320: The Expectancy Theory (Why Do People Take Action?) -with Jeremy Todd

That's right. Well, Happy Monday, folks. Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show get We made it. We made it almost halfway through the month already. I know September. Where's time going? I don't know where to have Jeremy Todd here in the show. Thankfully he's here with us because we're doing their sales and marketing episode but focusing today on sales in Part Four, part four of our two months of going through empathy Jeremy Todd, where his time gone and welcome back to the program, my friend.

Thanks, Brian. It goes by fast doesn't it and now that football season's here it's just going to speed up even more well before you know it and it'll be 22

I was mad at my cowboys cuz I stayed up until you know, midnight my time to watch them lose on basically my four points. They want them two points. But I say four points because they should have also I buy nothing because the kicker mister kick, extra field point and an extra field goal and just want to be doing what you're a kicker. You have one job, but I digress. So what By the way, who's your team?

in the NFL I chose a couple years ago to be a Bears fan. My mom's from Chicago. But hey, my my allegiance lies with the University of Alabama. And so when Jalen hertz throws that touchdown pass today to devonta Smith or when I say your throws? Yeah, I'll pull for any of those Bama boys on a team and there's a lot of them so so that's pretty good. Which which leads me to my hot take about your cowboys. I genuinely believe that Amari Cooper is one of the best if not the best wide receiver in the league. You ever watched practice tape of that dude. It is insane. He is on a different level. And he's unfortunately pending on the Cowboys for cowboys in the Raiders. Right so Prescott has been ever seen.

Dak Prescott despite his his injury last year, he has been playing out in his mind. So I'm excited. Let's get a healthy Dak Prescott

healthy Yeah,

but this isn't the around the NFL podcast. We're here to talk about empathy and sales Jeremy. So first and foremost, thank you for helping walk us through this journey. Because this is an area that folks in the green let's just focus on libertarians right now for a hot sec. We are not good at starting out in an empathetic mindset. I don't know what it is about the libertarian identity, the philosophy the who the buyer persona is that ends up becoming a libertarian, but there's just something about us being hyper, hyper individualistic, and also like this rational logic brain focused that we ignore empathy. So I think it's almost like we have to kind of go back to school, start from the building blocks and showing how to be kind of a functioning empathetic person first. And then we can start to focus on bringing the philosophy to the person right showing that the solutions can solve their problems that that's all stuff down the road. But first, we have to show them that we care about who they are. So today, I know we want to wrap things up by talking about the expectancy theory, which I know Yeah,

and behavior base, but I can I can tell you what my theory is on why libertarians are this way, right? You have an answer because not only the hyper individualism, it's that in order to exist in this world and be such a strong minority, you have to almost be that contrarian person and contrarians are very comfortable with confrontation and conflict. True. That's where they live, right? So we are contrarians by nature. We are the people who buy, you know, whatever is off trend, whatever we believe is, is different. Whatever everybody else is doing, we're going to do the opposite, even if it's worse. And so that is what contrarian by nature is and contrarians are comfortable with confrontation. And so we seek out confrontation, rather than conversation.

Yep. Oh, man. But if that's not the most true statement I've heard in a long time, because we see this, like, you have libertarians, they are on a mission to get in an argument. So they can just put it you know, put the skin in the wall. I won. I got my three. It's like, Okay, listen, we can go out, rationalize out logic people out good idea, people to death. But that only gets you to a certain extent, there comes a point where you have to say, Okay, well, what's your goal here? Is your goal to be right? Or is your goal to actually move forward with some type of common ground or solution that or at the very least understanding that we don't have to have an agreement right now. But we don't have to hate each other. We have to fight. We can just live in harmony. Let's go into that type of mentality and foster those relationships. So let's go to the focus of today's episode, and that is expectancy theory. So Jeremy Yeah, we talked from from beginning to end talking about who people are, how they get to the decisions that they make. Especially through who they are is their lived experiences, their emotional journeys. And today I know we want to focus on really the why of people buy, right the behavior of what makes people tick in terms of making the actual decision. So let's start off things. What is the expectancy theory? And why should we be focusing on it here in sales and politics?

Yeah, absolutely. So what we want to look at here with the third, the the third piece of empathy is individuals behaviors, answering the question, why do they do what they do? And expectancy theory is something that I hope to explore. And if I ever write a book, it will be on some large scale research of expectancy theory. But what expectancy theory is, is it's a business a motivational sort of equation process to Why do people have motivation to take action on certain things, and then not have motivation to take action on other things, and there's really three parts to the equation. The first part is about effort. So effort really answers the question. So and we can use your field for this, I'll do that. Can I actually pick up a phone and dial numbers and talk and read this script about cybersecurity? So that's the first thing, can I do those things? Do I have the capabilities, the tools and skills to actually perform the job as expected? So that's effort? The second part is answering the question, What if I put forward that effort? Will it actually lead to the result I want? Which is, in your case, scheduling appointments for account executives, right? And so if I make a certain number of calls, does that process actually work to reach the intended goal? And if I believe that it does, then I will be motivated, just like if I believe I can do something, I'm motivated. The last one is reward. Which means Okay, so I can do these things, it will yield the results and outcomes by doing these things, do the rewards I get for it. Are they worth it? Is it worth it to me? And so this would be your commission structure, your incentives, your you know, your your daily sort of promotions, whatever. What's the word? I'm looking for the eyes? Well, no, no, the like, you get $1 spiff. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So this is, are my spiffs worth it, or my commission incentives worth it to actually do the work if I perform at a higher level than a lower level? Doesn't really matter? If the answer to all three of these things is yes, people will be naturally motivated to take action. If the answer to all three of these things, or any one of these things is potentially No, their motivation to take action will go down. And that is, in essence, expectancy theory. Do we believe that if that we can do this? If we do it? Does it work? And if it works, do I get a benefit from it? If the answer to all three of those questions is yes, people will be motivated to take action.

So let's take this, and let's apply it to why we have issues right now. Right? So we see some of the most, I would say that the people out there you you would identify as are. They could be the best messengers out there, I think of you have your keynote sales speakers who go around the world, going to different organizations teaching how to have influential conversations, not just to, you know, push a product, but actually to solve problems and build that long term relationship. We have people out there who are in our buyer, persona and vertical that we should be reaching out to our target market, right? And we're not bringing them in, because I think they see that the effort will not get them the results. Therefore there is no reward. So why waste my time in the third party, when I can go and I know that either the red team or the blue team is gonna win. So I'm going to make basically a 50 bet and tie myself to one of these two teams, and hey, if I get elected, then I can maybe bring a little bit of my you know myself to what the role is. But now you also have to play politics on the playing field of that party platform that you are a part of. So how can we make this greater liberal Libertarian Party better in terms of showing it's not going to be yes, they may have long term, intense effort upfront, but it's going to give you the results. And that will give you a long time reward, in fact, in versus the alternative, which has just been, what? 3% 4%. Right. Yeah, per se. I point I

am so excited to answer this question. I've wanted to answer this question for months. Okay. So the reality, and this is where it fails. And I've talked to even congressman Amash about this, that that we need to redefine what these words mean to us. So number one, I think it's very easy to see that in the greater Liberty world, we do not have faith in our effort alone. So you look around and you go, Wow, the a lot of these people don't even have the skill set to have effective conversations. And that's why we are doing what we're doing. That's why the Carnegie caucus is starting is so that we can bring the skill set to the table to teach people, the nuts and bolts of how to be effective at conversations. That's the effort part that we're missing. We, we have never focused on training those skills. And it's time that we start. So that's number one. Alright, so now we have people with those skills. We go out and we say, okay, you will you be able to hit your targets? Well, there's another issue. What are the targets? Yep. Right. So so far our target has been, let's get ballot access in 50. States, let's re x y, z. Yeah, no, sorry.

uninspiring freaking message, it's to get people excited to work for you, like you were gonna get ballot access. I'm so proud, really exciting. What else do you got to do? Like, we're gonna sign petitions. So exciting, though,

those are absolutely not exciting. So this is where a couple different things have to be explained and redefined. So number one, this is where getting easy wins locally, can give you something to celebrate, and create that culture of winning. All right, small wins, big get big wins. And so that that's why working locally is very important. And doing these things, and finding and participating in winning local elections is very important. Because now you can start, it's kind of like that first game of the year for a lot of football teams, like when you've got a very young football team, you want them to kind of kick the crap out of a lower level team. And this is, this is where we are right? Like I laugh

because I my team was so small, we were always that lower level teams. So we would travel downstate to like, you know, the greater Central New York areas of Syracuse area. And we would play you know, the D one teams, essentially relative to our like, 14 team. And it was it was humbling, because you didn't realize you could get beaten so badly, we've been doing that as a libertarian party for

I have

right here, what we've got to do is do that to some local elections, we've got to go in there with various with good candidates, and win where we can win. And we need to put our resources strategically in those places, rather than trying to divide those resources. Okay, that's number one. So we got to get some little wins, then we have to redefine what wins are at our large scale things. Because again, I still believe we should be running presidential campaigns, Governor campaigns, all of those things, but we have to redefine what success looks like when we are the team that's getting the crap kicked out of us. So if we are the team who's getting the crap kicked out of us, and we're showing up in our, our performance is measured on if we win or not, it's always going to be a failure. But if our performance is instead measured on making gains, reaching milestones, that's different. So when you went down to play those bigger D one teams, you can use scored. It was like, holy crap, like, yes, we scored on them that meet that do this also be a confidence one day,

maybe again, in the future? Possibly. Yeah, that's how we felt. Yeah,

we've got to redefine that. So on a national level, we we have to talk about what 5% in a general election will do for the party. The Libertarian Party, if you guys don't know, if we reach 5% in a presidential election, a couple things happen. Number one, we receive all of our ballot access issues really kind of go away. We're classified as an official minor party. So for the first time, in a very long time, we would have two major parties and one minor party. So 5% is a huge milestone because all the money we invest in ballot access and collecting signatures and doing all these things. Guess what? That money is now untied from those activities. And so now we have funds to invest in things like marketing, advertising, candidate recruitment, all of these other things that really make a difference, but we can't we, if we can't get to 5%, then we have to continue investing so much money in all of these other things. The second thing it does,

yeah, but Jerry, hold on, because this is the objection you're gonna get. So let's block I freaking thing before he even gets tazo. But Jeremy, how do we get people to vote for 5% of like, 5% of the vote for libertarians because it's so hard. And it's so difficult because of the obstacles we face. Now, this is why goes back to it's so important. It's so important to build that base and to win where we can win. Going back to your original point, if you have all of a sudden, 15 Congress, people who are libertarian, the argument of voting for a Libertarian Party on a national level for president gets a lot easier. So give people dumber ammunition to make the decision easier on their hat on their their part, because going into the reason why people want to buy, right, what's going to actually move them to take the action? Well, if they're going to go vote for a different party, it is going to take a lot of effort, because number one, that's a big change mother used to and number two, they know that chances are the person they're going to vote for isn't going to win. So to number two point, are they going to get results? It's probably not. But if we can show that there's a chance now that they can start to build up that base and actually get some results. Then the third most important part that now they can see a tangible reward. Now there's a definitive, like end goal. And it's it's out of it's not out of reach. So like if you started a brand new company, and you arbitrarily set your expectations that we're going to have 15,000 million or $15 million in revenue this year. Okay, where did you get that number? And how are you going to accomplish that? I don't know how we're going to get it though. Okay, yeah. But that's great. But if you don't have a concrete way to get there, but also, if you don't start to build up the base of like, the resources need to get on that way to $15 million, then you're just gonna constantly be having to restart every four years. And Jeremy, we see this every four years. And it seems like we have to do a restart at the party. Like we have to like get everything back. It's like the engine just starts to slowly die and it takes forever to get to go again. And by the time we get to going the election ends, and then it by the end, we start all over by you know what the middle of the election season the next cycle, it's it's an exhausting and tiresome cycle.

It really is. It's extremely exhausting. And that's why you need to really focus on smaller, more achievable milestones along the way, that can be that energizing success. So it's not we came in third, in an election, it's we hit 5%. Now we're classified as a minor party. For the first time ever, we get FEC funding, like the two big parties, we don't have all of these other obstacles that are put in our way. So now our next milestone is, let's want to stay. Let's go get at it. Imagine this for a second as close as these two elections have been. Wyoming only carries two electoral votes. Seems seems minor, right. But if we were to say win Wyoming, which, by the way only takes about 80,000 votes, to win the state of Wyoming with a shout out to Marshall Burke, right. We went Wyoming and get to, and then the other two parties only get to 69 and 269. For the first time, we have to send an election to the Senate to be decided. You want to really get people excited in the two major parties about rank choice voting. When a state cause a time and let the senate decide people will be the big two parties will all of a sudden be fired up about rank choice voting, which they will say is, well, we could have ended up getting these libertarian votes in the end. But as we know, people are more likely to vote for us. But anyways, that's that's fun strategy neither here nor there. But the point is, we have to change what we talk about is our targets and our wins, that it is okay to pop the champagne in third place if we reach these milestones, and that's exactly what we need to do. Now the reward comes in. And that each one of these milestones then gives us an opportunity to do some different things. So 5% is going to put a whole lot more money in the bank for us, which means we can start running ads on TVs shout out to spike Cohen for helping me get people fired up about an anti mandate ad but we can actually start doing these things that other parties do. And that, in turn is the reward. It's a cycle that can kind of build on itself. And then the reward is well, maybe we can pull it 15% and get somebody up on stage. We have to redefine what these targets are, and then what the rewards and payout are So that we can continue to be motivated to take action. Because if our reward if our goal is to win a major national election, and the reward is to pass sweeping reforms that that, that give us all more liberty, I've got news for you, it's gonna be a failure, it's gonna be real ugly for a while, and people are gonna lose motivation and lose hope. But if we set smaller targets and smaller goals that we can accomplish, now, instead of people feeling like we're never going to be able to make a difference, they go, Oh, man, we're coming. Look what's happening. You can see the growth, you can see the change, and you can see what's going on.

That wasn't OSI, by the way of me disagreeing with Jeremy to the sigh of Yes, like, please, and please elect this man to the lnc. like God, because this is the stuff it's common sense. If you come from a business world especially. And you just see the the inability to speak like a normal human being, it's it makes your skin crawl a little bit. So going back to the reason that Jeremy wanted to do a conversation with you guys on empathy is because this has been one of the biggest issues that we have come across in the greater Liberty world. And something we frankly, need to address it because if we didn't get better, if we didn't grow, then it was just going to constantly hold us back. And we have this running analogy, this running joke. Working with libertarians is like herding cats it is but like, that's, that's because we didn't have any sense of what our real obtainable goals are. And because we never been able to, to get those minor little wins. Nobody really has been able to say that works that that that way, it's so scattered, that it doesn't really feel like a cohesive movement. So execs are focusing on those those real tangible wins Jeremy and let's do this as we wrap up our conversation over eight weeks on empathy. What do you want to leave the audience with Jeremy empathy sales? liberty, politics, floors? Yeah,

let's let's do it all. So what this will be what what I hope you take away from it is number one, well, a great story to or anecdote to kind of do it yesterday. Some absolute heroes, by the way, were out in a park that had been watered, by the way, maybe an hour before we showed up, and then we hit 108 that day. So I don't know about you. But if you remember those fall football practices where it rained earlier in the day, and then it got hot in the afternoon. That's what it felt like all day, except it was 108. And no shade. Except for the one the ones that we created in these tents. And for the in the dam wars rally here in Phoenix, man shout out to everybody for coming out and participating. We had a counter protester

that's talked to her today and she said that one solo one counter protest or two white counterparts. So how does that work? Can you explain how you know

neo cons go Neo con man. john mccain was allowed to be on this earth for you know, seven years. Right? Hey, there's a bit what's wild is that our airport here in Phoenix, there's a john mccain terminal. And then right next to it is a Barry Goldwater terminal. And I'm like, you couldn't be more in stark contrast. But that's neither here nor there. I like flying out of the Goldwater more, I'll just say that. So um, anyways, what was interesting shows up with an Afghan flags as anti war is pro genocide. Pro Taliban obviously has a very different opinion on things than we do. And I'm really happy to say that the all the libertarians approached him and Lauren will tell you, she went to him and was like, Hey, thank you so much for being here. I'm really glad you're here. Can we get

right did tell me she said those exact words,

he absolutely was mine. That is what empathy can do, is because when people are looking for a confrontation, and you instead show appreciation to them for being willing to have a conversation, they it completely off their game. And then like we talked about last week, reciprocity, so in conversations with individuals who disagree with you and the goal and trying to sell them or be persuasive, number one, be grateful and be curious that you have that conversation with them. Always be seeking to understand their why's. So why do they value what they value? What perspective do they see it from? What emotional state are they in? And then why do they feel what they feel your goal is to understand why just listen, just Be curious, always be patient and do not. And this is very important, before, listen to everything before you are willing to put labels, or pass judgment, or even offer a solution. Let me give you an anecdote here on a company that did this. So there was a pharmaceutical company, and a lot of doctors and pharmacists at this company. Were very frustrated that single moms are not single moms, but mothers with type two diabetes, were not taking their nightly insulin injections. And they were trying to figure out, you know, how do we get them to take their their their insulin injections. So they sent people to observe, and the mother is, you know, getting the kids home, getting them to do their homework, cooking dinner, cleaning the house and doing all these things? And they'd say, why aren't you taking your insulin injections? And they would say, well, it's hectic. And so the company would go, Oh, well, we can do a solution for that. We can give you an app, we can set a buzzer on the on the packaging, whatever. But that didn't really answer the question why it may seem like it did. But it didn't. And so they they asked a little more, and they peel that onion that that we talked about so often. And what it really was, is that the mothers would come forward and say, when I because type two diabetes, we're talking about when I have to give myself the shot, I feel broken, Please don't make me feel broken in front of my kids. And so the real solution wasn't bring more attention to it, which is what their original solution would have done. The real answer was, we need to find solutions. So she doesn't have to inject in front of her children. And then they went forward with other solutions that help solve that. And lo and behold, they were able to get mothers to take, it's really going deep and trying to understand why they believe what they believe beyond the surface area. Because when you create that foundation of caring, curiosity and listening, now, you can reach a point where you can reach them. But if you do not, and instead you choose to label them, judge them and put them in that 10% that will never be reached. Make sure you're not putting the other 90% in that 10% who you can never change their mind. Because a lot of people you can but you have to be willing to care about them, find what's matters to them, find out their Whys, and that is what's most important to take away from empathy to sets the foundation for persuasion.

And I will say one of the themes that you just outlined there, I hope people picked up on it was it wasn't about you. It wasn't about you. It's not about you. That's right. It's always about the person you're talking to. And in this case, you have to show that you genuinely care that is empathy at the end of the day showing you genuinely care not just about the person but how they got to where they are who they are, based on those lived experiences, those emotional journeys Jeremy, thank you, my friend for this entire eight weeks of teaching us about empathy I know made me

think of a pet peeve Can I get it off my chest first and this is this is this is the practical advice for people out there. Do it a saying what libertarians believe is blank is not persuasion. Never has been it never will be stopped doing that do not explain the planks of the platform. Do not explain to them what a libertarian is unless they ask instead, listen to what they believe why they believe it and speak to the solutions that libertarians offer in the way that they care about it. All right. Don't explain to them what a libertarian is or what libertarians believe that is stupid. That is frivolous. That is useless. Don't freakin do it. It's one of the worst things we've ever done for marketing. libertarians believe that I freakin hate those tweets and social media things anyways, that's a pet peeve of mine and nobody gives a crap what libertarians believe they want to know what you can do for them.

I definitely didn't have a presidential candidate who basically responded to the libertarian belief libertarian position as libertarians we believe it it's frustrating and to see that that's basically that's been the status quo is changing. But you know what, here's the here's the bright future. We always try to end the show in a positive direction. We're seeing the conversation change. We're seeing the way that people are approaching just not only the the political process, but looking at how they're just talking to people. It's it's different. I'm seeing the changes in the conversations online. I'm seeing how people are approaching as is really solution solutions based sales folks like trying to go in enter into the conversations that people are currently having not trying to just like go ahead and say hey, let's talk about my issue. Nobody cares about your issue. People want to know that you care about them. So thank you, Jeremy for showing us absolutely care about people also and we're looking forward to this we have you as our one on one mentor so Yoda please strap in sales Yoda. We are looking forward to a Tuesday and Thursday of this week for your sales shorts. But with that being said, folks, if you enjoyed the episode, please do me a favor. Go ahead and share the episode and of course when you do, make sure you go ahead and give yours truly a tag at V. Nichols Liberty Jeremy we're going to go ahead and find you there and continue to conduct conversation.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Add j Todd 601. On Twitter, J Todd for L nc.com.

There it is. And of course, folks, as always you click the link, click the artwork that is in the show notes. It will bring you right to The Brian Nichols Show page you can find Jeremy's bio links to his website where you can go ahead support him and his venture for l n c. Yes, we are looking forward to having a direct path to the the lnc I'm so excited to have my evil diabolical plan taking over the lnc slowly unfolding before my eyes now. I yes, I am evil Emperor Palpatine. No, I'm just teasing. Jeremy. Thank you, my friend. It's always a blast. And with that being said, folks, thank you for joining us on our funfilled sales episode of that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Jeremy Todd. We'll see you tomorrow.

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