Are you a product peddler, or a sales detective? Today the highest performing sales people aren't engaged in solution selling. And they're certainly not spewing out features and specs. They're actively engaged in problem finding. Join 3 Second Selling author and host David Gee as he is joined by serial technologist, inventor and sales leader Lief Larson. They will discuss how today's cluttered sales and marketing landscape requires curiosity, more listening than speaking, the ability to ask precise, strategic questions at the right time, and other forms of emotional intelligence. This method takes prospects through a discovery process and helps uncover pain points they might not even have been aware of. It also lowers sales resistance, gets you to yes quicker and easier, and elevates the status of the sales person. 

Research shows that top producing salespeople talk about their products and services and features and specs 63% less than the average sales person.  Features and specs don’t win the day. You can’t reason your way to a sale. That’s not how our brains are wired. Every buying decision we make is an emotional one. And as the movie Air illustrates, if Nike's Sonny Vacaro, as played by Matt Damon, hadn’t made an immediate emotional connection with Michael Jordan’s mom in their backyard at the family home in Wilmington, North Carolina, there never would have been an Air Jordan. Hard to imagine huh?!It’s also hard to imagine Nike as an underdog, but they were during the time this film is set. And because they earned the time and attention of Michael Jordan’s mother, piqued her curiosity, and created unique, memorable and authentic interactions they put themselves on the path to becoming people the Jordan's felt like they knew, liked and trusted. And had sales success with a legendary partnership worth billions of dollars. 

Competition, for the most part, is a healthy thing. In fact, it is essential,because it leads to innovation.Competition is also an enemy of complacency. If you are constantly and consistently trying to build a better product, offer a better service, provide a better customer experience, and so on, everyone benefits; your industry, your organization, your employees, and the end users of your product or service.However, some negative things can happen as well in the name of competition.Listen to this episode to learn how to use the competition to spur you on, to help you achieve more than you would on your own. But don’t let the competition take all of your attention. And energy. Especially if they don’t even exist.

Why in most  sales and marketing interactions are we trying to inundate the left brains of our audience with features and benefits when it's our right brains that is doing the buying? Reasons lead to conclusions and emotions lead to action. And every single buying decision we make is rooted in - and driven by - emotion.Here are some tips and takeaways for creating those emotional connections.   

There is a direct connection between how we use our voices and how the world views us. Your voice is a signature, a unique and powerful part of your professional identity and brand. Research shows 38% of messages are processed based on your tone of voice, your delivery, making how you say something more important than what you are actually saying. Does your voice enhance your image - or undermine it? Get rid of upspeak, and you'll avoid having other people wonder, “Are you asking me or telling me?”

The day I interviewed Tom Hanks for the hit film Forrest Gump he did 64 back-to-back, five-minute television interviews at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Although I was fortunate enough to be in the first group of 10, I knew if I was going to have a unique, memorable interaction with the Hollywood star I would have to be different, get him to put down his script, and take him off “autopilot.” Research shows that from moment to moment, all of our brains are set to run on autopilot. Which you will find out in this episode is both good - and bad.If we are going to be successful in our sales and marketing efforts, we have to cut through today’s buying clutter, having authentic, unique and memorable interactions, creating emotional connections quickly, and laying a solid sales-forward foundation.That is next to impossible if we are on autopilot. Our audiences too!

STORY = information, knowledge, context and emotionWhen facts are so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact. So stories and sales go together! 

Do you want the good news first, or the bad? The good news is, it has never been easier to reach large numbers of people. The bad news? It has never been more difficult to actually connect with them. And creating emotional connections, quickly, as in seconds, is vital if we are to earn someone’s time and attention, and eventually, their business.However, research shows that over three-fourths of our sales and marketing messaging consists primarily of bombarding our audience with large amounts of infill and information, features and specs.  That is not going to put you on the path to persuade, move, convince – and sell.Here’s why. It’s not the way our brains work, the way we are wired.  You see, reasons lead to conclusions, while emotions lead to actions. And every single decision we make, including every buying decision certainly, is rooted in – and driven by – emotion.So if you're trying to create behavior change, i.e., get somebody to do something, that happens by speaking to their feelings and creating an emotional connection. 

When I asked actor Jack Lemmon during the Glengarry Glen Ross Hollywood press junket why he was still making movies, his reply surprised me, and certainly piqued my curiosity.  "Because I still find romance in a loaf of bread," was his reply. In this episode of the 3 Second Selling podcast find out what he meant, and why we should all aspire to be - and hire - people who similarly find romance in a load of bread. 

There is about an 80-percent chance there is something fundamentally wrong with your marketing. It’s flawed because it’s about you, not them (your prospect or customer), because you’re the hero of your own story, and because you don’t demonstrate value. The result is you push and publish a bunch of content that isn’t relevant to your audience. And that costs you an opportunity to show up differently in a crowded, cluttered, competitive marketplace.In this episode I'll talk about how to fix that so that you can quickly create emotional connections. Why when we read or hear a bunch of facts, only certain parts in the brain get activated. And how telling stories activates other parts of the brain and puts our whole brains to work.Another way to make your marketing more relevant is through value creation, or creating a contrast between what is (your customer’s world without your solution), and what could be (their world, improved, with your solution in it).