
- I've found there are a few receptors that everyone has that you can use when you don't have the time to construct your own unique receptor. These receptors come pre-wired in humans at birth. The reason we feel instantly hooked is because these things take advantage of pre-wired idea receptors that exist in all our brains. threats, rewards, and fairness.
- APPROACHING DOOM: We automatically pay close attention to weather patterns, food shortages, political unrest, new types of weapons technology, and never-before-seen predators. Approaching doom refers to a threat that can take you by surprise because it moves too slowly for you to see it coming. The first person to detect slow-moving but catastrophic threats survives; others suffer and die. The rule? Humans always give their attention to new information about big environmental threats.
- A BIG PAYOFF: We are always looking for huge reward for just a small amount of effort. A reward has to be nice and big before it's really worth it for us to switch to a new behavior. The rule? Humans move quickly toward large pay days that are easy to measure and value.
- A FAIR DEAL: No one likes to be taken advantage of, and we are very sensitive to integrity, equality, and fairness. The rule? Other humans always want to be sure you have skin in the game and offer a fair deal before they say yes.
- Our receptors for these specific pieces of information are so deeply wired that we cannot evaluate details of an offer until the "big three" are satisfied. Buyers, therefore, come with the desire to know three things above all else:
- WHY SHOULD I CARE? (What new threats and dangers are out there?)
- WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME? (How can I get a better-than-average reward?)
- WHY YOU? (How can trust you to give me a fair deal?)
- Winter Is Coming.
- This targets the threat receptor.
- This is the Pre-Wired Idea: Those who do not perceive, prepare, adjust, and adapt to changes in the environment are wiped out.
- I would never tell a prospect that I have a better product than the one they are currently using, or that I have a new and better idea. I would just say that the industry as we know it is transforming, and I know how successfully in this new playing field. As I like to say, the person who to operate suck nows what will happen next and in the future is always the most important person in the room.
- 2x
- what's in it for me reward receptor is to use the idea of 2X: that something important to them will double in size, productivity, efficiency, competitiveness, output, or just plain happiness and satisfaction.
- Double is a magic number. Anything less than that is often not enough to activate and immediately satisfy your buyer's reward receptor.
- Conversely, show them that they will reach the same result but cut their expenses in half.
- Skin in the Game
- In my world, investors want to know that the CEO of the company is not going to give up and quit when things get hard--and things always get hard. It's not enough to say you are credible, hardworking, and trustworthy. What proof do you offer of this? What evidence can you provide to show that you'll stick with it, work hard, stay focused, and follow through?
- The only way for a buyer to be 100 percent sure that you aren't a lightweight who is going to bail when things start to get difficult is to see how heavily you are invested in a successful outcome. Your personal investment proves you have as much to lose as they do.
- [..] using a Skin in the Game script, a quick story a that shows how you are financially, physically, or contractually committed to this opportunity-maybe even more than you are asking them to be. In other words, you've made real sacrifices and paid the price to be here.
- Deal Viability Test:
- Step 1: Speak with about ten potential buyers.
- Step 2: Tell them about the best features of the product.
- Step 3: Gauge interest.
- Step 4: Decide if there's enough demand to keep going.
“I believe none of what hear and half of what I see”
- mammal brains seem to like things that are a little new and unusual, but not so new and unusual that we don't know how to process it. When something is totally new and novel, we don't have much information about it. This means there is a chance the thing could deliver a big reward. So we're programmed to be curious about novel things. The more novel something is, the more curiosity it triggers in us. Curiosity motivates us to approach things and check them out.
- The more novel the situation is, the more anxiety we feel, and the more cautiously we act.
- To influence people to try a new kind of anything, you first need to find somebody who is willing to listen to you talk about your new thing, whatever it is. At this stage, positioning a project or idea as completely new and original can cause a deceptive amount of interest. These people will listen to the idea. And yes, they'll be intrigued, maybe even engaged and excited. But when it comes to making a decision, they're likely to return to the products and ideas that are already in place and known to work-even if those products and ideas are just average.
- Because new and different things attract immediate attention. But this rise is temporary, and when the exhilaration of new and different wears off, the desire for tried-and-true takes over, and it is surprisingly difficult to get people to actually change their behavior.
- The trick is to use a technique called Novelty Chunking to make it seem like your deal is different from "normal" in just one key way, while everything else about the deal is completely Plain Vanilla. Then you show the buyer that what's normal is shifting, and the one key, different thing is really popular today. There is a new normal.
- We kept asking the same two questions: What parts of our deal would attract Mitch and what parts would push him away? In other words, "How is this deal the same as Mitch's other deals?" and "How is this deal very different and unique?" The plan was to find the perfect way to explain Mahalo as the new normal.
- So to write a Plain Vanilla script for Google Docs you would first focus on how similar it is to Microsoft Word. "Hey, look, Microsoft Word is fantastic. It's the perfect desktop word processor, and I would never change a thing about it. The simple interface with the ruler and toolbar at the top of the screen makes word processing a breeze. Google Docs keeps everything that makes Word great. The text editor feels almost identical. You can save, edit, spell-check, word-count, comment, and even track changes." Once you've established the many aspects of the product that haven't changed, it's a simple matter to introduce the Novelty Chunk: "But there is one key difference that sets Google Docs apart from Word. It is cloud based. This means the document lives in the cloud and multiple people can access it through a web browser from anywhere on the planet simultaneously." Then you explain to your buyer that the status quo is great and works just fine. Acknowledge that they probably aren't looking for a replacement. Finally, introduce the one way your idea is novel and show why this novelty is good-and how it's the same thing nearly everyone is doing (collaborating on projects in the cloud is the new normal).
- Let me flip the script for you: It's pessimism, not optimism, that is the formula for success in sales. To influence people, we're supposed to minimize all negative thoughts, leaving buyers excited and enthusiastic about investing in us and our ideas, right? Not exactly. The possibility of failure enhances a buyer's motivation to act. Until the negatives are out in the open, the buyer's spoken or unspoken state of mind is "What's the catch?" Therefore, pessimism is not a type of negative thinking that needs to be argued with, overcome, and destroyed. Instead, it should be invited and cultivated.
- Any feeling of psychological control, time pressure, scarcity pressure, social pressure, or other typical sales tools causes buyers to simply back away.
- Universal Curiosity Formula:
- arousing their curiosity by threatening their social ranking and then offering a valuable secret.
- THE BUYER'S FORMULA
- In my deals, I use a seven-step Buyer's Formula to lay down "do not cross" lines.
- I teach the buyer how to evaluate whether my deal is right for them
- p. 155
- 1. Introduce the Buyer's Formula
- To start, I'll say something like, "I deal with this kind of thing all the time. Let me try and help."
- Statements like "I've done this a thousand times" always reinforce one's status as an independent expert.
- p. 155
- 2. Outline Obvious Ways to Fail
- Next, start to create boundaries that your buyer will not venture outside of, by highlighting the obvious ways to fail.
- There are no real standards \[..] And you have someone like me standing by so you don't make an obvious wrong choice."
- p. 156
- 3. Highlight Counterintuitive Ways to Fail
- From there, you should move on to the less obvious, or counterintuitive, ways to fail. These are traps that most people fall into, things that your buyer surely believes he already knows, but really he doesn't. You are going to expertly point a few of these out and teach your buyer at least one valuable insight.
- Once you've shown your buyer five or six things that can easily go wrong in his decision (starting with the obvious and moving to the less obvious), it's time to shift into the positive actions he can take, so he feels he's in control and is making informed choices.
- p. 156
- 4. List Obvious Actions
- Now you can tell your buyer what actions he should take to get started. Again, start with a few no-brainers, or things your buyer already knows in the back of his mind and will definitely agree with.
- p. 157
- 5. Less Obvious "Hacks"
- Then move into the less obvious tips and insights, or the "hacks" (these are the things you would only figure out by doing it at least 100 times).
- p. 158
- 6. Hand Over Autonomy
- Finally, hand over autonomy with a shrug and a line that detaches you from the outcome, like, "Yeah, well, that's just what I'd do, having done it at least a hundred times already.
- p. 158
- 7. Redirect to Keep the Buyer "In Bounds"
- The better you get at delivering the formula, the less often you'll have to field rogue questions, but here's how to deal with them when they do come up. First, let the buyer fully object. Hear him out, then redirect firmly to stay within the boundaries you previously set. "People are always worried about that issue, and in the end, it's never even an issue at all,"
- "There are twenty five different things to worry about when you're buying a bike, but there are really only five things that actually matter. Just focus on these five and everything will be perfect.
- With the formula, the bike shop mechanic has boiled down and shared with you ten years of bike-buying experience.
- p. 159
- If the buyer won't respect your expert status and your Buyer's Formula, he's never going to be a good customer, partner, or investor. Start backing away from him. p. 160
- Entertain the objections. Welcome the pessimism. Acknowledge the downside of what you offer. Some valid objections will come up in any proposal, and telling your buyer otherwise and shooting down every one of his objections will signal to him that you are being less than authentic, or worse, needy (and difficult to work with). It's a good idea to bring to the surface the most obvious flaws in your plan before the buyer does, although most people try to avoid any mention of negatives. You should move in quickly and acknowledge the possibility of failure and the obvious negative features-or he will do SO but at the most inconvenient time. Do all this and you will gain your buyer's trust. When you embrace pessimism along with the buyer, he won't feel pressured, p. 160
- What does it even mean to be compelled? In its most basic form, it's that feeling of being unable to look away from something or someone. It can feel like being caught in a trance or placed under a spell, and it can lead you to a sudden insight in a way that opens the door to Inception. p. 173
- These are the five personas that make up ^^the Loser's Formula^^, listed in order of their appearance in most sales presentations:
- 1. The Ultimate Nice Guy
- 2. The ShamWow Guy
- 3. The Sorcerer
- 4. The Angel
- 5. The Wolf
- p. 186
- 1. The Ultimate Nice Guy
- At the top of a sales call, most people start by putting on the Ultimate Nice Guy persona. In other words, we play it safe. We want above all else to be liked, and we try to achieve this by seeking common ground.
- But the real problem with the Ultimate Nice Guy persona is that it signals to the buyer how much power he has over us. Once we have lost status (and given away our power) we shift from the Ultimate Nice Guy archetype into the ShamWow Guy archetype, who will go on to explain all the features of the product or idea.
- p. 187
- 2. The Sham Wow Guy
- People expect to know what it is we're selling, right? So we start listing the best features of the product, our most famous customers, the five-star ratings, our incredible customer service reputation, and our recent industry awards. This is where we become the ShamWow Guy.
- Of course, this information overload usually doesn't get through to the buyer unless he already has idea receptors built for whatever we're trying to tell him. Once all the best and brightest features and facts of the product are out on the table we realize, Yikes! I need to explain how these features will actually benefit the buyer. And then, yet another transformation begins.
- p. 188
- 3. The Sorcerer
- explain how fantastic the once you're able to do this in your own kitchen. You'll soon be smarter, more handsome, and more attractive to both men and women.
- The Sorcerer archetype explains how each of the product's amazing features will benefit the buyer in many exciting (but unverifiable) ways.
- p. 189
- 4. The Angel
- Now that we've given the buyer all the information he ever wanted (and never wanted) about our products and ideas, and we've tried to get him super excited about the benefits our products offer, we really need to know the chances of closing the deal-high or low, good or bad? Now it feels time to do a "trial close" and see how close or far we really are to making some money.
- "So what do you think? Is this something you'd be interested in? Any questions before we move forward?"
- By this time in the sale, the buyer has been talking to just one person, but he's encountered four different characters, each of them formulaic and unimaginative, each completely self-serving and predictable. It's off-putting and the buyer starts to wonder, "Who are you really? What are your values, what do you stand for, and how far will you go just to make the deal?"
- p. 189
- 5. The Wolf
- Things are getting hairy, and the final sales archetype now emerges.
- The Wolf jumps on the buyer's objections to wrangle him into submission and make the objections irrelevant in hopes each one will be dropped, clearing the way to a sale.
- p. 191
- The human brain is programmed to respond to the immediate demands of any social situation and modify our behavior accordingly. ‣ The problem is, the human brain is built to seek out relationships that offer consistency in character. We desperately want to build a matrix of reliable and predictable social relationships, because we have a deep desire to feel like we understand and control our world and can predict who will do what, and when. p. 192
- The key isn't to try to act how Elias would or how Oren would. The key is to stop being reactive to the needs of the buyer, and write personal scripts that are authentic to who you are, then stick to your guns (politely) anytime a buyer offers resistance or tries to push you around. Discount? No, not on your life. Free upgrade? No, why would I do that? Send me a proposal? OK, so we have a verbal agreement on terms? You must become an undisputed expert in the mind of the buyer in the first few minutes, and then continue to add credibility, insight, and competence to this expert status throughout the conversation. p. 195
- So here's a quick recap of the process; think of it as a quickstart guide:
- You'll start by getting your audience-whether they're a buyer, an investor, or a business partner-to pay full attention to you and take you seriously, as they would a partner or colleague. And you'll do this by achieving Status Alignment, the first step to making a deal.
- No buyer of any kind is going to listen to you until they feel they're in the right place at the right time with the right person. That's why the Status Tip-Off is SO powerful. When your buyer sees that you understand who they are, can speak their language, and are part of their in-group, they'll immediately become receptive to what you have to say.
- a Status Tip-Off works the same-it's a brief story or phrase that would be known only by an in-group member and will instantly cement your status as "one of us." p. 234
- When the stakes are high, you need to instill absolute Certainty in the buyer's mind that you're a true expert in your field and that things will happen exactly as you say they will. To do this, you're going to use a Flash Roll.
- While the Status Tip-Off aligns you with your audience by showing them you have a lot in common, the Flash Roll should distance you from your audience, demonstrating your technical expertise in one very specific field -which happens to be the area in which they are having a difficult problem. p. 234
- Once you've established your Status and expertise, it's time to explain your big idea to the buyer. Specifically, to answer the three questions in the buyer's mind: Why do I care? What's in it for me? and Why you? The faster you answer these, and the less cognitive strain you place on the buyer, the better your chances are of closing the deal.
- The easiest way to do this is with Pre- Wired Ideas:
- Winter Is Coming
- 2X
- Skin in the Game
- With Pre-Wired Ideas, your audience will understand everything they need to know about you and what you're offering.
- But you don't just want your buyer to understand your idea, you want them to buy in and pitch it back to you-to invite you into your own deal. You want to flip the script. And this isn't going to happen until the buyer feels safe to explore your idea more deeply and entertain both the positives and the potential negatives. p. 234
- To make the buyer feel interested enough to explore a new idea but safe enough to move forward, you need to find their novelty offer is the New Normal-a sweet spot. Show them how your Plain Vanilla concept with just one key and valuable difference. To keep things moving along, you should lump together all of the ways your product or idea is new and unique so the buyer isn't overwhelmed or scared to buy it. Then show how your offer is new and different from the status quo in just one key way. p. 235
- However, before you actually turn the power to make the decision over to your buyer, there's one final step: You need to contain their pessimism within a set of pre-defined boundaries. I call this an invisible fence. To do this, use a Buyer's Formula to teach them how to buy whatever you're selling. p. 236
- Through the above five steps, you can't change who you are or change your values to make the buyer happy. One reason why so many people are mistrustful of salespeople is because they see the seller move through different characters during a sales pitch, and this leaves buyers feeling confused and uncertain. p. 236
- This is what the most compelling people in the world have that others don't: character and values. p. 237
- In the final delivery of your ideas, if you're considered an insider and an expert, if the buyer knows why they should care about your idea, what's in it for them, and why you; if you acknowledge their concerns or objections, and guide them through the process of buying your product; and in all this they find you to be a compelling person, they will search for, find, and suggest a way to do business with you. p. 237
FUTURENATIVE - THINK BETTER. BUILD BETTER.
I very occasionally send out an email recapping some thoughts, learnings and ideas typically centred around a thesis & approach I call being “FUTURENATIVE”.
In short, the thesis states: FUTURENATIVE individuals and organization find a unique way to leverage apparent tensions and blend both discovery & execution work, in order to unlock massive impact.
You can sign up here to learn more:
