Why Influence Decides Every Sale with René Rodriguez

The lack of influence is one of the worst of human experiences and having it is one of the best. Renee Rodriguez is the best sign author, keynote speaker, leadership advisor. He's considered as one of the leading authorities on leadership and influence. He shared his stage with Ed Mylett, Tony Robbins. I was told two big lessons. You learn how to sell, you'll always be employed. And then the other piece was, "Build a career, don't make a sale." My mom asked me a question. She said, Renee, look in this room and what does everybody have in common? Is the Renee the Alba brain? If you understand how the brain works, life becomes just exponentially easier. You're obviously a body language expert, vice body language, so important. One of the things that's so powerful about it is. Our guest today, you know, always geek out on this type of stuff. Human behavior, the psychology behind why human beings do anything their life. It amazes me. So, when I find a guest, you know, typically we'll follow them for a while. You know, like, are they real? Do they have legit stuff? Are they an expert or are they an amateur? Now, this person is an expert. That's why he's here. So I've been following him for about six months. He's considered by, I would say, a lot more than many as one of the leading authorities on leadership and influence for the Navy Rodriguez is the best sign author, keynote speaker, leadership advisor and transfer maker, speaker coach. And for the last 27 years, he doesn't look that old. Renee has been researching and applying behavioral neuroscience to solve the toughest challenges, leadership sales and change. You know, if you follow me for a moment, you know, all I talk about is selling. All sales is changed. That's really what human behavior. It's about how good you are at getting the prospect to view in their mind that by changing their situation, it means purchasing what you're offering is far less risky for them than doing nothing at all, staying in the status quo and their problem state of the state. So we're going to talk to Renee about that. Now, as an entrepreneur and CEO, Renee integrates a practical business approach that inspires his audiences to take action. And I've heard from many other speakers that he typically gets voted speaker of the event, the number one speaker. And through his keynote, boot camps, workshops and proprietary amplify course, which I'm about to take, he helps us own our backstory to build the frame for not only our unique value, propositions, but also a beautiful picture of life, greater influence, greater transformation, more sales. He is the author of a best selling book, Amplifier Influence Wall Street Journal Best Seller, which was selected as the best business book 2022 by summary.com. And he shared his stage with, I would say Ed Mylett, Tony Robbins and Gary and Ryan Holliday have shared the stage with this guy, Renee. I'm telling great. What an intro man. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Hey, you know, I geek out about this stuff. So I want to, I want to jump right into it. So let's talk about your book. Okay, Amplifier Influence. Who did you write the book for? And for what reason? You know, it's a good question. And I wanted to do before I say that, I want to echo back. I've been following you and your stuff. And I was telling my team and my wife was like, you know, finally a sales trainer is here. And he's arrived and I get to call the time. Who's sales training? And even though I do it, I'm like, man, you got to call Jeremy. Jeremy's like, I start following him and you'll see what I mean. So one honor to be here. So why did we write the book? You know, the, the, the, in 30 years now, I'm doing this. I got to update that. I've come to realize it's one thing and you said it right. You nailed it. Selling is change. It's a behavior change. If it's spending money over here, you're going to spend it over here now. If it's behaving this way, you're going to behave that way now. And change, we are biologically built to resistance to resist it for good reason. You know, it's just, it's for very good reason. It's just very hard when we're trying to grow, which makes it hard, which is also what makes it valuable. So influence to me is what I found to be at the core of what leadership is and at what selling is. You know, and so the way that I talk about influence is to, we have a philosophical approach. Let's take it away for a minute. You walk in a room and no one notices. You tell a joke and no one laughs. You sell a product and no one buys. You share an idea and no one cares. You cast a vision and no one follows. That's a pretty horrifying experience. It's not. Yeah. And, but then if you really think about it, you'd probably say, okay, well, like, for example, like, okay, it's the feelings are invisible, but I would say insignificant. And if you were in a meeting and you felt insignificant, you'd say, why am I in this meeting? If you're in a relationship and you felt insignificant, you'd say, why am I in this relationship? If you have work feeling the same way, why am I here? And so, but a lot of people feel that way about life. And they start asking some really tough questions. And so I say, okay, so let's bring influence back. I tell a joke. I walk in a room, people notice. I tell a joke, people laugh, I sell the product, people are buying. I share an idea, people love it. I cast a vision and people mobilize and take action. Now all of a sudden, there is no question about why I'm here. I know why I'm in this relationship, in this business. I know why it is that I'm on the stage or selling this product or whatever it is on life. And so I think the lack of influence is one of the worst of human experiences. And having it is one of the best. And so we look at it from the realization that is your fingerprint on the world. It is the thing that is the core essence of what your purpose is. When you can define it and do it, you can live it. Well, I think everybody, I think you hit it right on the head. I think, I mean, it doesn't matter even if you're in sales or not. Like you're out trying, like I don't care if you're a school teacher, if you're a stay at home parent, if you're a politician, if you're an attorney, if you're a doctor, like everyone's in sales, like every day, even if you don't get paid to make a sale, I call that non-sales selling, you're still out there as you know trying to persuade influence and you're trying to move others to your way of thinking every single day, right? So influence, persuasion, and sales, if you master that, it's really hard to be unsuccessful. Yeah, really hard. Like tell me a person that is not extremely talented because they've learned sales, influence, and persuasion that's not successful. Like I just, I don't know anybody. I know lots of people that don't learn that. They're extremely unsuccessful because of that. Absolutely. It is the core. And everybody says I'm not in sales are usually the ones that don't realize that they are trying to persuade somebody. Kids are doing that. Yeah. Ever since we're born, it's in our nature to try to align life the way that we feel best serves us. Yeah, if you're trying to, you know, if you're, if you're an employee, trying to convince your boss to give you pay raise, you're trying to influence for sway, move out, if you're an entrepreneur, and you're trying to get your, your, your employees to follow your vision of where you want to take your company. You're trying to persuade, you're trying to influence. I mean, if you're, like I said, an attorney trying to convince a judge that your client's innocent, you see everybody's in sales and persuasion in some sense, your parent trying to raise your children, you know, to train them to be adults, you're trying to persuade influence. So like, absolutely. Doing this all the time, right? It's like one of the skills you have to have. Now, I wanted to ask, I got a bunch of questions for you, man. Still it. Okay. So maybe go over your background in neuroscience. This is really important because I find a lot of people that are out there talking about persuasion influence, like don't really have a background with the way the brain makes decisions. And I find that odd because my background's in behavioral science. I'm like, if I didn't know all this stuff, like, I couldn't do what I did as a salesperson or as a sales trainer. So tell us your background and why you really are fascinated in that facet. Yeah. I was, when I was a kid, my mom asked me a question. Yeah. And I was looking at facial expressions and color, skin and background. She said, Renee, they all have a brain. And if you understand how the brain works, life becomes just exponentially easier. And so I went and took that advice and I said, okay, I'm going to learn how the brain works. So I went to school for behavioral neuroscience. And as I was doing that, I realized that there's two sides to that. And the frustrating side of science was at the time in psychology is summed up with one of my favorite psychologists of Martin Seligman. And they said that he has a TED Talk where they asked him. They said, okay, Mr. Seligman, you got one word on this interview when I asked your question. I just need one word and he goes, great, let's do it. And he goes, so what is the state of psychology today? And he said, good. And he goes, okay, hold on a second. No, no, no, no, no, I think we need a little bit more. We'll give you two words, two words, a whole thing and goes back and says, okay, so Dr. Seligman, what is the state of psychology today? And he said, not good. Wait a minute, okay, hold on. All right, let's give him three words and does the whole thing. Dr. Seligman tells us what's the state of psychology today. He said, not good enough. And I thought that that was so fascinating because at the time, psychology and behavioral neuroscience and all this stuff was about studying what was broken in the brain. studying psychosis and disease and issues and trauma and all that stuff. And nothing was done on human potential. And that's where the whole concept of positive psychology came out was saying, what are we capable of? And that's where I started looking at saying, okay, what's the potentiality of this? How do I apply this search, this research to solve a conflict to sell? I was so in cookware, so how do I get it to close a deal? I was six foot three with a goatee and bald. How do I reduce the stress level of me entering that room so that people feel safer with me? So I was always on the application side of that. And so right now, one of our partners is the co-founder of the Neural Leadership Institute. And we geek out. He's 30 years in neuroscience, I'm 30 years in applied neuroscience. And we go, okay, how does this work? And he's like, okay, well, this is the research. How do you use that? And he gives me that and I give him this. It's a big problem. I love that. He said something important because when I was in university, my professors, they had the theories and the research, but not like how to apply it in a sale situation. Here's the right questions. Here's how to use your tone. Here's how to get the prospect to let their guard down so they emotionally trust you enough to tell you what's really going on, right? So that's what I love doing is taking the research and actually applying it to like real life sales situations. Hey guys, Jeremy Minor here. A lot of you guys keep asking me really good questions in the comments on how to sell more. So the easiest way to actually get a hold of me is to actually text me way faster. So 480, 418, 6755. So text me 480, 418, 6755 because here's the deal. I started this sales training company to help you finally master sales and persuasion once and for all, which is I know what you want to do. So text me and then let's get back to the show. I want to talk about body language in persuasion. You know, I find sales people and companies always come to us and they're always like, Hey, we need to get better at closing. And like, what do you mean better at closing? We need to know how to close at the very end. I'm like, well, that's not when the prospect makes it by decision. They don't make a decision to buy the car at the end when you use an option closed and say, do you want the red one or the blue one, right? That's not when they decide to buy. Yeah, I want the blue one. That means that they've already decided before you even asked that question. Otherwise, the other process is like, well, I'm still looking around, right? And they give you an objection. The sale was made in that conversation from taking that prospect from where they are now, you know, we call it the current state to where they now see they can be objective state. And what's the gap is all these newfound problems. Your questioning ability, your tone in your body language, if they can see you, even if they can't see your, because you know, your body language affects your tone causes them to start to see they have. They didn't understand they had before. So I want you as a, you're obviously a body language expert as well. Why is body language so important? Well, if you think about it one, you know, and I want to touch on something you said earlier too, which is the work you do. One of the things that's so powerful about it is the language choices that you make that if to the untrained eye in ear doesn't seem like it makes a difference, but those emotional responses and the triggers and the brain that are happening based on the choices and the of words that we use. And I watch your videos over and over because you master those, those phrases that are so critical. And the same is true with body language. If you go back to Dr. Album Arabians, which is probably the most misquoted and misunderstood study of all time, around, you know, words have 7% of impact. Oh, 38% yeah. Yeah, 38 comes from tone of voice and, you know, 55% is body language or nonverbels. And you combine tone and body. You have 93% of the impact you make on people has nothing to do with the words, but it's really about the meaning that people associate to it. And so if you're looking at what we're communicating when it comes to meaning, we light travels faster than sound. And so I see you before I hear you. And if you're walking in and your shoulders are hunched or you're not making eye contact, there's all of these subconscious cues that are being sent to this part of the main called the reticular activating system that's like this radar and the amygdala that's looking for threat. It's looking at those little, little underlying pieces that is constantly seeking congruency. And that's the piece that people don't understand. Like, you know, we train people to be on stages and they go, well, can you, can you, can you be effective on stage trembling? And they say, no, I said, well, hold on a second. Okay, so if I'm trembling and you see my hand tremble and I'm trembling and I say, gosh, I'm so excited to be here. Just again, I'm the 2020 2025 plan is going to be great. My word is saying it's great, but my body language is saying I'm shaking. And so there's an incongruency there. And so when they go, well, you can't shake. I said, no, watch. I'm shaking still. And I go, guys, as you know, talking about this is not easy because I'm shaking because this actually means a lot to me. This means a lot to all of us and all of you mean a lot to me. And so now all of a sudden, there's a congruency. And I'm okay with the shakes because now into your art conversation earlier, we have framed it. And we have owned the frame that surrounds the shaking, which means this means a lot. If I'm crying on stage, sometimes I get emotional. I say, guys, I'm emotional because this means a lot. Yeah. And so I own the meaning and you're raising your status in the prospect's mind. It's so true. The survival part of your brain is an interesting creature. And it's helping you know, because you could be walking across the street at a grocery store, right? And a woman yells like really, really loud. And instantly you're going to like am I safe? Your survival brain just reacts, right? It doesn't even hear the words she said. It just hears the tonality, right? You're reacting am I safe? And then you know, then our brain starts to like interpret the words. And then, you know, neocortex is like, oh, she's just telling her son to be careful crossing the street. You know, but it's interesting, you know, because we train a lot of companies and salespeople how to call call as well. And they think it's like these magical words, which some of it is there. But I'm like, it's really in your tonality because if you sound like I my name is I'm with XYZ company. The reason I'm calling you is, well, you sound like everybody else called calling now. Instantly, their brain has a script to what to do to that because they've heard that before, right? So I have to interrupt that pattern because they don't have a script for that. So I find it quite interesting what you're talking about here. I love that too because you're pointing out there's there's we can have an emotional response to something five to seven seconds before we're consciously aware of it. And we will show that emotional response on our body before we even are knowing. So I'm just like, Hey, something wrong. Like, what do you mean? What's wrong? I'm fine. And then a minute later, they're like, yeah, well, of course, yes, something's wrong. It's like, well, I was giving it away earlier because there's that and this is where it gets really fascinating and scary at the same time that there's us like you and I are having a conversation, but there's another part of us that is monitoring constantly. Yeah, you know, it's a system one and system two concept. And so I'm here with you, but there's another part of me that's just like looking around and, you know, and if we can calm that one that's looking around, that's where sales happen. It's keeping the prospects brain engaged because, you know, most salespeople, especially like they go into a presentation and the prospect starts to zone out thinking about like, Oh, I got to pick up my kids today or, you know, I got to get this important assignment done by Friday. And all that does is they're not really listening to what you're doing. And then they have uncertainty. So when you try to close in that uncertainty triggers objections and stalls. And it's like, you know, all these salespeople come to us and they're just like, I got to get better objection handling. I'm like, well, I can give you band-aids no problem. But what if we tell you how to prevent most of the objections from happening in their brain? To me, that would be a lot. It's a lot easier to sell when I prevent most of the objections from happening. Amen to that, brother. I mean, amen. Yep. All right. See, see folks listening, that is a sales trainer talking right there. Yeah, we need that. And prevention and handling, you know, and when I got an objection as a salesperson in the trenches, I always for a split second, I'm like, Oh, what did I say? What did I not ask that triggered that reaction from the prospect? Because I'm thinking like, I'm the one causing the objections, not the prospect. Yes. You know, how I'm communicating. Are you taking ownership to it? I love that. But that's how you get that's how you become the best when you when you figure out like, Hey, you know, I'm responsible for my results. It's not the prospects fault. It's not like my leave your bad. It's my communication. Yes. Core philosophy. I want to talk about the relationship between body language and your tonality. What's that relationship? Why so important? They both go hand in hand. Yeah. And there's so much there's so much connection between the, and this is the the the age old mind body connection too, right? So then you we know that how we feel our mind in essence affects our body. If we're sad, we're going to look that way. Then it came out that is it a synchronous meaning can my body affect my mind? And so if I might be feeling sad, but what if I stood confidently? Would that change the neurons firing? And absolutely it does. And so this is where we're even Amy Cutty wrote book presence since she did her great TED talk on, you know, instead of fake until you make it, fake it till you become it. And what's happening is the research beyond that basically says if you're feeling sad or let's say you're not feeling confident or to your audience here if you're doing it, if you're doing a cold call, if you're in a call center, if you're making phone calls, your posture on that phone call, even though they can't see it is 100% affecting the tone of your voice. Like we know this, we call somebody you know when you've woke them up. Like, oh, hey, yeah, what's up? You sleep? No, no, no, why? And you know they're laying in bed barely have opened their mind yet. And there's no hiding it. We have all of those unconscious pieces that are coming through our tone of voice. And you know, go back to sales training 101, put a mirror in front. Why? Are we smiling? You know, is there something happening there? And if we can do that, all of the idiosyncrasies, all of the little nuances start to align. And the listener hears congruency. Again, that is the word we're trying to create. I'm happy. Then look happy. And then you'll sound happy. And there's all of these things that come together to put piece of the puzzle when one piece is off. That's where people don't trust. And they might they're not going to be the ones to go, well, his eyebrow moved to the left. And therefore, there was an incongruency. Therefore, we can't buy. Yeah, they don't say that they don't have the categories by which to intellectualize that process, they just feel the process. It's a subconscious. Yeah. It's a I always say your tone. Your tone is how the the prospect interprets the intention behind every question and everything you say. That's how they interpret why you're saying what you're saying or why you're asking. Like if I if I went to let's say my I've got a 17 year old son, right? And let's do you have kids? I have, we have six. Yeah, between my wife. You beat me, man. I only got five. Well done. Well done, right? Thank you. You got the you got the plus one on the basketball team. So my son 17 and let's say that he got arrested because he's going 105 and 45 mile per hour kid zone. I don't even know. Let's just make something up. And so as a dad, I let's say I walk into the jail. It's one in the morning. Sad. I'm pissed, you know, I can walk in and I can communicate. I can get him defensive. But like I'm so disappointed in you. I can't believe you do something like that. See my tone and my my arms are out here. And as you know, what is my son going to do? Defense. It's going to get well down. Well, they don't understand. If I come in and I simply change my tonality into more of a concerned tone, a tone that shows them, they put my hand on my chest and I say, I'm so disappointed in you. Why would you do that? Now what does my son do? Yeah. Now either do you care? There's nothing to defend. He lets us guard down. He knows I'm still upset and disappointed. But he knows I love him. I do this example where I'll walk the room. Another course called Engage. It's more on trust and teamwork. And I'll have a handful of markers. And they're sitting in a circle around me. I said, so what if I walk in the room and every time I spoke and I just launch a marker at somebody? You watch them, you know, and then I'll launch it over here. And then I pretend to throw the third one. But the whole role goes like this. Yeah. I didn't even throw it. But your body and your mind was waiting for me to throw something. So you aren't listening to what I'm saying. You're waiting to defend yourself. And if you're that speaker, and this is where it comes down to what you're saying, if we have even a history of being that person, and we walk into room, they're already defending something that's coming. And part of our job is to be somebody that's easy to listen to, which is really, really hard. It's getting them to let their guard down. Whether you're speaking on stage, because as you know, as soon as you walk up there, they're picking up on social cues from you based on your tonality, your body language, what you're saying. And it causes their brain to either go into fight or flat mode where they start getting on the phone, just another speaker going to the bathroom, right? Or triggers enough curiosity where they want to engage. And they're just like, what's going on? This is interesting, right? Even at speakers, especially in sales, if you're selling one to one, it doesn't really matter. I always say your facial expression, even your facial expressions, or the remote control to your tone, right? So my second career, I was in B2B enterprise-level sales, some of that debt relief services, I'm calling large companies, you're a fortune 1,000 to probably the top 5,000 companies. And even on the phone, co-calling, I still had to, in certain circumstances, you change your fate. Hold on, walk me back. What did you mean when you said you're having issues with the debt? See, that's a confused tone. My facial expression shows that I'm confused. Now they can't see that, right? But as you know, Renee, try having a confused tone with a straight face. Yeah, no. It's so like the, here's in the fun example. If you're listening to this and you try this, like we call it a Neuro-Create a Neuro-Traffic Jam. Because your brain is designed to work in a congruent fashion. And I get leaders that will do micro expression stuff and they're like, "Well, can you get me to stop doing that?" I'm like, "Well, do you believe in what you're saying there?" He goes, "Well, I guess the no. That's the response you want. How about we talk about something you believe in first?" And then that'll magically change. But if we say, "Okay, if we leak our eyebrows, our curtains." So you can open the curtains, which is really nice things. Just like open them up, and you see my eyes, "Hey, how you doing?" But try closing them once. Closing your curtains, really hard. So that means like, screen your eyes like that, and now try to smile at the same time. Yeah. It's just weird. Yeah, exactly. And they don't go together. And so, yeah, so there's a lot of, and you don't have to be a body language expert. This is what I hope you guys are listening. You don't have to be an expert to understand it. You're just after starting listening to it and paying attention to what's going on. So, I always say, listen to what the prospect means. Not just what they say. Those are going to be two different things. Like, if I lean in and ask you like a commitment question, like, "Do you feel like this could be the answer for you?" And they're like, "Yeah." Well, a lot of things, we're like, "Okay, great." And they're ready to, you know, assume the close here. But what I just heard is uncertainty. What I heard is, you've seen a bit uncertain when I said, "What's behind that?" Well, I'm not sure about, see, I'm hearing uncertainty. I'm listening to what they mean, not just what they say, because I'm reading their tone, right? Gold. Absolutely, gold. And that's such a great example too, that if they're so stuck on making a sale, they're losing sight of all of the cues that are going to guide them there or guide them away. That's the other piece too. Like, sometimes we shouldn't be closing a deal. And that's totally fine. Like, I remember, I was told two big lessons when I got covered by basketball team going into college. I saw where you're asked an executive, "What's the one thing I need to do to be in their shoes when I get older?" And he looked at me and smiled and he said, "You learn how to sell. If you learn how to sell, you'll always be employed." And I was like, "And this guy ran a $25 billion company." And then the other piece was, you know, "Build a career don't make a sale." And that's what you're talking about there is that piece of really listening to what's going on. 100% because you make sales because you listen to what they mean, not just what they say. You lose sales because you don't listen to what they mean. You assume that you want it to mean something when in reality you can tell by their tone, they're not on board. So I need to learn what their concern is, help them overcome it, and then loop back around and close the deal. Now, you talk a lot about hand and arm movements, and how that affects how people perceive you. Maybe elaborate on that. Yeah. So if you look at, and one of our videos went crazy viral, like 26 million views of just making one movement where you get somebody on stage and their hands will be by their sides. And then I'll stand next to them and I say, "Okay, so notice who are you paying attention to?" And I'll put my hands in the position you have them right there, right? You're right above your belly button, and in this sort of ready position. And between your belly button and your eyes is what we call the influence zone. You had another great name for that place. So it's just-- Trust zone, yeah, I like that. The trust zone, right? And so you're in there. What it shows, and it tells the brain, "Oh, this person is about to do something. They're confident. They're ready for the game. I can throw them a pass. I can ask them a question. They're engaged versus hands down. You're not." And the brain is following those different elements. And so then you look at even the studies that they did on TED Talks. And they looked at the top quartile TED Talks in the bottom ones. And the bottom ones got an average of 131,000 views. And they used about 250 some 237, I believe the number was, hand gestures. And the top TED Talks had an average of 4.3 million views. So look at the difference, 131,000 to 4.3 million. That's a massive difference. And they used 465 hand gestures. And so when you look at the science, I did a whole podcast on hand gestures. And there's several things. One is we paint pictures with our hands. And so we were watching. People are watching us, we're doing it, even how you and I use them right now, with whether it's sequencing or looking back, whatever it is that we do, we're painting pictures for them. So when we remove our hands, a couple things happens. Comprehension goes way down. It goes way down. Engagement goes way down. But now the way hand gestures serve us is that we use them as cues for memory. And so we're using our own hand gestures to even draw upon our own memory. And so it was like, man, what was that one thing? And we're we're using, you know, you know, even scratching our head, like there's all sorts of things that are causing us to use memory. So hand gestures are huge. Yeah. I would say, you know, to sales people are companies that you're like, you're like a conductor at the orchestra. Right? So your hand gestures can control thought presses. It can control how they perceive you as you talk about. It controls your tone and pacing at a long-winded question. You know, a lot of people always ask me like, why do you always have a pin in your hand? And so what I always tell the story of is when I got into sales, my first job was a door to our sales in what college, 2021-22. And I hired this tonality coach from Hollywood that trains a lot of well-known speakers, Matthew McConaughey's, one of his clients, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joe the Rob Southerner. And he's like, you got to slow down your, you ask your questions too fast. You don't, you don't give, you don't give them enough time to internalize what you're asking. And so he gave me a pin. He's like, I want you literally, he's like, imagine you're, you're a conductor and you're leading an orchestra, right? So you're going to pace out your questions with this pen to kind of control your, your sequencing. So when I ask a question, I learned how to like slow down my tone, more verbal pausing, more verbal pacing, like, okay, why so important you now though? Right? See, I'm now I'm emphasizing now, like it's now right now, timing issue. And I verbal pause right before that word because I want their brain to think about now, not wise this or I could be like, well, why is this so important you now though? Now I just forced the brain to focus on whatever, you know, but a lot of times you can, you can use a pen, you can use your hand to kind of as a salesperson help you kind of pace out. and slow down. You know what I like about your use of pens too is so I don't use PowerPoint either and so I always have an easel pad, a whiteboard or something on stage with me and they're like well they there's three thousand people I'm like I just need to sometimes just draw a line in a circle yeah and but I love the pen like you're ready to show you're ready to train me on something you're ready to show me an illustration and the it's going to end the beautiful thing about the pen is that it's custom for me in that moment and it's not something like if you were to draw the same picture but one have a PowerPoint image ready versus having a pen and draw a napkin presentation the napkin is so much more effective because there's zero sales resistance to that you know it's like I give the example of you had a dinner table and somebody says so what do you do and you pull out a laptop no yeah no or even you pull out a prospectus remember those things right may start flipping through that perspective or you pull out a napkin you say well it's kind of like this and you drew this a couple of drawings and all of a sudden it's there's no sales resistance to it it goes right past the parts of the brain that wouldn't want to hear it and there's engagement and it's custom you're creating brand new for me well it's authentic right so I always tell sales people like when you're building out your presentations like you you have to keep the prospect engaged you can't just like talk for five or ten minutes straight and you show a bunch of slides because when they start to see slides as you say it's almost like the guard goes up because they have a script for about what's about to happen like the prospect already knows what that means right they're not they've been on the block so it's almost like you know taking your PowerPoint that's you know 60 slides and would have been down to like three or four or whatever drawn on the napkin and even when you ask questions you know I always tell sales people like look you can't you got you know you've got your any pq questions on your script but you're never going to stick to that 100 percent you're going to stick to each stage because you understand the psychology of what you're trying to draw out of the prospect and help them and you understand but I have to be flexible enough to be able to change the next question based on the answers my prospects are giving me and when I include their answers in my questions they you know they start to trust me a lot more that I understand their unique situation and I always say prospects always buy from the salesperson or company who they feel who they trust can get them the best result not just because they like you that's like a secondary thing you love grandma but you're not necessarily buying from grandma if a complete stranger you feel the sales of sales the same thing can get you a better result you're buying from yeah that's so true it's so true right and I think your brand I look I like it for your brands like you're on the pen I'm not talking to Jeremy you got the pen now I got another question for you because I Brad was talking about you a couple months ago and I was up at the offices and light speed and then I saw what he wrote on your website how did you take Bradley who's the founder of light speed virtual training who's who's a speaker as well and turn him from a talker to a speaker what did you do I have to know so so Brad Brad's first got an incredible brand and I don't even think his brand captures the power of who he is in the sense of one he's such a smart businessman right he gets business he gets selling he understands packaging he was a he was one of the first if he I'd say he's the first person to really take the greats and put them on video video training and created light speed with that yeah and when I first met Brad we did an event in New York and we got on a zoom and he's like so tell me tell me what you do and 12 hours later on zoom that was our first meeting and we're talking about storytelling and the concept of what we call it tie down and tie down is really the so the model we train on is what we call frame message tie down and that that sequence is what we drill over and over and over again so the book covers in detail each each of those has a chapter and then we go into application of each one of those and so storytelling is a great framing device because we can you know like one of my favorite you know if I want to preempt the price objection I will inner I will sprinkle in this story all the time every and I'll just give it to you right now have you ever heard of Alan Shepherd's name sounds familiar he was a first American to enter space was an astronaut okay I haven't heard him unless I've been I used to watch Jeopardy's a kid maybe it's it might have been on there right so it's May 15th 1961 and imagine him sitting on top of this massive rocket called the the redstone rocket going on the freedom seven mission and so as the first American which means he's sitting on a hunk of just big hunk of metal full of rocket fuel with engineers going we think it's going to work this time and so a reporter gets to go up to him and say Mr. Shepherd you're about to be launched off into space like the world is watching we want to know what's going through your mind and his answer will forever go down in history when he says the fact that every part of this rocket was built by the lowest bidder and so such a beautiful story of history to be able to remind people of two points in the transaction one is the moment of purchase and I call it a moment because it's a fleeting moment and in that moment of purchase we're thinking about interest rates we're thinking about payments we're thinking about how do we cut corners in lower costs yeah well we forget about is the time of performance it's in the future when that product has to do everything that we need it to do yeah and I guarantee you that he was not thinking did we buy the cheapest material were we on budget he was saying you better have bought the best for me because I need to get back to my family the result the result price your cost yeah and in the moment of performance right and because if you in that moment of performance we go and what we'll do is the clothes we'll say you know you know Mr. Prospect right now you're in that moment of purchase just like Mr. Shepherd you know when they when the whole team was building it right and before that but my job is to get us thinking of time of performance yeah and is this product service whatever we're selling going to do what you need it to do and from what you told me these things were really important to you yeah and now here's the best part to do those for working with my team if I wanted to be that person to be the lowest I'd have to hire different people yeah and there'd be a lot less expensive than the ones that I have right now yeah but I think it's a lot easier to explain my price one time than I have to apologize and that moment of performance at that time of performance to you forever yeah so there's I mean you said it right it's all about reframing the prospects wave thinking so first of all like from the very first questions I would ask my whole job is I have to get them to let their guard down a b I have to immediately get him into results based thinking away from price or cost based thinking I don't want to be commoditized right yeah prospect comes back and says well can you give us a cheaper price I might then say well is is price the most important thing to you or actually getting xyz result and see now I'm like trying to like like a comparative frame like it's either going to be price or the in result so they have to pick the in result but even for my very first questions like if I'm a marketing agency and let's say I have an inbound lead right and there they want to grow their business and get a higher quality lead the first questions I'm asking okay so it looks like you booked on the calendar about looking at getting you know possible help and and getting a higher quality lead to scale the company right well if I'm a marketing agency I'm not selling leads or branding I'm selling them the results of what the leads and branding does for them which is to scale the company so immediately I'm getting him into that result based thinking away from price or cost based thinking I'm always doing that you know what I mean love that and so that the framing is what a lot of people are good at storytelling like in Brad had so many stories I mean he was storytelling storytelling and so I said you have to add what's called the tie down to the end of that which is answers the question of what this means to you and I'll give you an example so one example that we use is the story of Janice and Janice was an executive that I worked with and she worked for a $200 billion privately held company and manages the largest privately held company in the world and they were coming to have her become president of one of the business units they had about 84 business units at the time and the interview is about nine hours I said Renee can you help us it absolutely now Janice is an MBA PhD overall badass carries herself beautifully I mean she is an incredible executive so we set up in a mock panel and I put three people in front of her put her in a chair I sit off to the side to watch facial expression timing sequencing all the things that you and I would look for and first question we asked her was tell us something you're proud of and she looked at us she looked and hitched her coat and she answered like most executives were taught which were short concisement to the point and she said I got straight A's my last year in school one of my proudest moments so now what they looked at me well what do you think I said well there was no frame so now when no frame is provided my brain biologically and neurologically has to create one to understand what was going on so I started framing her I said oh so you're you straight A's your last year in school so your procrastinator you're gonna procrastinate for us as well yeah she looks at me like I'm crazy I said oh I'm sorry did mommy and daddy pay for school so you didn't have to work that hard yeah you didn't you're without frame in it you can you can interpret it any way you want to your brains gonna everybody in the room is gonna interpret it a different way absolutely so now she's got a tear in her eye and I said Janice I didn't mean those things I go but you didn't frame it so I have no idea I do know it was important to you wasn't it and she's nodded her head and I said why and watch what happens the frame comes in and she takes her minute a half to compose herself as she looks at me and she says when you've been told you're stupid your entire life by adults you tend to believe them and something happened my last year in school where I said either I'm gonna believe them forever or I'm gonna do something about it and I did something about it so true now it's holy Totally different. - Yeah, it's framing. It's even, you know, like, you know, as a speaker, you can't just go up there and just talk about your story because then you're more focused on you than them. But you still kind of got to take them down your hero's journey so they can relate to you, right? They don't look like overnight. - Absolutely. - Born with these skills, right? So just the way the frame it, you know, the way I frame it, is like, you know, I'll tell you, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my story because my background relates to what is necessary if you wanna take your sales ability to level most people don't believe they can never dream about. Now I framed why I'm telling this story. - Absolutely. And you claim and own that frame. So now the tie down is where the magic happens. And so here the frame is that I was told I was stupid. And then so people are, what that creates, the frame creates emotion and it creates that peace. And I'll ask people to have I influence them. They're like, yeah, I'm like, you have an influence them yet. You have moved them emotionally, which is the precursor to influence. The influence happens at the tie down. And so I'll give you all three. So if I break them up one more time. Tell us something you're proud of. Start with, I'll start with the message in the here and now. - Yeah. - At Stradia's Military and School, your audience has to create the frames. We don't know, it's a crapshoot, hopefully. Maybe they agree with you, maybe they don't. If I start with the frame and I say, well, I was told I was stupid and I tell the whole thing people are gonna left with, wow, that was powerful. Who's next? Who's next to the interview? - Yeah. - And so no actions taken. And so we have to have a clear IO, which would be your influence objective, like a commitment objective in sales, right? But an influence objective. And the influence objective and an interview is to get the job. So I have to add that tie down at the end. And here's all three when they come together. Start with frame. Well, unfortunately growing up, I was surrounded by a lot of adults who told me I wasn't real smart. And when adults speak to you that way, you tend to act that way. And I didn't do it well in school. But something happened in my last year in school where I looked myself in the mirror and I said, either I'm gonna believe them forever. Or I'm gonna do something about it. So I went out and got the help that I needed. Put my nose to the grindstone. And I'm proud to tell you, message, I got straight A's in my last year in school. Now it goes to tie down. Now Jeremy, I'm assuming if I get to do get a chance to work with you and your team, there's gonna be times where our backs are being against the wall. We're gonna be faces pretty big pressures, maybe seemingly insurmountable challenges. But I promise you this, if I get a chance to be on your team, I will be out there next to you. If not in front overcoming those challenges, in the same way, I overcame them in my own personal life frame, except this time for you and for your team. Tie down. Tie it down to make sense in the prospects mind why you just said what you said. They're heading to loop back around 'cause at the end of what I do, after I go through the hero's journey, like I started here and then went here, then I'm like, now why did I tell you my story? 'Cause none of you in here about my story, you only care about who's story, your story, right? We're humans, right? Behavior science 101. The reason why I told you that is, I'm not like an influencer that has millions of tens of millions of followers. In fact, I'm just like you. You know what I touch somebody on the site 'cause I wanna connect emotionally with the audience, right? And then I go over like, I wasn't born out of my mother's room with advanced questions. So raise your hand if you're born after mother's room with advanced questions. Oh, nobody, I wasn't born with advanced tonat, I wasn't born with advanced objection, Provence of Handling, raise your hand. So what does that mean for a kid who grew up in the middle of Missouri, can learn those skills, and what does that mean for you? So it's all the tie down, so good. - Love that. - It's so good. - And you hit the right phrase where you said, what that means to you is. And the reason I share that with you is. - Yeah, dude, hey man, you know me, dude, I'm always trying to learn from you guys up there on stage. I just, I watch people just their whole stage saying, and I'm like, oh, I wonder, I don't know why I put his hand on his chest there. That makes sense. You're trying to, you know, I'm like, I'm probably like, you know what I mean. - So it makes it such a good trainer, man. A good student, that's rare these days, by the way. So I really commend you on that. - You and I both, man, I'm like a sponge, you know, trying to soak it, not, okay. So where can our community, which is sales people, business owners, entrepreneurs, sales leaders, where can they learn more about what you do? - So Instagram is Learn with Renee, L-E-A-R-N, Renee is one E, and we do a new video a day. It's all educational, micro learning content. And so you can follow a lot of these principles on, obviously the book is Amplifier Influence, websites MeetRenee, M-E-E-T, not M-E-A-T, that's a whole other business I'm assuming. But MeetReneeRenee.com, and those would be the best places, and soon something I, yeah, so yes. - Perfect, everybody go buy his book right now. Look, if you want to learn more about sales persuasion influence, you really want to study body language, tonality, all these frames that we just barely started mentioning here. So just go to amplifybook.com right there. Buy the book. Look, if you can't, if you don't have the funding for the $20 some dollars, let me and Renee know, we'll give you like a go fund me page or something, so you can sell more, we're just joking. They know I'm sarcastic, but go get that book. Look, if you want to sell more, you gotta learn more, right? You know, Renee, I'll end on this. Sales people, the number one question asked me, how do I gain more confidence in sales? Well, I'm like easy. You want to gain more confidence in sales, you've got to gain more skill level. Because your confidence level, always go down to where your current skill level is, right? How can you have a high confidence level in anything with a low skill level? Makes no sense. I love that. Can I add something to that on that? Yes. Just to the other piece too is, because you're absolutely right, the skill set, the skill level is number one, but the other side to that too is, you have to let go of confidence being a precursor. Because you're never confident at first. Confidence is a reward given to you for showing the courage to try it anyways, even without it. And you go out and you try this new clothes, you go out and you do the new scripting, and you go out there and you ask for the deal, you do the body language, all the stuff in Jeremy's training you want. And you do it and life comes along afterwards and goes, nice job. Here's an ounce of confidence. And then you go do it again, and you get another ounce of it. And by the time you have all this confidence built up, you don't need it anymore because you've been doing the work. You've been doing the stuff and the results are there. And then magically people are like, "Wow, you're so lucky." Bullshit. Work. You worked for it. Like you said, they're not born. We are made. That is a neurosurgeon gain confidence in brain surgery because they freaking learn how to do it. Even their first brain surgery, that's how. Exactly. It's like, how does an engineer be confident in the bridging builds? Or she builds because they learn a few bridges. They learn how to build the bridge, you know? All right, this was awesome. Definitely want you to be back on here. Let's hope-- I love that. We'll go up five, six months from now. Next time you're in Phoenix, area, let us know we'll bring you in. We'll have a live interview. This was an amazing station. All right, everybody, stay out of trouble. We'll get that book. We'll see you soon.