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Dennis Collins:
Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the sales accelerator podcast where small business owners learn insider tips to grow sales faster than ever. We’ve got a great topic today. If I understood you, would I have this look on my face?

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s a great idea. What do you think, Leah? I love it. Hi Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
Hi, Leah Bumphrey, my partner in crime. How are you?

Leah Bumphrey:
Hi. I am doing really well. Hi from Saskatoon.

Dennis Collins:
I hope so. I know you have a special message for our listeners and viewers. Why don’t you tell us about it?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yes. We want to make sure that our listeners and viewers know that we have a free 60 minute discovery call. Give us a shout, emails on the screen, either one of us, and we will set up a time that’s convenient so that we can dive deep into what’s going on with your small business. We are hopeful that there’s things that we can help you with that are very specific. Maybe we’ll even be able to work with you longer term, but as with our podcast, it’s all designed about insider secrets to help grow your business with our discovery call.

It gives us more time than just the questions because we’re always open to just one-off questions that our clients will send in. But please don’t hesitate. Dennis and I love doing this. It’s all about making a difference,

Dennis Collins:
Making a difference. How can we help you? That’s what we’re all about. Please get in touch. So today, Leah, have you ever had that happen where you communicated something, you thought you were clear and you got the look? The look

Leah Bumphrey:
Never happened to me. Dennis never.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, you’re right. I’m asking the wrong person. The master communicator, Ms. Leah Bumphrey. She’s never had this. Okay, I’m glad it hasn’t happened to you. It has happened to me, and this is one of my favorite sentences in all of the world. If I understood you, would I have this look on my face? So let me tell you. I love to tell the story about

That line. So we’re going to have to go way back in the dentist time machine again. We do that often, but again, for me to have anything to talk about, I got to go way back in the dentist. My favorite TV show from the seventies and eighties. I know some of you weren’t even born yet. That’s okay. It’s still in reruns. My favorite TV show, it was on for 11 seasons, which is an eternity for a TV show. One of the stars became a household name. I occasionally watch the reruns. It’s on Everywhere you can get it. It’s final episode. Leah, final episode. Set a record for viewership at that time. 106 million viewers.

Leah Bumphrey:
I remember it.

Dennis Collins:
What do you think my TV show, my favorite TV show was? What do you think it was?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, you know what? I know what it was. It has to have been based on that quote.

Dennis Collins:
Snow White.

Leah Bumphrey:
Snow White, I don’t think so.

Dennis Collins:
No.

Leah Bumphrey:
You say it because I don’t want to give it away.

Dennis Collins:
You know what it is? It’s M*A*S*H and the lead actor who’s the lead actor. Do you remember

Leah Bumphrey:
Alan Alda?

Dennis Collins:
You guys had M*A*S*H in Canada, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, we did. You know what? My mom wouldn’t let us watch it because she felt that it glorified war. But I loved it because the humor was fantastic. I did not agree with her. And as an adult and a young adult, I watched the whole thing and I continue to love it. It’s one of those shows Sean and I will watch. It is smart and fantastic and makes you laugh, but also makes you think.

Dennis Collins:
It was designed as a show that had facts, some facts, some fiction, but most of all, some comedy. If you can find comedy in war, they found comedy. It was the Korean War that they were involved in at that time. And Alan Alda played Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Hawkeye Pierce. He was the head surgeon for a mass unit, a mobile military surgical hospital. And I just was fascinated by his character. I mean, he won me over.

Leah Bumphrey:
He was a bit of a dreamboat too, Dennis. I know you didn’t notice that, but I have to tell you, that guy had those eyes.

Dennis Collins:
No, not to me. Leah. Sorry. I just thought he was a stud. But that’s all right. As much as I’d like to spend the rest of our time talking about M*A*S*H, we probably could. There’s another fun fact about Alan Alda that most people don’t know, and that is, it centers around that question. If I understood you, would I have this look on my face? Now, how is Alan Alda tied into that?

Leah Bumphrey:
I don’t know.

Dennis Collins:
The mystery. He saw very clearly in his life that a lot of people who were very smart people had trouble communicating critical ideas. Do you know he founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. It still exists today, the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, his mission to help scientists and other professionals communicate complex ideas more effectively. He identified a critical issue.

Leah, have you ever seen somebody who’s extremely competent? And I’m thinking back to my college days now, again, a big rewind in the Dennis time machine. I’m thinking back to college days, someone with a PhD, highly educated, very smart, but they were the worst communicators.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, absolutely. That is a common problem among people who just know their stuff so well, but they don’t have that other part of it.

Dennis Collins:
And in. business. How about leaders who are so smart about what they do, but they can’t talk to customers and they can’t talk to employees? That obviously causes some problems, some customer loss and turnover. In science. brilliant researchers, they’re trying to secure funding. They have something that needs funding. They don’t know how to approach the people who have the money or in healthcare. This is one of my favorites, healthcare. Doctors, healthcare professionals who speak jargon, who speak scientific terms to the patient.

Leah Bumphrey:
And no bedside manner, there’s no connection.

Dennis Collins:
I have some examples. My wife has some examples just this past year. I mean, unbelievable things that were said and not said by professionals. By physicians. Come on guys, you’ve got to learn how to talk to people.

Here’s another one of my favorites. Accountant. You ever go to your accountant and they start spilling off debits on the left, credits on the right taxes, and you got to pay this tax. You got to pay that tax. What the hell are they talking about?

And then our favorite, our salespeople, God, we love our salespeople. We love our sales managers. But why do so many of you speak jargon? Why aren’t you speaking customer language? Why are you speaking stuff? That doesn’t make any sense?

Hey, and how about us parents? How about us trying to gain our children’s trust? Do we know the language to use? I know I didn’t when I was raising three kids. Somehow we stumbled through it and figured it out, but I wish I knew then what I know now.

But you know what, Leah, we can fix this. We can fix this. All this work focuses on bridging communication gaps. Isn’t that what we do? You just told our audience about that. Tell ’em again, what do we do? How do we improve communication?

Leah Bumphrey:
The whole point of us doing our podcast is to be able to talk to small business owners with insider secrets. Things that over years you and I have seen and experienced, and we invite them to send us specific questions, but also take part in our discovery call where we’re able to have this conversation. This is what we do. So it’s about working towards fixing a problem that a lot of people don’t even know. They have the information, they have the best business model, but how do you get it out there? So that’s where you and I can come in.

Dennis Collins:
Steve Jobs used to say, real artists ship. What does that mean? Real artists ship. That you’re not a real artist until you complete, until you communicate, until you get the desired result from your desired audience. Real artists ship. Okay, so Alda has a method. Do you think we should share that method or maybe we’ll keep that a secret?

Leah Bumphrey:
This is fascinating to me because I love him as an artist and as an actor, but I didn’t know the depth that he had. So please, yes, let’s keep going.

Dennis Collins:
He has a five step method that he teaches, that he uses.

And how many times on this podcast have we talked about active listening, number one? If we had a dollar for every time we talked about it, you and I would be out on the yacht doing this podcast. We’d be out sailing in the Mediterranean somewhere. Active listening skills says Alan Alda.

Number two, empathy. Relate to the audience. Relevant. Are you relevant?

Number three, and this is a big one. We talk about this a lot. Storytelling, analogies. Yes. Explain complex concepts.

Number four, body language. What is your body saying? Is it saying the same thing your words are saying, or are you in conflict?

And number five, clear jargon-free explanations. That’s what Alan Alda is teaching in his school, the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

Leah Bumphrey:
It’s so interesting because he has five different points to his method, and they’re all very relatable. There’s nothing that I’m going, okay, this doesn’t make any sense. Here’s a man, an artist in his own right who was able to clearly, I mean, think of the show M*A*S*H. Think of what it was able to accomplish over in a time period where a season wasn’t just 10 quick 20 minute segments. It was at least 26 episodes long. And I know he took great part in that storytelling in what they were trying to achieve, and that was relating to the audience and creating real characters. That’s sales.

Dennis Collins:
He gets it. And like you said, it’s shocking that somebody from that field would actually become an expert in clear communication. But he saw the need. He had a lot of empathy for people who had something to say but didn’t know how to say it. So that is his prescription. He has some quotes. I love his quotes. Lemme share some quotes.

Leah Bumphrey:
I love quotes.

Dennis Collins:
“The most important thing I learned about communication is this. We don’t tell people things. We ask them.” What do you think of that one, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s true communication, because communication shouldn’t be top down or even side to side, or even just like a funnel of stuff. It’s back and forth. So we’re asking someone to come into what we’re talking about. I love that.

Dennis Collins:
And it’s asking questions. It’s not making statements. It’s one of the things we teach salespeople, is your success in sales is determined by the type of questions, the value of your questions, the quality of your questions, not by your statements. It’s the quality of your questions. And that’s true in personal life too.

Here’s another quote. “Communicating is more than just saying what you think. It’s listening to what the other person is really hearing and watching how they’re really responding.” What do you think? It’s not about what you think, huh?

Leah Bumphrey:
And it’s not about what you’re saying. It’s what are they hearing? What are they? And I have been in circumstances where, honestly, I think I’ve presented this so clearly. This is what’s going to happen with your branding. And then you’re talking three months later, and that’s not what they heard. It’s maybe not because what they wanted, or maybe it was, yeah, but what is it that they are hearing? And then what are they thinking about that?

Dennis Collins:
I picked this up somewhere along the line, A communications model. So in communication, in a simple communication, there’s a sender and a receiver. There could be multiple receivers, but let’s say there’s a sender and one receiver. I am sending a communication to you. So I either send it verbally or in writing or electronically somehow, and you get that communication. That’s only one half. Leah, of the communications loop, what’s the other half?

The other half is, did that person understand what you meant? Okay, how do we do that? Communications model says we follow up with them and say, Hey, let’s discuss what we just talked about. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page. Let’s discuss it. So it’s a loop I send to you. Then I as the communicator, go to you and say, what did you understand in my message? And we determine whether or not that is what I meant. Does that make sense?

Leah Bumphrey:
It makes sure that you’re not, again, talking down to anybody, you’re not talking sideways. You guys are having a back and forth sharing with a view to moving something forward. It could be moving sales forward, it could be moving training forward. It could be moving a podcast forward.

Dennis Collins:
Or moving your family forward. I mean, it could be any of those, correct? Because as Alan Alda says, there’s tremendous misunderstanding and miscommunication, and he has a solution. And one of those is to listen and to confirm with the other party that they heard what you meant.

We could do another hour on this of clients that I’ve worked with, worked for over the years where that just wasn’t happening. There was one thing said on high at the top, and another thing understood down here. Whoa. And you talk about misalignment and missing revenues, missing profits, missing opportunities to help customers. No chance. Total misaligned. One more quote from Mr. Alan Alda. I like this one. “If you can’t explain it to an 11-year-old, then you don’t understand it yourself.”

Leah Bumphrey:
I love that. I love that 11-year-old. 11. Because you know what? Honestly, sometimes it’s so easy to use jargon to use words, fancy words. We call them the million dollar words because oh, darn it, I’ve paid big money to know that word. That’s not what it should be about. It should be about making sure that we understand the premise of how this is going to help. What is this going to do? And that they understand it back and think about an 11-year-old. We’re not talking about a 6-year-old that maybe doesn’t have the vocabulary, and we’re not talking about an 18-year-old that is, you and I both know smarter than both of us.

Dennis Collins:
Of course.

Leah Bumphrey:
But an 11-year-old is still wanting to know and waiting for us. So that I think is my favorite quote that you shared with us today.

Dennis Collins:
A true story. I always used to think that I had to speak and act as if I were the smartest person in the room. And I look back on speeches that I delivered years ago. Look at content that I wrote, whatever, and I thought that I had to use these highfalutin terms and I had to use these scientific terms and all these descriptions, and boy was I wrong. I mean, when it finally hit me that what are you doing, man? Talk in regular authentic language. You don’t need all this jargon, all these words, but that was kind of my persona years ago, and I thought that’s what made you credible and smart.

Leah Bumphrey:
Being able to change that was because you wanted to make a difference. It was because of what was the most important to you, and that was being able to find that common ground with people and share your knowledge,

Dennis Collins:
Common ground.

Leah Bumphrey:
Speaking of which, Dennis, you and I have to go. We have a discovery call with one of our listeners ready to start in the next few minutes here, and I love it because it came from a single question that a client asked that you and I or a listener asked that you and I talked about, and it was what should happen in a sales meeting. So we are going to have a discovery call with a business, and this is going to be fun.

Dennis Collins:
What should happen in a sales meeting? That’s a good one, don’t forget.

Leah Bumphrey:
If you want us to have 60 minutes on a topic that is of interest to you and is going to help grow your business, call or email us. We’re here for you.

Dennis Collins:
We’re here for you. That’ll do it for this episode of Connect and Convert. We’ll see you next time. Tune in every week.

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