This Is What Good Sales Conversations Look Like (Sales Training Pt. 1)

What we want to do is when we're in a sales conversation, we must determine if it's a good fit for both the prospect and ourselves. They arrive to us understanding the problem. They don't tell us the problem necessarily. They tell us, "I need something. I need head shot. I need a new website. I need brand identity. " Everybody here has experienced this. Yes. Our job is first to understand the solution that they're asking for. Try to understand and surface the problem in which the solution is supposedly connected to. And what I need to do is I need to ask myself what is the reason. Okay? Because if the reason that Carlos wants this is not the solution, no amount of us providing the solution will solve this. What are the top three things that the prospect needs to know in order to determine if they should move forward with you or not? Would you guys agree, Price? Yes. Would is that number one? No. No. Why not? Before I get started, I want to welcome you. My name is Chris Doe and my partner in crime here is Carlos Garcia. Hi everybody. Thanks for being here today. Yes. And Carlos and I have known each other for a couple years and he is really a sales trainer. I just pretend to be one and I just want to disclose that most of what I know in terms of sales has just been in the field. I probably have literally worked on a couple hundred pitches in the 20 plus years of running a commercial production company. And I was I really felt like I leveled up with my business mentor Kier McLaren who since passed away and it's just in the field. I have then gone back to find out what people write about sales to see if what I was thinking was true and what the principles are. And thankfully like 90% of it I was already doing. I just didn't know what it was called. Whereas Carlos is an is a certified trainer in this kind of stuff. Right Carlos? Yeah. So I've taken several trainings over my career. I've been involved in thousands of conversations anywhere from inbound to outreach to prospecting to knocking on doors through building a strategy. And so I've been exposed to so much of it. Obviously, at the beginning, it's it can be very scary, but when you do something for a long time, you start recognizing patterns and figuring out what are some ways to become more effective at navigating through those things. And so today, I hope to bring some of those insights as well as share with you uh some of these uh frameworks that Chris and I put together. And we're excited. Okay, I'm going to show you guys the agenda because we're going to move really fast with some things. And most of this workshop is really you all working together. This is not one where I talk to you or Carlos talks to you. You'll work together. You'll share some

insights and then we'll kind of critique and review together. So, we've broken this down [clears throat] into a couple of phases here. There's like five exercises we're going to do. And so the agenda, as you can see, is really jam-packed. The first thing I just want to point out, we're going to make up for some time here, is the four agreements. I think for us to begin having a real relationship and a dialogue with each other, we must agree to these things. So, I'll just really just briefly just go through it with you. Okay? Number one is that we must agree that we're doing good work. And if you're in this room, I just assume that. And we're going to ask everybody, you you're going to agree to this or not? Because if you don't do good work, then I don't know what to do. I'm not here to help people who are just faking it. uh we're going to assume that you put in your 10,000 hours of practice to get to some level of mastery. I'm not saying the best in the world, but proficient, productive, and all those kinds of things. So, we agree that we do good work. Number two is that you're going to price fairly because if we can do this, then we don't have to fall and triple over ourselves about like h is it worth this? What? And this is a tricky word, the word fair. So the way I've defined it is that the value you create for others exceeds the price in which you charge. Okay? So if you charge more than the value you deliver, then I don't think that's called fair. So it puts the onus on us to no matter what we charge, we deliver greater value than what we charge. And then the important part to know here, it's fair to the client, not necessarily fair in your mind. So if the client perceives what you're doing is creating greater value than what they're paying, they will buy all the time. So what we want to do is increase the perception and then the reality of the value of what we do such that the price is irrelevant. So we want to shift the conversation away from the price and drive it towards the value. Number three is we have to adopt this service mindset, this servitude that we exist because clients are our patrons and give us money such that we can afford the lifestyle and support the people that we care about. And so if we have this attitude that we prioritize the client's needs above ours, then we will do really well. And I think this is the most genuine, most sincere way to sell. What do I mean by this? that when it's not a good fit, you owe it to the client and yourself to say, you know, as much as I'd love to work with you, I just can't in good conscience take your money. I can recommend several options, I'm not the best person for you. Surprisingly, when you say this, they may insist, "No, you must do this for me. " Because people really respect that level of honesty and transparency. And so, a lot of times what we're going to talk about throughout the day today are concepts that seem counterintuitive. It's like if you want to be more attractive, don't go chasing after people. It's like, well, wait, how does that work? But it's true and you know this, right? The more desperate you are to close a client, the less likely the client. The less you want the sale, the more likely you're going to get the sale. So, what we have to do for the [clears throat] course of the next few hours together is I just want you to suspend disbelief for a minute and just go with what we're trying to teach you and just try it on for size for today. So if there's something radical, I don't think there'll be anything radical. Just try it out. Decide later if it's going to be good for you. Okay? So if we serve others, we're going to do really well. And the last one, this is kind of important. It seems obvious that we must agree that we're going to act with integrity. That we do the right thing even when it's not easy for us to do the right thing. And what do I mean by that? Because if you believe you do good work, don't tell me later you're not worth it. Or is this price fair? I'm like, nope. That was one of the agreements. So this says all of this is true. and we must act consistently with that. And this is where we run into a lot of trouble because people walk in with a certain idea and then they act a different way and they say a different thing and they do it's just all over the place. So we we're going to be consistent. We're going to hold true to our values and then if we all agree to this I think we're really good. So I just want to quickly ask by show of hands, do we all agree to this? Okay. I don't know if you don't agree to this just leave now. No refunds but just leave. Right. See so that's how we got it. I just want to add a couple comments on this is when I think about each of these four things I think about the selft talk that goes behind it right so in my experience working with creative professionals what I've heard a lot of some mindset uh challenges that people go through is when we think about do good work sometimes I hear this my work should speak for itself or my work should sell itself so I would challenge you when you think about do good work you should also showcase and position how your work is perceived as good to that external client. So a lot of that comes obviously many of you are branding experts but is in your branding in your positioning you know how do you show up on your website socially online when people look at you so that they can perceive that you do good work. Second piece is price fairly some of that you need to communicate it by the questions that you ask. The better the questions the more value you create and that's how folks can perceive you as valuable. The other thing, even though it says here value exceeds price, one nice statement you can say to your customers to demonstrate obviously show it in your conversations is by saying the price that I will charge will always be a fraction of the value that I will create for you. I create for you. So you say that with confidence. It helps the other one feel like, okay, no matter what I invest, I'm always going to get more, right? When you think about serving others, all of that happens with the tone that you use. And what I would just say to number three is leveraging curiosity. You can stay curious long enough, go deeper in the conversations, not just go to solve, then you can demonstrate that you're being in service for their benefit. And the fourth one is again, it's in the conversation. You act with integrity by showing, by staying curious, by asking the right questions, by not just jumping about I want to sell something to you and that's how you can stay true to those four agreements. I just wanted to add those. Thank you. Um, we asked you all to fill a survey. Not everyone did, but most everybody did, right? Yes. And we noticed one thing. There's two things that kind of stuck out at us. The first one is what? Well, uh, we asked you to evaluate yourself on these eight things, right? The elemental skills of conversational mastery. And what we found is that many of you rated yourself a five on listening skills. Five out of five, everybody. I know. Five out of five. This is genius. If and if this were true, Carlos and I have very little work to do today. Okay. So, we already know this. People overindex and are overconfident in their ability to listen. But some of you have seen and participate in our live role plays. The person barely listens to anything that's being said. So, I would rank most people at a one out of five. Some people are really good. Maybe two and a half out of five. But a lot of you, the majority of you answered five out of five, which is awesome. You believe in yourself. We love ourselves. [clears throat] You know, I'm happy for you. But later on today when we go through some of these exercises, you may realize, oh my gosh, I gave myself too high of a grade. And that's okay. Just remember that, okay? It's not we're not here to beat you down. But we want you to have a realistic u up like realistic perspective as to what you're bringing to the table. What's the other one? Uh the other one I saw was needs assessment. Yes, needs assessment was rated very high. Now what I'm excited about is that some of you, most of you ranked success metrics as fairly low, which gives me the impression that the price conversation probably fits into that. And the good news is that what we're doing today is all going to be exercise focused. We're not going to be teaching that much. We're going to give you a small concept out of five sta step steps inside of a conversation and you're all going to skill practice how well you can execute these skills and then you're going to self-evaluate. You're going to have you're going to take turns but someone's going to observe you and really objectively try to see did they really execute these skills and that will hopefully help you become aware of what are some of the areas of opportunities that you can truly work on but you're going to do it five times. So, I think doing it enough times is going to help you understand, okay, I'm cutting the person off too much or I'm layering my questions. I'm confusing them. And so, that that's going to be the exciting part about today is that we're not going to do much teaching. We're going to do a lot of practicing. All right. So, the hardest thing that Carlos and I have had to work through is we're trying to distill probably 40 plus years in sales experience down to a 4hour workshop. So, there are some

things that we cannot go over, but what we thought were we're going to prioritize the things that are going to give you the biggest results the minute you walk out this door. Okay. So, Carlos and I were talking about this. There are three things that we think that you need to be able to do in order to close more clients and to generate more revenue. Number one is you have to plan and prepare for the conversation. So, if you enter into a conversation and you're not prepared, that puts you at a disadvantage. It might erode some of your confidence, your self-worth, all those kinds of things. Then the next

part the most difficult part is I'm prepared but now you have to execute the plan. There's no point to have the plan if you don't execute the plan. And this is usually where a lot of people struggle. Okay. And then once you have that conversation with the prospect there there's things that you do afterward the post that what happens next. We will cover some of this but we don't have an exercise per se. And if we feel like we're where you guys are really struggling with this then we'll talk to you. My feeling is you plan and you execute. This stuff is pretty straightforward. Basically, clients sell themselves and they agree to everything and then this is just a formality. The reason why this is such a big problem is because we haven't executed the plan and now we're like, what do we do next? Like, how come I feel like I have to chase the client three, four conversations later and they're starting to ghost on me? So, we're going to mostly focus on these two things, the plan and the execution. So, one of the things that I want to start off in a conversation with you all today is what we want to do is when we're in a sales conversation, we must determine if it's a good fit for both the prospect and ourselves. Okay? Come on in. Don't worry, you're just in time. You're sitting right up here front. We saved a spot just for you. Okay? Right. Right up here. Yes. Okay. And so, I'm going to ask you something here. When we know what the prospect is looking for to see if you're a good fit, then we can also ask questions and frame the conversation so that they get the answers they need without even necessarily needing to ask us. Okay. So, I just want to brainstorm with you all a little bit. What are the top three things that the prospect needs to know in order to determine if they should move forward with you or not? And anybody can throw things out. We're going to This is a catch box. It's very light. It's mostly foam. It looks really

scary, but we throw it to people. As long as there aren't too many open beverages, we should be fine. There you go. So, you speak right into it. Price. Price. Would you guys agree? Price. Yes. Would is that number one? No. No. Why not? Hey, hang on. Hey, what's that? Catch. Okay, remember. Okay. Um, I have a slide for this and I was listening to this short clip from this ex CIA guy. He goes, "The biggest idea that I can share with the many years of working with the CIA is this idea of of perception versus perspective, right? Like how you perceive something is how you experience it. But having a perspective means we could look at things from a different point of view. " And it's they're very similar words, perception versus perspective. So when we look at it from the eyes of the buyer, you're telling me price is not the number one thing you need to know? Yes. Cuz let's say when you walk into You got to speak into the mic. When you walk into any, let's say, designer shop or store, you don't ask the price right away. First, you assess the products. You look if it's a good fit for you, and then you already kind of go to price part. So, what are you saying you look for first then? So, usually it's if it's a good fit to work like service-wise. Yes. The problem solving part and then you get to the price. In my spending, let's say you fall in love with the problem solving part and they're 10x of what you thought. Do you feel like you your time was well spent or was the time That's true. Yeah. Right. Almost everywhere you go, and it's very hard to determine this, but I would say 99% of places you go, you're very clear about the price upfront. You even see fancy restaurants, they put the menu outside for a reason. It's not necessarily because is this the right kind of food for me? is do I want to sit down and realize this is an $80 meal versus a $20 meal or $800 meal? I think there's a reason. Car dealerships, one of the biggest frustrations is I just need to know the price and they don't they withhold that information from you. And I think what happens is it creates frustration. What we're trying to do is reduce in the sales conversation. What we want to do is reduce friction. We understand that, right? Because the more friction there is, the less likely they're going to move forward. And what we want to do is we need to increase trust. Would it would you guys agree? We want to make it easier for them to say yes. And we want to build trust. And trust is built like one step at a time. And what we do is if we scaffold up where we earn their trust, they will sell themselves. And there are things that we're going to do sometimes unconsciously that are going to erode trust. And we'll get into that a little bit. So I'm just going to put price. I think the prospect does need to know the price. And then this points to us the one of the biggest problems for us is we're reluctant to talk about price. We delay delay. And some of us will delay it so far that the conversation has ended and we haven't talked about price. So what do we do? We use the proposal as a means to the courage that we didn't have to speak about it. It's in the proposal now. And now we don't know and they don't know and there's a lot of anxiety that's being created. So one of the best things that we need to do is figure out an elegant way to talk about the price and that way the clients are put at ease. Okay, everybody understand? What would be another thing that we the the client needs to know? Remember the perspective? Uh what problems are going to be solved? What the remember you're the buyer. Do you need any creative services? Yes. What do you need? Okay. I need a brand identity developed. Perfect. I'm a designer. Let's try and look at through that lens. Okay. So you kind of need to know the ballpark that we're in with price. Yes. What's the very next thing that you need to know from me? What I'm getting. What are you getting? How can we rephrase that? Like just think about like what is the judgment decision that will make you say yes, let's move forward with the conversation. It's the value, but I'm not sure if that's the way to Okay. pose it. Okay. Does anybody want to try? Go ahead. Throw throw the knife. Catch catch. Yeah. When you guys talk, ask for the box, please. Yeah. Okay, let's speak right into it. If you can execute the job. Okay. How? Okay. How do we phrase that, Carlos? Well, let's keep working with the crowd. I think we're on to something here. We're we're like very warm here. Okay. Somebody phrase it. Okay. Go ahead and give it to Tom. I'm going to learn everybody's You want to have the confidence that they can execute on the work. That's very true. Okay. I think in other words is are you qualified to do this for me? Right. Like are do you have the credibility? You know, proof? Okay. You have the evidence that you have the experience. Okay. So, experience and qualifications. Those are pretty good words. Yes. Okay. R. You don't like it. Don't give me that. You All right. Okay. Catch the mic, dude. Catch the mic. No, I was just I was boiling those two into one, which was capability. Yeah. I think Can you execute, right? Can you get it done? Okay. I think qualified is a really great word. Are you qualified? qualified is a universal on both ends, right? Like are you someone? Yes. Yeah. Are you competent? Are you able? Do you have the credibility? Do you have the track record? Do you have the evidence? Any of that could be the same, but let's just use the word qualified. I'm going And we're going to expand on that a little bit. So, I'm going to write qualified. Okay. Yes. Yes. There's a reason why because I want to expand on it down here. Carlos and I did rehearse some of this so we're not just like winging it. What is one other thing that you need to know? Maybe that we can there's something inside the process, but there's something else. I don't we don't want to give it away, but process and timing. Deliverables like timing is very important. You get it done within the time that I need it. Right. Right. Would you all agree that that's fair? I mean, one I mean, you got to think about this. Whenever you need something done, how much how long? Yeah. Exactly. Right. And so, here's where there's an interesting concept here. It's like, do we pay more when it's done quicker or if it takes longer? For most things, we will pay more if it could be done quicker, if it's a result that you want. Right. So, uh, what do we call this? Time. Yep. Time. Uh, timeline. I like timeline. Timeline's fine. Okay, cool. Okay, here's the real interesting thing now. Okay, what do you need to know? This one's easy. Scope. Okay. Scope. scope of work. Okay, I'll help you out here a little bit. You see, there's this one. What would you mean? If you knew the scope of work, help you here. You know, work with me. If you knew the scope of work, then what would that help you communicate to the customer? Budget 100%. They need to know their price. You need to know what their budget is. Can they afford you? You guys, we're just learning about each other, but you'll see like it's right here. You know, this game is meant to be for you to win. Can I say something? Yes. One of the things that I do, you know, like we were kids, we all played ice by something orange, whatever. And what I say to my clients is, okay, why don't you just tell me what your budget is and then I can create something to fit that. Let's not play ice spy. Let's not, you know, like I'm thinking of a number, you guess what it is, then I have to, you know, and then right away it's like trust. It's like, look, I'm not gonna fill Yeah. That's great. You know, and I'm not going to build up something bigger to go up to your budget, but let's be realistic about what we can accomplish within that. That's great. Are there occasions where when you do that, it doesn't work out for you? Okay. It does work out great. Sounds like you're qualifying really good. I qualify really good and I'm really honest and I qualify them before I even talk to them. I think the more comfortable you can talk about price period the easier the conversation gets right like so we're going to try to navigate how to address price as Chris said elegantly can I add one more thing yes um if I don't know what the project is and I you know so like back to you if you don't have enough information I can just say the base price for these things is this and I usually have there's a range of this and you can call it something to Yes. And then they go, "Oh, like platinum. It doesn't sound like something I can afford, but let's go with the silver plan. " Kind of like insurance. You're framing the price. Yeah. That's what you're doing. Okay. So, what do you think the next thing you need to know? Um, who's going to be managing the project on the client's end? Okay. What is your name? Rosio. Rosio. Uh, you know how this game is played, right? You see like price and then budget and then you're like, and by the way, that does who you marry, too. That does fit in one of the three on the left. It can be the same. It is the same, but we'll call it something else like maybe deadline. You see, it's like they want to know the price. You need to know the budget and you need to know by when does it need to get done? Right. Well, and then just know this, this is universal for all those things, right? Who's the decision maker, right? Right. Like, is there another department that we have to convince, you know, to make this decision? That tells you if it's qualified or not. Because if you're talking to a non-decision maker very and you don't address that you're wasting your time and they're you know so that's the qualification part is asking the right questions to know am I talking to the right person do I need to talk right I'll help you out we're going to just move this along they're wondering if you're qualified you're qualifying them too right okay so they're asking themselves are you the right person what do you think you're asking them in your Carlos may have trained him too well. Yeah. I mean, just think about it. Like, are you literally like, if I have money to give you to solve my problem? Do I want to work with you? And how would you determine that? Ask me another question. What's another way of saying that? Are we a good fit? And how would you know? Well, that's already taken care of here. You're right. Know what they want. Okay. Well, do you ever ask yourself, do you have a problem I could solve? Ask myself. Yeah. Like, I have money. I want to hire you. My first thought is, do you have a problem I can solve? Can I? Right. Because we're right here. Remember the four agreement is we're going to hold their needs above ours. Right? So, that's usually what I'm thinking. They're like, are you qualified? And then you're like, well, depend. It depends. Do you have a problem I can solve? Yes. Okay. All right. So, now let's try this. Okay. So, what do we say this was? We're qualifying them too, right? Sure. Are we a fit? We are we a fit. So this might be like how much? Right. And you're going to ask how long or when? And then now we have to kind of design the conversation a little bit. Okay. So are you the right person? How will they determine if you're the right person? Let's just spitball ideas here, everybody. And I'll be your notekeeper. Let me switch colors. Remember, you're the buyer. buyer.

right person? Portfolio, reviews. Okay. Portfolio. Okay. We we'll do reviews. Okay. Which would be word of mouth. Experience. Correct. What else did you You said portfolio. So, what what's another word for portfolio? Because that's not a universal term. Prior clients. We'll call it work. Perfect. Well, your previous clients. Yes, that helps. What else? Um, team size. Yeah, sometimes they need to know that. That's right. You They want to know your process. Okay. Just for a second, put yourselves in the buyer's shoe for a moment. Yes. What do you look for? Thank you, Carlos. before you make a purchasing decision. Right. What about like What about like the vibe? You said vibe check. Yeah. Yes. Can you trust the person? Yeah. It is it gonna if you're the customer, is it going to be difficult to work with this person? Right. Is the way that they explain their process complex or easy? Right? Because how many times have you ever gone into a buying conversation and they're like, "Well, we have a 17 layer situation. And it's going to be you're like, "All right, that's too complicated. I just break it down to threes for me. " Right? Yesterday, if you were on our LinkedIn audio, Chris talked about that people, it's much easier for you to just break it down into threes. Just easier to make decisions. It's simple. If this is too cold, this is too hot, this is just right. And we do it in presenting price options, product options, how to work with you, and even in a process. We have a three-step process. So, what else? Anybody less risk? I don't know. Okay. I'll write it up here. So, how else could we phrase that? I don't know. That's why I said Yeah, that's fine. For everyone else, what is a question they would ask you to feel like all right, if I spend this money, how sure am I that I'm going to get the result that what do we call that? That could be one. What else? return on invest guarantee, right? Like what's the level of assurance that you're going to give me that this is going to be delivered the way that I expect it or beyond my expectations? I'll ask you another question to help you think. When you go to select a doctor, what are you looking for? We'll call it reviews, referrals. Yes. Yes, for sure. References. Chris, can I What's that? Reputation. Rep. How do you know? reputation reviews and reference. Okay. What else? What do you want to say, Carlos? So, I just want to add these are three questions that my mentor Phil Jones shares that customer thinks in their mind. The three questions, right? Break it down to threes. Have you done this before? for someone like me? And have you done it recently? If you could answer those three questions very early on through that conversation, everything becomes easy. You repeat them. Yes, Carlos, repeat it, please. Have you done this for someone like me? And have you done this recently? So, think again. You're the customer. What research would I need to do to know that you've done this before? Like, if I were to look at your website, if I were I would want to look at past work. And when was the past work? I'd probably want to look at the past testimonial. When was the testimonial? Four years ago. or was it a week ago? I wanted to see if in LinkedIn you have a success story to share of a recent project you did and have you done it recently, right? Have you done it for someone like me? Is there anything in your web copy in your content creation that you're saying, "Hey, are you a blank industry person that is struggling with blank problem? " And when they're listening to they're like, "Yeah, that's me. " It just makes the inbound conversation much easier, right? Half of the sales already done. If you can qualify it just through the way you position your company and your value proposition. Would familiarity be in there? Expand what do you mean familiarity? I think for a doctor as you were saying I personally I look for somebody that is hopefully from where I come from. That has experience in what I'm looking for. What do we call that? I said familiarity. Affinity. Maybe there's another word I'm thinking about likely likely. looking for common synchronicity. Interest. Yes. A stronger word than interest. Or values. Yeah. Yeah. Common. You're looking at like, you know, don't we have shared values and just as beliefs, values. Yeah. Beliefs and values. And so, as Chris writes this down, when you're doing your ICP, which stands for ideal client profile for those who don't know, um, one of the things that you want to measure is their psychoraphics. Psychoraphics is what do they value? What do they believe in? beliefs, feelings, and attitude. There you go. Graphics. How do you come across in your again in your copy when they're researching you, when they're googling you, you know, making sure that you're very effective at communicating that piece? Okay. I'm going to add a few more things because we we're going to wrap this up, but I think we got the best parts here. Okay. Uh sometimes, especially in the world that we live in, certifications do matter for some people. Like Carlos is a certified exactly what to say instructor. That matters. Um awards. Yeah. Oh my god. How do we skip this part? Social proof is really important these days. Um I was at a conference recently in Dubai and it became pretty apparent to me social proof is the new CV. Yeah, I know. Roll your eyes. I know. But it's the real thing because like when you say like you're an entertaining thought influencer leader and then you have like four followers like are you really? Because you know everybody can fudge their own CV because everybody does the value of that is decreasing. And I know people that are within my broader circle of friends who wrote that they went to Stanford one semester. Oh that's kind of deceptive you guys but most people don't look past it. So we all have this feeling now. The CVS you can write whatever you want because no one's really checking that. But it's hard to fake this part. It's not impossible but it's harder to fake the social proof. That's why that's carrying more weight these days because there's safety in numbers. So when a lot of people rate a movie, a restaurant or a car dealership or a book or a product on Amazon, we tend to just buy these days. I don't read any more reviews. I just look at what customers say. Can I say something really quick for those of us who have been dinosaurs? Um, you know, it's like I think there was no social media back in my day, right? So all the that I excuse me all the stuff I did um you know just there is no you Google like who did the Steuart Whitesman brand launch I did but it's like I'm like invisible. So now I have to talk about old stuff to show credibility because it's a remember the timeline the the recency matters. So if you're published in graphis 2001 it's not as strong today. Still good but not as strong. I will say if you I just tell it as a story. If you can consistently say that you've done that work from 20 years ago and you can see your version one in 2012, version two in 2013 and the evolution of that even builds more credibility. So I think that's a big piece. Okay. And I created I know we could talk about this for hours but I I'm mindful of time. You get the last comment. Can you throw in the mic? Nice. I was just going to say with social proof you can include all these aspects in your social media. It's true. A lot of this is social proof. It really is. So social proof is one of these suitcase words where it contains lots of things. Right. Beautiful. Okay. Here's what we're going to do throughout the day. We're going to try to dip into all of the eight multiple times. So we have five exercises run through. I just want

you to be cognizant of these things. Have you been able to identify the real problem? Are you asking clarifying questions? Is there a deep follow-up to demonstrate that you're listening, understanding, processing, and summarizing? Do you understand what they need and what the problems and challenges are? Can you help identify how they will measure if it's a good outcome for them? Are you maintaining a neutral and balanced tone throughout? Or do you feel needy, desperate, or overly excited for something or angry? How are you handling the objections, the resistance in the buying process? And all of this could be I guess you can add it up as to listening skills, but we're just going to separate that because it's so important that it we need to point it out. Okay. And just to talk about listening skills because many of you rated yourselves as a five out of five. What is the definition of listening skills as Chris is going to hand out uh our first

exercise. Don't look at it yet. Let's talk about this for a moment. What is the definition of listening skills to you? Being able to show that you have listening skills. What would be the things you can show to someone to pro to let them know that you're listening. You hear me. You see me. You get me. Yes. Yeah. What I like to take. Thank you. I do what Chris does actually. I've been doing it a long time. I take notes and I show them. I just say, "I hope you don't mind. I'm going to take notes. " And then I show them. And I also send them to them after taking notes. What else? Follow-up questions. I'll say so I hear you saying this and then I'll try to like recaping. Yes. So by the way, repeating the exact thing back and paraphrasing are two different things. Yeah. I try to say it like in my words like what is the risk of repeating the exact thing back? You're just paring. Yeah. Right. They're going to feel like this is weird. Right. But if you say it in other words, you're you're saying, "I get you. I hear you. " I'm saying it from a maybe I'm helping you rephrase it in a more compact way. And when they say, "Yeah, right. " Like that's the indicator that you're listening. Here's the thing. When you're just saying, "I understand. I understand. " It's very important to use their vocabulary. When you're ready to sum summarize, that's the paraphrasing part. We need to use one versus the other. Jordan Belelffort, the famous Wolf of Wall Street guy, he goes in, he's like, you know, I want a beautiful home. I want it to be expensive. And the other person's like, "Yeah, you want a nice house. " Did you just understand what I said? Language does matter and it matters a lot. So, there's a part where you want to mirror, but you're not going to mirror every single thing, just the important part. Then, when you're ready to summarize, then you want to paraphrase because then you demonstrate, I'm putting all these complex ideas together, and I might use word that elevates you to a more precise outcome. First part is listening, next part is processing, and then you summarize. But it happens very fluidly. So, here's what we're going to do. Carlos, you want to say something? Yeah. No, let let's just set up this exercise. So the purpose of this exercise, what you have in front of you is we are only going to focus on the needs assessment part. And we talked about the power of three. Guess what? The first part of the exercise is just the left side. On the left side, you have a section that says, what three questions would be most effective to ask during this stage of the conversation? Let's define what a needs assessment part of the conversation is. So Chris, do you want to just share what the definition of a needs assessment part of the conversation? Yes, we're gonna we're going to demonstrate this together. Okay. So I I'll walk you through this. Each exercise is meant to take 30 minutes. The first part is silent working for five minutes, but I'm going to demonstrate so we don't steer you in the wrong direction. This happens a lot. So I want to design a few questions that I can ask Carlos. And this is a real thing. And the example is I need head shot. Yes. So Carlos is a rising social media star. and it's been identified that he needs head shot, right? So, what kind of question would I ask Carlos to understand what his needs are? What's a sample question? How will you be using these? Okay. Anything else? Okay. Do you have any? Okay. Here's my question, Tim. Tell me more about the reason why you want head shot. I need to understand whose phone is that? Is that me or is that you Carlos? Nope, not me. Whose phone is that? Okay. All good. You see, so one of the things is, and I'm gonna show you this somewhere. I'll show it to you right here. All right. A client had experiences a problem, creates friction in their life. They desire a solution. They want a solution. They arrive to us understanding the problem. They don't tell us the problem necessarily. They tell us I need something. I need head shots. I need a new website. I need brand identity. Everybody here has experienced this. Yes. Our job is first to understand the solution that they're asking for. Try to understand and surface the problem in which the solution is supposedly connected to. And what I need to do is I need to ask myself what is the reason? Okay? Because if the reason that Carlos wants this is not the solution, no amount of us providing the solution will solve this. So, I'm asking these questions back and forth until I can understand this and I resolve any potential conflict. I've had clients before who come to me and say, "We need to sell this property. We need to build a website. " And then 30 minutes into it, we discover in the the possible people they want to talk to, it's about 15 people who are going to this website. And I said, I would be happy to take your money, but it doesn't seem like a responsible way to spend it. Is there some other creative way that we can get to these 15 people without building a website? You see, so I need to understand the reason. What is the reason? So that's the act with integrity part, right? Yes, it is. So if you remember that part and this part, you're going to do great. So we're going to go over this again and emphasize this. Okay? Just keep in mind we're acting with integrity. We want to serve others. And one of the things we have to do is we have to slow down our desire to fulfill whatever his request is. Right? If you're a parent, hey, I'm hungry. You know what my wife does? She starts going to the kitchen making sandwiches like was he even talking to you? I'm hungry. It wasn't even, "Mom, I'm hungry. " But no request was even being made. It was just a thought. Yeah, I need head shot. That's right. I just want to add a comment to that. You said something that uh triggered a thought. Uh again, just another nice sound bite or something for you to write down is in all of these exercises, consider slowing down the process. We're not solving. And again, I'm gonna quote my mentor Phil. He likes to say, "When you slow down the process, you speed up the outcome. " As we start doing more exercises and practicing, you're going to start noticing that when you learn how to slow down a bit, you can capture your thoughts better. You can stay in the moment, stay present, and stay in service of helping the client, not getting anxious about all right, when do we talk about price and when do I pitch my product and when? because that's the part where the trust is put at risk. Okay, here's what we're going to do. You're going to spend five minutes. You're going to write down what three really good questions might be to ask during this stage of the conversation to understand what their needs are. And then as soon as you do that, you go down to the bottom. You're like, "What might be a good follow-up question to each of the questions you've asked? " We want you to get into the practice and the hopefully mastering the art of asking questions. Okay? Would we just do this silently and then I'll instruct you to do the next thing. talk about your example because after this you're going to skill practice that example. You're going to give a brief context of I need blank like my customers typically need blank. One of you will be the customer and you're going to the best of your ability pretend to be that customer. And we'll set that up later. But for now, just for your situation, for your target client, think of the three questions that would be most effective to ask just to understand their need.