Dennis Collins:
Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the sales accelerator podcast for small business owners who want to learn quickly how to explode their sales, make them bigger and better than ever. Leah, my partner.
Leah Bumphrey:
Hey, Dennis, how you doing?
Dennis Collins:
Hi, Leah Bumphrey. How are you?
Leah Bumphrey:
I am doing great. I’m excited about this one. This is very interesting, gets into a little history, and your experience. This is going to be very interesting for our listeners and viewers.
Dennis Collins:
Our topic is, oops, another persuasion fail. What would Aristotle say about that? So Aristotle told me a lot when I used to walk in the gardens in Athens with him.
Leah Bumphrey:
You guys golfed together, didn’t you?
Dennis Collins:
Oh, yeah. We had a lot of great conversations over a few drinks occasionally, but I would love to share all that, but right now you have something very special for our viewers and our listeners. Why don’t you tell them, Leah?
Leah Bumphrey:
You know, we get calls and we get emails, specifically emails from our listeners and viewers with questions and every once in a while it’s a longer question and we just want to make sure everyone knows we have available a 60 minute, we call it a discovery call.
It’s where we set up a time, Dennis, myself, you, we will sit down, we’ll look at not just the question, but in the broader sense, what could happen next and what kind of advice we would give. Our podcast is all about helping out small business and we’re very sincere about that.
So please, you see our emails, give us a shout, set up a 60 minutes. We’re going to talk about what it is that you’re doing, maybe even how we could work together a little bit more, but don’t hesitate.
Dennis Collins:
It doesn’t hurt to call, to talk, does it?
Leah Bumphrey:
That’s right. Free is the big word. It’s very specific to your business and we’re not saying we’re not going to end up using it on the podcast at some point, but really this is important stuff. And we are hoping that you see enough value in the podcast that we’re doing that you’re going to sit down and say, hey, I want to talk to them one-on-one about this.
And it’s very specific and 60 minutes, no charge. We are always thrilled to listen and talk with the people who are getting something out of our podcast.
Dennis Collins:
Absolutely. And thanks for that. You did that so nicely, Leah. Well done. So today, ever been here, Leah, you got all your ducks in a row. Everything’s lined up. The big sales call, the big speech, the big presentation. You’re ready, right?
Leah Bumphrey:
Oh yeah.
Dennis Collins:
Did your homework, you practiced. What could possibly go wrong? It’s always when it happens, isn’t it? It does go wrong. The client or audience is just not impressed. Their eyes gloss over. Their attention span is in milliseconds. They’re distracted. They’re busy. There’s no connection.
Another persuasion fail. Has that ever happened to you, Leah? Probably not.
Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, yes. You know what? It makes my tummy go just to remember it because you can tell they’re not engaged. It may be because they have something else going on in their lives and you didn’t have enough of a preamble to make sure you had their attention.
Maybe you did not read the room when you first met them and what you’re even starting to talk about has no interest. It can be something as simple, and Dennis, you and I know nothing about this, but something as simple as the technical aspect of your presentation not working.
You decided that this time you were going to have everything on your laptop and it’s dead. It’s not happening. The YouTube video is not. But you can see they’re not giving you an inch. This is a waste of their time. Oh, my stomach just goes remembering those occasions.
Dennis Collins:
Unfortunately, I have had those fails, the technical fails, as you say, where you’ve got it, you’ve practiced it, you’ve run through it, and there you are at the big moment and it doesn’t work. That’s when I call producer Paul Boomer, who comes in and helps me sometimes when he can.
Leah Bumphrey:
That’s why we have him, which is one of the many reasons, right?
Dennis Collins:
It’s one of the many reasons. Today, we really go way back in the Dennis time machine. How about to the fourth century B.C. two thousand years ago?
Leah Bumphrey:
Time travel.
Dennis Collins:
I like to learn from anybody that I can, from everybody that I can. And here’s the guy, Aristotle, one of the greatest thinkers and orators of all time. Did you know, Leah, he was a student of Plato in the ancient Greece? He studied with Plato.
Leah Bumphrey:
These guys were all connected. They knew their stuff.
Dennis Collins:
But you know what? One of the most highly valued skills in that era in Greece was the ability to speak and persuade. At midday, imagine this. The men would gather in the Agora. The Agora was where all the political debates were held and discussion occurred.
In the afternoon, Aristotle would spend time in discussion with other thinkers, and he often teaches students at the Lyceum. That’s the school he founded in Athens. So the ability to argue effectively was highly desirable in everyday life in Athens. He studied the great writers, the orators of the time, to discover what is it that the best persuaders did better than the rest. He came up with three elements.
Leah Bumphrey:
Now, was one of them wearing those robes, Dennis? Because those guys knew how to dress, let’s be honest. We all have seen the pictures, and I’m taking our listeners and viewers back to that. I don’t know if I could see you pulling it off, but if anyone could, it’d be you.
Dennis Collins:
You know what, Leah? I can pull that off. The next time we record these, I’m going to wear my robes from ancient Greece. I have those robes.
Leah Bumphrey:
That’s why they had to argue so effectively. They had to debate because they wanted to get home and put some pants on. I digress.
Dennis Collins:
That’s a good point. Aristotle taught us that there are three elements to persuasion. Pathos, logos, and ethos. Now, if you probably had college courses, maybe even high school courses, I know I studied Plato in high school, for God’s sake, and Aristotle.
You probably have heard about these before. But today, I want to do a little deeper dive on pathos, logos, and ethos. So pathos, Leah, pathos is the emotional part, right? It’s making people care about the message.
The logos is the rational arguments. Now, you know me, I lean way heavy into logos, right? Way heavy into logos. I like the science. I like the facts and figures. You, my dear Leah, I think if I could be so bold as to say this, you lean into the pathos.
Leah Bumphrey:
Absolutely. That’s why we get along so well, because we each pull each other in different directions, and it makes it engaging for us. We hope for our listeners, too.
Dennis Collins:
Yeah, you engage emotionally. Everything to you is a story, you can weave anything into a story, which is what pathos is all about. And the third one is ethos establishes the speaker’s credibility, their trustworthiness. Now, you know, as a student of Robert Cialdini, one of the principles of influence is authority. And so Cialdini didn’t invent that. He just picked that up from people like Aristotle, that if you are speaking from a position of credibility, authority, and trustworthiness, that helps make your message more believable and more persuasive. So that makes sense.
So here’s today’s thought. When we attempt to persuade and it fails, Aristotle tells us something is missing. He says that it takes all three. What happens when one is missing? I’ve got a story about this.
Leah Bumphrey:
Excellent.
Dennis Collins:
So I do a lot of self-analysis. I think feedback is a gift. I love feedback. And lack of feedback, I don’t thrive in that. So feedback to me is the gift. So I started doing some analysis of my speaking, my presentations from the past. And wow, Leah, I found a clear pattern. Very clear. I learned that I was consistently leaving out one of the three. Which one, Leah, do you think it was? Was it ethos, pathos, or logos?
Leah Bumphrey:
I’m guessing it’s the pathos, because you’ve got more logos than most people have in their little finger. And the credibility and your trustworthiness, it just shines through when you’re talking. So it’s got to be that you are forgetting the story, the emotion part of it.
Dennis Collins:
You nailed it. I was not using the pathos part. I managed to be fairly persuasive without that. But as I looked at my writings and my speaking and all the content, I said, wait a minute. I am missing pathos. Aristotle would not be pleased. He would give me an F for that, because I only used two out of the three. So let’s look a little more in depth. What if we have no logos and no ethos, only pathos, only emotion, Leah? What do you think? That’s kind of a style over substance, isn’t it?
Does that work?
Leah Bumphrey:
Well, it can’t in the long term. It can get people engaged, but they’re always going to be waiting for the substance. I always liken it to food. I love having tiger ice cream, and that’s fantastic. But eventually I want a steak, right? I want a steak, and I want it consistently.
But in the short term, I’m thrilled to have a bowl of ice cream, and that’s what it is.
Dennis Collins:
And pathos is exactly as you said. It’s very short term. It doesn’t have a lasting impact. It also can be seen as manipulative or insincere. Sometimes we have to be careful about how we use persuasion, how we use emotion. Emotions can be used for the good and for evil, unfortunately. And people who are unethical use them for the evil. But it can seem manipulative sometimes. And by the way, those critical thinkers, the analytical thinkers in the group, they’re not going to be persuaded by the pathos. Not going to happen. So example, here in the US, we’re in the middle of a political season.
Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, I hadn’t noticed.
Dennis Collins:
Yeah, you guys don’t pay any attention to that. So I am a junkie. I’m a political junkie. I want to hear the messaging. I love to hear the messaging. So I’m listening to all these politicians giving speeches full of pathos, emotion, rhetoric. We’re going to do this, and we’re for the middle class, and we’re for you, and we’re for the…But there’s no policy.
There’s no concrete proposal. There’s no logos. There’s no logos, no credentials. So good luck. That falls, as you said, on deaf ears. It resonates for a minute. So let’s jump to the next. Let’s say you’ve got no pathos, no ethos. There’s no emotion. There’s no credibility. Only logos. Only facts. How do you feel about that?
Leah Bumphrey:
It’s just that other side. It’s not engaging anybody’s heart because you’re not giving them a reason. It becomes dry. It becomes boring. It’s AI. You know your stuff, but you’re not able to transfer any confidence from yourself to the person listening.
There’s nothing to it. There’s nothing human. There’s nothing real.
Dennis Collins:
Yeah, it’s facts and figures. How many presentations have you sat through in your life where someone was trying to sell you something, and it’s all features and benefits?
Leah Bumphrey:
That’s not why people buy vehicles. It’s not why people sit down and have a laptop. You want to know, how is this going to make my life better, and how do you know about this? Why are you telling me what’s happened with you? What’s your story? But I don’t care how it works, Dennis.
I just want it to work. Now, maybe that’s way too much, drives my hubby crazy, but I really don’t care. The remote on the TV, if there’s too much to do, I don’t care. I’ll go read a book.
Dennis Collins:
I hear you. No motivation, no action, no behavior change with logos. I would say a lot of clients, a lot of salespeople that I’ve coached, a lot of clients, they are heavy logos and short on the pathos. So when they have a communications fail, that’s not surprising.
How about a celebrity endorsement of a product without explaining the benefits or connecting with the audience?
Leah Bumphrey:
That’s when you end up going to the next level and you have all of this credibility. You have all of the ethos, but nothing else.
Dennis Collins:
With only logos, a technical presentation that’s filled with data, a lot of facts and figures, a lot of good stuff, but no personal connection or speaker credentials. Now, the third case, only ethos, yes, like a celebrity endorsement of a product without explaining the benefits or connecting with the audience.
You know how many? I mean, I don’t know how it is on your Canadian TV, but you cannot go through one hour without seeing some celebrity talking about some product. Do you guys have that? Do you have celebrities talking about stuff?
Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, absolutely. And the endorsements that I’ve been involved in, where it’s a local celebrity, that there’s a connection with the audience, the ones that work are where you can tell that the celebrity actually uses it. They actually have the story to back it up.
You have their personal credibility, then you have the story of how they used it to their personal benefit. And then the belief and the information that these are the experts, they’re going to give you the one plus one is two business. So it becomes a package. But when it’s just an endorsement because she’s got blonde hair, eh.
Dennis Collins:
Yeah. I kind of laugh at them because, the assumption is that because so-and-so uses such and such, that because there’s only ethos, in other words, there’s alleged credibility that I’m supposed to go out and buy that product. That backfires on me because I don’t buy it. The only ethos approaches, they’re trying to build trust without people thinking. There’s no resonance, there’s no logical support. So you can see that in the absence of pathos, in the absence of logos, in the absence of ethos, when we don’t have those, we have a problem.
So what about the breakout challenge? One of the best ways to combine all three is to use a story that has some facts, some logos, a story that has some pathos, some emotion, and of course, a story with some credibility, with some ethos. Your stories can use all three.
There are different kinds of stories for different purposes. Some stories showcase, highlight, you know, one of the elements over the other, depending on the social style. You know, if you have a heavily analytical social style, you’re going to go heavy on the logos.
When talking with an amiable or an expressive type social style, you go very heavy on the pathos. So audit your next presentation or speech. Have you included all three? If we believe Aristotle and believe me, I believe Aristotle, we got to have all three. So when you have, and you’re not able to convince somebody, your message is not resonating, which element is missing? Maybe there are two elements missing. Maybe you’re heavy on one element. That just isn’t going to work.
Leah Bumphrey:
And like anything, when you start putting a little bit of focus on it, you’re going to realize, oh man, you know what I’m, where your comfort zone is, that’s where you go. My comfort zone tends to be on a story. Your comfort zone tends to be on the science. So once you recognize that, then you’re able to give the balance. That brings us to our question of the week, Dennis, and I think it’s a good one. It’s specific to small business sales teams, and a manager wants to know how often should you meet with your sales team?
Dennis Collins:
That’s a great question.
Leah Bumphrey:
And it’s a pretty broad one, but I’m throwing it at you anyway.
Dennis Collins:
Wow. That’s which of your children do you like the most? It’s hard to answer those questions, you know, because it depends, doesn’t it?
Leah Bumphrey:
That’s exactly it.
Dennis Collins:
Let me tell you what has worked for me, which I recommend. I am a big believer in daily check-ins. No, I’m not a micromanager. You can talk to anyone who’s ever worked with me. I do not micromanage, but I do check in. What’s a check-in? A check-in has several elements.
Hey, Leah, tell me about the good stuff that happened yesterday. Tell me about what went on yesterday, particularly the good stuff. Number two, what have you got on the chart for today? What is today looking like? What loose ends are you going to pick up? What new stuff are you going to work on? And finally, number three, what’s in your way? What are the blockages, the blockades, the barriers that maybe I can help you with?
Leah Bumphrey:
Those are great. That’s a whole podcast. I think we’re going to have to talk about this. This is a great example of our listeners giving us an idea, and I like that.
Dennis Collins:
Thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Leah, for your, as always, your amazing insights. Follow Aristotle when in doubt. Follow Aristotle. Pathos, Logos, Ethos. Your key to better persuasion. That’s all for today. Leah and Dennis signing off. We’ll see you next time on Connect and Convert.
