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Dennis Collins: Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, where small business owners can learn the insider secrets to accelerating their sales. I’m Dennis Collins and my partner today is Leah Bumphrey.

Leah Bumphrey: Hi from Canada.

Dennis Collins: Hi Leah. Welcome back. You’re still putting up with me and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Leah Bumphrey: Hey, we have a lot of fun here. It’s excellent.

Dennis Collins: We do. Today, this is a little spooky. First of all, why do we want everything so fast today? You guys have Uber Eats in Canada, don’t you?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, absolutely. Quick, quick, now, now, now.

Dennis Collins: I am so addicted to it. I mean, a few clicks on the phone, and the food appears at your door.

How about Amazon? I get upset when I don’t get same-day delivery. Damn it. You did it yesterday, why can’t you do it today? We’re impatient. So are you Leah, an early adopter? Do you go for technology?

Leah Bumphrey: You know what? I’m not. I like to talk to people who are using it.

I like to see how it might fit into my world. I think that technology is a tool. I’m no troglodyte, but, I’m not going to be the first one lining up at midnight for the next edition of anything.

Dennis Collins: You won’t be there in line for the new Apple phone.

Leah Bumphrey: No, that’s not going to be me.

Dennis Collins: Well, today we may touch a little bit on the nerves of people who are not early technology adopters. Because today I want to talk about nano tools. What’s a nano tool? Have you ever heard of that?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, I remember a couple of episodes of Star Trek and I’m for sure not into that. Nobody’s injecting anything into my bloodstream.

I don’t care how cute those little robots are. I thought this was sales. What are you talking about, Dennis?

Dennis Collins: I know. Let me share the meaning of nano tools. It’s a fast, effective tool based on brain science that you can learn in 15 minutes or less. It has the potential to significantly impact your success.

Now, does that interest you, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, absolutely. We are busy people. Life is full. And that is not bragging, but we have lots to do. If we can do something in 15 minutes, I’m in.

Dennis Collins: Well, let me share with you how this all came about. The very smart people at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania, have designed something called nano tools.

And their professors and others that they choose submit to an app. Everything’s an app. And on that app, you can get instant advice on almost anything in business. For instance, how do you create high-performing and resilient teams?

How about Leadership 2.0? How about recognizing deception? Here’s another one. Influencing without authority. Here’s one. Better communication through neuroscience. Those are all nano tool topics that you can get instantly and learn them within 15 minutes. Now let me share with you one of them that’s one of my favorites. In fact, I’m going to look at my app right now and I’ll tell you what I’m looking at.

This one here is called “Speak With Confidence: 4 Fixes That Work.” The author of this one is Jonah Berger. Jonah Berger is a professor at Wharton. He’s also a prolific author. If you haven’t read Jonah Berger’s books, get them.

So he wrote in the nano tools, what’s the goal? Greater confidence and power through your choice of words. What’s the nano tool?  He has four action steps right here in the nano tool: Ditch the hedges. When somebody says “around,” “arguably,” “generally,” kind of,” “maybe.” No good. No bueno. Use definites.

“Definitely. Clearly. Obviously.” Without a shred of doubt. Ditch the hedges and use definites. Don’t hesitate. You know, I’m a member of Toastmasters, and we have a bell rung every time we say “ah, um, er,” any kind of filler words like that. The science says people who use those filler words are less credible, and less believable than those who don’t use them.

So ditch the hedges. Ditch the hesitation words and last but not least, turn pasts into presence. It’s not what did happen. It’s what is happening. So that little nano tool, I just read it off to you in about two or three minutes. That is one example of a nano tool that works. How does that sound to you?

Is that creepy to you? What do you think, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, no, because this is actually just a credible source of information. I mean, I trust you, Dennis. You’re well- nread, you’ve been in sales for, what is it, 157 years, so.

Dennis Collins: At least, yes.

Leah Bumphrey: But you know this stuff, and if it has credibility to you, and they are sucking it down into something very specific, this is worth everybody’s time.

Dennis Collins: Yes. Again, anything that can save us time and increase productivity, we should look at it. I am not in business with Wharton. I get no commission for talking about this. I just think it’s a cool thing. It’s fairly new. And a lot of people like Leah said, think what the heck is a nano tool, but go for it.

Try it. There are so many topics in there. I can’t read them all, but you can by downloading the app. So, let’s talk about our question for today. We always try to answer a listener or viewer’s question. What’s our question for today, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: The question today is if we were starting out in sales, and I mean, everyone knows that we have worked in the advertising business and worked with wizardacademy.org, but if we were starting out in sales and going home to tell our parents, this is what we’re doing, what gets us the most excited about it?

Dennis Collins: That’s an interesting question. What gets us excited about being in the business we’ve been in?

Leah Bumphrey: You know, this is an interesting question to me and the reason I picked it, Dennis, was – this is now going back to my early career in sales – and I was working with a gal that started out – this was office equipment. So a different area of expertise than what I have now, and when this gal started she wouldn’t tell her dad because he was so embarrassed she was in sales.

To be honest, she referred to herself as the East Side princess because she had many advantages in this world. And the idea that she was going to school and now had a job where she was providing a service really bothered her parents. Now for me, when I was able to finally crack into an entry-level sales position, what I was excited about was the fact that I was going to be learning something specific and being able to work with a variety of businesses. Because, to me, it just opened up a whole new world.

Dennis Collins: I would have to say that that excited me too. I’m thinking back to my very first moments in the business, very young.

Totally naïve. Knowing very little. But you know what excited me was the opportunity to help small businesses, particularly small local businesses succeed because I was their voice. I could amplify their voice on radio and TV, and that was cool. And now creating messages. What really excites me is I feel like I am the creator of the message.

That’s important, I think. And you know, its message — it’s everything.

Leah Bumphrey: And it all goes to building communities. And we live in communities. If we can build local businesses, that’s I think why I love Wizard Academy so much. You know their intent and all the classes that they have are focused on being able to help small businesses grow, to take what that daydream is and grow.

Dennis Collins: So today, what’s our challenge? Our challenge is, what will you do to learn more about nano tools? It’s easy as can be. If I can do it, you can do it. It’s a download. It’s an app on your phone and it has hundreds of ideas about how you can speed up. Check it out, and let us know what you think about it. It’s DennisCollins@Wizardofads.com and…

Leah Bumphrey: LeahBumphrey@Wizardofads.com

Dennis Collins: We usually like to end with a success story about how the material we’re talking about works. This stuff is so new that I don’t have one. I know personally it works for me. I can vouch for that. I have used these nano tools. They have shortened my learning curve on so many things.

But we’re going to be looking for other success stories. Why don’t you send us one? Send us a success story of how you picked a nano tool and you used it and it was effective. Does that make sense?

Leah Bumphrey: I think that’s fantastic. I mean, I am a huge proponent as are you of reading and getting information and checking sources and just finding out what people have done.

But what appeals to me about this app is that it’s 15-minute segments. And from there you can branch off and wow… So I think we’re on a good challenge and a good setting for questions and success stories for next time.

Dennis Collins: Perfect. Well, that’s the stage. You have our breakthrough challenge.

Please accept it and respond to us via the emails we just mentioned. We look forward to seeing you on the next Connect and Convert. See you soon.

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