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Dennis Collins: Hello everyone and welcome back to Connect and Convert, your sales accelerator podcast, where we share weekly insider secrets to growing your sales faster than ever. I’m Dennis Collins, your host, and my co-host, Leah. I think you’re going to love our topic today, Leah because do you realize it was almost four years ago to the day as we record this that we were hit with COVID? Did you guys get hit pretty hard up in Canada there with COVID?

Leah Bumphrey: COVID. That’s a new word.

Dennis Collins: You guys, maybe you didn’t have it.

Leah Bumphrey: No, I don’t think there’s anyone that doesn’t have that word in their vocabulary. And we all learned a lot about a lot of things.

Dennis Collins: Well, we learned a lot about contagion. Didn’t we? Wear your mask, stay home when you feel sick, avoid crowds, stay six feet away, or in a Canadian speak three meters or something like that. Anyway, wear your mask, stay home, avoid crowds, and wash your hands for at least a minute.

We learned how to wash our hands. And by the way, get your shots. Okay. So, today I want to talk a little bit about a different kind of contagion. I want to talk about emotional contagion. What the heck is that? Well, brain science is very clear. It’s an automatic and subconscious response that causes humans to mirror or mimic the behaviors around them.

By the way, I have a four-year-old and a three-year-old grandchild. I already see it in them. The three-year-old mimics what the four-year-old is doing, both physically and emotionally. So it’s a real thing. We’re built on a biological level to mimic others.

We are wired to respond. We’re very good at picking up on each other’s emotions, both positive and negative without even trying. Unfortunately, it’s unavoidably human.

Leah Bumphrey: It’s how we make connections, Dennis.

Dennis Collins: Absolutely. And it’s a good thing. We have these neurons that fire when we watch someone else do something, even when we’re not doing the same thing.

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you. Did you ever hear that one, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Absolutely.

Dennis Collins: Automatic response. Remember back in the day of the old 1950s and ’60s TV shows, they used laugh tracks. Why did they use a laugh track? They did it to prime laughing. It’s a way of showing empathy. As you said, Leah, it’s a connecting device.

And we are all very bad at controlling emotions. Even when we can modulate our moods, we tend to be able to do so only in spurts. So, Leah, you might ask, Why?

Leah Bumphrey: And I’m asking…

Dennis Collins: It’s sales and it’s a great question. Go ahead.

Leah Bumphrey: No, I was just going to say it’s something that is so basic and sales actually are not necessarily something that’s learned. It can be focused on various products and different types of businesses, but this basic ability to connect is what people are looking for when they’re interviewing potential salespeople. It’s how are they able to relate to others, and how comfortable are they with others. And that’s all part of this mimicking.

Dennis Collins: It is. And it has, as with all things, a good side and a bad side. You and I have both been in the sales business for a long time. Let’s say that somehow we’re irritated or frustrated. A customer has done something that irritated us and all of a sudden, we develop an emotional response to that.

What happens when a salesperson demonstrates that emotional response that’s negative, guess who picks it up? It’s contagious. However, The good news is that positive emotions can also be conveyed. With confidence, assertive probing questions about needs, and relevant solutions, prospects say “yes” 50 to 70 percent of the time when we’re asking relevant questions.

Nonassertive, wishy-washy, I-don’t-want-to-seem-pushy behavior drops to no more than 30 percent closure. So when we’re relaxed, confident, and assumptive, those emotions are transferred to the customer, just like negative emotions are, thereby giving us a better chance to make a sale. How does that check in with what you have found in your career?

Leah Bumphrey: Again, think about the customers that you feel the closest to. They’re the ones that are the easiest to feel closest to. They’re the ones that are very similar to you. They have a connection with you, you with them, and you’re not even trying. Then there are the clients that you have to work to have that connection with.

You recognize them. Maybe they remind you of Uncle Harry at Thanksgiving, and you know how to work with them. You know how to deal with how they’re speaking. So you’re able to connect with them with a little bit of work. Then there’s those ones that, “Oh, I don’t get it. I don’t understand these people. I don’t want to work with them.” Well, customers have that same feeling towards us too. And it’s what we do, how we manage those types of relationships that make the difference.

Dennis Collins: Precisely, we have control over the emotions that we portray. For instance, let’s give some examples. I like to give hard examples.

So what would be considered weak negative or passive behavior? Have you ever heard of a salesperson “I’m just checking in…”  “Well, I was kind of hoping and wondering if blah, blah, blah.” “Hey, I have my whole day open.” Have you ever heard that?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, absolutely.

Dennis Collins: “What do you think? What’s the best time for you?”

Leah Bumphrey: I know I’m interrupting you, Dennis, but sometimes you hear this kind of thing and we’re sitting on a sales floor in a cubicle and you’re hearing the guy next to you or the gal next to you talking like that. And that’s when it strikes you. It’s tough to hear it within yourself because sometimes you’re not in the mood for the less weak, the more direct question, but think about how it’s positioning yourself, right?

Asking that and how do you feel about this? You know that’s giving all the power of the conversation to the client as opposed to trying to connect with them. What’s the term you use – hedge words? Dennis, I’ve heard you say that.

Dennis Collins: Hedge words.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah. It’s not really an offensive, kind of offensive. It’s a hedge. It’s a um, and a uh, and you know, and I think, and maybe, and sometimes, and you’re just drawing out. You end up with a very long conversation, and I know Dennis, you do this all the time, if you actually listen to what the salesperson is saying, they’re not saying anything.

Dennis Collins: You know, it’s funny you mentioned that. I’ve referenced this in a lot of our episodes. I listened to a large number of hours of recorded sales conversations and I’ll tell you one thing. When I start hearing the ahs, the ums, the filler words. All of that, the maybes, the sort of. After having done this for so long, I can predict the outcome of that call. It’s not a position of confidence. It’s a position of weakness. It’s a position of uncertainty. And I’ve heard it. I can tell you for a fact, those less confident, those negative behaviors and words hurt, but let’s not leave it on the negative.

Paul Boomer: Hold on, hold on, hold on. I’m going to interrupt you.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, here we have Boomer coming in.

Dennis Collins: Yeah.

Paul Boomer: So I’m going to push you guys aside for just a moment. And just something that comes to mind is something I learned years ago, but it had to do with digital marketing. And what was always said is everything online is intangible, but the feelings are very real. That applies here. It’s very intangible, but the feelings are extremely real and they have an impact. So I just want to add that in there because that just kept going through my head.

Leah Bumphrey: And, what you’re saying, Paul is exactly right. Because if I, as a salesperson, am feeling kind of eh…yeah, guess what? The prospect is going to be feeling eh? I love my stories, Dennis, and I remember when Sean and I were replacing all the windows in our home, and in Canada, that’s a big deal when you’re looking for new windows. So we were down to two different potential suppliers and I asked one gentleman “So I’d like a comparison, A to B. You’re B here. What’s the comparison? And what would you tell me about A Windows?” And his answer was, “Well, I work for B, so I have to say B is better.” Guess who we bought from?

Dennis Collins: A.

Leah Bumphrey: We bought from A. Are you surprised? Because of what he said, he wasn’t enthused about it. He works there. Why do they have you working here? Talk about a contagion. I was completely infected.

Dennis Collins: You caught his disbelief. It was contagious. So how do we fix that? Paul? Yes, the feelings are real, but is there language of confidence that we can use? Thankfully, the answer is yes.

Ask with confidence. Assume you’ll get what you ask for. Believe you’re going to win. Use definite words. Definitely. Clearly. Obviously. Certainly. Emotional words that denote uncertainty. All emotional words work, but these work better. Unsettled, doubtful, or anxious. Let’s schedule the next definite step. How about next Thursday at 2 p.m.? That’s confident language. There’s no question that we’re gonna make this work. It’s just a question of what day we’re gonna get together to finalize it.

A lot of my customers are telling me they have a challenge with, anxiety about, they’re doubtful about XXX, whatever it is, “what’s your biggest challenge, doubt, or anxiety about doing business with us?” Ask him directly. That’s a question of confidence. A less-than-confident person would never ask that because they’d be afraid of the answer. A confident salesperson says, give it to me. What’s your biggest concern about working with us?

Have you ever used anything like that, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, absolutely. And that’s how you form a relationship. You have to ask those questions. And it is scary to ask those questions. I don’t care how long you’ve been in sales. You can remember those first few calls. You don’t want to know who else they’re talking to. You don’t want to know that you’re asking for too much money. I just want to get out of here and go think about this, but this all requires practice and it requires confidence even to practice it. This is a difficult thing, and you can always tell someone who really wants to get better at this because they’re not afraid of the mirror.

They’re not afraid of self-talk. They’re not afraid of making these kinds of words part of their repertoire because if they’re not, we will naturally go to what’s more comfortable, and what’s more comfortable is the passive way of speaking.

Dennis Collins: Someone told me once, that you can either be courageous or be comfortable. You can’t be both. Courage is uncomfortable. Courage is outside the comfort zone. Courage is outside the status quo. The top salespeople have the courage to ask the hard questions that show the customer they have confidence. They’re not afraid of the question and they’re not afraid to stand up and show you how much they believe in their product or service.

So asking those questions, what anxiety do you have about not coming up with the right solution? You know, a lot of people look at three, four bids, six bids, I don’t know, a hundred bids. Why? Because they’re afraid. Don’t be afraid to ask them about that. Does that make sense? It’s contagious.

Leah Bumphrey: It absolutely is. And being able to have that conversation with people doing what you’re doing, whether selling under the same roof for the same company or working in another industry, when you realize that it’s part of the human condition, everyone feels this, then it becomes that much easier. But you got to talk about it.

Dennis Collins: Well, a good segue. It’s your turn, small business owners and sales managers. What can you do to monitor this?  The best way, of course, is either being at a sales conversation in person or getting recordings. But the key is all emotions are contagious, we’re human. We connect. We connect both positively and negatively. What emotions are your salespeople displaying that are turning into behavior during their sales conversation? That behavior is either moving you away from or toward the sale. There’s no in-between. Everything counts and it’s automatic and it’s subconscious.

Leah Bumphrey: Dennis, we’ve all sat in those Monday morning meetings, where it’s around the table, what’s your success story? All you need is that one person that had a crappy week last week and does not have a success story to infect everyone.

We’ve talked about Wizard Academy before, think about when you’re at Wizard Academy. When you’re taking the classes that are offered and when you’re able then to bring that back to your salesforce, to your staff, generally it’s confidence. It’s realizing that this is going to be contagious. This is going to affect the whole room.

Dennis Collins: I think that’s going to wrap it up for today. Hey, we’re all contagious, not only physically, but emotionally. Control your emotions and you control the outcome of a sales conversation. That’s it for today on Connect and Convert the Sales Accelerator podcast. We’ll see you next time.

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