Nick Morgan, Public Words

Inspirational Speakers, Inspirational Stories - 3 - Paul Dunn

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Alice Herz-Sommer
• 2. Sir Ken Robinson
• 3. Paul Dunn
• 4. Jill Bolte Taylor
• 5. Dalton Sherman
• 6. Coach John Wooden
• 7. Henry V
• 8. Melissa Etheridge
• 9. Taylor Mali
• 10. William Ury

Paul Dunn was one of the first 10 employees at H-P in Australia, and went on to start his own computer company, as well as a number of other companies and ideas -- all of which seemed to make millions.  He's one of the world's smartest and most successful entrepreneurs you've probably never heard of unless you're from Australia or New Zealand or you've heard him speak somewhere around the world. 

At some point in his career, Paul started mentoring others, traveling around the world giving back, teaching others how to succeed as entrepreneurs, and inspiring people to work with him to create a more joyful world.  He's currently the chairman of an organization called B1G1, or Buy One, Give One.  B1G1 is running 612 projects in 28 countries to date, from feeding the hungry to restoring vision to the blind.  It's an extraordinary organization that was started by a Japanese woman and entrepreneur with vision and heart -- and one of Paul's mentees. 

Here's Paul at a TEDx event in New Zealand, telling the story of B1G1 and more.  By the way, this video astonished me because Paul mentions my name at the end -- but that's not the reason to watch it.  Watch it because Paul has a huge heart and a compelling vision for how we are connected, as one, on this little planet.  Enjoy!

 

Inspirational Speakers, Inspirational Stories - 2 - Sir Ken Robinson

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Alice Herz-Sommer
• 2. Sir Ken Robinson
• 3. Paul Dunn
• 4. Jill Bolte Taylor
• 5. Dalton Sherman
• 6. Coach John Wooden
• 7. Henry V
• 8. Melissa Etheridge
• 9. Taylor Mali
• 10. William Ury

I'm continuing my series of blogs on inspirational speakers with inspirational stories.  It's the season, and anyway the world seems to be in a dark mood.  Let's see if we can lift the spirits by sharing some inspiration!  Please send me your most inspirational videos and I'll post the best ones.  No politics please - of course there are many great political speakers, but they're too divisive.

My second inspirational speaker is Sir Ken Robinson, an impassioned and articulate campaigner on behalf of creativity in schools (and life).  If you've been lucky enough to have a teacher who changed your life -- or suffered from bad teaching -- then you'll appreciate Sir Ken's message.  He manages to be witty, wise, and inspiring all at the same time.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

Inspirational Speakers, Inspirational Stories - 1 - Alice Herz-Sommer

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Alice Herz-Sommer
• 2. Sir Ken Robinson
• 3. Paul Dunn
• 4. Jill Bolte Taylor
• 5. Dalton Sherman
• 6. Coach John Wooden
• 7. Henry V
• 8. Melissa Etheridge
• 9. Taylor Mali
• 10. William Ury

I'm going to start a series of blogs on inspirational speakers with inspirational stories.  It's the season, and anyway the world seems to be in a dark mood.  Let's see if we can lift the spirits by sharing some inspiration!  Please send me your most inspirational videos and I'll post the best ones.  No politics please - of course there are many great political speakers, but they're too divisive. 

OK, my first inspirational speaker is Alice Herz-Sommer, who, at 106 years old, is the world's oldest concentration camp survivor.  She is a musician, and so was sent to a camp where she had to perform for the Nazis.  But she says the music kept her alive, and she is living testimony to the power of music to feed the soul, celebrate life, and keep death at bay.  Here's a little bit of her story:

 

 

 

By the way, Alice turns 107 on Friday.  You can send her birthday wishes to:  alice107bday@gmail.com.  Happy Birthday, Alice!

Communication and Sales - 5 - How to build to a close

This is the final installment in a week on selling and communication.  Five days, five tips.  Put all of these to work and I guarantee you improved results for virtually any kind of selling. 

Involve your customer with small steps to get them comfortable to take the bigger ones. 

It’s imperative that you don’t do all the work in the sales process.  If you keep your clients passive, don’t be surprised when it’s hard for them to suddenly get active and agree to close the sale.  Too many salespeople think that it’s all up to them.  But the real secret is to get the customer working on the deal too.  Begin with little steps, steps that don’t involve big commitments, and then work up from there. 

In the 1987 comedy Tin Men, 1960s-era aluminum siding salesman Richard Dreyfuss initiates a younger protégé into the magical world of sales.  In one call on a housewife, Dreyfuss drops a dollar bill on the floor, and allows the housewife to pick it up for him.  He explains to the initiate that he can tell whether or not he’s going to get a sale with this trick.  If the housewife picks up the bill, she’s a nice person and can be talked into aluminum siding.  If she doesn’t, she won’t be won over.

The psychology is right, but the execution is wrong.  Dreyfuss should have been seeking to create a real relationship with his customers, rather than just exploiting them.  And by getting them involved, not in sneaky tests of their malleability, but in genuine steps along the road to the sale, he would have increased the amount of aluminum siding gracing the houses of Baltimore. 

Take your clients from passive to active.  Involve them in the process.  Don’t do all the work. 

What are your communications sales secrets?  Let me know, and I’ll put the best ones in a follow up blog. 

Here are the 5 communications sales tips in an easy list:

1. It’s not about your product, it’s about listening to your customer’s need.  

2. It’s not about eye contact; it’s about personal space. 

3. To close a sale, you need to first establish two things with your customer:  credibility and trust. 

4. Closing a sale is all about understanding the customer’s decision-making process.

5. Involve your customer with small steps to get them comfortable to take the bigger ones. 

What would you add to the list? 

 

Communication and Sales - 4 - Where is your customer?

I’m doing a week on selling and communication.  Five days, five tips.  Put all of these to work and I guarantee you improved results for virtually any kind of selling. 

Closing a sale is all about understanding the customer’s decision-making process.

Where are your clients or customers when they get in touch with you? 

Are they happy with the product they have, but want to be reassured that they made the right decision? 

Or are they in the throes of the problem, uncertain of which way to go, looking for answers? 

Or have they already decided on a course of action, and are basically looking for you to take the order? 

Each of these states of mind requires very different handling; it’s axiomatic that you need to understand your customers clearly in order to be able to talk to them effectively. 

Customers in the first stages of decision-making just need help with framing the problem.  Less information is better.  Just give them a statistic, or a very brief verbal portrait of what the future might look like.  Do you realize that the 2011 version of the Fabulator uses half the energy of its predecessors? 

Customers deep in the problem want information – comparisons, data, detail.  This stage is where all that product or service knowledge you have is actually useful.  Don’t go to the point of eyes glazing over, but do satisfy the urge for information.  Both models will get the job done, but the Fabulator-B is smaller and quieter, not to mention faster operating. 

And clients who have already made up their mind will appreciate some visualizing of the benefits, but very little else.  They don’t want to be slowed down, so don’t make it hard for them to buy.  You’ve made a great choice.  The Fabulator Supreme will take care of all your issues and also make you a spectacular cup of morning coffee.  Now let’s get that paperwork out of the way. 

That’s why it’s so important to listen to your customers before you launch into any kind of explanation.  If you don’t know where they are, you can’t point them to where they should be going. 

Communication and Sales - 3 - The secret to a lasting customer relationship

I’m doing a week on selling and communication.  Five days, five tips.  Put all of these to work and I guarantee you improved results for virtually any kind of selling. 

To close a sale, you need to first establish two things with your customer:  credibility and trust. 

To succeed with an audience, or a customer, you need to establish credibility first and trust second.  Credibility comes first, because that’s what happens when you show that you understand the customer’s problem.  Trust comes second, because that’s what you establish when you solve that problem. 

Failing either one, your relationship with the client or customer won’t be durable.  Without credibility, you’ll find that your customer will be likely to go elsewhere in search of expertise, even if they trust you as a human being.  Do you really understand my paint color issues?  Without trust, a client will be tempted to mine you for expertise, and then go make the ultimate purchase from someone else.  Will you really follow through on the after-sale? 

How do you establish these two key aspects of a relationship?  Begin by listening to the customer’s problem.  Show that you understand it as well or better than the client does, and you’ll create credibility.  She gets that I loathe chartreuse!  Finally, someone who knows something about paint!

Then, show how you can solve that problem.  You’ll forge a strong bond of trust with that client when you take away the point of pain that sent them to the marketplace in the first place.  That shade of lavender will be perfect for the room. 

Credibility and trust.  The two key ingredients for a strong, enduring relationship with a customer. 

Communication and Sales - 2

I’m doing a week on selling and communication.  Five days, five tips.  Put all of these to work and I guarantee you improved results for virtually any kind of selling. 

It’s not about eye contact; it’s about personal space. 

Of course eye contact is important to communicating – and selling.  But it’s not as important as most people seem to think.  The exquisite dance of eye contact between two people who are talking to one another is largely regulated by our unconscious minds.  The point is to signal – along with a symphony of other gestures – when one person is done or almost done and the other person should start talking.  It’s only noticed when one person indulges in too much – or too little – eye contact.  Then it interferes with the regulation of the conversation. 

It’s like catching the eye of a waiter.  A good waiter makes it effortless; the harried or incompetent make it difficult. 

More important to communication and to sales is the amount of space between the two people.  We all have incredibly sensitive monitoring capabilities keeping constant track of where we – and everyone else – is in space.  It’s for obvious safety reasons, it’s mostly unconscious, and it works very well. 

We monitor four zones of space.  Twelve feet or more is public space – and our unconscious brains don’t pay much attention to that, because that means that people are far enough away that we have time to react. 

Twelve feet to four feet is social space.  That’s warmer, and our brains are now paying attention, but it’s still a cool relationship.  Things heat up in personal space – four feet to a foot and a half.  And things get really hot in intimate space – a foot and a half to zero. 

Here’s what’s important about that:  The only significant things that happen between people happen in personal and intimate space.  As a sales person, you can’t go into intimate space, usually, so here’s the takeaway – to close a sale you must get into the personal space of the client/customer.  It’s why car salespeople spend so much time shaking your hand – they want to build your trust by getting into your personal space repeatedly.  Good tactic, just a bit overdone. 

For the rest of us, a successful sale involves the delicate art of creating trust without pushing it.  Use personal space subtly and tactfully and you’ll accomplish this with style.  Let the eye contact take care of itself, unless you’re the Rainman. 

Communication and Sales - 1

I’m going to do a week on selling and communication.  Five days, five tips.  Put all of these to work and I guarantee you improved results for virtually any kind of selling. 

It’s not about your product, it’s about listening to your customer’s need.  

Most salespeople know that they should listen to the client, but too few of them do, and usually not soon enough.  And they don’t listen in the right way.  You should be listening for the underlying messages more than the superficial ones.  What emotion is the (potential) customer putting forward?  Excitement about a new purchase?  Fear about a new technology?  Resistance to change?  Resentment at the old product? 

What’s memorable – and important to people – in communication is emotion; that’s what you should be listening for and responding to, not just the expressed content.  If you acknowledge a client’s emotions, and figure out an appropriate way to respond to them, you’ll be his favorite salesperson in no time. 

Begin by reflecting back the basic messages.  “So what I hear you saying is that you’re in the market for a new flibbertigibbet, is that right?”  Once you get the basics settled, then move on to the emotions.  Ask questions to elicit them, like, “Were you sorry to see the old one go, or was it good riddance to bad rubbish?”

Keep it light; this is a sale, not therapy.  But don’t duck from stronger emotions if they come up.  Put on your therapist hat and go to work.  Your goal in all this is to be able to complete the following sentence:  “Customer X is in the market for a Y, and she’s Z about it.”  X is the customer, Y is the product, and Z is the customer’s attitude. 

You’ll have time to sell your customer on products, features, and upgrades later.  For now, focus on establishing a connection.  We want to feel that connection is real and strong enough to last through the after-sale (or repeat-sale) care, so don’t rush it or fake it.  Connections between people get established at the surface first, but if they’re to be durable, then they must have emotional glue to hold them together. 

The Secret to Moving Your Audience to Action

Speeches are supposed to inspire.  But more than that, if you’re going to get everyone together in a room in this virtual age, you should change the world.  That’s why I started my first book with the words, “The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.”

So how do you do that?  I give a much longer answer in my book, but here’s the short one.  Basically, our minds are constructed to want to solve problems.  Give me a problem, as an audience member, and I’ll get to work solving it.  But there’s a caveat.  If it’s your problem, I won’t necessarily be motivated to solve it.  I’ll be concerned, perhaps, and I might even donate some time, attention, or moolah, but I won’t get really worked up. 

If it’s my problem, on the other hand, you’ve got me.  I will be motivated to solve that problem.  I will get to work changing the world. 

So that’s the secret.  As a speaker, ask yourself, what’s the problem the audience has for which my information is the solution?  Then, talk about that problem.  First, before you offer your solution.  If you can convince the audience that it does indeed have that problem, then it will move heaven and earth to work with you to solve it. 

The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.  No excuses.  Get to work. 

Getting to Know Both Your Brains

Anyone who is interested in communications and the brain should spend a little time with Heribert Watzke, food scientist and researcher into what he calls the little or lower brain.  It turns out that you’ve got 100 million neurons – 20 different varieties  -- in your gut, connected to the emotional centers in your bigger or upper brain, the one in your head.  Those neurons are mostly concerned with keeping you alive and fed, but they are also responsible for your ‘gut feel’ – that sense you have in your stomach when things are right or wrong. 

So you literally do think with your gut – and paying attention to that busy little brain down there is a good first step to being able to think with your whole brain.  If you can think with your whole brain, you can communicate with your whole brain, and greatly increase your presence and awareness with everyone and everything around you. 

The explosion of brain research in the last decade or so is revealing two extraordinary things about our huge, powerful, and largely unconscious minds.  First is that neurons are incredibly specialized.  Second is that they are surprisingly plastic.  That is, they can learn to do new things when the old roles are no longer useful. 

That means that we can almost certainly improve upon our current rather limited abilities to communicate with each other.  Increased awareness of our non-verbal signals in communications, to take only one example, brings with it a huge increase in our ability to read others. 

We are just beginning to understand the role that our brains play in communications, not to mention the rest of our bodies.  Watzke’s research is a step toward a greater understanding.  Watzke has an accent, and it takes a little patience to follow him, but the result is well worth the effort. 

 

 

How to Communicate Like Kennedy

50 years ago yesterday, Senator John F. Kennedy wrapped up an exhausting presidential campaign at the Boston Garden with a speech to his most loyal supporters.  He’s clearly tired, and the speech doesn’t soar quite the way his inaugural would, but watch the excerpts for 3 things that Kennedy did particularly well, and from which any public speaker can learn:

1.    Let your points land.  Far too many speakers don’t wait for the audience.  In this case, with tens of thousands of people listening, Kennedy shows his mastery of audience interaction by waiting for them at every important point.  We say, “give” a speech, and that’s an essential idea that’s often lost:  you give the speech to the audience.  It’s the audience’s speech.  Let them have it.  Don’t talk over them or past them. 
2.    Gesture powerfully and simply.  Kennedy’s gestures are strong – to a fault, since he overuses the jabbing forefinger.  But at the end of the clip you’ll see him open his hand when he makes the ‘ask’ of the audience, and then make a fist, to show emotion at the conclusion.  What he lacks in subtlety, he more than makes up for in power and simplicity.
3.    Stand tall and believe in your message.  Kennedy’s posture may have had something to do with a bad back, but he stands tall and conveys great self-confidence in his message.  Your posture signals to an audience how you feel about your subject, and Kennedy’s posture showed no self-doubt.   When you stand up to give a speech, stand straight and proud.  That way the audience will give you a real hearing. 

Here’s the clip.  Enjoy!

 

 

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Ted Sorensen, presidential advisor and speechwriter with a flair for the memorable phrase.   You are missed. 

How to Communicate Virtually

I often get asked about virtual communications -- webinars, audio conferences, and so on.  How do you keep people engaged in that form of communication?  In this final podcast in the series, I offer some tips, as well as a surprising fact about virtual trust.  The podcast lasts about 4 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

 

Nick Morgan Interview-6- Oct 2010

 

How You Can Be Charismatic

For the fifth podcast in this series, I talk about how you can become more charismatic.  The excerpt lasts about 7 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

 

Nick Morgan Interview-5- Oct 2010

 

4 Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

In this, the 4th in the podcast series, I talk about the 4 steps to becoming your most authentic and charismatic self.  The excerpt lasts about 10 minutes, and it's based on my book Trust Me.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

Nick Morgan Interview-4-Oct 2010