Episode 11

How To Get To "YES" Faster Than Ever!

Discover the secrets to getting that 'YES' faster than ever! Join Dennis Collins on Connect & Convert as he unravels the mysteries of persuasion and influence. Learn how your brain's System 1 and powerful principles like social proof and unity can make a world of difference in your personal and professional life. Tune in now for quick insights that lead to quicker YESes!

Transcript
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Hi again, it's Dennis Collins with another session of Connect & Convert.

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We're here on a regular basis to help you sell more.

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Tips, minibytes, ideas.

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Things that are going to help you sell more.

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Today's episode, how do you get to yes faster than ever?

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If you're in sales, hey, even if you're not in sales, let's

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say you're a leader, a parent.

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Whatever.

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How do you get that?

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Yes, faster than ever.

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Aren't we all kind of interested in that?

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It's all about persuasion.

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How important is persuasion in your day to day life?

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If you're in sales, obviously, it's very important.

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If you're a leader, very important.

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A couple questions to start off today's session.

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Do you know how to move people in your direction?

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That sounds like a weird question, doesn't it?

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But isn't that what it's all about?

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How do you get people moving in your direction?

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How do you change behavior?

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I don't, that's a hard one, isn't it?

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Is it possible to change someone's behavior?

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Yeah, I think it is.

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Here's what I've figured out over all these decades that I've

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been trying to figure this out.

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This is very clear to me now.

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If you don't know how people decide to become part of your plan, you

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are destined to become part of their plan, especially if you're in sales.

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So the goal of this episode, let's explore some ways to get to yes

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faster than ever, understanding how our brains work, how people decide

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that's the key skill to improving.

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Persuasion So I want to start with a with an experiment that was done.

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I believe it was Stanford out in Palo Alto and out in California.

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Uh, they did a A study on which message would be the

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most persuasive in influencing people to conserve more energy.

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Okay, so they came up with four messages.

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Number one message Conserving energy helps the environment.

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The number two message conserving energy helps future generations.

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The number three message Conserving energy saves money, and number four, your

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neighbors are already conserving energy.

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Okay?

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Four very different messages, and subjects in the experiment were asked to rate

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the persuasiveness of each message.

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Which message would they choose to be the most persuasive in improving

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the conservation of energy?

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Well, the survey says...

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Almost all of the participants chose environmental protection, the

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environmental protection message by far two to one over every other message

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benefit to society was a number two, a way below number one saving money was a

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little bit below benefit to society and the one about your neighbors are already

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conserving energy that was dead last.

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Number four.

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That's what was chosen in the survey in the experiment.

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And now what about real behavior?

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When the scientists went in to test those four messages in real life

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experiments, what do you think they found?

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Did you, would you say environmental protection as it was from the survey

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respondents would be number one?

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Is that what you thought?

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Maybe saving money, benefit to society?

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Uh, wrong.

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Number one motivating message to get people to conserve

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more energy and actual tests.

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Your neighbors are already conserving energy by a long shot.

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No other message of the other three even came close.

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Your neighbors are already conserving energy.

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So what does that tell us?

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First of all, people we typically don't know what's influencing our behavior.

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We're not.

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It's not at the level of awareness.

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Also, we don't always act in line with our values.

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We may state a value, but when we go out and actually check real behavior,

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it's not in accordance with our beliefs.

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And maybe the bitterest pill of all, when we ask people, Hey, what do you want?

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What do you want in a new HVAC system?

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What do you want in a new car?

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We don't know what we want.

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We can't answer that question.

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We typically don't know what influenced behavior.

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We don't always act in line with our values, and we really

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don't know what we want.

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So we delve a little bit into the brain.

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I said we're going to talk about understanding the brain.

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One of the gentlemen who's helped me understand the brain better than anyone

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else is Professor Daniel Kahneman.

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If you've done any study at all in persuasion and influence,

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you've heard of Kahneman.

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He's a Nobel Prize winner.

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And here's a quote of his that I really like that kind of sums up what he thinks.

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It feels like we believe in something because we have arguments for it.

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But it actually works the opposite way.

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First we believe, then we create the supporting arguments.

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It's fundamental.

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It kind of says it all about Kahneman.

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He kind of was the first, at least the first that I read about, that talks about

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the two systems we have in our brain.

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System 1 and System 2.

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System 1 is our fast brain.

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Unconscious, automatic, everyday decisions.

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Error prone.

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That's the brain that keeps us moving every day.

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We get up, we brush our teeth, we eat breakfast, we drive our car.

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That's almost an automatic pilot.

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We don't think about that.

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We don't have to do any deep thought about that.

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That's system one.

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The fast, unconscious, automatic part of our brain.

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System two, of course, is the slow brain, the conscious brain, the

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effortful brain, the complex brain, complex decisions, options, reliability.

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It's a very reliable part of our brain, much more reliable than system one.

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So, understanding that the brain has two systems, system one and system

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two, is fundamental to understanding how to get to yes faster than ever.

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Okay, what else did Kahneman tell us?

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Pay attention, Professor Kahneman says system one runs the show.

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Okay, the fast, automatic, unconscious Everyday decision brain runs the

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show attempts to use system to the rational brain usually fall flat.

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That's why when we're training with salespeople, we talk about no, we

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don't talk about features and benefits.

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We don't talk about that anymore.

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We talk about feeling the emotion, the emotional response that you're going

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to have when you meet your needs.

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That's system one.

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It's fast.

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Behavioral scientists now say 95.

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That's correct.

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95 percent of all of our behavior is determined by System 1.

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So if you're going to appeal, To the way the brain actually works, not

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the way you might like it to work, we've got to appeal to system one.

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So I come to a word, you've probably heard this word if you've done any study in

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sales and marketing called satisficing.

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Satisficing.

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What is satisficing?

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Satisficing is a product of information overload.

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Okay?

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So how much information do we have available to us at any moment?

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Well, our little...

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Phones have more computing power than some of the most

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sophisticated computers of years ago.

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We have unlimited amounts of information that were never ever available

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before, but let's make it real.

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Um, my wife actually talked me into going to the supermarket the other day.

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I try to avoid supermarkets, but hey, as a favor to her, I said, I got it.

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I'll take care of this.

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And we wanted to get some peanut butter.

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Okay.

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Very simple thing.

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I mean, I love peanut butter.

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She likes peanut butter.

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I'm supposed to buy some peanut butter.

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When I approach the peanut butter aisle, if you will, in the supermarket, I

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was confronted with possibly hundreds, hundreds of jars of peanut butter,

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hundreds, huge display of peanut butter.

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I never knew.

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Actually, I did a little homework on this.

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Do you know that there are 87 different peanut butter products in the USA today?

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87.

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I think all 87 were on those shelves.

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Maybe more.

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So how can I ever decide what peanut butter I'm going to buy?

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What am I going to do?

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Bring my iPhone and research every, okay, here's one.

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What's this?

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Heavens no.

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Heavens no.

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Heuristics.

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Shortcuts.

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Heuristics.

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Satisfying.

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It's good enough.

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Social proof.

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What are other people doing?

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So what did I buy?

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What do you think I bought?

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Of all the 87 different manufacturers, what do you think I bought?

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I let social proof help me here.

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What do most people do?

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Most people buy a brand called Jif.

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J I F.

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Jif.

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Okay?

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Now, Jif, at this particular supermarket, was on the bottom shelf.

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That's another thing, isn't it, where the placement of the products

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in the supermarket are critical.

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This, literally, I had to bend over and go to the bottom of the shelf to get the Jif.

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But the Jif stood out to me because of heuristics.

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Shortcuts.

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Branding.

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Satisfying.

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It's good enough.

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So when a consumer is confronted with that wide array of products and services, all

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of which could meet their needs, I'm sure any of those peanut butters would be okay.

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We often choose good enough rather than spend extra time, extra

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effort, extra money to make the absolute best possible choice.

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We settle for good enough instead of seeking the best option.

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The behavior is the result of System 1.

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That's all System 1 working, okay?

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Prioritizing speed and ease over secure over accuracy and effort.

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Another supermarket experiment.

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Have you seen those little stickers?

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That say everyday low price that are sprinkled all throughout the

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supermarket, they put those little stickers on their everyday low price.

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It's not a sale.

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It says everyday low price.

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It's everyday low price.

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Okay, on certain products, the particular market that did this

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experiment posted them randomly on random items in the store for 24 hours.

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And at the end of 24 hours, they take those down and randomly choose

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another group of products, randomly.

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And the next day, they would take those down and randomly choose

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another array of random products to get those little stickers.

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Okay.

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Every day, low price.

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What do you think happened to sales?

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I think we'd all like to say, Oh, come on.

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We know that's a bunch of baloney, right?

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Every day, low price.

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That's a gimmick.

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Okay.

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Well, maybe it is, but guess what?

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In almost every case.

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Sales doubled randomly selected products.

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No particular reason for the product.

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Sales doubled because of a little sticker.

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Another quick example.

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Say you're this was a an example of an executive.

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Large company was looking for a tech developer.

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He needed to develop a new app.

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He had dozens of candidates.

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A lot of them were very qualified.

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They checked all the boxes.

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All the boxes.

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Okay.

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He didn't have the time.

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Nor the desire or the the resources to do a deep dive on all those candidates.

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So what did he do?

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He makes his decision based on just enough information, just enough

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to be satisfied, satisficing.

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It's in every part of our lives, our personal lives and our business lives.

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So if that's the case, how do we trigger system one?

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If we want to get to yes, faster than ever, how do we trigger system one?

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How can we account for the option four message, your neighbors

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are already conserving energy?

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That was the one by far that motivated the most energy conservation.

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What is it that triggered that?

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Well, there are two principles of influence.

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Social proof and unity come into play.

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We look to other people like us, people who are like us, okay,

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to find out what we should do.

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And we also look to people in our group unity from our neighborhood, our

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church, our school, our club, our sports team, our family, our close friends.

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So we had two very strong principles of influence in effect here that

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had number four come out as the motivator, the influencer of behavior,

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social proof people like, Oh, geez, people like me are doing this.

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My neighbors and neighborhood.

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Oh, I belong to that group.

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I have to support.

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What that group does.

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Perfect example of satisficing heuristics and the Cialdini Principles activating

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behavior getting to a quick yes.

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Well, that's a lot.

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We've got a lot more in future episodes.

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I hope you'll continue to tune in to Connect & Convert.

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If you understand how people decide to become part of your plan, you can

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move more people in your direction.

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If you don't know how people decide to become part of your plan, you will

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likely become part of their plan.

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System 1 is in control 95 percent of the time.

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If you want to get to Yes faster than ever, appeal to System 1 and

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you will get Yes faster than ever.

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Hey, it's Dennis Collins signing off of this version of Connect & Convert.

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We'll see you again soon with another episode.

About the Podcast

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Connect & Convert: The Sales Accelerator Podcast
Insider Strategies for Small Business Sales Success

About your hosts

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Dennis Collins

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Paul Boomer

I help businesses grow up after they've grown their revenue. Think about that for a moment. You'll understand what I mean.