291: Practicing Active Empathy in Sales -with Jeremy Todd

Well, Happy Monday there folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show and welcome back to of course, we're on Monday so that means are talking all things either marketing with Chris Goyzueta or talking sales today Jeremy Todd returning to the program How you doing man?

doing so good. Finally rested back up after a fun freedom past experience. I'm gonna

say we last saw you that you were getting ready to fly out to South Dakota hang out with all those Liberty love info. How was that trip my

phenomenal. If you ever get an opportunity like you will soon coming up just to be around the people who believe what you believe Who are your partners in crime on the internet. It's just a ton of fun and very surreal. A big shout out to both Clint Reed Clint from Liberty lockdown Reed Coverdale and then an Eliza blue. It was I was kind of there tag along, fortunately enough, and so one night we walk in and it's like, oh, there's Hancock, Spike Cohen, you know? Just me yours. We're driving with Scott Horton. She's really surreal. And then the next night and it's like, oh, look, Dave Rubin. The next night. Oh, look, Dr. Drew. And we're just sitting around these, these people that you admire and look up to and just having drinks it just it a phenomenal experience all around.

That's so cool. Yeah. And and you tease towards what's happening here this coming week. And yeah, we're recording here on Sundays. We're airing here on Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I'm going to be down in Florida, with our buddy there, Chris Goyzueta hanging out in Orlando at young Americans for liberty revolution. 21 I was actually I didn't realize I'm like hey, if you haven't had a chance to grab your tickets yet head to young Americans for liberty and then I'm talking to Eric today I hosted a debate over on town circle between Eric breaky and Mark Claire on whether the Snowden reveal the NSA leaks was a net positive for the Liberty movement. Eric takes the positive Mark takes the negative it was timely because actually Snowden is gonna be one of the main speakers here at revolution 21 and I'm like Eric, you know, I'm looking forward to it you know, if you have any like extra tickets I can make sure I push them to show he's like Dude, he sold out

way long ago. I'm like,

Oh, well my bad cuz I've been pushing people that way. So yeah, I'm excited cuz I'm going to be able to hang out with some folks too. And like you You teased and mentioned it, there's just it's different. You you get to see your partners in crime like you mentioned on online in real Life, you get to build those those relationships in just a different way I went to go to the Indiana, we're libertarians Pool Party there, back the beginning of July. And that was a whole experience in itself, I never really had the chance to go out number one out to Indiana, but to not only see the entire network, but to see these people for the first time, in many cases face to face, you build just a different relationship. So yeah, 100% man and talking about building that relationship, reaching people on that very personal emotional level. That's actually what we're gonna be talking about. We're starting off today, on part one of a four part series that you want to focus on, focusing on the idea of empathy. Now, we've talked about empathy in the past here on the show, and we're talking, I actually use the the ron paul example. And we're talking about how he brought empathy to the debate stage in 2008, talking about our foreign policy, but empathy across the board, I think does often get misunderstood. And I want to make sure that when we're going through this, we start off by first really setting the kind of like the definitions properly. So let's start here, Jeremy, what is empathy? And how does it apply here, as we're starting off in our application to sales?

Absolutely. So there are a lot of misnomers about empathy. And I'm really happy we're starting with this high level kind of introduction to empathy. What what it really stems from it, and we discussed this the last time I was on a little bit about how politics is shifting from an opinion, to a lifestyle to almost a purpose, it it, politics, give somebody a way to say this is who I am. So it becomes almost an identity of theirs. And one of the issues in persuasion, is it okay, so if I have an A, let's say I'm, I'm selling for Cox internet, well, that's a bad example, they don't compete directly, because they know they will shady in their business practices. But okay, neither here nor there. Let's say you've got t mobile and at&t, if I'm selling T Mobile to an average everyday person who may have at&t, no big deal, you know, I can talk about the price, the value, the benefits, the features, all the things that we've discussed. However, more and more people in this analogy are starting to be at&t employees, they, they it has become their politics have become part of their identity, it's who they are. So we're almost trying to sell people who have decided my identity is this political belief system. And so I found myself asking it freedom past a lot of people, a lot of the greats in the Liberty movement, when you have somebody who has kind of publicly stated their identity strongly, and then painted themselves almost into a corner, to where now, they would seem like a hypocrite if they believe something different. How do you give them away out? Or how do you at least help them find a way out and change that perspective? And we kept coming back to empathy. So to to answer your question, what is empathy, I think empathy is as simple as, as two things you got to understand about empathy. Number one, empathy is really just curiosity, it is a desire to understand it and seek out the second part of empathy is that empathy is you are not empathetic towards positions or belief systems, you are empathetic towards people. And so empathy is something that you show to a person. And it is essentially a curiosity about that person showing genuine interest and curiosity in that person.

So you hear towards a specific person. And, yo, it's tough, I think, for a lot of people, and we talked about it before, because when you look at the Liberty movement, we want to talk about all the shiny bells and whistles about what it is that we are selling, in this case, the ideas of liberty. But when you're talking about empathy, to your point, not only do we have to talk to that specific person, but it goes to we have to figure out what makes that person tick. And the only way we can do that is by being empathetic. So I hear this reoccurring theme when I whenever I'm talking to sales executives and in curiosity seems to be one of the highest traits of very successful salespeople. And it has to be very genuine curiosity can't be a forced curiosity. So how can we encourage people and let's Focus on when we're trying to bring empathy to sales. How can we encourage people to be empathetic without coming across as salesy.

So, first it is, understand that so we have to begin with it. It's the word curiosity to answer your question, but it's a curiosity because you are genuinely and you have to become genuinely interested in other people. You're not looking for opportunities to weaponize their What? In what they believe against themselves, what you're looking for is their why how did they reach this point? along their journey, every single one of us has a different perspective on the world. And that perspective comes from the fact that we all have different experiences, life experiences, and we all have different education, how we were educated, what we were taught from friends, family, in schooling, and then personal education, along with what we've done along the way. We have picked up our own perspective, I believe you've used the beach ball analogy before, can you can you expound on that about the beach ball holding the beach ball and how they see it differently?

I don't think it was me.

It was you. Okay, so I'll recap it. So it's like when you're holding a beach ball, if you know a beach ball, it's got the three stripes, like a yellow, a red and a blue. And if you're holding that beach ball right here next to your face, you may see blue and white, but that same beach ball to the person standing across from you. Looks yellow and white. Did I and as you turn Yeah, that was used somewhere I swear. I'm in so they are looking at the same thing as you. And you're over here saying, I swear this is blue and white. I'm looking at it right now. And there, I'm looking at the same thing. And it's yellow and white. So it's an it's it's trying to reach a place of understanding how they can see what they are seeing. Not what they see. not arguing about what they see. But trying to reach a place from curiosity of why do they see what they see? And you do that from, you know, asking a lot of questions and what should be what we break down in the next three parts.

Now let's go to that know the why. And you said the why. Multiple times? I'm not sure. Are you familiar with Victor Antonio, by chance?

I've heard of Victor Antonio, I'm not as familiar.

Okay. So Victor Antonio, he was a former IBM sales executive. And he's most noted for he is the guy who helps you find the reason why in why people buy. And the reason to figure out that why to show that genuine curiosity is, and we talked about this, when we're talking about tracing the sales cycle, right? I need to go through that history. How did we get from where they were to where they are now? Because chances are that when they go through that that sales cycle again, they're going to follow the same patterns of behavior. And so that's why you want to figure out, what was it that was the driving factors? What was the pain point that you can focus back towards? And at the end of the day, what do we know, Jeremy, people make decisions with not just emotion, but also with the sense of trying to maintain some sense of security? So understanding that and trying to lead in with understanding what are those emotional driving factors, we have to ask those questions, why to truly dig into that empathetic notion?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's it's extremely it basically, it empathy gets. I don't want to divide empathy, or I don't want to combine empathy with like discovery, a portion of the sales process, because they are kind of two very different things. Empathy is acknowledging the humanity in somebody else. So one thing that empathy is not it is not an endorsement, so I can have empathy towards someone who believes something very different, and something even very immoral, in my eyes, but and that's where empathy comes back to being about a person, I can see their humanity. And I want to understand their journey. Like you were saying, on how did they reach this decision. And so the reason we do that is is twofold. One is what you're mentioning, which is strategic. But the second is people just want to be heard, we put up these walls that block other people out because of fear of rejection. So empathy is the opportunity to extend to them a sense of humanity, and that I see you, I understand you and all of a sudden They will put that they will start to slowly take down those walls that they put up to protect themselves and to protect that identity. And then they are finally open for the opportunity to persuasion. But without doing that you can come across people who are like, it doesn't matter, you you can make every factual point you can ask me all these discovery questions. You can you can you can build the most value in the world, but this is who I am. And if you don't get that wall down, you're never going to be able to change that identity that they have found in their current belief system.

facts don't sell. That's just the rational so no, and neither do features. We need to realize that when we're talking about how great liberty is, that's that only goes so far. So I have my opinions. But Jeremy, I'd love to hear your thoughts here. What are some of the common mistakes that you see libertarians making? When we're talking about empathy? Where are they getting things wrong?

So we believe we have reached a logical conclusion in the Liberty movement, that our positions are correct. Oftentimes, ours are devoid of what's interesting about us is we reach them logically, and then we justify them with emotion, which is kind of the opposite of what most of the world does. It's something that I've found to be unique about the Liberty world. But for starters, when you are interacting with somebody who could possibly disagree with you, make sure you are speaking with them, not at them. In just it, and being curious and wanting to reach out and understand. Hey, what, tell me about yourself, tell me about what you believe. Oh, that's interesting. How did you reach that point? We don't do that. What we do is we want to jump to say, oh, you're wrong because of this. Well, what about this counterpoint that shows you're a bad evil person? Nobody's mind has ever been changed by telling them how awful they are? And really, oh,

how about like, like, saying the word libertarian or Liberty? Yeah, all the time. Like, yeah, and here's here's the reality is that you don't need to use these zones words all the time. Because here's the dirty rotten secret. Outside of the greater Liberty movement. These words don't mean much to your average person. So we almost have to be see threepio in Star Wars, we are the interpreter droids, we have to go and take what it is that is this idea. And this, this new language that people haven't really had the chance to hear, or at least learn to speak. And to bring it and help make it make sense to them. Talking about the nap all day is going to put people to sleep on intensively on entirely intended. But again, it has to make it has to start with us making sure that we are trying to communicate our ideas effectively.

Absolutely. And that. So I'm at brunch today with my wife, my baby, our best friend here in the Phoenix area and some one of her co workers. Well, it as we're going around getting to know the new person she goes. So what do you do? And I'm like, well, I've been in sales for 13 years, yada, yada. And our friend says,

oh,

did you tell her you're a libertarian? And my wife goes, Oh, no. hereos and I'm okay, clearly I've done this. In the past this this reaction, I basically explained us, look, we believe in digital rights, we make our decision on everything. So on one hand, we believe that, you know, you should be able to defend your yourself your property, your guns and your money. And what you've earned is yours. You shouldn't be taxed by the government. But at the same time, you have to give credence to people whose want to live their life and marry who they want to and have relation, whatever. It's your life. And we prioritize that first and she goes, Oh, so you mean an American? And I'm like, Yeah, that sounds good. And then she goes off to talk about how she had her family has gun art. So they put live guns into artwork, so that if anybody ever breaks in their house, they it's they pull it off the artwork. And it is okay. Ready to go? I was like, Okay, yeah. Cool. All right. Yeah, we can we can talk a little bit.

And how about but yeah, like if that hadn't been discussed it the concept hadn't been brought up about, you know, you being a libertarian. You could have easily discovered that just through learning by asking those questions by asking and here's the secret. By being genuinely curious. Can't we can't emphasize that enough. You have To be genuinely curious, and when it's Jeremy, here's this. Oh, go ahead. What do you got? No, no, please, I, oh, your Internet's cutting out a little bit really quick, just give you a shout out there. But um, while I'm going off, maybe you can look into that. But, uh, one thing I think it's important for us to acknowledge is you can build relationships with people, based on these underlying fundamental concepts that are kind of inherent throughout to your point that she was she was saying, are just American in nature, we kind of all just believe this by the very nature that we kind of were raised in this red, white and blue mentality. And we had to kind of speak to that language again, that's, I think, who we have to start to refocus our target market towards is not the active Politico's who have established a team but rather, your average everyday person, because dare I say, Jeremy, they are more likely than not to at least be more empathetic to the ideas but just not realizing that they're speaking a different language that saying the same thing.

Yeah, it what it reminds me of Brian is the one of the things that I used to force my, my sales reps to do was to hold off on price as long as they could. We made it a challenge to see how long we could talk without bringing up price. Because when you lead with and so the price, as we discussed a few weeks ago, is Hey, what is a libertarian, I'm being a libertarian, what would be the price that you pay the exchange that you get? So you bring that up? At the end? You find all these agreements, and it's like, oh, by the way, you Oh, we agree on this, this, this, this, we agree that this principle matters, this principle matters. This principle matters. By the way, I'm a libertarian, because I believe that that word means all of these things and yeah, that so I really liked that. Um, you you, you said be become so of course, and I'm rocking the shirt. I'm rocking that hold up.

Now for the audio listener he is holding up originally he had it's How to Win Friends and in How to Win Friends and Influence People give me your I'm sorry, my brains we're gonna win friends and influence people by the m&m shirt. Now where m&m is holding a book. In their all time plan, my

favorite all time class? Yeah, the the foundational book, it will be the first book my son reads when he's capable of getting out of children's books. And it reads very simply, I would encourage everyone to read this foundational book, but the first principle in how to make how to make friends. Right here, I put it on the screen, says become genuinely interested in other people, to be somebody who is likable, and that other people see and go, Oh, I want to I like this person. I want to be like this person. That's that's likability and the likability factor that gets heard a lot of times, Dale Carnegie, the most influential writer on this topic, said, the number one thing you can do is become genuinely interested in other people. How many times do we sit at home and we watch documentaries, we watch investigations stories, people love to hear about the lives of other people. So all you have to do is put that genuine interest into the person you're interacting with. And that's that's the foundations of empathy is to be genuinely interested in their story, where they come from, what their background is. People don't want to be told what to believe. They don't want to peep people don't care to understand people will never understand you until they feel understood. So people have this innate desire to feel like they are understood by the other party in a conversation. And so practicing active empathy, in in that way, really shows them that I am genuinely interested in understanding you and your perspective. And when you do that, they lower those walls and give you the opportunity to present your perspective.

You need to earn the right to ask those discovery questions. Yeah. And it starts with us first knowing there's a problem we can help solve. And we need to know the problems there. By being empathetic and figuring out understanding what pain that person is feeling and then figuring out and figuring out how they got to that pain. Now you don't have to go through the discovery questions to figure out that pain. But by being a genuinely good person trying to do good and solving the problem, you're already doing what is 10 times better than the other person that's out there because your average Politico, we say this all the time, Jeremy, they're more focused on winning arguments and being right, then they are going out and solving problems, meeting people where they're at, and actually showing that it doesn't have to be this way you with a problem that you that you see the pain that you feel, it doesn't have to be this way, not only does it not have to be this way, he can be infinitely better. And then we show them how and we had to set a step by step way to show them. It's not just something we talked about, but it's actually doable. It's feasible right now. So we're already close to time, my friend I know. But hey,

this is only part one. And this was this was in Let me tell you guys, part two, is my favorite part of this whole series. I, I It is, it is one of those lightbulb moments Give me what to expect though, what we're going to be talking about over the next three weeks is how empathy impacts and is related to someone's value system, someone's behaviors and someone's emotional connections and states. Next week, we're going to talk about value systems and conflicts in those value systems. How to express empathy, understand what type of value system conflict they may be having in their situations, and then how to respond to those empathetically. It's phenomenal. It's very exciting.

I love it. And if people are looking for this, this daily, I mean, this is one thing I've been getting asked all the time is like, we need more sales tips, we and I'm excited to see that we're now offering a tangible solution to the problems that we're seeing right now. And that is people in the Liberty movement are I think starting to acknowledge elephant in the room. Yeah, we are having trouble communicating our ideas at times to your average person because every time that we start to get any sense of eyeballs on us, we just start to screech Liberty doesn't work that way. We need to make sure that your average person is seeing the value in what it is that we're bringing to the table. So I've been doing my morning sales huddle, which you can go The Brian Nichols show.com Thank you my friend had The Brian Nichols show.com you can sign up for the email list right there or you can go ahead and get our new ebook four easy steps you can implement now to sell liberty to friends and family it is a free ebook a free resource I implore you with eight or nine pages and it's a quick easy read and it helps you number one learn how to ask better questions which is the probably the one of the most important skills that you can you can learn as a salesperson I think if there's one thing you know, is that like a sales secret is it just figure out how to morph your curiosity into asking phenomenal questions that would be like the number one thing to start doing and that will like set off like the the big proverbial boulder down the hill. So that would be number one. You'll learn the book at plus a bunch of other different little tidbits stories that you'll hear throughout the book. Again, Brian Nichols Show comm forward slash Liberty friends ebook and then for social media as of course at V Nichols liberty, twitter, facebook instagram tik tok. Jeremy where can folks go ahead and follow you?

Yeah, on Twitter at Jay Todd 671 we're running for represent party platform at Jay and then 400 and twitter at LP underscore Carnegie caucus we're gonna be doing some big things here in the future when I'm not changing diapers nonstop.

And when he says that he's being fixed like not just figure two diapers is real, like actual literal real diapers. Yes. And in Jeremy heads up your audio cut out there for hot sex. So just for folks super audio version, we will include the links for Jeremy there in the show notes, just so it's easier for you to go ahead and find if you if you cut out a little bit there. But I have here for the YouTube watcher at j Todd 601 there at the bottom of the screen. So with that being said a couple things come up here. Yes, of course I mentioned it I teased it revolution 21 I'm excited to be heading down here to Orlando Florida so if you're going to be down there at young Americans for liberty revolution 21 please stop by media row Say hi to yours truly and Chris Goyzueta make sure you get a picture with us I'm gonna be a little busy here and there. So if you don't see me right away, please understand I'm probably either a out mingling with someone or be I'm gonna be doing some interviews on media row and I have a little media row like interview booth. So I'm going to be doing some stuff there. So I will be around for those three days. So stop by say hello, Jeremy, what's going on in your neck of the woods over the next couple of weeks here before we talk to you next? What uh, any fun exciting things happening in Jeremy's world

man We got them all out of the way so no not at this point. We've I'm is you saw on the candidate series working with Steve Remus on his gubernatorial campaign we're excited about nailing down our strategy and issues over the next and staffing over the next few weeks. And that's that's it for me being a being a dad and trying to promote liberty.

My dad was trying to promote Liberty I mean, otherwise, that's pretty easy, right? Nothing Nothing too difficult. Well, hey, my friend I appreciate all the your your love and support and hey, really quick, some final plug to all those other folks who are out there giving us some love and support here at The Brian Nichols Show. And that is the amazing Patreon supporters. So thank you Darrell Schmitz, Laura Stanley, Michael lemma, Michel. Mankiewicz hodi John's Craig Acosta and the big we are libertarians network $5 $10 a month either way you're going ahead and getting entered into get our $5 or $10 dollar month clubs for our don't hurt people and don't people stuff bumper sticker but also come up here on Monday actually and tonight. It's amazing. The magic of the internet. We're recording here on Sunday. And already tonight Jeremy on Monday night, I will be having a conversation roundtable with all the the Patreon, folks so we have live q&a um, and also Yeah, getting a lot of questions already emailed in to folks some sales questions and stuff. So if you want to be part of that and actually be part of a live q&a session, Brian Nichols Show comm forward slash support head to the Patreon you can go ahead and sign up $5 $10 a month also you're gonna be getting a lot of stuff from Jeremy here he's working on some sales stuff as well as Chris Goyzueta was so kinda to get it basically his entire marketing library so shout out there to Chris for helping bring his marketing guru self to the greater Liberty world also speaking of which, he and I have been helping our good friends over at the sound mind creative group they are the gents behind the yes follow the science on lockdowns and liberty docu series. And I need your help folks. I need your help. We are looking to get these guys on some impressive podcasts out there be they conservative libertarian, I don't care at the end of the day. This is a story that transcends politics. It's impacting us real people. So what I want is for you to reach out and let me know if you would be interested in having the crew from the follow the science docu series on your show, email me Brian at Brian Nichols show.com would love to connect you and also if you'd love to support them head over to my The Brian Nichols show.com Facebook page, I have a landing page right there on the sponsors logo, click their logo and bring you right to their fundraiser and you go ahead and support them we just got over $100,000 we hit the $100,000 threshold which is incredible. Keep it up folks this is how we are going to be able to go ahead and change the future otherwise with that being said one final thing and I was actually going through and looking at the old videos I saw your old shirt there the good ideas don't require force guess what man we have some fun brand new swag so here check it out. Let me pull up my go work here and while you

pull that up I want to echo I got to meet the the guys from sound mind creative and the work they are doing is incredible. Make sure you go check out their fundraiser they need about 1.5 million and it can we can have follow the science on on platforms like Netflix and Hulu. So do we this is this is something that can change the world.

And as you can see right here we have some new swag over at proud libertarian. So please go over to YouTube right now if you're an audio listener, like seriously head over to YouTube and just check it out. You can also just go to The Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop that's probably easier our freedom is science freedom his nature series as well as I love this one our stop trusting government bureaucrats swag. I mean, I mean that's just that's just so perfectly timed right now with all it's happening with the the Delta vary in the CDC. But I I'm a big fan of these as well as our new series here. Our new graphic designer Collin, he has been working tirelessly our new tar and feather series. So I'm excited about this as I know right so folks, if you want to make sure you're not missing out and you're able to rock this phenomenal libertarian swag I mean in for the YouTube or for the audio listener that is I mean we have laptop cases we have stainless steel water bottles, we have T shirts, we have snap backs, we have stickers for your laptop, all that and in between. So please if you're interested in supporting The Brian Nichols Show, and also rocking some awesome swag while supporting some libertarian entrepreneurs that proud libertarian, I would appreciate that Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop final words my friend Jeremy, what do you have for us anything else? Yeah, fine.

Thought probably one of the most revolutionary things that taught to me it was taught by appear at one of my previous roles. He said, no matter what is happening in assume content from and it makes the conversation a lot easier to be empathetic. Assume that people are coming from a good place, not a harmful place. And that allows the conversation to track much, much better.

always assume positive intent. I cannot agree more. Jeremy, thank you. As always, my friend coming up here on Wednesday, Tiffany justice is joining the program. She is part of moms for liberty, guess what Jeremy moms are standing up across America saying no to the public schooling system. We are tired of what we ever seen taking place with our kids in these schools, whether it's seeing kids being kept home for over a year plus plus the different content that kids are being taught in school, Tiffany raises up all the concerns plus the solutions that moms for liberty is raising as a real alternative to the traditional public schooling system. But with all that being said, as always a fantastic conversation here talking all things empathy, part one of our empathy series here in sales. Jeremy Todd joining us here on The Brian Nichols Show. It's Brian Nichols signing off. We'll see on Wednesday. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai