Hey, everyone. Ken Courtright here, this is today’s Growth Growing Business Today. This episode is actually sponsored by our great friends at CEO Space. I’m on faculty over at CEO Space, we meet five times a year. For eight days, we teach business owners how to grow their business a little bit faster in today’s environment.
And Forbes just ranked them the number one business conference to attend in 2016, so thanks to CEO Space. On the last episode, I covered some subtle adjustments that could be made in communication that can lead to explosive growth. I went into exactly why TOMS Shoes is the fastest growing shoe company, how did Gary Vaynerchuk take his dad’s liquor store and grow it tenfold in
under a year.
And I think I even talked a little about Dan Kennedy’s No BS Marketing to the Affluent book and how he explained that the affluent make decisions a very specific way. And so that was a pretty good episode. This episode, I’m gonna call it the Sister or Cousin episode to that one, because we’re gonna stay on the psychology of selling.
We’re gonna stay on the theme of why exactly do people buy from other people? So if I was to say, does everybody listening to this podcast consider themselves a sales person. Usually when I do this from stage, I’ll get 10, 20% of people raise their hand. And then I go onto a little monologue that says, no, everybody raise your hand right now, because I think you have sold or are still selling on someone on dating you or marrying you.
I think you’ve sold kids on behaving. I think you’ve sold banks on loaning you money. I think you’ve sold and are still selling and are gonna sell til you leave planet with your boots on. We are all sales people. And again, Brain Tracy says that definition of sales is the transference of feelings.
So what I wanna cover on this episode is what are some things that we can actually physically add into our narrative into our messaging that can guarantee some explosive growth. So, I just heard my Skype ping, I am going to put Skype, so it doesn’t interrupt the rest of this podcast.
So the question again is what can we add to our narrative? So I was thinking about this, I’m titling this episode, throw one ball at the time. Throw one ball at a time. So what I wanna do is I want you guys to look at your company and look at your messaging, look at your narrative, moving forward as throwing out tennis balls.
So you’re going into the market and instead of throwing messages at people or paragraphs of information, each chunk of info is a tennis ball. So what I wanna kinda set the stage is there is a think that we do at at CEO Space called Snap and Snap is when five people get together in a circle.
They’re all facing each other, usually in a ballroom and one person kinda wears a funny hat and they run all over the room. And they go to another circle, they leave one circle and they go into another circle, sit at an empty chair and they deliver what’s called their Snap to four complete strangers.
And the Snap is pretty much your elevator pitch, it’s your 30 to 60 seconds, who are you, what do you do? It’s your message. It’s your message. So what I wanna do is I wanna cover what I teach over at CEO Space of something that could be interjected in a snap that I have found makes a tremendous amount of difference in people remembering that elevator pitch, remembering what you do for a living.
And to me, this is mission critical. So let’s start with this, I want everybody to pretend I’m sitting to your right. We’re at a conference or something. And with absolutely no notice, I grab four tennis balls and whip them at you as hard as I can, and then I say, are you going to catch any?
And the odds are strong that you are going to go into a defensive position to block the four tennis balls coming at you at the exact same time with no notice and you’re probably not going to catch any. But if I stop and say, can you do me a favor?
Can you put your hands together right in front of your chest and make like a cup, like you’re gonna grab some water out of river stream to drink? And then I’m gonna very slowly throw you one tennis ball at a time, I’m gonna lob it at you. Do you think you’ll probably catch it?
So the key is if you hold your hands out and I alert you that I’m about to throw you a tennis ball, the odds are really good you’re gonna catch it. But if I just shotgun rattle at you four tennis balls at the same time, the odds of you catching any is pretty close to zero.
So I wanna drill this down right now into this snap scenario. So I want you is I want you to picture yourself, you’re sitting in a circle. There’s five chairs and all the chairs are facing each other in a circle and there’s four people in chairs, but there’s one chair open.
And then all of a sudden someone blows a whistle and a stranger wearing a funny hat cause the people that have to run around are signified by the funny hats. So they sit down in the circle and out of politeness, everybody leans in a little bit, cuz it’s kinda noisy, cuz everybody’s talking.
And the stranger with the hat leans in and says, here’s my name, here’s what my company does, here’s what we sell, blah blah blah. And you have 30 to 60 seconds, now watch this. You have 30 to 60 seconds to get out everything you can about who you are and your message because in that room of four other people sitting in that circle, there are sometimes angel investors.
There’s sometimes private equity people, there’s sometimes business coach and mentors. There’s faculty and board of directors of CEO Space in this circle, so there absolutely could be one of the greatest connections for your business, your start up, your entrepreneurial endeavor. They could literally be sitting in that circle, that’s kind of the point.
So just as we have learned in the 25-year history of CEO Space, there has been major deals, major transactions, major public companies come out of CEO Space. So you wanna take every advantage of these snap sessions. So usually, people come running in. They’re super, super excited to be able to share who they are and what they’re selling and what they’re doing to see if there’s anybody in there that’s interested.
But picture this, everybody comes in totally amped up, they sit down, they only have a 30 to 60-second window. And almost 100% of the time, what happens is people sit down and they go, my name is this, this is what I do, this is where we’re from, this is why do it, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut.
And it’s ready for this, it’s tennis ball, tennis ball, tennis ball, tennis ball, tennis ball. And the four people sitting in the circle, they lean in out of respect. They’re truly listening, but almost every time we witnessed what’s called the who farted look. I’m gonna say it again, I’m not exaggerating.
It’s called the who farted look and the who farted look is usually, the head turns slightly to the side, one eyebrow goes up and the face turns into a funny face. And what’s happening in this situation is the person that sat down is so excited, right? My name is Steve and I sell industrial equipment and da, da, da, but here’s the deal.
The reality is because Steve most often, because of excitement and enthusiasm is just literally shotgunning information at the other four people in the circle. Most of the four people in the circle, most of what they absorb is just Steve’s name and sometimes they even miss the name, because the person is so enthusiastic.
Sometimes, you’ll even see the who farted look right at the name. But most of the time, you’ll hear the name. And then what they do for a living, which that in of itself is sometimes confusing. But then when they get into their actual product and they’re talking 700 miles per hour, almost everybody almost every time develops some form of who farted look.
So, what I mean by this is this, let me give you the exact opposite. A lot of times, this is what I’ll do. I’ll grab a funny hat, I’ll run around in circles and I’ll sit down in the circle and understand, this is time. There’s a 60-second window and I say, my name is Ken Courtright and I wear funny hats and I’m going around the world looking for people like me.
And so what I do, I do the exact opposite of what everybody else does running all over the place. So what I do, is I throw one tennis ball at a time and I don’t say, after I say my name is Ken Courtright, I don’t say, I wear funny hats or I’m the founder of income store.
I don’t say the second part until I see the heads continually bobbing. So we’re gonna take a step back, and we’re gonna talk about the psychology of communication. Now watch this, Initially, I urge you, if you own a company with multiple employees, I urge you to hold a conference and do this test.
Get groups of five people, play the snap game, send one person around with a message. But watch this, when the person comes in, then the stranger sits down. The other four people inevitably, 100% of the time are gonna lean in a little bit and especially the females. They’re gonna actually start nodding their head up and down very subtly.
And usually, the men, instead of nodding their head up and down, they continually lean closer and closer, closer. That’s the men’s way of showing a little bit of a sign of respect. So you got this circle, the men are slightly leaning in and they continue to do so.
The women are kind of nodding their head up and down, it’s how the women communicate, but watch this, [LAUGH] watch this. As soon as the stranger that enters the circle says their name and what they do in the same literal breath. Like if he says, my name is Steve, I own this industrial equipment, blah, blah, blah.
The people, you see it every time. The women start nodding, stop, stop nodding their head, they turn rock solid. The men lean backwards a little bit, because what happened at that moment when the stranger named Steve sat down and said, my name is Steve and I’m gonna industrial dah, dah, dah.
He put the same thing in the same breath and the four people first need to hear my name is Steve. When they hear it, they’re thinking, but after thinking comes processing. So they have to process, meaning, they have to take my name is Steve and put it into a box in their brain.
In my world, it’s a 16-inch stalk of wheat, but that’s another story, that’s another podcast. They gotta think, okay, my name is Steve, great, process 16-inch wheat. Now, I am ready for what they do. I started in industrial equipment company, great. Let me absorb that, I’m gonna process that, another 16-inch stalk of wheat.
When they say my name is Steve and in the very same breath that I own an industrial, blah, blah, blah company, people went from thinking to thinking and processing at the same exact second that can’t physically be done. And so thus, the men lean back, give the who farted look.
The women stop nodding their head a little bit, give the who farted look. And basically, the person that’s so amped up and excited keeps going. My name is this, I’m gonna just serve you, we started this company. Nobody’s even listening any more, because they were forced to think and process at exactly the same time.
So let’s go deeper and kinda do a little proving. Have you ever been driving in your car and while driving, understood that you’re processing at the speed of light. You’re reading sign after sign after street sign after street sign. You’re reading red light, yellow light, green light. You’re reading your gauges, you’re reading your rear view mirror.
You’re reading your left mirror, your right mirror. You’re reading and absorbing and then processing at an unbelievable rate. It’s awesome, it’s absolutely awesome and then all of the sudden, then again, I have a slight case. Well, that’s an understatement, I have ADHD, I got ADD, I got OCD.
I got it all and then say, my phone will ring. I answer the phone and then miraculously on a monthly basis, I miss my exit. I’m still on the highway, I’ve even gone one state over once. So the point is why do I miss exits on a continual basis?
Because the brain cannot think and process at the same time. There’s a very famous story of Vince Lombardi. When he was a high school coach, he was taking four kids home and he was so engrossed into teaching these kids psychology of sport. And because he was Vince Lombardi, winning state championships at this high school, not one of the kids dared to interrupt Vince Lombardi while he’s talking.
Nobody dared interrupt Mr. Lombardi. So what happened, finally, it was pitch black. It was two and a half hours later, one of the kids had to stop and say something. He goes, coach, coach, coach. Yes, yes son, yes son. I think we’re lost and then Coach Lombardi stopped thinking and starting processing and he’s like, my gosh where are we.
Well, it turned out he was not only one state over. He was an hour into the next state over and he had to turn around two and a half hours and take these kids home from practice. I think they got home at 11 o’clock at night. So the point is, the brain to one degree is very linear and on the degree can process a number of things at the same time.
Like my 16-year old daughter, she can watch TV, she can be on an iPad doing homework, she can thumb Facebook and then write a paper on her laptop at the same time. She can have four inputs going at the same time, but the reality is Yale, every 40 years dissects a 16-year old brain.
And 40 years ago, the 16-year old brain does not look anything like the 16 year old brain today. We process at a much faster rate today. So let’s bring this back to the tennis balls and what in the world does this have to do with business and selling, everything.
So when these people are sitting down in these snap circles, I’ve done this exercise I don’t know how many times. I’ve done this to at least 200 people. So, I’ve said to 200 people that are permanent members of CEO Space. You can come back year after year for free as long as you’re you’re lifetime member of CEO Space.
So they’ll come back, we’ll be at a lunch table, a dinner table and I’ll turn to somebody whose been here for years and I’ll say, listen, quick question for you in front of four new people. How many snaps do you remember? And they’ll always go, boy, I guess none.
So my point is this, very few people remember any snaps, because I don’t get to teach these concepts until the snap sessions are over. So what I’m telling you in life, if you’re in business, if you sell, if you have a product, if you have a company, if you have a brand, if you have a message, you’re snapping all the time.
Your website’s snapping, your brochures are snapping, your business cards are snapping and when you’re talking, you’re always snapping. Who are you? What do you do? What do you sell? That’s your snap. That’s your elevator pitch. So here’s what I’m telling you. I’m guessing that your snap is probably 30 to 50% too fast.
You’re probably throwing one tennis ball, two tennis ball, three tennis ball, four tennis ball. When it’s been proven and still today, I’ll show you some evidence in a minute that you can only throw one tennis ball at a time. So how do you know if you’re pace is right or your cadence is right or if you’re going too fast?
It’s simple, you watch for the who farted look. So when you’re snapping with someone and you say your name is Bob, you wait and make sure their head’s still nodding and the men are still leaning forward. If the women’s heads are still nodding, they’ve heard you and they’ve processed it and they’re waiting for more.
Then you say, I own a very large manufacturing company, great. If the woman’s head’s still nodding and the guy’s still leaning in, keep going. Yeah, we invented this, because my kid broke his ankle, da, da, da, da. If they’re still nodding, keep going. If their heads are not still moving and the men have moved their physical posture back an inch or two, you’ve lost them, that’s called the who farted look, you have to start over.
Where this is really, really critical is on your website and on your brochures and your highway billboards, and your messaging, and your ads, and your radio spots. Listen, I dare anybody to open Yahoo News, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, any major magazine, and you correct me if I’m wrong.
If you don’t read an article, and it’s two paragraphs of text, and then a picture that breaks up the text, and then two paragraphs of text, and then an ad, then two paragraphs of text, then maybe a video. So why do they do this? It has been proven and the major marketing world knows, you deliver info, they have to think and absorb, but then they have to process.
And that you have to give them a break to process and compartmentalize the 16-inch tall wheat. If you’re not sure what wheat is listen to the prior episode and then you have to let them absorb. So, I wanna stop for a minute because this episode is sponsored by CEO Space.
You can find them at CEO Space International. It is an absolute blessing for me to be on faculty there. They have a board of directors, it is an incredible organization. I will never forget the first time I went there. I walked in, I just sat and watched for two days, because a gentleman named Berny Dohrmann was bugging the heck out of me to join the faculty.
And I said, Berny how in the world am I gonna give up eight days of my life five times a year and you’re not even gonna pay me? And I’m gonna come here and just tithe my time and give back to entrepreneurs that need help? And he said, Ken, it’s pretty much this simple.
Christopher Columbus, the Christopher Columbus who sailed on some ships to come here wrote one time that you live life in three compartments. In the beginning you earn, I’m sorry back up, in the beginning, you learn and you toil. So you learn first, then you toil and then you become an ambassador and you have to give back.
And he goes if you’re not ready, that’s fine. But when you’re ready and you know you’ve done your learning, you’ve done your earning and it’s time to give back, just call me. So a year and a half go by and I met Berny at another conference and he kind of caught me in a hallway and he’s like, hey, how are you doing?
And I go, hey, how are you? And he goes, are you ready? I go, yeah, I think I am. So, bottom line I’ve been there a year and a half, two years and CEO sponsored this event. You can find those guys at CEO Space International. If you wanna just kinda be a fly on the wall like I did once, just tell them Ken Courtright said, I could get a one or two day free guest pass to just listen.
And listen to some of the big shot speakers that they bring in and attend some of the how of raise capital classes and this and that. I mean, some of the greatest strategic minds are on faculty there and it’s amazing. So wanted to thank CEO Space for sponsoring this episode.
So, now let’s take this back into how does this all wrap up into your business. How can you take throwing only one tennis ball at a time and in a very, very subtle fashion, but a very strong fashion, explode your sales. So number one, again, if we go back to Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Oprah’s Magazine.
It doesn’t really matter, all the major publications are now aware of this information. You’re gonna find that most information and especially digital information, but also in books. I’m gonna get to that in a minute is delivered in a two part, one part mechanism. Two parts text or info or wheat, one part, let’s call it neutral or a space gap.
So it’s two paragraphs of text, cute picture, two paragraphs of text, cool video. Two paragraphs of text, maybe an ad. So now if you open up your personal website and you go to some of the blog rolls and your pages of content, is it paragraph, after paragraph, after paragraph.
And what we call, puking on people. Thinking you’re a captivating writer and you’re just gonna keep their attention to the bottom of the page. My guess is nobody’s that special and nobody’s that good of a copywriter. So let’s look at the transition from information say, 60 to 100 years ago to today.
So, some of the greatest books of all time, I think we’ll agree How to Win Friends and Influence People. Think and Grow Rich, you go on and on. Steve and Cubbie’s books, Tony Robin’s book’s, stuff that has absolutely stood the test of time. These people have counseled Presidents of the United States, the influence is solid.
Back in the day, it was just paragraph after paragraph, after paragraph, after paragraph. Today, I dare you to open Jeff Walker’s book Launch or Perry Marshall’s book 80/20 or any Dan Kennedy book. It doesn’t really matter, the data’s out there. These guys will do a couple pages of content and then a killer graphic, then they’ll do two paragraphs of content and a quote.
Or then they’ll do a page of content and some kind of thing on the side. I mean, we can only expect in this digital society of so much noise and confusion. We can only hold people’s attention so long. I got a funny feeling, everybody listening to this podcast is hit with Skype, email, voicemail, text, GoToMeeting, FaceTime, family, company interaction, people walking into your office.
I mean, we are bombarded, and yet, I don’t think we respect the people we’re trying to sell and I think we just dump on them. At least that’s what I find in the marketplace. So now, watch this, as huge as this is in print, this is so much more important in your physical narrative and physical messaging while in person.
So just like in a snap, I want you to start looking aggressively for the heads nodding and the men leaning forward. I urge you to start physically being able to raise your who farted radar five feet in the air. I want you to start watching other people interact and see how many people that you see getting excited to tell their product and service story to somebody else and how they just lose them and the lights go out in the person their talking to. I’ve been at weddings at receptions where I’ve seen strangers kind of talking and kind of bonding so to speak. And I’ve seen one of the people, real excited, they’re just going, going, going, going and I can literally see the lights turn off in the other person. And I want to jump in and say sir, if you just slow down and threw one tennis ball at a time, your message would have gotten across to that person.
But they don’t, they just keep going and they’ve read a lot of books, enthusiasm sells. Can I share something with you, it does, sales is a transference of feelings, but people still have to hear what it is you’re saying, absorb it, compartmentalize it. So they can then absorb the next message.
How many people have you seen that have lost people at hello? They’re just jacked, they’re pumped on adrenaline and they open their mouth. By the time they get to the second sentence, they’re done, they’re done. It’s just too fast. So anyway, this episode throw one tennis ball at a time.
Slow done, ratchet down 30% to 50%, try voice inflection. Just don’t allow yourself to lose a deal, because you couldn’t control your narrative. So once again, this is Ken Courtright from Today’s Growth Growing Business Today. Hope you liked it. If you liked it, please jump over to iTunes, throw me a review.
If you thought it was truly beneficial, if you don’t mind, shoot me a subscription in iTunes and stay tuned as I don’t do these on a regular basis. I do them when I’m not traveling. And if you subscribe, then they’ll just dump right into your box. Talk to you guys soon, take care.
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