The Cold Calling Trick That Makes People Overshare

0:01Jack Frimston:Yes, yes, we're back again. But why, Jack? Why are we back again? And why do you look so emotional?

0:09Zac Thompson:Because it's just emotion tickling my feet. I'm going to tell you why I'm thinking about emotion. Because the brain is an incredible thing, Zac Thompson. You've got one, I've got one, and you know a thing or two about brains. And not to be confused with Brian, he was my old next-door neighbor. he's now dead brains the brain is split into two parts the logical part the emotional side so when we're selling what one do you want to tickle you want to go like this under the chin

0:40Jack Frimston:of the emotional part you want to go tickle tickle do you want to have a pickle so what i want to do is i'm going to give the people that are listening a framework to follow that it steals from therapy like a lot of the stuff that we do, but it should get you to the emotional root cause of the problem, okay? I'm gonna take you through it, Jack. So step one I'm looking for is how do I draw out the surface level problem? The, that takes too long, manual processes, we can't get rid of enough clients, recruitment's the bottleneck to grow, drawing out that surface level problem. So I'm gonna lay out two scenarios.

1:24Jack Frimston:Cold calling, what I might do is I might present a little problem menu. So I might ring you up, Jack, and rather than saying that we're an award-winning XYZ, I might say, well, I get invited in by a job role who struggle with problem one, two, or three in hopes that you pick one of those problems. Sometimes, though, that doesn't happen, does it? And they might say, some of that applies, or where are you calling from? and they might steer us off that path. Okay? Now, what I would suggest in those moments is looking for what's the biggest pain when it comes to handling what you do? Or when you look at the topic that you solve, what do you think is the biggest problem that you face?

2:12Jack Frimston:The simplest answer is often the best answer. Jack, please add your two pennies on that one.

2:18Zac Thompson:Yeah, I think sometimes people aren't going to come, people aren't going to dive headfirst into that problem buffet are they they might say you know what i've actually just eaten you're a salesperson i know what you're doing i don't want anything from the buffet so i say okay will you serve me something and then like a gorgeous short crust pie i'm going to pick it apart i'm going to follow those breadcrumbs until i finally find

2:44Jack Frimston:some sort of problem very good very good now next obviously we're going to do the usual stuff that we would suggest we're going to example of a problem, blah, blah, blah. The bit that's often missed is this next bit. And this would be the exploration, which would be digging in to the emotional and personal cost of having the problem. Okay. So I'm going to give you a few examples of how this might sound, hopefully inspire the listeners in their sales conversations. It might be saying, that sounds really frustrating. How's that been affecting your day to day? Or you You mentioned before that you felt overwhelmed.

3:21Jack Frimston:I don't know how comfortable you are telling me a bit more about that. Or what do you think is at stake for you personally with where you are right now in the business if nothing changes? What do you think of those? You like those or you don't like those?

3:38Zac Thompson:I wanted to go down a side alley then the way that you were talking. I've heard you do that in podcasts as well, and I love it as a question. I don't know if you'd feel comfortable telling me a little bit more about that. I can't really think of an experience where I've maybe seen you in a sales environment or in a podcast environment where people actually say, I probably don't feel comfortable. Because what people tend to do is they will share something and they'll only share as much as they feel comfortable sharing. It doesn't mean that they're going to go balls to the wall. Let's give you everything.

4:11Jack Frimston:I think it's a great little question. Thanks, mate. Yeah, it's one of my calling cards, that one. I don't know how comfortable you feel. Tell me more about that. It's a good one. A little bonus tip here for people who perhaps aren't opening up. So we're digging in, and they're kind of giving you that short response. So they're, you know, how's this affected data? It makes things quite slow. You know, they're giving you those types of answers. It's hard to get there. There's something called the five whys, which is often used in therapy. In the book, Sales as Therapy, we call it the cascading why.

4:47Jack Frimston:What you're looking for is to say, do you mind if I'm struggling a little bit here? Treat me like a five-year-old. Why is it important to you? They'll give you a layer of why it's important. And why does that matter? And normally what happens is if you go down five whys, you typically get to a very simple answer that's often emotional. And for you delivering this as the salesperson, you will feel that it almost gets like a little bit awkward. The answers get a bit slower. where the person seems to struggle a bit, that's kind of how it's supposed to feel. So five whys, use it with this step. So, so far we've got drawing out the surface level problem.

5:26Jack Frimston:We've got exploring so that we're digging deeper into the emotional and personal cost. Next, we're going to look at, I would always suggest some form of IKEA curve, right? So this is where we start to move that emotion into a little bit of vision, a little bit of ownership and making the person feel like they're kind of co-creating something with you. Do you know the reason why we do this, Jack? I'm sure you do.

5:54Zac Thompson:I do know the reason because people love – funnily enough, we were talking about IKEA at the weekend, me and my partner. I always want to say partner just to keep people, whether I am or whether I aren't, or amn't. Yeah, so it's just people take that ownership of – they feel like they when people have been involved in the process they value it more and we're really trying to drive that value and did you know now that ikea when you purchase you buy whatever it is if you buy it for delivery they say you can pay this much 90 pound add-on and someone will come to your house and build it for you and we were looking at the chest of drawers that's true uh air task or something like that and and my partner michael said do you want to do you want to click it i said no i said i know too much about psychology i will be building those drawers and i'll be building them badly because i want to look at them and i'll be proud of them and that that's kind of the ikea curve and i think that we get when when people i mean probably leading on to your next point but when people are building it out themselves every everything is said for a reason and i love the the the level of listening when you listen to what's not being said so if i was asking you what do you look for in a partner and you say oh i want a partner that's always on time part of me thinks there's something there there's something to unpick at from what you've just said

7:23Jack Frimston:exactly exactly so the i was the practical end of this i had the how to actually do it so we've gone through that that why arc let's say and we've got to the the real core emotion it kind of feels like you've beaten the prospects up a bit and you want to give them some relief we're then rather than pitching them going to say well if it let's say you had the ideal solutions or you were building this for yourself what would it have to look like to stand a chance of working and deliver just like a bit of a struggle bit of a throw it out that kind of question and then they're probably going to start building something and then rather than doing the classic sales thing of okay we can definitely do that try and just maintain that curiosity a bit longer ask that ask the simple questions so and so a nice follow-up to that might be how would solving that change things for you at the minute compared to how things are happening day to day and then starts again that co-creation i've got the i've got the the offering now i'm building it into the team okay and then so you've got it in place it's working with the team and then what would be a real win for you what would be the things that you'd be seeing that would say right we're definitely getting this right and and that only then i would say that step is complete it's not what would you build cool onto the next step it's really like hunkering down and going

8:46Zac Thompson:through the layers the way to picture this is you know if you was to buy a a um a selection box and you've got some of those like lovely we're talking like high quality thornton chocolates with a gooey center you've got a toothpick and you're trying to scratch it off most people just scratch a bit off and then they're kind of done keep going stay in those conversations ask another question don't run in just with your solution ask a few more questions and that's when you get to the gooey

9:18Jack Frimston:goodness of caramel exactly now the the place this can sometimes go wrong my last little bonus tip very practical episode is it can feel like i've asked the question then i've just moved on to my next question you don't want that to be the feeling so what i'm going to give you is a lot of framework i'm going to give you ores okay ready for this one jack open question yeah affirmation reflection summary this is a really good way to show someone you've really listened right so i'll give you an example of an open question what's been the biggest challenge for you in this area lately give me give me that jack what's been the biggest area lately probably getting new sdrs through the door okay so then getting new sdrs through the door that i suppose that's quite a frustrating thing is that new uh no it's been going on quite a while so that's my that's my affirmation i've i've i've hit that can be quite frustrating so i'm seeing you first and then i'm going in with another question um and and going in with another question is me doing the reflection piece so i'm mirroring back your thoughts and feelings making you feel heard but i'm deepening my understanding so you see what i mean i'm not just moving from you sdrs being annoying to like the next bit here's how we can help i'm going deeper yeah and then you would end on a summary so as we go as we go deeper it would be open question that sounds frustrating what particularly about it is slowing things down blah blah blah okay so it sounds like what you're telling me is the sdrs is the piece and this is this is kind of how it's affecting you day to day doing those things will make the other side feel heard there we go hopefully that helps people through that

11:14Zac Thompson:get to that emotional root cause this framework will make you money i like it uh i've got a task today i don't know if you've noticed but all the way through this uh episode i've been drinking this i have um we've had loads dropped off at the office and it's it's not from like a sponsorship thing but what i want you to do is comment we're trying to make loads of money in our lives. So actually comment. If you're watching this on YouTube, just comment and say Dash. They're called Dash. Dash should sponsor this podcast. Do that. If we get about eight of them, I think eight will be enough. I'll DM the founder and he said that he's going to give us five grand and we're going to give you guys half.

11:57Zac Thompson:So we'll see how we get on. You like that?

12:00Jack Frimston:All right. That's a really good one.

12:01Zac Thompson:Five grand. Five grand. All right. Take care, guys.

12:05Jack Frimston:Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye. Thank you.