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In the You’re So Brilliant, Why Don’t They Buy series, we discovered an interesting phenomenon.

Tell people the results you get first.  Then tell them what you do.

You’ll get much more attention.

Wake up the Old Brain with an amazing story, in other words – GET THEIR ATTENTION FIRST – and then tell them what you do.

It’s hard to do (try it!) because it’s counter-intuitive, but it can produce some amazing results for you.

Remember, you’re talking to a polite stranger (in person or on the net) and you’re also talking to a 450,000 reptilian brain that is secretly scanning you to see if you’ve got anything interesting to offer.  And it had better be good.

Kathy Eppley, of astoundyourself.com, gets pretty remarkable results with her clients.  When asked what she did, she said, “I teach people how to take bored, stalled, stuck and struggling and turn it into passionate, powerful six & seven figure profits, quickly and easily, so they can have more freedom, fun and security now.”

That’s a good answer, but there are a lot of words in there.  The only problem is, the Primitive Brain, which is the only brain that triggers decisions (see NEUROMARKETING by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin) likes word pictures, beginnings, and endings.  It doesn’t like “the middle.”

What does that mean?  If you explain yourself in a really loooooong sentence, or if you use 3-4 sentences to explain what you do, the person may be listening to you with a polite smile, but their Old Brain has hit the snooze button.

That’s because the Old Brain doesn’t like “the middle.”  You know how someone’s telling a really good story and taking too long and you want to say, “Get to the good part!”

That’s how the Primitive, or Old brain works.  It likes short stories, beginnings and endings, word pictures, and high contrast.

So we took Kathy’s results and what she did and flipped them around.

See if you like the difference:

Kathy, what do you do?

Kathy:  “Let me give you an idea…  When I met Peggy she was scared – she had $67 to her name. At the end of 11 months she had made over $350K.”

Did Kathy tell you what she does?

No.

But can you Peggy, broke and scared, and then making 350K?

Yes.

Here’s the question:  Do you want to hear more?

Yes!

Why?  Kathy just delivered a perfect Old Brain message.  It’s a short story, it has a scary beginning and a happy ending.  It has no middle.  It also has great word pictures – we can all picture broke Peggy – and it has high contrast ($67 - $350,000), another favorite of the Old Brain.

NOW that she’s got our attention, Kathy can tell us what she does, because we’re hooked.  We want more.

“So Kathy what do you do?”

"I teach women at the end of their rope how to transform a bored, broke and struggling business into passionate, powerful 6-figure profits, in 12 months or less."

Furthermore, because she started with the story of Peggy, our defenses have been unconsciously lowered (the Old Brain loves stories and lets them right in.)  So, we’re far more likely to believe Kathy can do what she claims.

Giving your results first is strangely hard to do, because we are all so programmed to answer the question, like polite children.

However, it is far more important to capture the full attention, interest, and curiosity of the Old Brain FIRST, and then deliver your service.

Would you be as interested in Kathy, even though her message is really good –

"I teach women at the end of their rope how to transform a bored, broke and struggling business into passionate, powerful 6-figure profits, in 12 months or less."

If she told you that first?

Or did hearing about Peggy prime the pump?

Work with the Old Brain. Speak to it, intrigue it, make it curious, give it what it wants, and you will be rewarded with far more focused attention than you are used to.

Try giving one sentence of your results first next time.  Let me know what happens.

Sarah was listening to a CIA agent lecture about  "passive interviewing."  He said (and he should know) that if you ask too many questions, people feel interrogated, and they tend to clam up.  The best way to get the most information out of people was NOT to ask questions, but to volunteer a small piece of information about yourself.  Passive interviewing is a way of getting information from people without them realizing that information is being sought from them.  Undercover agents do this when they lead their targets into thinking that they are someone other than who they really are.  You start volunteering information about yourself to encourage the other person to start sharing too.

That would turn a networking meetings on its head, wouldn't it?  The man asked everyone in the audiece to turn to the person next to them, and get as much infornation as possible about their partner without asking a single question.  He gave them minutes to do it.

I liked this idea so much because it takes away the tiresome stream of questions that we often fling at people in order to find out more about them, their businses, if they'll be a good fit with us, etc.  It's a softer and more influential way of gathering information, and in addition, it creates a more powerful relationship from the get-go.

The next time you meet someone new, try volunteering small pieces of information without asking any questions, and see how much information the person you're talking to will share with you.  Probably more than if you asked a direct question.

I'll report back when I've tried this out.  I know it comes from the CIA, but if it's useful, what the heck!

I do want you to be remembered. I know how difficult it is for people to remember especially with the amount of information we are bombarded with today.  If you create curiosity interest and hunger for what you do this is fabulous. You are marketing yourself in a whole new way.  But I do not call this a sales technique because there is no direct selling at all. (So no worrying! :-))

1. You know everything about what she does.
2. You don’t need one, and
3. You stop listening. You’re polite, you smile and nod, but you’ve stopped listening.

No communuication has taken place.  This is a dangerous waste of time, it happens all the time, and the Speak Your Business system is deisgned to stop it.

You know the phrase "the sale is in the follow-up"?

Well, landing your prospect is in the follow-up too. A good series of follow-up lines, that you've practiced and have ready when you talk about your business, can create an invisible sales funnel that draws your listener further and further into wanting to know and work with you.

A great follow-up series can convert them from "mildly curious" to "Can I call you next week?"

There are at least six different follow-ups.

Here are three ways a Headline Follow-Up can capture more clients.

(What's a Headline Follow-Up? A bullet-point, only you're speaking it instead of writing it.)

1. Make the headline about the results you produce for your clients, a secret they don't know, or a fact that is tantalizing and provocative.

For example, after you've delivered a knock-out message about the results your service or product delivers, and someone asks, "How do you do that?" just steal one of these 4 follow-ups and reword it to fit your business.

- "All the techniques in the world won't teach you how to sell if you don't know the biggest secret to sales."

- "I've been in business for 15 years and there's one secret to selling that nobody teaches you."

- "Believe it or not, no one actually buys your service."

- "There's one simple word that can lose potential clients fast. Once you've lost them, it's virtually impossible to ever get them back."

These are all designed to provoke curiosity and a bit of anxiety. But they won't work if you don't stop talking.

2. Deliver your follow-up, then stop talking. Wait for their response. This takes practice. Most of us can't stand silence. But silence builds intrigue, mystery and a little user-friendly tension.

Why? In your silence, it feels to your listener that you are withholding something valuable. You appear to have self-control, and therefore you appear to have power.

In your silence, you are allowing the curiosity and tension level of your listener to rise. This is good. In order for your listener to ask you for more information, they need to be at a certain level of healthy tension.

If you want to attract more clients and customers, withstand your own anxiety and allow theirs to rise. The more curious they are, the more anxious they are to hear more.

You can watch this happen in less than 5 minutes.

But this will not work if you give in, soothe them, and gabble on about your business. Then their level of tension decreases, and so does their interest in you. (Research backs this up.)

If you want to know how good you are at holding silence, tell a joke. How long can you stretch out the pause before the punch line? If you're really good, you'll tease your audience so that they'll burst out laughing when you deliver the goods. Why? The laughter is a sign of how much tension you've built.

3. You don't have to answer their questions immediately. This is an old tip from PR. If they say "Tell me more," resist the urge to tell them just yet. You can answer with another even more tantalizing secret, or little-known fact, or even a question.

Build the intrigue! It takes guts to do this. Most of us dutifully and politely answer questions, adding a little to try and make our service or product more interesting. Yes, you can and will give A FEW solid results - not facts - results about your service or product, but build the intrigue first. You will be delighted with the results.

I was studying with sales super-star many years ago, and I always felt like there was never enough time when I hung up the phone. I actually felt the anxiety rise in my throat. Finally I asked her, "How come I always want more of what you have to say?" She laughed and said, "That's sales!" And hung up.

Try it. It works.

Copyright 2008 Ann Convery. All Rights Reserved.

BE COMFORTABLE, BUT DON'T COMFORT YOUR PROSPECTS.

What? How can you be comfortable without comforting people? And why should you behave this way? Because they need to feel comfortable with you, but if you comfort them, you are dissolving their need to work with you.

FIRST, be comfortable.

We all need our prospective clients to trust us. You know you can be trusted. But surprisingly, research shows that prospects see you as over 25% less trustworthy than you see yourself.

So you have to "up" your trust factor when you offer your services. There are numerous subtle ways to do this, both in person and on your site, but the most important is - be comfortable.

Remember that anxiety, like a virus, is catching. You can actually "infect" others with your own anxiety. So watch your comfort level.

If selling makes you uncomfortable, then don't sell. Casually mention your own results. Consult, advise, educate, and ask the right questions (more on those in another article.) The amygdala (the lizard brain) of your prospects picks up instantly how comfortable you really are. If you are comfortable - and this means, you are comfortable whether or not they do business with you - you will put your prospects at ease and they will allow themselves to trust you more. It lowers their anxiety thermostat.

SECOND, don't comfort them if you want them to buy.

But what about comforting your prospects? Saying things like, "Don't worry, everyone has that problem." Or "Most of my clients have the same issues." "Oh, that's easy to fix." "You're not alone. I've heard that so many times."

You don't want to do this. You're losing potential business if you do.

Why? Because when you reassure them., your prospects immediately feel less anxious, more at ease, and more comfortable. And research proves that this is not the state they are most likely to buy in.

Comforting prospects is a natural habit that many service professionals and others fall into. It's easy to want to reassure and relieve someone's anxiety.

But - that anxiety, if properly addressed and allowed to surface, is what will make them turn to you for a solution. However, YOU need to allow THEM to experience it.

So don't comfort your prospects. Listen, instead. Listen as hard as you can, because if they feel listened to, they will tell you their story. And in telling their story, they will re-experience their anxiety (which is why they sought you out in the first place!)

Allowing your prospects to re-experience the anxiety of their problem is the single biggest factor in getting them to turn to you as a solution.

So if you comfort that anxiety and don't allow it to surface, you may end up with "That sounds good, let me think about it."

If you reassure your prospects, you've just told them things aren't that bad, don't worry, they've got company, many people have the same problems.

Therefore, their anxiety goes back down. They don't have to address it just right now. And you might just have lost a good client or customer. Or you might have to work three times as hard to get them back to that point of focused interest.

Your prospects have a natural anxiety about their problems. That's why they're talking to you in the first place.

Allow that natural anxiety to bring your prospects to you on its own little tidal wave. Don't stop it. Encourage it. Listen to it. Make sure they know you understand every last bit of how it feels to them and what it's doing to their lives. (Even if you've heard it 100 times before.)

You are rejecting the immediate need to reassure your prospects for the long-term comfort of solving their problems and creating a loyal client or customer for life.

So, be comfortable, because people do business with people they like and are comfortable with.

But don't comfort. This is the secret of allowing others to sell themselves on you.

Copyright 2008 Ann Convery. All Rights Reserved.