So it's a bit of a shame today that we don't have Zach here for the 4th of February for today's stoic quote. So 4th of February. come on. Never mind. Good to see you. Good to see you. Yes, it is. Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice. A nice short one today from Epictetus. We like a short one. They ring around your head. Yeah. Like a mantra.

so you can't control whether a prospect says yes, but what can you control? can control the tone of your voice, the output. can control the techniques that you use and everything that you say in between. one of the things that I think comes to my mind is it's very easy to be the telephone monkey. you're not interested. Okay. Bye. you're not interested. Okay. Bye. You're not interested. And that's not what sales is. Anyone could do that. That's just looking for the one person who might be in the market at the right time. That's not what you're there to do. If you think when a prospect answers the phone, I like the term. It's the inner gatekeeper. Yes. And so we love that the phone. So you're not through yet to the human being. If I just approach you in the street and go, sorry, Jack, have you got a minute to talk about something and you don't know I am your brain goes to who is this?

What's it about? going to bore me? Are they going to sell me something I don't need? Are they going to eat me? Exactly. And then what do you go to there? You go to, do I get out the conversation? And perhaps in your British politeness, it's yeah, sorry. I'm not, I'm not interested right now. Thanks. And Pete and salespeople get fighting. What do mean you're not interested? You don't know what it's about. How can you say you're not interested yet? And it's like, no, we have to understand we're talking to the chimp part of the brain. Like a lot of the time when you hear an objection to start with.

Objections come later in the sales process, but if you hear something and you're calling it an objection, it's not, it's a knee-jerk reaction. Exactly. It's that inner gatekeeper. You know, like, have you seen the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Which one? Well, the original. Of course I have. Charlie Bucket, Grandpa Joe, what a piece of dirt. But you know, Verrilli Gow, that's so easy. Don't know, but DWP, they're watching. And know Veruca Salt, when they're trying to work out if it's the egg.

So that's what the inner gatekeeper's doing. Are you a good egg or are you a bad egg? Are you gonna bore me to death or are you actually gonna offer me something of value? So a lot of the time, like you say, we're not having that human conversation yet and it might take a little bit of time and they say, no, no, I'm not interested, I'm really not interested. We have a technique that we love. Yes, so the first thing to do, and this is to epic to his point around being invincible.

If someone said to you, yeah, look, I'm not interested. The first thing you should do is say, look, yeah, I appreciate it. I've called you out the blue. Not everyone is. And that's called welcoming. Yeah. Very hard to argue with me then if I, if I welcome it. But your point before was, what? You haven't even heard what I've said yet. That's easy to argue with. If I go, yeah, get it. Look, I'm not, everyone's going to be interested. That's the first thing. Welcome. The next thing is permission to ask one last question. So it's like, I'm walking towards the door. I'm like, look, actually just before I go, I couldn't ask you one last question. I?

door opens a little bit, the head pops in, in the most, I think 99 % of times people go, yeah, go on then. And then you've got one last question to ask. So it might be, I suppose if someone did have to push you on it out of A, B and C, what problem would you say might apply in the future? And they say, well probably getting in front of more people. That's, that's it. wasn't expecting you to say that. That's really interesting. What, what, what's made you say that?

And before you know it, we're back in the conversation. The person's not in that fight or flight mode anymore. And we're back into a real conversation. And I reckon a lot of meetings in our teams get booked from that point on. Yeah. If we were to abandon that bit, you'd lose maybe 60 % of the meetings that are booked. Yeah. You're just slowly getting them to open up. Like I, I, I'm a firm believer that anybody can book meetings. Like if you call enough people and you just said,

I'm calling about R and D tax credits. I'm calling because I want to try and sell you a new website. If you did enough calls on a weekly basis, you'd book meetings and you'd probably make sales, but that's transactional. That isn't selling. That is just like, okay, well let's send a thousand or a million emails. And someone will say, yeah, you know what? And they'll guide themselves through that process. Your job is to ask those questions to get the conversation moving that gives you a few breadcrumbs. And you think, I'm going to follow these. So I think.

That is a brilliant technique. If you get into the conversation, what can you do to stick in it a little bit longer? The best salespeople stay in it a little bit longer and get a little bit more out of it. Are there any other techniques that spring to mind to get people talking a little bit more? I think the one of the big ones is salespeople get into this habit of they ask a question, the person answers, they'll say something, customers obviously like, okay, great. Yeah. Then move into the next question.

But often there's layers of depths that we can go to. Right. So let's say you said, um, yeah, I'm doing a lot of things quite manually at the minute. As part of a conversation, the prospect says, yeah, I suppose. Yeah, we're doing quite a lot of things manually at the minute rather than going, okay, well, talk. What do you mean by that? I route down there. I put the anchor down and I say, okay, sounds like you've got something in mind. Sounds like something's happening.

or I might go emotional, feels like that's quite frustrating. Feels like that's slowing things down. So I'm just rooting down and making sure, let's make sure we really understand this bit before I move on. A little tip I would say for salespeople, and you'll find that this really helps you, before you ask the next question, make sure the person feels heard. And that might be saying their words back to them. Might be using a label like I was saying there, like a feels like, sounds like, seems like.

But really make sure you do that before you ask your next question. Otherwise it can very quickly feel like an interrogation. lad in our office used to have a photo of a pneumatic drill on his desk. And that was there to act as a reminder to go deeper and deeper and deeper, because it's very easy to just go across. Okay. You've got a problem. me. Yeah. cool. But what does it really mean? What's that root cause? Tell me everything. I'm the therapist. I want to really understand your world. And if I understand it,

then I can see if I can help. I'm not pushing what my solution is. I'm here to help. Well, beautiful. I really am here to help. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Jack Thompson. Remember you will die. Two eyes, one trout.