In this Marketing Over Coffee:
Learn about Inception, Credibility, Pre-Wiring and more!
Brought to you by our sponsors: LinkedIn and NetSuite
Oren Klaff talks to us about his latest book Flip The Script
Also check out the fantastic interview on his previous book Pitch Anything
Things are bought, they’re not sold
Racing in the Daytona 500
9:27 LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is how B2B Marketers and advertisers drive brand awareness and generate leads. It’s the only place where you can find over 610 million user accounts, all business focused, that you can target by title and other selects.
And we’ve got a special offer for Marketing over Coffee Listeners, you can redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit for your first campaign: Click here to get a $100 for your first campaign!
Why it needs to be doubled
What language was created for, and what we are pre-wired for
19:32 – 20:42 NetSuite by Oracle is the business management software that handles every aspect of your business in an easy to use cloud platform; giving you the visibility and control you NEED to GROW.
NetSuite is offering you valuable insights with a FREE guide – “Seven Key Strategies to Grow your Profits” at NetSuite.com/COFFEE
Jumping up to hot cognition
Plain Vanilla – getting it to the committee
Skin in the game and credibility
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Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.
Oren Klaff
This is marketing over coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.
John Wall
Good morning, welcome to marketing over coffee. I’m John Wall. Today, our guest he was with us about a year ago talking about his book Pitch Anything, which as far as I’m concerned is the best book you can get on deal making. There’s no better book to dive into to figure out what needs to be done and kind of what’s going on in the whole deal making process. But he’s back with his new book. It’s gonna be out August 13. It’s called flip the script. Oren Klaff. Thanks for joining us.
Oren Klaff
Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, we just need to may have flipped the script and Pitch Anything, make love to each other and turn into one book. Unfortunately, they’re two different publishers, so that cannot happen. But as you and I said a minute ago, Pitch Anything define what to do, in deal making, how to get a deal done, how to approach it, how people behave, how you You have to behave in order to create a sale, a deal a transaction and flip the script really fills in the gaps and shows you exactly what to do when say when you’re in those situations.
John Wall
Yeah, that’s what I loved about it was you know, Pitch Anything covers the whole realm of deal making but this book here really digs in and kind of tells you what you need to do step by step and where to go and you lead off talking about how you know most products are bought not sold. And everybody this is you know, every marketers lament that they’re putting out stuff that’s not interesting or just nobody wants to buy what they’ve got they can’t make a sale happen. Talk to us about this idea of Inception and then the fact that stuff is bought not sold like how do we work with this?
Oren Klaff
Yeah, so when we started experiencing the in our business, and I’ve helped 80,000 salespeople from the stage, you know, in person work from every form of sales, so government sales, IPO, selling equities, selling company stocks, only products, maybe not plastic Santos but everything Not including plastic sanas up to rocket ships. And in between, I’ve had some hand in trying to sell. And what we’re finding today is when you pitch, people are fact checking you, as you’re pitching literally on, you know, on the internet, on the computer, on the phone or in person. And no matter what you offer them, they’re looking for a better deal while you’re offering it. And they all they want is the information. They want to plumb the information from you, then they want you to go away, then they want to go to the internet and look for it for free, or cheaper or better terms. Anchor with your offer. Look for better terms negotiate from the offer that you’ve made with another vendor that magically showed up from England or Pakistan or the dark side of the moon that you didn’t even know was a competitor and then come back with a new bed and try and chisel you down or decide on their own without your help people today By they aren’t sold the secondhand information from you, they want you to go away while they do their independent research. And it’s trying to say one thing like this. There’s a ton of work in investment banking, you know, that’s how I make my money. I invest in companies, and I buy companies and then help them grow. Okay, we call this due diligence. Right and due diligence was an inside legal term for the last 50 years. Now you have housewives in Wisconsin. I’m gonna I’m gonna buy a washing machine. Oh, really? Did you do your due diligence, which basically means get only information right from the internet, go to the wire cutter, write their opinion, good Amazon, read a couple reviews, do due diligence, then go back to you and say, yeah, you know, I really like yours. But I could get the Hitachi you know, or I can get the Whirlpool for $100 less. Can you match that? No, okay, buy, things are bought. They aren’t sold.
John Wall
So how do we get around? I mean, where would where’s the place to start to make yourself different to rise above the rest of the flag? I mean, do you have to wait till they come back? Or is there any way to get around that?
Oren Klaff
So a guy comes into my office and I can give you 100 these stories, we don’t have time, but I’ll give you one or two of them guy comes in my office two weeks ago, and we pitched him and we don’t have a one call close in investment banking, right? Nobody decides to have you sell their company, you know, based on one meeting that we do talk to other companies because they you know, if you got a $30 million company, you have a lawyer and advisor and a CPA and but you know, and you look for an investor guy comes in, give him the pitch. He was Yeah, it all sounds really good. Send me the information, right. Yeah. You know, do what I can based on the pitch or anything he leaves goes out to the parking lot. A minute later comes back through the door. This is never good. It usually means somebody went to the car to get a gun like in white men can’t jump you know, did you forget your What did you forget something? walks in and goes No, he’s kidding. You’re in his checkbook, walks in the conference room and writes a check for $15,000 and goes here. I don’t know what it’s for, like, we don’t charge $15,000 for anything, like we charge a million dollars, we charge $50,000 we charge $5,000 for a conference, like we don’t have a thing that costs $15,000 What is this money for? But I’m also smart enough to not refuse $15,000 when it comes to me, and he goes, you know, here’s some money, send me over the agreement and let’s get started. And so that is when you are doing inception. Right? having people come up with the idea to work with you on their own. Because those ideas are resilient. Those ideas are people trust their own intuition. They do those kind of contracts and agreements and sales stick when somebody decides internally without you having to demand it suggested ply a yes out of them, that they should buy from you work with you be your Customer those are high margin high stick high quality long cycle customers. And so over time I’ve developed a systematic way to get people to come up with the idea of working with you on their own and propose it and give me another quick story I haven’t told anybody this john This is first time doing this on the air at some I guess risk without getting signups but whatever if I go to jail will not do it for you and and marketing over coffee. What other what other podcast is worth going to jail for? So I run a car in the Daytona 500 this year right so natural Carnage I like put my name on the rear bumper in three point tight but actually you know it’s it’s my partner is our car in the Daytona 500 childhood dream. Right We go to the drivers meeting. You know ahead of the dates tone of fiber I mean Daytona 500. Like you know, if you’re not a car fan, you may not understand the scale and scope but this is like America if you remove the Daytona 500 from America, and maybe remove the Super Bowl like America just like disappears like these are the pillars that hold up the nation, the Daytona 500 and the NFL Super Bowl. So it’s, you know, 200 quarter million people. They’re super important. I mean, it’s real. It’s not like can you explain it like so anyway, we go to the drivers meeting, Dale Earnhardt is in the drivers meeting JJ watches in the drivers meeting, like you know, 20 other guys of that caliber, and and we’re talking to someone I say to JJ watch, excuse me. Sorry, very interesting how you did all that football stuff, but I gotta go talk to that guy. So So standing over there’s Carlos Slim, right. world’s fifth sixth third richest guy. So I said excuse me to JJ watts go over to Carlos Slim talk to him for a few minutes. The drivers meeting breaks up drivers meetings. anybody tell you can only go 12 miles an hour during pit row. Turn three. You know rain last night is slippery. Watch out. We put arms In turn 12 you know, they really give you the thing so we go down to the field. There’s quarter million fans in the stadium and my car, Carlos Slim’s car are parked next to each other about 30 feet away. And my partner goes, I really want to talk to Carlos Slim. Okay, go and talk to him. He’s like, Oh, I don’t know what to say. So I go, okay. So walk maybe 10 feet of the 30 feet. I go, Hey, Carlos, you may recognize me from the jobs mean, I’m like, hey, come over here for a minute. This is not like lap 400 of the Daytona 500. Right where there’s nothing to do. This is the start of the race. He’s there with his team. his crew chief his model his driver nanny Suarez, right? He’s got things to do at the start of the Daytona 500 yet, waiver over to him he loonies, all of that in his car and the photographer and the media and he comes over to our car. And he hangs out with us for five or six minutes taking photos talking. Right? That
Oren Klaff
is inception, putting the idea in somebody else’s mind that they should look Leave what they’re doing and work with you want to work with you do something with you give you a contract that so so helping people decide to buy from you by taking them through very specific steps. So they come up with the idea that they’re going to do business with you. That’s what I think is important about this book flip the script. And the idea you mentioned maybe 30 minutes ago, when I started down this rant, of inception.
John Wall
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Oren Klaff
Right and to be able to do that to get the
John Wall
idea in front of them. Obviously, being an expert is at the core of this, you have to have everything lined up and in the book to go in depth of, you know how to script this stuff and be planned and be ready to go. But if you can throw us what’s one of the best ways to be ready to start that going, how can you break in and get them come to you?
Oren Klaff
Let’s, let’s unpack that a bit. Right? You first of all, people will not do business with you until they believe what you do is hard. If you have nothing out if you don’t listen to the rest of these podcasts, if you have just found out that you have cancer of the eyeball, and you have to go in for surgery right now. That’s one thing that you have to take away is that people only will eventually decide to do business with you once they believe that what you do is very hard, right? How will they learn that what you do is hard. Mainly because you’re in a expert in something, and you can unpack how difficult it is to solve the kind of problem they have. Right now there’s two ways of showing someone that you’re an expert. Okay? And I say showing that you can either tell them you’re an expert, which is what nine out of 1099 out of 100 people do. They tell them as a PhD or staff as a PhD, we’ve done this for Microsoft. Here’s our logos. Here’s our social media proof. Here’s a use case, we’ve done this all the time. Or you could tell them you’re an expert, or you can show them and for me, that is step one is you show somebody through language and deeds, you are an expert, and you don’t have to tell them you’re an expert. And so that’s the first step in Inception is showing someone that you are an expert in solving their problem. For me, tripping off to someone that you are a expert, and are knowledgeable and can speak their language. In fact, this is where we win or lose deals. If we can’t speak to someone a little bit in their language, showing that we are in their field, that we can talk their language, and then we’re in some small way or large way appear, and that we understand the terminology and the set of ideas and the KPIs and the technologies and the tech stack and the you know, related problems that are there specific language, we lose the deal. If we can show them that we speak their language, then we have a good shot of winning it. So the tipping off to someone that you are appear to them at their status, can speak their language, and then moving on to show that you’re an expert in their business are the two critical steps to getting into creating Inception or by definition, bringing them to the idea To form the idea themselves that they should do business with you.
John Wall
One thing that you thrown out there, which was really got me was talking about how 80% isn’t good enough like you really need to be showing somebody something huge. talk more about that. Like, why why is there this threshold of how good it needs to be? Or? And how do you work that into set that up?
Oren Klaff
Yeah. So I think how we got to that subject of really showing people that by working with us, they can make a huge increase in happiness and performance in ROI, in stepping up and competitiveness in profitability, you know, whatever it is, your value proposition is. So to showing someone that they’re going to do a little bit better than what they’re using. Now. Typically, you can win sales by saying, Hey, you know, you’re going to improve 10% you’re going to have a 15% improvement in performance. You can certainly win sales like that. But if you certainly want to be compelling, if somebody feels like they’re going to double on a value proposition, things are going to be easier, things are going to be smoother, they’re going to be more profitable, they’re gonna make more money you’re going to customer service is going to be better it all inclusively. This is gonna be twice as good as whatever they using now, that is a critical step in creating Inception and creating the idea internally. So the way I got there as I said, Hey, a lot of our presentations and probably john a lot of the people who listen to your podcasts sell fairly complex things. I mean, you do have a sense of you know, the millions of people that listen to you the kinds of things that they market
John Wall
Yeah, Software as a Service marketing tech stuff and yeah, like he says expertise stuff and stuff that they just don’t even have the chops to build on their own.
Oren Klaff
Yeah, okay. So So hear me out. I think if there’s one thing that we you know, cover seriously, and in all earnestness language was not built to describe SaaS software, accounting software, financial services, insurance. You No contracting, audit, IRS, you know, auditing. That’s not what language was built to do is describe those language was built. We evolved to use language as a tool to describe danger. And threat. That’s the purpose of language. That’s what it’s good at. That’s what it requires no training, right? requires years of training to use language to describe how to, you know, to do accounting audit to do a surgical procedure to do loitering, you know, that can take take 20 years of practice takes no practice at all to say there’s a fire a quarter mile down the road on the left by old lady Smith’s house next to a yellow car, it’s burning, you know, at 15 by 15 feet and it’s growing 15% in size, the fire every minute and a half, like a five year old can do that. Right? That’s because that’s what life language was built to do. We took that and I said, Okay, that led me to the notion that there are some ideas in the mind that are pre wired, right communication about danger, communication about how much results, you need to get communication of how to work with people. And so what I really did is look for pre wired, ideas, things that existed already in the human mind, you could just tap into this is not in the book, but I think this is the same concept I heard on NPR. And this is really one of the things that led me a bit down this path is if you think about the drugs like cocaine, I can’t tell you too much about cocaine. I’m not a user. Sounds fantastic. From all the descriptions I’ve heard, would love to be a user it just seems like I’m busy in my current life of a five year old and running a business and printing books and stuff but when I slow down a little bit, love to try this stuff out. But anyway, why does cookie work right? Why does porn work? Why does chocolate cake in your your and have a have a huge meal You’ve been at Mastro seven to me two nights ago, you had a porterhouse steak and you hit all the bread in the beginning and you had a plate full of, you know, broccoli, and then you had an appetizer, and then somebody else shared a dish with you. You’re like eating 5000 calories, just 4000 calories more than you need, and 4500 calories more than you’re supposed to. And then they walk in with chocolate cake. You’re like, Yeah, right. I’ll have to, like two chocolate cake, cocaine porn. Why do these things, you know, are so attractive. It’s not that the brain has never seen this stuff before. And it’s so incredibly novel, right? That we got to run for it as fast as we can. It’s because there are receptors in the human mind for these things. Already. There’s receptors for the chemicals in cocaine, there’s receptors for sugar, and that that these things super saturate those receptors, right and overload them, and that’s why people love it man, but the receptors are there. So what receptors are already in the Mind for your ideas. How can you take the information you have and form them? So there’s already pre wired receptors for those ideas, because I can tell you for sure there’s not a pre wired receptor, you know for SaaS software that plugs in your API, scrubs your data, normalizes the data, applies some AI. And there’s some, you know, marketing automation and outreach to receive some return email on a lead form and then create a pipeline into pipe drive. There’s no chapter in the human mind for that, for sure.
John Wall
We have to pause for just a moment here to thank Oracle, NetSuite for their support of marketing over coffee. We’re always talking on the show about the challenges of working around siloed data and the headaches that creates to work around it. The fact remains that if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business. Rather than trying to squeeze data out of a hodgepodge of business systems. We’d like to introduce you to NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite by Oracle is the business management software that handles every aspect of your business in an easy Easy to use Cloud Platform, giving you the visibility and control you need to grow with NetSuite. You save time, money and unneeded headaches by managing sales, finance and accounting orders and HR instantly right from your desktop or your phone. That’s why NetSuite is the world’s number one cloud business system. And right now NetSuite is offering you valuable insights with a free guide, seven key strategies to grow your profits and netsuite.com slash coffee. That’s NetSuite comm slash coffee to download your FREE guide, seven key strategies to grow your profits, again NetSuite comm slash coffee swing on over there and grab a copy of that report. And we appreciate them for their support of the show.
Oren Klaff
And so how do you take that and form those incredibly important ideas, so they fit pre wired ideas of mine so that’s what I dedicated a whole chapter in the book to is pre wired ideas, but I think the one that you touched on is this sense of two acts when we discovered and research to offer somebody 10 Next is bullshit. There’s no tenex like real critical minded, thoughtful people have money to spend, don’t believe they’re going to get a 10 times return by buying your SAS API plug in for accounting software. Okay, but they also don’t want to 10% you know, to change our system again, our server and put it past our CTO, you know, retrain our staff learn how to use it, a 15% improvement isn’t enough. So where are between 15% and 10? x? Is there a real sense of value and already answer the question and that’s it hovers around two x Look, you’re going to double what you’re getting. And I understand if you are doing wealth management or you’re selling investments or real estate, you know, or performance, a, you know, you don’t have you can’t double but if your overall value proposition feels like you’re doubling what they had before. Then you’re tapping into a pre wired set of ideas like double that’s pretty I switched when I can Double what I currently have. So that’s a target that I feel really is a pre wired idea.
John Wall
Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, even if it’s something where, you know, they’re going to go from two to 4%, you can say like, you’re doubling what you’re getting. It’s something big, it’s something sizable, but they’re in front of them.
Oren Klaff
It’s just such an easy, there’s just that receptor, right? There’s just not a receptor for you’re gonna improve 50% that requires critical analysis and requires thoughtfulness requires getting over accounting and getting the sign off and, and, you know, the analytical mind, right, and very cold analytical processes. When you tap into, hey, we’re going to double what we’re doing now. And that gets into a hot process, a hot cognition, hot emotional process. We kind of shrugged our shoulders. That’s pretty good. You know, if we come down, we’re doing let’s go for it. And it circumnavigates all the cold analytical processes that stop sales.
John Wall
So one thing that you know, in this book and the last book you talk about, go into detail on the deals that you’re doing and what’s going on One thing that jumped out at me in this book, we don’t need to go into the details of it. But there’s this Hawaiian deal that you had going on. And you talk about how, at one point, you are like, Oh, my God, this is a monster deal. And this is going to take my whole career in my company and everything. And it just surprised me that you done thousands of deals helped thousands of people, but still even you have these moments where you’re like, Oh, my God, this is just an incredible storm. And what the hell am I gonna do with this? Yeah, talk more about that. So the thrill never goes away, and the fear never leaves.
Oren Klaff
So that particular deal. It’s, that’s a really interesting chapter, that chapter is called plain vanilla. And so what happened there as I got into a deal, so my partner said, we were going to do this deal in Hawaii. And it was just large, right? I mean, we’re talking 40 $50 million. And I said, let me just see if there’s a market for the deal before we commit to it. And this is you know how I got over my skis. The expression is and I went called a bunch of potential investors. couldn’t call it a timber thing like that. And I said, Hey, this is the deal, we have $50 million. Are you guys interested? Well, it’s Hawaii, everybody’s interested in why, but at the end, they like, it was, you know, tepid to lukewarm interest. So went back to my partner, and I said, hey, look, let’s not do this deal. I can’t find demand for it in the market demand, you know, that’s the language of marketing, right? Can’t find demand for it. And he goes, oops, already signed the deal. So I get stuck with the deal is just way too big for the pipeline for the demand for the market. And we were committed to it with millions of dollars. And so it was just too complicated of a deal to sell to the current investors and, and so that chapter is all about how taking something complicated with many different features, technology, social nuances, you know, pricing differences, a super high quality in some areas, like in that piece of real estate, when it really really high rent bumps, five 6% rent bumps, but we also had tenants with no credit, right? And these are like In some areas, the risk is way too high. And in other areas, the risk was way too good. It was just a very unusual, complicated, non standard, many, many different features, many, many different benefits. That was exciting, but confusing. And so the rest of that chapter is what I recommend everybody go through with how to take something complicated. You know, we worked on a API company that takes in data from legacy data systems, goes out on the internet and finds, you know, on Amazon and, and eBay and different vendors, data structures reorganizes, that data to the correct data structure automatically builds an API publishes that API allows you to test it anyway, I could go on right. So how to take that and make it plain vanilla, the kind of thing people just buy every single day already for the business has one small improvement, we’ll make it fit into the next generation. I have business, right? And so a really learn there when you have complicated stuff. It’s not that you have to dumb it down or make it simple. Right? What you have to do is make it seem plain vanilla, this is what everybody is doing today. Right? And that commoditize is the competition. And then you put a layer on top of it that is sexy, unique and understandable. And to really learn there, we ended up for that project that this concept and encourage people listening is not how can I make my things simple, or easy to understand. But how can I make it seem plain vanila with one major improvement, it’s easy to understand.
John Wall
That’s great. Yeah, you know, so much of the stuff I see for the marketer. This is the critical stuff that you learn how to do this, and it bridges the gap. And this is what gets you to to cmo or CEO, you know, you’re not just running ads and doing the trade shows, you know, you’re actually coming up with the language for this kind of stuff and scripting and help build successful salespeople.
Oren Klaff
One sense of this is like, I spent my career with this one innovation, not how do I pitch to or create a marketing idea or a marketing program or campaign to one person? How do I deliver them a package so this can go straight to the committee and be in committee format? Right? Because today things are bought not so people want the information, they’re gonna assemble the information themselves, the best, they know how, and then take it up to the CFO, CEO, you know, whoever in the buyer to get sign off in which you won’t be there. How do you get your ideas, your proposal? You know, whatever it is, you have, yes, you want to attract people, but then how do you get them in the format that committees are used to looking at can sign off on right? And for me, if you have your protagonist or the person in the company that is your proponent or supporter, come and go Hey, guys, this is What everybody’s doing today, it’s Google Docs. But it also has this API layer, which we really need. This is what everybody’s doing today summarizes, you know, 100 technical details that they would otherwise have to explain, you know, of course, if it’s true. So this is what everybody’s doing today, but it’s also positioned for tomorrow and where things are going. That’s how you sell to a committee.
John Wall
Another thing that came up in the book, you had a number of stories where you’re talking about how you’re different because this business is going to mean more to you. It’s you’ve got more risk, and it seemed great way to shoot an arrow at, you know, if you’re fighting against a fortune 50 company, you just say, hey, look, these guys, your business means nothing to them. Tell us more about that.
Oren Klaff
Yeah, so I think if you’re the guy, either marketing or sales and there’s so much blending of those roles today. Right and you do everything perfectly where we see people lose deals is this idea of skin in the game, right? And this is one of those pre wired ideas. If somebody believes that you’re just going for a commission, once you get that commission, you’re going to be gone. I think in a flip, you’re going to be flipped over to customer service or nothing worse, right? That is one of the walkaway points. They can love everything else the value proposition, what they’re going to get your reputation, the the product, the product, the the solution that it provides, how quick is going to solve the problem and everything like that. But if there’s a sense that you don’t have skin in the game, it’s often a lose or walkaway point. It’s very easy for salespeople to just say, hey, look, you know, I’m gonna be here after the sale. I’ve been in this company for 10 years, I have stock in the company, you know, we’re heading for an IPO. I want to be here for another 10 years, I will be with you the whole customer journey, right as you use the product and call me at any time so that that holds water, but if you’re a marketer, you know what are ways that you can indicate or if you don’t have that narrative, You have skin in the game? And that is a real question that I think people need to answer for themselves. I mean, the the easiest thing answer is, you know, we have announced a certain goal, we’re going to get 1000 customers, we’re gonna have a million customers, we’re going to, you know, go public, you know, I’m next in line to be the vice president remarketing, some important high stakes goal, right. And then you position the customer whether in writing, or in speaking, of being critical to attaining that goal, right. So at this point, right, with the announcement that we’re going to be the leader in the industry and overtake Microsoft, every sit this account, I would rather say no to it didn’t have any problems. This has to go perfectly. Right. And so unfortunately, that falls on me if it’s a Saturday or Sunday or to 2am in the morning, I need to be there. This account needs to go perfect because our next hundred deals need to be the best deals of our lives if we’re going to overtake Microsoft. So I M joining you in the success of this account, this business this installation, this contract and so whether you have it in writing in some way or you have it spoken skin in the game is something that marketers and salespeople leave out far too often and they don’t even know why the deal fell apart. But that can often be tied back to the problem. The buyer doesn’t believe you’re going to be there after the check is written
John Wall
something How about that then having to believe that you’ve got skin in the game? And the idea that it you know, you talk a lot about how kind of the salespeople whoever’s working the account. A lot of times it looks like they’re they’re rolling through personalities, you know, it’s kind of like like you said up front when they want to do the deal. Everything’s great. But yeah, you know, you kind of have to get to that point where you’re being honest with them about how you’ve got skin in the game. And then like you say, that you’re not getting thrown over the fence when the after the deal is done.
Oren Klaff
Arm especially in real estate, especially in timeshare, especially in autos, right so you go to buy a car By the way, if anybody sells cars sell me a car, I’m the easiest car buyer in the world I walk in this is my negotiation strategy. How much is it? I have a lot of cars, and I feel bad for car salesmen for killing them, and I just buy it, but I rolster to negotiate or get or walk away, when, you know, ask a couple questions and get flown over to somebody who doesn’t know, me doesn’t know my account. And I just feel like the salesperson is just trying to make a commission and wheeling into finance manager or the service manager or you know, another salesperson to just answer my questions and get me to shut up. And especially when I’m buying a quarter million dollar car, that really I’m sensitive to that. So throwing somebody over the transom to another person in the company just to answer the questions without any sense of guiding that person through, you know, whatever you call the customer journey or experience or buying experience or happiness signals that you don’t have skin in the game. And that it is one of the big reasons that sales dropped When everything else, you know, as I said before, when everything else is correct.
John Wall
Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that as the handoff is that actual signal of not having skin like it’s one thing to tell people, this is why we have skin. But again, when you’re kind of acting like you don’t care, that is you’re demonstrating you don’t have skin, you’re demonstrating
Oren Klaff
you’re showing, hey, I don’t care. But just going ahead, look, you know, once you talk to our finance manager, and he’ll answer all the questions. The correct path to that is, it’s a little different for marketers, you know, because they’re not always directly looking eyeball to eyeball with the customer. But the correct path is one of my best friends here is the finance manager. We help each other out. Right? Let me tell him what’s going on here. Ask him to do as a favor for me the best that he can and let me even see if I can just get the answer from him. So you don’t have to meet an entirely new different person. Right? Come back. Hey, look, this. There. It is a little involved. Joe doesn’t feel like I can correctly explain it. Let me go back with you. You know, let’s meet with Joe for a few minutes. I do Hold on, let’s keep it as short as possible. You guys want to get back to your weekend, you know, we’re not gonna try and sell you under combing. But we do need the finance guy to help us with this. I’m gonna go with you and get to spend a few minutes with Joe, again, I trust him to treat you the same way that I would want to myself.
John Wall
All right, well, so we were talking about, you know, cars and speed and you talked a lot about motorcycles. A lot of that ties right into how to be compelling, you know, you go into that in the book, what’s like one secret thing that a marketer can use to to make themselves legitimate and compelling like what do you have to do to do that?
Oren Klaff
One of them examples of using the book about being compelling is the scene you know, with everybody’s familiar with from white men can’t jump. There’s a scene where they are cheating. Some of the other players are running a grift right by using Woody Harrelson as the ringer right. They’re making Woody Harrelson seem like a chump. Take the chump. Everybody remembers that line. Right? And so there’s swindling or grifting guys out there. So a guy runs out of money one of the players and he then he’s like, hey, I need another $500 to stay in the game against what Harrelson and Wesley Snipes. And so he goes to rob a liquor store and the owner of the liquor store immediately recognize even though the guys wanted the robbers wearing a ski mask, you know, he recognized and laymen is that you take that damn mask off. But I do to everybody’s watch that clip, if they don’t remember it from the movie, because when you go in with a mask, and you’re speaking in different voices, to the same person from different angles, right, and you seem like you have different motivations, and you are a different person at different times in the sale. Whether it’s a 32nd spot, whether it’s a landing page or you’re there in person, by showing different personalities in the same marketing piece. You are losing compelling this because People are compelling, are absolutely dead, stick to their guns, the same person, same set of values from the first second that they start the meeting or the pitch or the biess, or the marketing letter or the landing page to the last. If you’ve seemed like your values are shifting and you’re wearing masks, people will see through you immediately, and it causes you to not be compelling. And people aren’t compelling obviously have a lot harder time closing and converting.
John Wall
All right, that’s great. The book is flip the script available on Amazon August 13. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes, you can check that out. Be sure to sign up for the marketing over coffee newsletter. You can get all these links pushed to you don’t have to worry about it as your operating heavy machinery or drinking or whatever you can get it pushed and click through we get it without any trouble, or and thanks for joining us.
Oren Klaff
Well, I appreciate it, john. This is you know, one of the podcasts that we’re always glad to come back to and we tell people to look at you know, you guys dead center for the kinds of things that I worry about everyday is how to communicate how to communicate in writing, and how to get people to want to buy your stuff. instead of you having to sell them and ask for the order.
John Wall
That’s great. That’ll do it for this week. So until next week, enjoy the coffee. Thank you,
Oren Klaff
john. You’ve been listening to marketing over coffee. Christopher Penn logs at Christopher s pen.com. Read more from john J. Wolf. At jw 51 fifty.com. The marketing over coffee theme song is called mellow g by funk masters. And you can find it at music alley from meh vo or follow the link in our show notes.
Oren, as usual, you are amazing.
You are helping whoever hired you to sell regardless if they are really better than their competitors, so here is a question, by being famous, many of your prospects for your core business have heard already your techniques, they have already taken a look behind the curtain, how do you address the fact that they have been already inoculated and may override their crock brain?
The technique is to find the best way to prove you are an expert. The prospect doesn’t care about the technique, they are either going to believe you are an expert who is going to treat them right or not, and most of the time that’s what the deal is riding on.