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Hi there, I'm Ben Pearce and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Every episode we talk through how to thrive in the tech world, not just survive. Now, if you want me to work with your team, just give me a shout. I love to help teams be more influential, memorable and successful with their stakeholders. Head over to www.techworldhumanskills.com to book a chat.
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tech world human skills podcast. Now today we have another great episode. A few episodes ago we had Ron Whitson on the show and Ron was talking about his timeless human behaviors from his book A Friendly Human in Presales. So there are seven timeless behaviors and last time we only managed to cover three before we ran out of time. So this time we've got Ron back and we're going to cover the other four. Now if you haven't listened to the other episode yet Ron is a seasoned tech pro, he's a senior director of solutions consulting at Thomson Reuters and of course author of the book A Friendly Human in Presales. So please welcome back to the show Ron Whitson. Ron it is lovely to have you back with us. Ben it's fantastic to be back with you. I had a great time last time and really honored to to have a return shot with you. Well you know it was it was such a wonderful conversation that the book is so interesting it was great to go through it and it felt like we you know we'd left things undone because you you'd chosen three that you went through but there was still another four so it was a bit of a no-brainer to get you back. But before we go into it in more detail just in case anybody missed the first episode do you just want to introduce yourself briefly to everybody? Sure no happy to do so. I've been doing presales work for 28 years. Three years of that was actually as a salesperson. I did that on purpose. I wanted to go add that experience to the resume. I was a programmer as a database administrator so very geeky very techy heavy as I got into this. That was truly how most of us get into the role right we're the least objectionable technical person that you can put in front of a customer. That was me. The least objectionable. I love it. Yeah so when I started doing this you know get in front of a group of people and doing the demo that was easy making all the tech work make the smooth slide transitions this piece of cake but but they didn't always buy and it's like what's the matter with you people? I'm giving you the perfect logical argument perfect solution to your problem. Why are you not buying? And I would get feedback like hey Ron you know it's a great demo but you got to work on your people skills and that really didn't mean much to me. I didn't understand what they were saying and so as I kind of dug into it there wasn't a recipe book there wasn't an owner's manual that I could find to help me learn these things I need to get better at so I started trying to find individuals who did these behaviors well and and really studied them and tried to learn how to add that to what I was able to do and that eventually made its way into the book that came out and the idea is that maybe there are other people with this engineering brain that suffer some of the same maladies that that I was struggling with and suffering from maybe this book could help them avoid some of the many many mistakes I've made over time.
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Now now when we were going through it last time we chose three but but they weren't the first three we've gone slightly out of order on what we've done so do you want to tell everyone what why you chose the ones you chose last time and what were the skills that we're just going to quickly recap before we get onto the new stuff? Yeah oh no absolutely so so under a great deal of pressure from you like AE putting pressure on the SE you told me I can only do three and I had to pick my favorite and it's kind of like picking your favorite children and I won't say anything more about that because we talked about that last episode so anyway the three that I landed on as my favorite ones were authenticity be authentic to me that's really really important that's where everything starts and that's why it is timeless behavior number one and then we kind of jumped to the next one which is listen actively and all the timeless behaviors as you'll learn from reading the book they all build on each other because if I'm listening to you actively but you think I'm being inauthentic then it's to no avail right so be authentic listen actively and then we jump kind of to the last one which I think is really important as well and that's leave an impression our audiences are seeing lots of impressions I worry that they start to sound the same over time so I think a lot about what is the experience I'm delivering and I'd like to be something they remember I'd like to be a positive experience for them. Yeah yeah excellent so that was authenticity or I can't even say it, "authenticity" to listening and leave an impression so we're gonna go for another four let's do it let's not leave them in suspense let's hit them with what the four are and then we'll unpack each one so what are the four we're going to go through today yeah so if if the first is be authentic and the second is listen actively the four we're going to talk about today are they're actually the ones kind of in the middle so number three is show empathy number four is have a conversation five is another one I had to struggle with practice humility and number six is tell a story and then the last one leave an impression so those are the seven timeless behaviors. Okay so let's just correct straight on show empathy yes tell me about that. So when I first got into being a sales engineer that was my first title but now I've been an application engineer solution consultant many many different titles for our role obviously but when I first got into it it was all about my performance right again this was doing overtime work and I want to make sure all my slides are right and all my tech is working properly and just wow my audience but it was about me showing up and putting on a performance putting on a show doing the demo and it was selfish in a way in that I was kind of the focus of my attention it wasn't my audience and I just really got to thinking about what that audience experience is we talked a little bit about that with the leave an impression one but when we show up and do something we should be in we should be in service to our audience I mean they've got some kind of business problem that they're looking to solve they got something they'd like to be better our job isn't to show them our wonderful tech our job is to give them a path to make that better and it's a subtle shift in your thinking but if you really make the focus your audience it kind of changes the way you approach everything and I've I've couched that as this idea of you know show empathy I think in our role there's another really important group that we should show empathy to and that's our sales partners and again this is part of the reason why I took the job as a seller for three years I wanted to understand that role better I wanted to understand their pressures and some of the things that were driving them and again I did it for three years I made some money I got to negotiate some deals I did all this stuff and and I tell anybody in pre-sales you could go and be a seller you'd be successful at it but there's probably gonna be aspects of it that you don't enjoy and for me I found out that I'm not coin-operated I'm not most energized by what am I selling today right I'm more energized by solving different problems so again it's just this whole idea of empathy it's like really putting yourself in the shoes of someone in your audience and understand is what you're sharing relevant to them is it landing with them are you giving them a reason to care are you considering what their daily struggles are just just all that kind of stuff so anytime I'm getting ready for some type of meeting or presentation I do spend time thinking about my audience and how can I best serve them and again that really kind of influences a lot of the things that I do when I'm in those meetings. Yeah and I think I said in the last episode when we were talking the challenge I have when we're doing this podcast is I am in violent agreement with you in nearly every point that you make which is just a bit boring probably for everybody else just for Ron to speak and Ben goes I completely agree but again this is what I completely agree and so when I'm talking to people about it I often use the term it's like audience centricity like the audience is at the center or the customer is the center if it's not partners it's always customers you're working with customer centricity audience centricity and actually it's not about me centricity it's not I'm here to present to the customer it's all about me my stories my demos my anecdotes my quota to retire it's about them but but the challenge I often get from people so I'll put this to you is what if I am not a naturally empathetic person you know if that's not my nature in inverted inverted commas a do I need to build this muscle if it's not something that comes naturally to me and if I do how can I build that really good I mean the answer the first question is yeah I think I think you need to kind of work at building that muscle I think it's super important I think it's one of the ways it's one of the tools you have for building that relationship with your audience to to move towards that trusted advisor status
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you want them to believe that you care for them that you are truly interested in solving their problems so that's that's where the the empathetic part comes from if someone is not good at that there's a few resources and exercises I talk about in the book that can help with that but the one really is doing that thought exercise of putting yourself in their shoes and in the book I reference there's a phrase we use in the US walk a mile in another in another person's moccasins right yeah now I always thought that came to us from Native American culture but that's not the case it was actually from a point a poem written back in like the 1800s so and I've got the poem listed out the book properly accredited of course but um I think that's a really good mental image to have is to put yourself in the other person's shoes put yourself in their situation and again it doesn't have to be like this hour-long exercise it could be a five to ten minute thought exercise where you're like okay what if I'm a user of this solution at my audience's company what is what is that life like and if you don't know well you've got chat gpt you've got claw you've got these great tools that can help educate you a little bit but you can also ask questions of the different people right hey tell me a little bit Ben about how you're using this tool today and you know how long does it take you to do this particular task yeah and again you know I think we definitely have to develop the muscle if it's not a natural thing for us and I think also a lot of people think about empathy as a purely emotional thing you know like oh I saw some you know I saw somebody stub their toe and I burst into tears in empathy for them of the pain they must be going to but but I don't see it as there's definitely an emotional part of it but there's also a very logical part to perspective taking you know of going right what is the problem they've got can I put myself within that situation where they had that problem that is not just an emotional thing but that's also a logical thing you know oh if I was in that situation logically this would be the things that I'd want to do about so there's both an emotional and a logical part to empathy it feels to me no I'm gonna say let me give you this example too because I think everybody who's done pre-sales can relate to this but again if we think about it okay we got the the call or the email or whatever from the AE that we're getting ready for this demo right and so we're prepping and we're doing everything and then we show up and we just start performing we start doing the clicks we start we start telling the story right did we ever just take a second and think about how are they perceiving this I think one of the most difficult things for us is to see what we're doing see our demo see our presentations with fresh eyes you know to think about the words we're familiar with our domains we're familiar with the lines of business that we're speaking with are there idioms that we're using are there you know acronyms that we're throwing out and assuming the audience knows everything so I really think it's not about that now the other thing too that I think is important that we don't do and you'll see this a lot as well is someone shares something some experience or whatever and a lot of us want to build that connection by jumping in saying oh yeah same thing happened to me that's a dangerous thing to go down because that and it's not really one upping but it's it's done in a pure way if we're trying to build like connection but what happens is you've immediately discounted what the person says so you know if Ben were to tell me yeah you know I got this morning and I got my five miles in and I went and climbed this hill in the neighborhood it's like yeah me too I did three miles with the dog and then I just discounted your achievement yeah I'm trying to connect with you and show you that we've got some commonality but it didn't get perceived that way in some in some situations so that's the other thing people want to do that sometimes as a goal of being empathetic but it ends up yielding a little bit different result yeah no I like that yeah you're trying to connect commonality to build rapport but actually it just feels like then you were going back to your your one last time you're active listening it feels like it was you waiting to speak as opposed to hearing internalizing taking on board and then coming up with a response you've just fired back something which isn't isn't great active listening exactly right love it so show empathy so that's the fourth one of the seven um what what's next what we're gonna do next third third sorry the third what's the fourth one the fourth one is have a conversation okay can you unpack that first absolutely I think in my experience what I've seen is way too often these presentations are not a conversation they're a monologue they're the expert the SME the pre-sales person whoever delivering their script delivering their lines delivering all the wonderful things that marketing has suggested they share that's going to make their stock go up and it that I don't believe that's what it should be I believe it should be a conversation and we've got some wonderful tools now with some of these competitive intelligence tools going some of these others that will actually give you you know the percentages of who's talking when and we go back and we audit those calls we want to understand that and there are sometimes where I see we totally got into monologue mode you see those long blocks of things being delivered and very little interaction from the customer um so so that's that's what have a conversation means to me it should be two-way communication but I also use have a conversation a lot as I'm mentoring people and coaching people you know there's a lot of people who are in the job hunting mode right something's happened at the work and now they're back on the market and I tell them those interviews treat those interviews as a conversation and and that's an easy thing for me to say right but what I think about is when we're in that mode of trying to find the next opportunity where we can care for our family and do the things we need to do I think we start stacking pressures on top of ourselves the interview takes on this increased feeling of importance and I feel like because of those pressures and everything else it forces us a little bit out of our comfort and so when we're in that interview we're trying to be something else we're looking for the perfect chat gpt answers we're we're not showing our our charm and our true authentic self and so I try to coach people really just just approach it as a conversation they're going to ask you questions and you need to be able to answer those truthfully and authentically because if you're not if you're trying to come up with the the chat gpt answer and you're trying to be something else you're going to be unhappy with the job because if they hired something other than you truly are it's not going to work out so it's really important in those interviews you're just having a natural conversation because you want them to hire who you are and that's really important so discovery to me again have a conversation there's a lot of things that you can do but just have a conversation but that's that's kind of what I meant by that now and again let me challenge you a little bit because the you know the people that I know that are listening to this are you know proper season pros so sure sometimes it's very clear that this is a conversation right I am with one or two people either on a teams or a zoom meeting or in a room together it's clear this is a conversation you can go to the other extreme so let's say a conference a conference which is clearly a broadcast right so you're on stage at some kind of conference you deliver a 30 minute thing which is and maybe there's some q&a at the end so if you've got maybe those two extremes there of one to one an obvious conversation and broadcast which is an obvious broadcast quite often I remember being in in my career and having my team asked can you come into our team and give us a pitch or not a pitch it would never be called but can you come into our team and tell us about how we could use this solution and it's like come in and give us a presentation how do you how do you get the interactive conversationness when it moves away from a very obvious one-to-one conversation no that's good I still think it's important because how do you know if what you're sharing is of interest to them or not without that interaction now a lot of times that interaction can be ahead of time through a discovery call or just through interviewing some different stakeholders that you could be speaking with yeah but I still think there's other ways even in those one to many presentations where you can get a little bit of a conversational piece going on and I'll give you a couple of examples you know like during a big presentation at a conference using some of the tools like mentimeter or interactive polling right to have the audience be involved a little bit you get a little bit of their voice know if you're generally aligned or not it was it last week or week before I was speaking to a group of 3000 people which was amazing and again it was a situation because of the virtual format cameras were off microphones were off the chat was active and so we were able to utilize chat and do some polling ask some questions and it was cool to go back later and review the chat because it was blowing up people were very engaged there so I don't know that it's so much of a methodology have a conversation as a mental model and I think if we find ourselves in those monologue moments monologuing moments if we find ourselves in those moments where we're monologuing maybe it should be a good reminder to take a pause check in with the audience if that's the situation and just make sure we're on track yeah that's exactly what I was thinking it's that sort of reminding yourself right oh I've said a lot here and hopefully it was interesting and informative and exactly you know and now they're engaged and you know they're getting excited or maybe I'm off and if I'm chunking that up and making sure that I'm putting some pauses and checking back in then that that avoids that irrelevant monologuing which could be such a disaster I would say too Ben I mean we've all seen these different TED talks right those TED talks feel like a conversation to me and I don't know I don't know do you feel the same way a good one you know a good one a good one yes I think you know TED talks and conferences are a bit unfair I think really because they are sort of
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you know certainly if I've speak to or you hear behind the scenes of people that have spoken at TED talks and those the amount of prep the amount of polish the amount of coaching the amount of you know and and so those ones that sound like a conversation have been coached within an inch of their life to sound like a conversation as opposed to being a real conversation do you know do you know what I mean 100% and I think that's a skill to make a broadcast feel like a conversation I think that's something that they've worked hard on the easy bit about that is it is a silent audience that is listening to your conversation and that in some ways makes it harder because it's a big audience but but also I think makes it easier because nobody's actually going to throw a hand grenade at you whereas in the scenarios we're talking about you know every time you open that up for a conversation you don't know what might come back at you and then you've got to adapt in the moment that's such a good point but again I think it just it just shows you know sometimes especially with a lot of your audience who are these very skilled people like you and I who've been around the block a few times I think it's so cool though that we can see examples like that we can learn that we can get even better even it's just 1% we can continue to improve our craft and get better at what we do yeah love it um right so we've done show empathy we've done have a conversation move away from the irrelevant monologuing into this kind of nice conversation
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what's the next one Ron five is practice humility okay okay tell me about that well humility is another idea that I sadly I I struggled with early I was I'm the best at humility you would not believe how humble I am no one is humble like me then now it was just again smart guy knew it was smart I knew all the tech stuff I mean again if we go back if we go back in the day a little bit I knew I knew dolls forwards and backwards now for you youngers out there disk operings before there was apple ios for those windows you had dosh you had the prompt right what you see the hackers on tv do that's what we were doing right but you had that I had my network certification I had my novell netware certification I knew word perfect five one lotus one two three I knew paradox right and I was learning um ms project there was there was no other software on the market that was it I could do all the things I could do everything I could build hardware I was I was a god so no so so that was where I was at as I got into this role so this idea of my talk to audiences about tech I'm going to show them software it's like
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what's what's the downside and you're you're going to pay me pretty well for this what's the downside and then they introduced rfp's and then I understood what the downside was but the job itself was really easy and really interesting to me but my approach was wrong because as I talked about a little bit with the empathy piece of it it was all about me it was all about my performance it wasn't about my selling partner it wasn't about my audience it was about how good could I be in my mind delivering on what I thought the job was doing the perfect demo so sometimes people confuse you know the show empathy piece with the practice humility piece to me they're very very different to me the show empathy is really understanding the needs of my audience right practice humility is not coming in and being the smartest person in the room not looking at everything is my performance really understanding that I'm there to to serve others and sometimes that means I've got to be quiet more often than I should there are still times today when I'm in meetings and I have ideas that I want to share but again because I'm there in a role to help serve I don't feel the need to pop out everything that pops in my brain so I try to be a bit more strategic about looking for the opportunities to share something I think is important at the right time and and that's been that's still something I struggle with I have to I have to think about that and it's interesting just as you're talking there I'm just sort of thinking of some of the cult the cultural um impact of that and how different cultures and persuading people in different cultures maybe take different approaches if I think of it as an English person um that have often quite a self-deprecating sort of approach um which I think is a bit different to humility I think self-deprecating is maybe a bit more of a humor thing than a humility thing sometimes but but they're sometimes somewhat similar um so if I think about that culture if I think about when I've worked with many of my US colleagues over the years there is more of a culture of we're the best let's go you know uh you know let's let's go kind of thing um and so when you see those those cultures coming together and often you think well the UK and US is very close but sometimes you think they're quite different and I wonder if this humility is one of those areas where there is a bit more cultural difference that's that's pretty interesting um you know you it's funny you're talking about US in general Texans are even worse about that
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native Texan so we were our own country before we were a state and sometimes that still seems like a good idea right so that's really interesting point um I've worked with a lot of teams across the pond and it's always been very easy it's it's an easy relationship and we work together well that's uh I'm not to think about that love that's an interesting take you you have on that my friend yeah it's just thinking about sometimes definitely that there's coaching that I see that that needs to happen to Brits where we are too self-deprecating okay sometimes you need to be uh hey hey stop putting yourself down it's almost like you're giving yourself a negative critique and you need to to elevate that self-deprecating which I think is a bit different to humility but you know sometimes we need to elevate that and be a bit more positive about about it and then yeah that you so you know it was just something that occurred to me as as you were talking there that there's sort of some nuance and some um yeah some some deeper thoughts to think about this kind of stuff which is what I love about this sort of stuff it's it's almost like there's a scale right if you slide too far down the scale and and you are self-deprecating you could almost lose your credibility with your audience right now you're a comedian you're not the technical expert in the room to help guide them but if you get too far into maybe we'll call it American arrogance okay too far yeah I didn't say Texas arrogance because that's that's just pride it's Texas pride but if we get too far into the arrogance piece of it then we also start to lose our audience because they're like this this guy's not nice he's a jerk so yeah so I think we've got to find that that happy balance right and again I've just in my career again more US pre-sales and solution consulting people than than overseas but in my career I've seen so many people who are on the path that I was on where they were very intelligent they knew they were very intelligent and they were more than happy to share with their audience how intelligent they were so that's just not a good path I don't think as we're looking to build these authentic connections and and build those relationships are going to help us convince someone to buy our solutions yeah I remember when I was at Microsoft and Steve Bama left and Sachin Adela came in as the new CEO and one of the first things he did was to really emphasize on the growth mindset culture and and one of the observations that he made which I think was true and I think this was a great thing he did was there was a culture before of I am the smartest person in the room I am a know it you know I know it all I know you know I know it all and he very much moved to no I don't want the smartest people in the room because you don't know it or you might think you do but you don't what I want is people that want to learn it all and so I would and to learn it all you need to accept that you don't know everything and therefore there's a journey a path to a bit of improvement as opposed to coming as a as a no and I and that was a fundamental shift and I really loved it when he sort of sort of did that and that very much aligns I think to what you're talking about there I think so but I think that is such a dichotomy of what most pre-sales people believe and where we we want to be right we want to know it all to go into that meeting and have the confidence to handle any hand grenades or any questions that come at us but and I think early on a lot of us fall into that trap and we spend the extra time studying we spend the extra time going through all the product stuff because we we don't want to be called out because we're worried about losing our credibility what I have found over time is being authentic being able to be comfortable telling my audience that's a really good question I don't know the answer to that but I'll go check it out and I'll get back with you is that okay they I think it actually has helped my credibility over time so I think it's something that we've got to learn to be comfortable with that now you have to do it at the right time and you have to have the base knowledge if they ask you a very standard question for the industry of your solution that's really good I haven't heard that question before it's like what are you talking about you can lose credibility but I think we've got to be comfortable saying you know what I don't know let me go find out for you yeah Brent I could talk to you all day on on that topic but sadly time is escaping us so I'm going to push us on to the to the next um uh the next one yes tell it tell a story I believe is that right that's 100% correct so time is behavior number six tell a story okay right enlighten us on this so again I think a lot of us over time has gotten feedback you got to tell a story you know work on your storytelling and I understand that in some countries overseas storytelling almost translates into fairy tales and that can be like a bad thing and there's lots of books and there's lots of experts on storytelling and from what I've consumed of all that um a few people make it more complicated than I think it needs to be so mine is not storytelling mine is very specifically tell a story and to me it's all about how we communicate it's using anecdotes it's using plain language and I give the example in the book like you know Ben you guys I know this but Ben called me up last week and asked about my rackets and I explained that you know the tension generated by the prince tore 300 gram racket through its prince technology and it's extra soft this and the tension no no we wouldn't talk to our friends that way right Ben called me up said hey what record he hits yeah I got a prince rack I really like it so why do we not take that very plain very simple language that we would use with our friends and our family into our audience meetings it's because we're trying to project a different persona right we're trying to project ourselves as smarter for whatever reason and again lots of internal external pressures drive that
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to me storytelling tell a story is about simple language if you use an acronym that's fine but after you use the acronym just take a second and throw out what the definition is
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people in your audience are not going to know what the acronym is but they're not going to have the courage to stop the meeting and ask it's not because of you it's because of their co-workers sitting there they don't look like a silly person for their co-worker um and and to me also tell a story is about have an overall narrative now where I say this stuff gets too complicated is you'll find guides out there that are okay your customer is a hero and the problem is the villain and the turn is here and then yeah no yeah yeah I would agree I would agree find out what your audience is normal day is like and the tools they're using today and tell a story around that and tell the story of how it's going to be better with this new solution that you're offering them to me that's what tell the story is all about communicate it in a simple way so that when you leave they can tell their friend hey this guy showed up today he shows we could solve this problem with the billing hours with three steps let me show you let me tell you what when you can do that you've won because now they start spreading your message internally without you having to be there yeah I mean I love this topic you know and I spend all my time you know the course I deliver all my time is called technical storytelling that's what I spend all my time so this is this is right in my wheel I love this topic and I can again talk about it for hours and hours and hours maybe can I ask you some questions that that that I get challenged with when I talk about that this sort of stuff because I'd love to hear your response what I was having just the other day um the challenge the challenge I got was look look Ben I I hear what he's saying but I'm talking to technical people and they don't care about a story they just want to know the facts so that's so if somebody says that to you what are your what are your sort of what thoughts does that sort of bring to you they care about facts but there is a way that you could communicate the facts in a way that would land with them better I was talking to a storage company the other day and marketing had given them um the phrase of 300 gigabytes an hour great phrase people are going to understand what it means right um one of the people on the team said they expressed it a different way they said 40 hours of content
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I to me those are the examples because is someone going to remember 5000 gigabytes an hour three whatever the number was I even forgot the number but they're going to remember how many hours of content so I think it's little subtle things like that that can make your story easier to remember and easier to share yeah because I think what it does when we start to use stories is it starts to make stuff a bit it connects with people a bit more emotionally
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and and then that lights up the whole brain like you've got the front of your brain which is doing all it's like um rational processing logic data but you've got other bits of your brain around the back that are more you know about emotion and and if you can get all of that lit up at the same time it really helps people recall things and it helps people think better because their brain's like lit up um with all of it so it it's like an addition it doesn't don't subtract it seems to me no you're still communicating the facts you're still communicating the information you need to share you're just doing so in a way that makes it more memorable that that locks it in right um I was going to ask you you know you do a lot of the storytelling training what what's your number one tip around storytelling for for people who do what we do the first thing is getting people to believe that some emotional connection is a good thing right um because genuinely people are thinking well no you know like we're talking logic we're talking facts and so doing things like like Aristotle talks about the three means of persuasion like how you persuade somebody and he's like right you need to be credible which we in tech are really good like I've got my certifications I've got my this you know I'm a senior whatever I'm a principal whatever it is then we need a good rationale a good rational argument we're really good at that and then the third thing he says is we need you need an emotional connection you need people to convince you need to convince people emotionally because people buy what they want and then justify it they don't buy what they need they buy what they want and so you've got to make them want it and and so that comes from emotion and so you need that sort of three-pronged attack you can't have all feeling with no substance but you can't have all substance with no feeling and and you've got to get that in a balance and it seems to me the two most powerful ways of doing that you've of creating that emotional connection you've covered the first one is active listening that creates an a massive emotional connection with people if people feel heard and understood and listened to that creates it and the second thing is those sorts of stories like you're talking about that creates a massive emotional connection so those it feels like are the two primary levers that we sort of use in our world to really connect with people emotionally i don't know what do you think no i think that's right i think i think that's really the essence of our job right people have referred to pre-sales people of the past as translators right but what are we translating some people say well we're translating our solution into value i'd go one step further and i'd say you're translating that value into an emotional connection with your audience that's the job and when you do that people are going to buy from you right they're going to justify it other ways just like you said but they're going to buy from you because they trust you they like you you've got a connection with them and you're going to have success in our in our world it's funny that and i'm just recalling this conversation that i was just having just last just just last week and um so i thought right i the analogy i would use for storytelling and this is going on on your bit about the whore the hero's journey like you can find people out there that say you know they've got this very complicated construct very similar to star wars or the matrix or whatever the hero's journey and they're trying to fit their product lifecycle into this very and and the analogy i i gave to them was it it's like mustard storytelling is is like mustard right now i've seen some videos on this english mustard versus american mustard um and american people i've seen some videos on instagram or tiktok
[00:40:37:19 - 00:46:00:15]
english mustard is very strong um it's and so if you take a spoonful so i've seen these videos of a very good of mustard on the top it's gonna knock your block off and your head is gonna explode and i think a lot of people think that when they hear storytelling they think of a sandwich with an inch of mustard you know and this horrible narrative it's all crafted it's contrived it's not natural whereas i think what we're talking about is how we bring it alive with little anecdotes and little stories and and things that make people connect to it yes yeah when we when we spend too much time and money working on the limbic opening and the cute tie-in to some prop or something and we lose the narrative that that's that's a problem so i think you put it really really well i may i may have to borrow that english mustard that that's really good the right amount on the ham sandwich you're good slather it on maybe we've we've gone overboard yeah and i think we could culture we could take it with wasabi or horseradish or some of these other ones that they are not not you knock your block off yes uh brilliant do you know what i've just looked at the clock and we are time has just disappeared from us it always goes too fast when we get together it does um so so should we should should we just wrap up so key takeaways for anybody that's zoned out whilst they're walking the dog or or pushing your pumping iron in the gym whatever it is they're doing what would be the the key takeaways from this i think key takeaways are just you know the the remaining timeless behaviors and why why they they are important why why we should consider them why we should take some time and and consider are we incorporating these in our day-to-day work in in pre-sales and solutions and and again it would be the four that we covered today we talked about uh show empathy have a conversation practice humility and tell a story and we incorporate those with the ones we covered last time number one was be authentic number two listen actively the the the four we just talked about and then finish up with the last one that we talked about last time um leave an impression yeah and they they are just brilliant and i think you know from me you know as i think about that you know we've set this in the context of pre-sales today when i talk to engine you know internal IT teams that have to go and tell their business you know about why IT is important why a bank you know how an IT infrastructure team justifies its budget and existence to the ceo of a bank it's it's all exactly the same it's all exactly the same thing so although we've talked about this in the context of pre-sales this is so relevant to engineering teams consultancy teams customer success teams uh product teams it's it's just awesome i think for for everybody so um yeah thank you so much for for taking the time to enlighten us on all this now if people have really enjoyed this how can they find out more how can people get hold of you or or the book or find out more about the book yeah so so the book's on amazon um a friendly human in pre-sales by ron witson uh there's a kindle version we've got an audiobook version that jack cochran narrated and he does an excellent job on it oh thank you very much that's the kindle version that's the kindle version right there uh there is a website i put the landing page for the book for people who'd like to learn more first it's just timelessbehaviors.com um if you want to sign copy you can actually order a signed copy from there um for your audience i have a little bit of a special band um the audiobook company gave me some codes for free audiobooks so if anyone is interested they can message me on uh linkedin or maybe you know if they want to message you and you get a hold of me whatever way they want to do it don't bother been been some busy guy message me on linkedin and um i can give you a code you can get a free audiobook to listen to it's a it's a four hour listen and like i said jack did such a good job i tried narrating it myself and that was i gave up pretty quickly it was really really difficult uh jack is actually trained to do this kind of stuff and he really did a wonderful job of of bringing my words life when i listened to it i was so impressed because he got it he got the the story that we're trying to tell there but yeah and also just connect on linkedin i really enjoy continuing this conversation with people if you think differently too i'd love to hear different thoughts on this i mean this is these are simply things that i had to work on for myself and it seems like other people have found some value in it so really happy about it the book's going to be two years old here in a couple of months so um a maze has been out that long already and still still really i'm still really happy because people always ask you would you do anything different no i'm still really happy with my wife still says there's errors in there that need to fix she's a highly accomplished copy editor why she didn't copy edit it is the story for the other day but i'm still really proud of the book yeah well i've thoroughly enjoyed uh reading it and i've thoroughly enjoyed talking you to this episode in this episode and the last one um final thing for me to say is thank you so much ron it's been an absolute pleasure so thank you for sharing all your insight wisdom and experience with us my great honor band i appreciate it and you know let's talk again soon
[00:46:02:23 - 00:46:23:02]
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