Patrick Renvoise - Are you Persuasive?

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 442-22. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you. Can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thanks for joining us once again today. We, we love to have you with us. I love to have you hear the wisdom and knowledge of our great guests, and my next guest is also a returning guest with me today. He is Patrick Renoise from Salesrain. And he's been with us several times. We've talked about, we've covered some interesting ground, I think. Patrick, thanks so much for joining me once again today. Hey, hi Bill, good to be with you. Pleasure. You know, we've talked about the persuasion code, the science of human persuasion. We've talked about how people can learn to be to harness that information and all the research that you've done and in your book The Persuasion Code, and I'd love to get deeper on some of that today. I have a I have a particular question to start out with with you, and that is we've talked about how we persuade others. Let's talk a little bit how we, how we persuade ourselves. So that might be difficult, but it's going to be interesting. Uh, you know, I was listening in your show and uh the previous person was talking about the mission statement, and I have a very, very strong, uh, feeling about what the mission statement should include. I mean, I, I pretty much agree with what the previous uh person was talking about. I think, however, that included in that mission statement, we need to find the top 3 reasons why the customer should buy because it always starts with the customer and it always starts with the why. So yes, everything she said is absolutely right. It's got to be simple. It's got to be memorable. And in fact, we, when we, when we coach customers on how to do that, we include one of the 188 cognitive biases to make sure that the mission statement is easily remembered and actually it's actually a bias called the rhyming as a reason effect. So here's what happens. Uh, I, I'm sure you remember the story of OJ Simpson, right? And he got acquitted when a lot of things were pointing against him, but the defense attorney chose that sentence. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. And you know it rhymes, and that helps people when something rhymes, when it's really easy to remember, when the music behind the words becomes uh interesting, people believe it and people remember it more. So in the mission statement, we invite people to include also the top reasons why the customer should buy, and these top reasons should be spelled in a way that makes it either rhyme or that an alliteration like you repeat the same word three times. And we're really, really amate that 90% of all mission statements are not properly written. Yeah, it seems like in some mission statements I've seen, I've seen quite a few of them in small businesses, they go, they're, they're too long. They just keep going, you know, they keep explaining they're superfluous. They, they say they start off strong and then they they because we do this, because we do this, because we do that. Um, what's an optimal rhyming is a great idea. What's an optimal length for something like a mission statement, do you think to be memorable and, and, and hold that persuasion? So then the question would be how quickly can you express the why your customer should buy from you. So let me give you an example. I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna give you a brand, and I'm gonna ask you why would people buy that particular brand. We're gonna start with the why and then we, we're gonna see how we can build the mission statement based on that. So if I tell you Volvo, why would people want to buy a Volvo? Safety That's right. And that's what most people would say, you know, 95% of people would associate the brand of Volvo with the concept of safety, and it's because, you know, Volvo has invested about 3 or $4 billion in advertising in the last 60 years to create that memory in your brain. Now if you're Volvo, your mission statement should be very short, and it should just it should just say Volvo is the only car company that is 100% focused on. Your safety. And when you say that, that's the mission statement of Volvo. And it's why, because there is only one claim. There is only one reason people should buy Volvo, and that's safety. So you know, Volvo is the most famous example that people typically associate, but when we work with customers, for example, we worked with a law firm in Los Angeles and their claims are protect your time, protect your dime, protect your peace of mind, right? That's the three reasons why companies should engage that particular law firm. So we are using different techniques to make it memorable, to make it mnemonic. We're doing an all iteration on the word protect. And then we're using the word you, so take your time. And then we're using the rhyme in time, dime, peace of mind. So we're using all the techniques in the book to make that memorable to creative music in it, because if you remember my first thought, right? I talk about the unconscious brain or what we call the primal brain and that brain is not smart enough to understand words. But it will understand the music and the reason behind the work. So that particular law firm, its mission statement should be, we are the only law firm, and that's the beauty of it is when you create those claims and when they're so unique, you don't really need to have anything unique about your value, your product or services. It's only what you say about why people should buy from you that becomes unique. So when they say, you know, we are the only offer that will protect your time, protect your time, protect your peace of mind. That's it. That's their mission statement. And that mission statement is equally important for the outside world in order to convince customers to join it. As it is for the internal world when they're recruiting new lawyers. Right, right, right. you know, it makes it, it makes sense and I think, I think you know when you see it, um, but I think you also know when you Don't see it Right, well, when, when it's like almost. Yeah, if you think about it, most companies, they say we deliver fantastic products and services with very high quality. We do that with a high level of integrity, and we've been doing it for a combined total of 400 years, right? And you hear that all the time. It's not unique. It's not exciting. It's not memorable, and at the end of the day, it's not a clean way to spell out the why the customer should choose you. So I believe that mission statements should start with the why the customer should should buy. Yes, yes, yes, and yeah, how many, how many banks do we see that say we compete on service, you know, it's, well, well, who doesn't, you know, right, it's that's not, that's not unique. Maybe the first person that said it was unique and everybody else that came after. It's just blah blah blah at some point and it's, you know, it's getting Patrick, more and more there's more and more messaging happening everywhere we look. I mean we were talking about with the last guest also how one of the programs they put together for advertising is now in the movie theater. You just can't get away right from from messaging. So it's really important to clear out that space. So what I, what I like hearing from you is that you're not talking necessarily to the person's face. You need to be messaging to that that deep down. Uh, what do we call it the lizard brain, right, that's going to remember where stories go, the place where stories go. That's correct. That's correct. You know, human beings are 10% rational, 90% emotional, and that emotional world that drives our behavior is really our unconscious. So deep down, whatever message you create needs to appeal more to our unconscious than our conscious. So that's why again, finding a very simple way to express it. I mean, in the case of Volvo, it boils it down to one simple word. It's just safety, right? In the case of that law firm that I was talking to you about when they said protect your time, protect your time, protect your peace of mind, at the end of the day it boils it down to one simple concept of protection. Now, of course, if you're about to choose a lawyer, guess what your unconscious is afraid about? Your unconscious. It's about, it's afraid of losing that lawsuit. So using the concept of protection and repeating it 3 times in your claims, which means that whenever they talk, they probably say, you know, 100 times a day, the sheer repetition of that concept makes it more believable for countries. Uh-huh. So the, the rhyme is carrying the deeper message of protection in that case, correct, correct. And again, you know, scientists, psychologists have discovered this. It's called the rhyming as a reason effect. And it's one of the 188 cognitive biases that drives human decision, which again is completely irrational. But although we are irrational, scientists have studied the irrationality in our judgments and in our decisions. And so it's really important for people to understand that at the end of the day all of this can be summarized into one concept, which is that it's our primal brain that drives our behavior. So amazingly enough, you know, if I go back to your original question, which was, you know, how can we change ourselves, how can we alter our own opinion, our perception of the world? Well, we have to be open to use outside proofs which tells us that our own judgment is completely wrong. I see. I mean, this is the truth we don't have there are somewhere no matter what, right? And we have to be open to that truth. But the problem is that we see the world through the lens. I will give you an example which is possibly the best and simplest example that I can give you. And I do these tests sometimes in front of 100 people. I say I'm going to divide the room into half. Half of the people will be asked to do something. The other half of the people will be asked to do something else, and we're going to be judging how what you know or what you think about something impacts your perception of the world, right? And we ask people to smell a whole box. So there is a box, and in this box there is something they cannot see what there is in there. They can only evaluate the smell, right? And guess what? All the people are gonna be smelling the exact same thing. I can prep the brain by believing that what they smell is either really good or really bad. You know, I can predict that exactly half of the room will give it a really, really bad rating, like, you know, on a scale from 1 to 1010 being a very appealing. Smell, one being an awful smell, right? I can bias the room, half of the room, to exactly say that that smell is going to be a 1 or 2, you know, it's a terrible smell and the other half of the room will say it's a great smell. And at the end of the day they're smelling the same thing. So you know what I do, and I'm not the one who did that test, but I've repeated it and I can do it, right? So here is what happens. People were smelling. Parmesan. So in that box, that was a really nice parmesan. It's an expensive, you know, Italian cheese. But half of the room was told, you're gonna smell an expensive Italian Parmesan. Everybody rated it at 89, or a 10. The other half of the room, guess what? They were just being told, guess what, guys, you're gonna be smelling new socks. So when people believe they're smelling new stocks, although they are smelling a really, really expensive Italian Parmesan, everybody rates to a 1 or 2. And it's like this for everything in our lives. In other words, we don't see an absolute perfect image of the outside world. It is filtered by our own perception and by our own beliefs. And by the way, if you take that to the political situation that we have in our country right now, that explains a lot of things. Why is it that we have the people that see the world one way and the other have that see another way, right? So what you need to do when you want to change your own behavior, you have to clean your own glasses. You have to look at the world the way it really is. You have to eliminate your own biases. No, you say very, very, very hardly done, right? Yeah, yeah, cause nobody, nobody likes to admit that they might be wrong about the way they might be looking at something. That's dangerous, you know, we're in every bit of our life, perception is reality, you know, our own perception is our own reality and a lot of times we stick to it. So it takes a lot of guts to basically be able to say, hey, maybe I'm wrong about this, maybe I need to look at this a different way. Um, because you know why nobody wants to challenge an assumption, and there is a very simple reason for that. It's because it forces you to change. And, uh, scientists have demonstrated that change, any change, you know, the change could be, uh, changing from drinking a cup of coffee in the morning to drinking tea. You know, it's a fairly simple change or having to brush your teeth every day, right? Any form of change to the brain is the equivalent of torture. So people don't want to change. Mhm. So you have to be willing to create that own painful situation for yourself and think that again, you were smelling Parmesan or you were smelling a dirty pair of socks. Right. So that's really difficult. That's really difficult. So that's, you know, these ideas that every Perception that we have of the world depends on our own five senses plus everything we know about the world. So the example that I gave you was for what we know about the world. In other words, if I know I am smelling Parmesan, I know that smell is going to be good, right? But, but our senses are also interdependent. In other words, what people taste it depends upon what they see or what they hear. And I'll give you an example. This is a test that was done by another set of um Researchers and they had people rank the saltiness of oysters. So people were in a room, there were 5 different kinds of oysters, and they were asked oyster number 1 on the scale from 1 to 10, how salty is it? Oyster number 2 on the scale from 1 to 10, how salty is it, etc. And people thought they were there to taste the salt in it. But in reality, what they didn't know is they were doing this test and we were checking the impact of the ambient music in the room. So there, there were several rooms, and in one of the room there was just no noise. In the other room, they were playing music through the speakers, and the sound that they were playing was just the general sound that you hear in a city, like city traffic, sirens going on. In the third room there was just the, the sound of the wind, right? So it was like in the forest and people, and guess what, in the last room they were playing the sound of waves. And when people hear waves, although they don't know about it because they were not informed that they were doing, the perception of the saltiness of oysters increases. But the thing is, it is not an illusion. In other words, they put the people inside an FMRI and they check, and people really perceived that the oysters were more salty. Just because of what they were hearing. Uh, so, in fact, there is a whole bunch of, there is a whole bunch of marketing called multi-sensory marketing and uh that's what people study for that. It's a fascinating world as more and more of you listeners are trying to figure out how you can become different. I mean, I talked to a lot of my listeners, Patrick, and they're saying, you know, one of our biggest problems is how to, how to differentiate these days, how to be, how to have more persuasion. You've written a book all about that called Persuasion Code and more importantly, you're available as a visage speaker and of course as a consultant. Um, for, for our businesses that want to do better in this area, um, what would people find, let me ask you this question, what would people find that would be interesting at your website which is salesbrain.com? Well, they find information on the 4 steps that they need to follow if they want to impact that unconscious brain. So, you know, we explain to people, we teach people how that unconscious or primal brain works, and then we translate that into various actions that they need to do to improve their sales and marketing. But again, at the end of the day, Every concept can be summarized into the fact that we are not rational decision making machines. We are emotional decision making machines, and although we believe that emotions are not predictable, they are, and that's what we do. We teach people a rational way to impact the irrational brain. It's fascinating. So, so instead of you listeners out there, instead of hitting your head against the wall, learn how to appeal to the to the to the rational brain, to the emotional part of the brain rather, and and then it can be justified. Very, very, very interesting stuff. I love your examples. You always break it down for us and make it easy for us to listen to. Have you been, do you, do you have a lot of speaking engagements lined up and how's the book doing? Yes, so our book first of all received the uh Axion Publishing award, so we were very happy with that, and, uh, we are now transting it into. Yes, thank you. We've got it now in 12 languages. Amazingly enough, the first country in the world that bought our book, guess which one it is. There are two countries that first decided to publish our book locally, and one of them, the first one was China, and the second one is Russia. I think that that should make a lot of people laugh right now, right? Uh. Yes, I know, I know. In fact, my partner is in China right now, and I told him about the danger of going there, but, uh, you know, we're, we're seeing if, if we can work with uh people that are not really respecting intellectual property too much, so I'm a little concerned. But, um, so yes, our book is being translated in 12 languages, and, you know, we're traveling the world to teach people that, uh, you know, how to impact the primal brain. Well, again, it's called Persuasion Code and it's available on Amazon, of course, anywhere else you might find great books. Patrick Renoise from Salesrain, thank you so much once again for joining me today. It's always a pleasure to talk with you, and I look forward to the next time we speak. Thanks Bill. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.