MMS #92 - Crafting Connections Using Humor: B2B Transformation with Jon Selig

[00:00:00] Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling, Relationships, Social and AI in the Firecentric Age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of FistThumb, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller, Carson V Heady, and Tom Burton, author of the Revenue Zone and co-founder of Leedsmart.

[00:00:19] As we explore the strategies and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals, dive in to business growth, personal development and the pursuit of excellence with industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your

[00:00:35] backstage pass to today's business landscape. This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by FistThumb. Everybody welcome to episode number 92, Mastering Modern Selling, and we are improving today. John, welcome. John, see you like welcome as our guest. We expect to

[00:01:03] have Brandon and Carson show up here at some point, but Brandon is stuck somewhere with no internet and Carson, I don't know where he's stuck, but I retrou-y will show up here at some point.

[00:01:16] Meanwhile, we're going to improv and talk a little bit today about how do you use humor and even jokes and your messaging and your sales strategy. Again, welcome John. It's good to be here. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. So let's start off a little bit

[00:01:38] here and tell everybody a little bit about who you are in your background. And then there's a lot of interesting questions that we're going to want to cover just related to using humor and

[00:01:49] everything in sales, but love to know a little bit more about your background. Sure, so good to be here. Thanks for having me. So I'm John Seelylick and have sales guy have standard comedian

[00:01:58] and all parental disappointment. And about seven years ago, I decided, well sales and stand up have all these similar characteristics and parallels. And I merged the two to create comedy writing for revenue teams and I deliver sales and abominant storytelling and memorable messaging

[00:02:16] to revenue teams all through the process of crafting jokes and ironically, that isn't one. So I do a lot of team building trainings and workshops where go to market professionals work together to unpack points that they really want to highlight and shine the light on to their target

[00:02:34] personas. So typically we choose problems that that Avengers can solve for their target persona. And we unpack, well, what can happen if they don't solve this problem? What's that cost of an action?

[00:02:45] We get very specific. We get in the reads. We talk about how they affect different stakeholders and different emotions. And then we kind of go down this creative process once we've mapped out

[00:02:55] all that good knowledge, and I show people how can you get creative and convert that knowledge into a short quick bit of ice breaking humor that makes you relevant and makes you memorable

[00:03:05] and that provokes a conversation with prospects. And I also sometimes just write jokes for my client. So that's the other side of what I did. And you're going to give us some examples, right? Of

[00:03:15] what you mean by jokes and how they're used and all of that. But before we do that, you obviously work with a lot of different companies of all sizes. We talk a lot about this on the show.

[00:03:27] What do you think is the problem today? Like, what is the challenge that sales and marketing organizations are running into related with messaging and why should they even consider doing some of the things that you get involved with? I think they're their own worst enemies. They

[00:03:42] get in their way a lot there. They're very scared to take any kind of risk, not just because I think sometimes they're scared that someone above them might not approve of it. I think they

[00:03:53] think their prospects are too serious. I think they like to play at safe and do what everyone else is doing. And we all know that fortune favors the bold. And when I say jokes, I don't mean like,

[00:04:05] you know, calling up a prospect and saying, hey, I'm a priest in a minister walking through a bar and say offensive things to each other. I'm just talking about short-quick ice-breaking humor

[00:04:15] that sometimes compares two different things or just pains a bit of a picture about what can go wrong if you don't solve a problem. And we have our party is rounding out. I told you the party's going

[00:04:26] to get bigger and better as we go a lot. You see, I learned at an early age that you never want to be on time or early for the party. You got to stroll in so you can make an entrance. And I just

[00:04:36] do happen to have come off of a really great and impactful meeting with a customer executive that I set up throughout reach via LinkedIn and sales navigator. And wrote and helped AI help to me

[00:04:49] write the message. So there's all this stuff we talk about on the show. So I have a good reason why I'm tardy. There you go. Well, you're practicing what we're preaching is what you're telling us.

[00:04:58] That's exactly right. I'm mostly here for John. So you started about the show today. Well, we're just telling some jokes and doing some humor so it's all good. Beautiful. Because John, no one need that jokes. We've been known to tell a few of those

[00:05:12] on the show before. Yeah, I don't know. We asked, we asked it very about that. Just my own father's but I'm going to make sure Carson that we walk away from today going

[00:05:22] we don't need AI to craft a good joke. There you go. That's true. Yes, that is very true. That's one thing that it'll never be able to do as well as humans. Definitely not.

[00:05:33] So Carson, the Phil you in real quick and John, if I don't if you could two Matt Carson and John, I'm not sure. No, we're not. We exchange messages but never Matt. So everyone's getting this in real time and by the way, welcome Bob and Chris and Margaret

[00:05:46] and looks like you got a lot of fans also out there lining up John as well. So the pressure is going to be on for some good humor here. But what we were talking about Carson before you got here is

[00:05:59] you know, why do you even important to start thinking about how we're messaging and then corporate humor into our messaging? Why is the same old bland sort of stereotypical sales message

[00:06:12] not working, not making sense and I was going to John just ask a follow-up question of what you were saying. Do you think that in, if you said you know one of the reasons people don't change

[00:06:22] right as they don't want to be offensive and see this party just is getting bigger and bigger by the minute? We're all here. I know. I know. I told every- John, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Hey, I was late too. So, so Brandon, you and Chick-fil-A?

[00:06:40] No, I'm actually, I'm in a fair field in now. I couldn't find good. I mean, I'm like an hour outside of Atlanta, but I've got a meeting immediately after our show and I thought no, no problem.

[00:06:51] But I couldn't stream from my phone. I couldn't find good Wi-Fi. Here's my secret when I travel. If you have to go the restroom where you need good Wi-Fi, go to a hotel. This could be the problem here. This could be the topic of your next live stream.

[00:07:05] Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, page. So, anyway, before John just wanted to finish the question here and then we can kind of get into some of the things. But do you think that the dry sort of stereotypical, politically correct messaging that tends to exist in sales and marketing?

[00:07:25] Do you think anybody hears it? Do you think the prospect hears it? Or is it just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and is it really, you know, impinging and making an impact? I don't think political correctness has anything to quite frankly do with it.

[00:07:39] I think everyone's just trying to sound the same. I think creativity and oral and written communication skills are dropping like mad. Like as people lean on emojis and means to communicate

[00:07:54] and just images and gifts, I think this art of how do we, how do we write? How do we speak? How do we communicate is going away a little bit. And I think people need to flex that muscle

[00:08:06] just to say, or work exercise that muscle the same way as going to the gym. Like when I started stand up in 2011, you know, I sort of stumped it like everyone tends to when they start but you

[00:08:19] go up three, four or five times a week and you feel yourself growing and developing with how you communicate with a live audience and how you get to the punchline faster. What's funnier?

[00:08:28] I mean, if sales teams and marketing teams could practice not getting up in front of their peers and delivering jokes, but just basic writing and communicating with one another on a more regular basis,

[00:08:39] I think I would translate to better to better our reach, to better demos, to better sales presentations, to better communication skills with their prospects. Perfect. You know, I had a conversation this morning. I know I'm late to the dance and sorry everybody, it's hard to be audience,

[00:08:56] but we're just having that conversation with someone today about, you know, just the amount of automation and amount of scripting and how dumb it's made people. Like it's like we have this whole

[00:09:08] generation and forgive me for anyone I offend, but we have this generation that if you've been in sales or really in almost anything in business since about 2010, if you started in that time,

[00:09:21] most of what you've been taught is trying to turn you into a robot and not turn you into a thinker and so things like you're talking about John, your ability to communicate, your ability to have

[00:09:32] the improv, the ability to have a conversation and connect. Like that's just all gone down and I hate to sound like the old guy that's like back in our day, but I find that one to be really,

[00:09:43] really true. I couldn't agree with you more like half my LinkedIn feed is by my set of templates that are guaranteed to work. I've spoken with lots of SDR leadership who, the SDRs don't

[00:09:58] write their own messaging. There's one person who's craft and sequences and then like I'm not really sure what the SDRs job is if they don't think for themselves they don't communicate for

[00:10:11] themselves and they don't learn for themselves. So, you know, I know everyone's in a rush to scale, but if we're not training our people to think and to engage with our prospects and customers,

[00:10:21] are we setting ourselves up for success in the long term? I mean, it depends how smart the leadership Well, and unfortunately my opinion is and I didn't say in this for a while and that wasn't very popular,

[00:10:33] but you know the VC game and the investment game which was hurry up in scale, it came at a cost and the cost was team members and their lack of experience. They're not prepared to go to the next

[00:10:48] job. They're not prepared to advance to the next thing because what they've been doing as a job is taking what somebody else wrote and saying it or taking what someone else wrote and sending it

[00:11:01] and all they were focused on is getting demos for people and we've got this generation of people. You know, is Bob on here a little hot bob if he's on here? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know he always

[00:11:13] talked about he's like, we have this generation of sales people that don't know how to sell because they've never experienced selling, they experience this little sliver and that is it. They didn't experience the full cycle so they didn't have the opportunity to learn.

[00:11:30] They didn't have the opportunity to make mistakes and things like your sand John, like I learned a lot by when I'm talking with people, I'm hearing things ago.

[00:11:38] What if I say it this way if it would land a little bit better and you test things and you try things and it's experiential learning and they just don't have that option. Yeah, I agree with that.

[00:11:50] I couldn't agree with that more. I mean sometimes the biggest barrier is, and John I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, you know you have to have a sales culture that allows for the

[00:12:01] creativity as well. A lot of times the starts with leadership empowering and enabling people to go out and try to communicate authentically and uniquely with potential clients in a way that stands out from the the droves of automated messages that sound like drones. Furthermore, every activity has a

[00:12:22] probability around it. I mean you could absolutely send some purely AI written mail to a thousand people and get a few hits and pat yourself on the back. But the reality is if you set yourself apart

[00:12:33] you say something very unique, thought provoking, provocative. The chance is of getting that meeting go up and up and up and what I think's really important for us to understand and realize is that

[00:12:46] it isn't all about trying to sound like everybody else but we've also got to throw ourselves into the discomfort sometimes. You know before I was able to talk to a sea level, it made me very nervous every

[00:12:57] time. Sometimes I still get nervous talking to a sea level because I want to make sure I sound like I know what the heck I'm talking about. But you've got to throw yourself into this comfort,

[00:13:06] like I love your gene analogy, you've got to train some uncomfortable, untested muscle and what do you gambling ultimately by doing it? If you're if you've got an approach that's not working, you're not risking anything by trying to approach that stands apart that is unique and might give

[00:13:21] you a better outcome. I actually want to go once like everything you're saying is is 10,000 and 17% true. But I think another challenge is not 18% of 17%. I know, I've tried to get really specific there.

[00:13:37] Look, I think I have an expression that some people seem to like which is most sales pro sell stuff they never used to people whose jobs they've never had, industry's they've never worked.

[00:13:45] As a result, they don't know how to really relate to their prospects, how to be credible, how to earn their trust and before they even can get creative, that's the stuff that companies

[00:13:57] are dropping the ball on. I'll go up to someone manning of booth at a trade show and it's usually young, like I was at saster a couple years ago, the big software, kind of conference for

[00:14:11] scaling companies. And I'd go up to some trade show booth and the company has their name. I've never heard of that I can barely pronounce like schmizza.io or something like that. And I'd go to like

[00:14:23] the dude and the booth, it could be a girl too. And I would ask them the following questions. I've never heard of you. What problem do you solve and who do you solve it for? And they

[00:14:33] have immediately launched into where an ad driven engagement platform and we ten extra scale ability, do you want to see a demo? And I'd be like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa like, I don't know what you said

[00:14:44] just there. You didn't answer my question more importantly. I just want to know what business or technical problem do you solve and who is the person who's going to raise their hand and say

[00:14:51] I need that. And the guy looked at me like I was from Marx and I'm like why are you off for me a demo? I could be your competitor. So I think there's like this basic ability to help

[00:15:07] to get sellers and even marketers to listen and to answer questions in a way that's meaningful for a prospect or a buyer or a competitor. But I think that's really non-existent to some degree.

[00:15:23] Some companies do an okay job of it, I guess. But you know to your point cars and like all that stuff about creativity and standing out, you can't even do that unless you mastered the basics.

[00:15:34] Love that. So John, I want to get into the specifics and John's going to take us through almost like an example, like he would work on with a client or a customer using humor and jokes.

[00:15:46] I wanted to hit a couple of comments because there seems to be quite a bit of agreement here on different things. Just say Lincoln, I think Lincoln's actually in the UK, differentiating your authentic interaction is the best way to combat information age

[00:16:01] low overload. I think that's a while right there. I'm ready right there. I also want to Anthony also really liked your gym analogy. I think that's a really good point, right? We don't

[00:16:12] go trying to bench press 500 pounds day one. Brandon. Well, Brandon yeah but the rest of us. Yeah, every team five five five pounds. It's all that Chick-fil-A. Right. I think what Margaret

[00:16:27] saying is the same thing, factory like production, right, another way of saying it and Bob who is here is saying given an easy button like AI people are going to hit it like lab monkey,

[00:16:39] hitting the magic button for a treat. And I think we see that a lot. I see it a lot on Lincoln. We see a lot of those things that are there and Luke also agrees. That would make you great

[00:16:51] name what Bob just said, you know, lab. He's saying for the untrained sales person AI button for a treat. Exactly. I think you know it.

[00:17:02] Yeah, you know what I want to point out to Luke. Luke and I had a chat last week or so. And Luke is a he's he's starting his senior year of college next year. So he is in that generation.

[00:17:14] And I would say Luke has broken out of the mold of everything. All these doing some great stuff. He's very bringing his humanity and everything to Lincoln. But I think even when someone like Luke

[00:17:24] is noticing, when he looks to his left and right around that everything is so robotic, everything is so scripted. Everything is just so, you know, brown and vanilla and just go act

[00:17:37] like everybody else. There's a big concern. I mean, I, I, with John, you were saying when I first joined, I had this happen to conversation earlier with somebody we were talking about

[00:17:47] a very similar thing. And it's like, you know, we have so much tech and we have so much automation. We have so much scripting. The companies are just forgetting the fact that people need to be trained

[00:17:59] repeatedly. Right? They need a trainer, they need a manager who is going to be involved and help them in the learning process. Not just let me teach you how to use this technology that's going

[00:18:12] to do everything for you. It's teaching them how to learn, how to make mistakes, and how to fix mistakes, and how to keep going. And that is just not happening. And it's playing out in, especially

[00:18:25] in social right now, which has just become an aschit shell. Can I say that on our show? No. It's already done. All right. Okay. But I'm glad to hear that you do a thousand

[00:18:37] fist bumps in your sleeper and so. Yes, thanks Anthony. It's, it's, it's a nervous, you know, reaction. All right. So John, take us through, right? We're a client. We're struggling with our sales messaging. We're struggling, getting our message across. Take us through kind of a little bit what

[00:18:54] you would do. How you would use that humor and that joke. And even I know you picked out an example we were going to go through. Yeah. Look, when I work with my clients and I write jokes for them,

[00:19:06] I'll often talk to them. Well, okay, who's your target persona? What level within the organization are they? Are they a sea level? Who's thinking about big pictures, strategic stuff? Or are we dealing with managers and directors who are probably a little bit more focused on tactical stuff?

[00:19:22] So it's called, no-one your audience. Right? And what is that person trying to achieve? What is success and failure? Or look like for them? What KPIs are they measured on? Who are their key stakeholders? What affects their emotions? What excites them? Makes them, makes them proud? What makes

[00:19:40] them afraid? What, what frightens them? You're sorry. I said that. What makes the nervous, what makes the manchess? Or just what makes them frustrated and angry? And, and, you know, as vendors, there's problems that we solve that that trigger all those negative emotions for them.

[00:19:56] So if we were to isolate that problem, let's tell a story of what could go wrong if that problem isn't addressed, isn't solved. So for example, I have a client they're called event

[00:20:12] mobile. And if anyone has ever been to a conference or a trade show of some kind, they make those apps that you open up and it's got all the content, all the speakers,

[00:20:23] all the exhibitors, let's use set of points, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, what challenge you? These guys solve, they eliminate the hassle of printing programs for an event and disposing of them when it's over. So their team wrote the following joke. They said

[00:20:43] the most challenging part of printing programs for your event is finding a big enough for cycling been to put them in, getting big laughs I can tell but it doesn't matter because the joke is

[00:20:56] in written for you guys. If you literally written, I don't remember. I'm never going to be on it when I thought it was like when it'd brand-news dad jokes about that same level. Well,

[00:21:09] like the reality is it paints a picture, you know, dad joke or not, it paints a picture about what's going to happen if you stick with the status quo. And look, I'm not going for

[00:21:21] Netflix comedy special kind of humor because we're writing short quick one liners. If you look at traditional stand up, especially in the modern form, it's a long-winded story with some punchlines along the way. That will not fly if you're doing cold email, you're sending linkedin

[00:21:37] connection requests which have 300 characters. If you are at a trade show booth and you have a few seconds to grab and attend these attention when they approach you with the other few seconds

[00:21:50] to kind of shine a light on something and provoke a reaction. So I don't know if it's a dad, like I don't even know what a dad joke is. I just don't know it's like usually got a pun in it.

[00:22:00] I would like to say that that joke was fun free. So I was just... It's so ridiculous jokes that your dad probably told when you were growing up, that you've grown dad but that now as a dad, you tell and you think you're funny. Trust me,

[00:22:14] I'm a big sufferer. I would challenge people because I know the term dad joke gets thrown around a lot. I would challenge people to watch stand up and dissect it a little bit within every comedian set.

[00:22:27] There's probably a few things that if you took away their tone, their body language and you saw it on paper, you might think it's a dad joke. I don't... That's the thing though. I don't think there.

[00:22:35] I think dad jokes are puns and growners. It's really been thrown on that then maybe it's a dad joke. But... And, Laura, especially the way these guys tell them but what I love about your

[00:22:46] plot process, John and your approach is you can almost like lean into the elephant in the room or the problem, right? Because you know that in a lot of times I think sales people might shy away

[00:22:58] from some of these types of things because they perceive some risk. They don't know how that message is going to be received. How do you typically help sales people get over that up where

[00:23:08] you know they can kind of step into that creative zone. I'd love to hear your thoughts because like I don't have any qualms about it at this stage in my career but coming out of college when I'm

[00:23:17] taking this templatized training and I got to read off the script, the likelihood of me doing creative stuff is next and nothing. So I'm going to give you guys a... I want you guys to imagine

[00:23:28] real-life scenario like look, I have a client that came to me and they said we stink at exhibiting of trade shows, we don't know how to engage people, we don't know how to explain to them what we do.

[00:23:40] Can you help? And I wrote them 20 to 30 icebreakers. Short quick bits of humor that highlighted the challenges they saw. They were small sales team including the CRO, they were six people

[00:23:51] and the CRO and one other veteran sales guy took two of the jokes and they used them over and over and over to spark conversation after conversation that led to a hundred K in that

[00:24:03] new revenue in just two months. Off of the conversations it started with those icebreakers and they converted another 60 K off of cold email. And so let's imagine we're at a trade show. Everyone at the trade show should have if they're not the person who is affected by a

[00:24:24] problem we solve, all of their bosses. All we get is but they're going to be familiar with it. Are we in the middle of a gang fight guys? What's going on over there? Tom what the heck's happened

[00:24:36] in out there? No it might be Brandon at the holiday in there. It could be. So I was supposed to pipe down. Yeah, imagine we're at a cybersecurity trade show and

[00:24:50] someone comes to your booth and you say hey do you want to hear a joke about protecting your data on the cloud? What are they going to say? All of our they're going to say, all right what do you

[00:25:03] get? If you deliver the joke, tooth and it's written properly as like I believe they should be sort of where you're revealing their relevance to them and highlighting the challenge in the setup

[00:25:13] to the joke whether or not it gets a laugh there's going to be a reaction. And if they laugh it's because it's either a problem today it's a painful true challenge that they're struggling

[00:25:26] we laugh at things when they're painful and true. It was a problem the past that they've resolved or they know it's going to be a problem in the future because stuff's happening and

[00:25:38] we're going to be dealing with that soon. That's number one if they don't laugh, the jokes are structured in such a way or the prospect who might not be like they might not find a funny

[00:25:47] but they're processing what you said and they might go, that's really interesting that you say it like that or that you're reading and then either way it's a conversation stirred and that's what we're really looking for from like we're not we're not looking to get a five-star review

[00:26:01] from all those Netflix fans. We're just looking to provoke conversations in a human meaningful way and shine a light in some challenges and through that process even qualify them to see if they're

[00:26:13] the best people we should be talking to. So I need you to give Brandon a joke that he can turn around and tell one of these employees to have them start listening to our show. On your website I know

[00:26:24] you talk about how you replicate some of this content to different channels. What I'd love to hear, you know especially for like my purpose for our audience what are some of the other channels

[00:26:35] that you see this working effectively in? Like how are you leveraging the humor, the video or other types of ways that you can engage with with prospects? Yeah let's get questions. So look

[00:26:46] there's seven cold-hour retowels that you can open up with a bit of humor like a short one liner. So look my go-to and I'm calling a CRO is this call or the CML or this LinkedIn connection request is colder than the relationship between sales and marketing. And I'm

[00:27:05] highlighting a challenge that mid-salignment, I want to say like it's a problem for you like that misalignment between your sales marketing teams because that's kind of part of what my workshop is able to do is bring them together. Also sometimes I'm calling up a

[00:27:20] STR leader. I'll say this call is colder than an STR's feet their first day dialing. So I'm highlighting the challenge of call reluctance and so look we're shining a light on problems we solved. Now there's cold calls, there's emails, there's LinkedIn connection requests,

[00:27:37] there's voice mail, there's videos, there's voice notes on LinkedIn that cold opener kind of style doesn't really work on a demo but there's other jokes that you can use to repurpose

[00:27:48] on a demo in a cold email within ours. Within our pitch deck, you can turn that into memes and graphics. I have a client and I'll tell you guys this joke I will drop them. And I worked with their network observability team. They sell solutions to network

[00:28:08] operations managers who look they're they're whole their whole success is predicated upon people not knowing what they even exist. So because if you're networks down you're going to come running for the network the network guy or girl. So I wrote this joke for them. Your

[00:28:24] success in network operations is predicated upon being invisible and people not knowing you exist. That's a career I could have crushed in high school. So Jeremy who's the product of he's like the brand evangelist there or the product, he took that joke and he

[00:28:44] added a picture of himself with a mallet from high school. He posted the on LinkedIn and that was his best performing post to date. I bet. Yeah because it was different it was original he was

[00:28:56] he looked he I just wrote the joke he added his own spin where he added his photo and that there's like one plus one equals three kind of thing. So there was some self-deplication and there

[00:29:06] was just a clever joke and it just got people reacting. And that's an interesting kind of segue too because I mean look you have an important brand and then the press of the ring

[00:29:16] well John it's so like what I've known about you following you for as long as I have is you you you parlay that humor into your posts and they they stand out. I'd love to hear how that has

[00:29:30] positively impacted your your business, your brand and how you've leveraged LinkedIn as an example with your following. Well you've touched on a source spot a painful truth is that the

[00:29:42] algorithm doesn't give me the reach I used to get all post a brilliant joke on there I'm like six hundred. Yeah that's exactly it. You triggered me right here guys but all that to say is look if

[00:29:54] I if I hadn't been using humor to spark conversations I wouldn't have a business I wouldn't have a brand on LinkedIn like I used to create a lot of videos but I also wanted my videos to be like

[00:30:06] joke joke joke joke joke joke joke joke joke and like like memorable moment after memorable moment I was never great on like the whole short full content thing. He's produced a lot of like

[00:30:15] eight years in videos that people when the algorithm is a little more giving would would notice me as a result. When I called call people which I still do it's usually someone connected with

[00:30:28] on LinkedIn and they know exactly who I am right when I'm calling like I called up a I'm calling up some channels sales leaders recently and saying it is called as colder in the

[00:30:38] shoulder you get from disengaged channel partners and they know exactly who I am. So is it is it the joke on the cold call is it the brand on LinkedIn where I'm being a little funny and a little different

[00:30:49] than all these other people saying seven quick hacks to 10Xing your earnings. You know it's I'm trying to just use this it's sort of a bit of a what's that term for it? It's a

[00:31:02] what do you call it? I'm forget that term is on the tip of my tongue like it's a multiplier effect right? One of the spars. Yeah definitely. That's it and it's not going to happen if you're just

[00:31:13] hunting on LinkedIn if not going to happen if you're just hunting on cold calls or just memorable at least like a few of the term funny from the memorable is a better way how do you stand out that's

[00:31:23] all part of you funny. It's not going to happen if you just do it minimally and for a very short period of time I showed up to trade shows I introduced myself to people and I was at a trade show the other

[00:31:36] day where I was kind of doing some prospecting in the manufacturing space and there were someone I went to and they're like I met you at a trade show two years ago and used to use that exact same

[00:31:45] humor on me to start your spiel I remember exactly who you are and so aside of me it's like oh no I'm using the same jokes it doesn't matter they remember. Yeah and that's so much I'm sorry Tom go ahead

[00:32:00] go ahead I'll ask my question when you're done. I mean Tom you and I talk a lot about rising above the noise is such an important thing right now and as you say like here's the seven hacks to this

[00:32:12] that it seems like so many people just following these you know these hacks these systems that are all boring and everyone sounds the same you know one of the things that we've been talking about with

[00:32:24] rising above the noise and being remembered is bringing more of your humanity into your everything and I think especially with LinkedIn you know it gives you that opportunity for repetition but the more you bring your human in it and this isn't like oh keep Facebook out of

[00:32:43] LinkedIn this isn't all personal personal it's bringing your humanity into it and I think in your taste on your humanity is humor and you're bringing that into your business conversations to standout and be memorable that's what I see. No I appreciate that I don't think people even

[00:33:01] how like look it's not easy to teach people let's back that up let's let's rewind I don't teach people be funny I teach a small percentage of people quite frankly to get a little funnier but all

[00:33:14] I really care about is that they loosen up through the process in other words look I don't use the joke writing process to make people funny I use the joke writing process kind of like Mr. Miyagi

[00:33:27] taught Daniel to be a karate champion by getting him to select his cars and sand is deck remember this wax on like soft all that kind of Daniel was like well why am I doing this and he became a

[00:33:40] champion through the whole thing and I'm using the joke writing process to help sellers better master what problems do we solve how are they impacted tell some stories about that and just be more human communicators that are also complicated and nature that are subject matter experts

[00:33:57] better listeners and if they can be a little funny or through after completing that process cherry on top of it like you know that's that's kind of the whole point of what I do so it's

[00:34:09] not always about being funny it's definitely about standing out it's about being human but we're dealing as we talked about earlier with a generation of investors who want to rant these companies quickly they over hire some people aren't really meant to be in sales no

[00:34:24] offense to the people who probably are watching this anyway and how can we how can we and they don't want to invest in abominants so how can we up their games to to be a real sales person to craft the

[00:34:35] right message to have a real conversation sort of start conversations and have meaningful ones and I just use that joke writing process to help my clients achieve those kind of objectives.

[00:34:46] You know what I'm hearing you say I think John good I think there was a couple questions earlier about difference you know improv versus jokes and what I really hear you saying is

[00:34:57] what your teaching people how to do is one break the ice in a way that makes you memorable but even gets a conversation starter right a conversation starter breaks the ice you're removing that wall of seriously right that often exists in a new relationship right there's

[00:35:13] a serious I have to be serious because I have to be professional you're kind of removing that and dissolving that and I think the third piece to it that I'm it's if I am doing cold outreach

[00:35:23] to me it sounds a little more fun then dialing the phone and saying hey do you want to demo or whatever that you know an SDR anybody else at a trade show is gonna say if you take those three

[00:35:35] things together you're getting more productive sales people that are maybe having more fun with their outreach you're removing some of the seriousness which breaks a real builds a relationship and helps you rise above the noise brand and as you're talking about and then the third

[00:35:49] piece is there as you are breaking the ice and you're becoming more memorable it's isn't about getting somebody to laugh hysterically on the floor crying that's and I think that you know

[00:35:59] that's the first thing you hear of right when you think of a joke is that a good summary of kind of what you're saying that that's perfect and it's like look I'll give you guys another analogy

[00:36:10] in the stand up world to maybe give this little context I'm sure everyone here has gone to watch some stand-up comedy at a club or a bar and there's a very good chance you don't know

[00:36:21] any of the comedians who are on the show doesn't mean they're not funny but they're just not famous they don't have an Netflix but I Jerry Seinfeld and right you know that's correct they're not

[00:36:30] they're not a brand name that sells tickets you're at the club to watch comedy not to watch a comedian the moment that comedian comes on stage they have like 15 seconds to make you laugh

[00:36:43] to earn your attention and to earn your trust so that you give them more of your time right like you listen to the next joke and that that 15 second window you have to be a

[00:36:55] relevant you have to say something that's on their minds right away something that's frustrating them something that's keeping them up at night something that they're just petrified about and how can we trigger that within 15 seconds whether we're on stand-up comedy stage

[00:37:11] or whether again they're taking our cold call you need really five to 10 seconds into those circumstances are email like whatever it is how do we be relevant memorable quick but we can't

[00:37:24] be relevant and memorable unless we understand the audience inside and out and why our company is in business and why they can help them achieve their objectives I love that so much and like look

[00:37:38] I'm somebody who's not funny so like for me my challenge to myself would be how could I do something unique or creative to approach this conversation that is going to be unorthodox that can get somebody's attention I loved your karate kid reference earlier I will say what was

[00:37:54] at 40 years ago this week that within a legal crane kick Daniel Lerus not Johnnie Lawrence but it reminds me when I ran a call center years ago we used to do fun little things like

[00:38:07] I would do a contest we were calling into a market we were calling karate dojos and I said I'll give a dollar to the first person that calls one and says does fear exist in your dojo

[00:38:18] and it was hilarious and they did it immediately it was an activity that a lot of people don't enjoy cold calling but it gave this fun element of it so it's like in talking to sales leaders

[00:38:31] John I'd love to get your you know any pushback that you ever get from like sales cultures that are super rigid and aren't quite ready for this I think there's a lot of people that are so

[00:38:42] like not able to step outside of that rigid box but you know if you make that environment fun for your for your sellers for your customers it creates that personal element right out of the gate

[00:38:55] I'm really picky and choosing two on TV shows I'll watch like the first 10 15 minutes of that pilot and if it doesn't grab me I don't watch because we live in this society where I mean I got a

[00:39:05] billion choices to make and your customers have a billion choices to make too so I'd love to hear any thoughts about you know cultures that are very rigid to accept you know this type of approach

[00:39:19] look I'm kind of touting something that a lot of people say to me you read like the kind of humor you write or you encourage like we've ever heard of this like let's say it's a manufacturing

[00:39:30] process you know some aspect of manufacturing process like you can write a joke that shines a light on that that manufacturer process and what sucks about it people don't think to do that

[00:39:41] I think humor is meant to be offensive number one they think it's meant to be frivolous number two like just some frivolous joke that gets attention they don't realize that you could

[00:39:52] write a hyper relevant bit of humor that's clean that's tasteful and that shines a light on a problem or an impact of not solving it so they don't always understand what's possible number one

[00:40:06] number two to answer your question cars and the people that push back the most just on the idea of using humor not even forget the idea of using comedy or anything to better enable sellers

[00:40:17] and make them better communicators but the people who push back the most are usually self involved sales leaders who are so serious themselves that their ineffective leaders because they don't connect with their customers they don't connect with their team they're projecting

[00:40:38] they're like I've spoken to the odd cyber security sales leaders like we we can't be using humor our customers are serious not if they're job serious they're people they're humans they're humans they watch TV and maybe you're only thinking about how you're going to

[00:40:55] miss your number all the time and terrified for your reputation but I promise you that the vast majority of your prospects are competent take their jobs as serious these they can and are okay with the

[00:41:07] right kind of humor being injected into their prospect communications and in fact they're going to say this job has gotten stale because all these vendors sound the same bit more than we need to

[00:41:17] laugh and they said something that's relevant I want to talk to them so I kind of think those sail leaders who push back feel that humor has no role in their world I think they're they're

[00:41:30] I think they're they're just two inward looking and maybe they're successful I don't know if it's working you know I I think you know when the terms that we've used in the past is there's

[00:41:41] people that hide behind their title like they don't let their humanity come out they don't let their humanity show in my opinion is those are the people that they they're insecure generally because

[00:41:53] if they let their humanity out they would feel judged or people would like them or they wouldn't and they they have a clear you know differentiation between here's who I am and business

[00:42:04] here's who I am and my personal life the two shall not ever get me reach other and you know it's it's just not the way I ever want to do business like for me business and my

[00:42:15] personality and everything's always kind of done together and you know who I am I'm linked in I love it with people tell me hey you're exactly like I see you on linkedin I'm like well thank you that's

[00:42:27] that's the goal is to bring it you know shy of I think like Margaret said on here those those rigid cultures just aren't your prospect pool are there any ways that you can approach those types

[00:42:40] of managers or those types of companies and make any headway or is it just pretty much like if if they're that rigid it's just not something that they're going to consider comedy or another

[00:42:51] route of doing things look we we know this term which is probably the most you know 2024 in human term I've ever heard but this concept of multi-threading where you hit up multiple

[00:43:04] stakeholders in the count if I hit up five stakeholders in the count and one tells me that oh there's no room for you and there's good to be for who like I really like this and most people are

[00:43:18] like you said they're authentic they don't take themselves that seriously regardless of how seriously they they they take their jobs and it's a matter of finding those people and then and then

[00:43:29] the question is do you want to you want to wage the battle where the decision makers really hung up on the way they do things to me if a CRO tells me there's no room for humor this is serious I'm

[00:43:40] just like all right there's a million other companies there out there I'll I'll go find one where the CRO gets it a little bit more and do they all sound like the guy from taxi when they said that which character you can't breathe remember his name no

[00:43:57] this is the world yeah yeah Chris and Lloyd's character right forgot his name on taxi yeah Reverend Jim Jim very in three or jokes that you won't touch John I have to ask yeah I'll give you some rules like look pharmaceuticals the use case of pharmaceutical sales

[00:44:17] there is a natural it's a natural fit between what I do in the way they sell they they have to visit doctors all the time they have to do they bring them donuts they all bring them donuts or

[00:44:29] some are bring coffee they have seconds of their time and theory the right bit of humor can make them really memorable look there's like I said you can write a joke to impress any point

[00:44:41] upon any audience but we don't want obviously mock you know human tragedy we don't want to make fun of conditions illnesses suffering of any kind we don't want to punch down on marginalized groups

[00:44:59] so when it comes to industries I don't really think there's two many industries that the camp editor from this I think it's how we use humor to illuminate a challenge like you don't

[00:45:11] have to highlight suffering or or illness when you're trying to like do the doctors attention you don't have to do that it's how do you look the right joke is connecting tissue between buyer and

[00:45:22] seller and you just have to figure out like how can we check enough boxes to make that work and find any of the rules so I don't really know if any industries where it won't work

[00:45:33] because again we're all we're all people we all appreciate a laugh most people as importanters their careers are they're not to find by it most people like a moment of levity in the day

[00:45:44] it's just sort of within the topics that we're writing jokes about what do we want to avoid and I think that's what we need to tread lightly on well said so so Bob has a joke here

[00:45:57] says when someone asks how I am he says spectacular of course that means all that me is I'm making a spectacle of myself well done Bob I thought that was good and I wanted to build

[00:46:08] on what Anthony was saying here and I wanted to get your take on something John Anthony saying you know it's really important and you've touched on this right too really make sure you

[00:46:16] know who your your ideal customer profile is who is the person you're trying to communicate that joke to along the way there's so many different you can't be everything for everybody

[00:46:28] if I wouldn't be an acceptable thing right if I take if I'm again in my business and my sales organization I spend a few minutes identify my ideal customer profile which we should know and basically the predominant problem that we're trying to solve for them which we should

[00:46:44] know I could go to chat GPT Carson just like you used to do with asking for a dad joke and put in that information said hey my target customer is this this is their problem can you

[00:46:55] create a simple joke for me or something that would be a nice breaker along the line now it may not be perfect and you may not like it but to me it would start the process of you thinking

[00:47:05] that way I mean John is that something you would recommend somebody to do just to kind of get started you know from what we've run it gone over today so so because you brought that up I feel

[00:47:14] that this entire live stream has been a lab or it's set up to the punch line and put it me out of business but the good news is that that's what we do here that's what we do here that's

[00:47:24] what we do with our guest you didn't get that warning before we started I did but I was I was holding my even up there come on yeah so to answer your question though look I played around

[00:47:35] with with AI for jokes I'm really not impressed by it and I think that our own sensibility and since a humor will never come through an AI joke they're kind of lame to be quite honest like

[00:47:49] those are they're not even dad jokes like I drive their here a dad joke to be quite honest and it's trying to mimic the dad joke formula because jokes are formulas people let's not

[00:47:58] get ourselves but I really think that again the real value of writing a joke for salespeople isn't to be hilarious or even to get that conversation with going within five to ten seconds it's

[00:48:11] it's sort of like like I have a graphic which I'm happy to share it people if they drop me a line so it's it's something I linked in content somewhere I create like an upside-down triangle and as

[00:48:22] we you know the the base is actually upside down and at the top we have like understanding your buyer understanding what problems you saw of how they impact them getting creative learning how to

[00:48:34] refraze and say things in simple English and then and then sort of then it's creativity and then it's like well how to joke short jokes are formulas how can we how can we take all that stuff all

[00:48:46] those inputs and have a nice output which is a short quick one liner and again even if you don't write a great joke but you go through that process you're going to be a better communicator and even storyteller and we all know that storytelling resonates with the sales

[00:49:01] the questions I put my clients through get a answering before we even start the creative process it's kind of before and after storytelling so you can use chat GPT to get you an outputs

[00:49:13] which probably isn't that great and if you were delivered your prospect might be like what but I still think the value lies in creating the joke yourself no matter what interesting branding carts in any final questions here before we need to wrap up here I know brand

[00:49:32] and you need to get to a meeting I was just gonna ask any other you know projects or jokes or just successes that you're particularly proud of that will stand out John like

[00:49:46] where you were able to come in and really you know have an impact on the way that they did business you know I'd love to just hear how impactful injecting that humor was into someone's sales process

[00:49:58] yes I mentioned the client they're called PowerCore and they succeeded with trade shows and cold email I have another client they're called Trust Arc and spoke with the CRO a few months after I worked with his new logos team they were like 15 or 16 people I had to

[00:50:19] and six of them were brand new hires I was I was inviting them to the workshop with their Gmail addresses and I spoke to them about three months later and we hadn't had time to like review

[00:50:30] the success of the workshop we did like an open mic at their QBR where the team I gave my keynote the team told their jokes but they wrote in the workshop and then I told my jokes and they were

[00:50:42] laughs like we all got last on jokes about global privacy compliance efforts the most boring topic on the planet but we wrote these jokes that painted these pictures that told these stories and I got a couple of emails during the quarter that followed that that keynote

[00:51:00] hey we close some deals with off of cold email that had those jokes and I'm like great and so I met with the CRO who hired me a few months later I like like three months after

[00:51:12] we did the workshop and I said so what do you think of all this and he leans in and he's kind of like is a bit of a gruff guy and he goes like look I don't want to tell you how to run your business

[00:51:24] like and I thought he was going to tear me apart but he's like the real value of what you do and I know I've articulated this during this this live stream the real value of what you do

[00:51:34] wasn't that we closed some some revenue off of cold email he's like you got my new reps being able to express what problems we saw for who in simple English before they even started on

[00:51:45] the job they ramped quickly and the team hit numbers in the quarter two of the quicks reps exceeded quota and the other four were closed and he's like I've never seen that before the process was really impactful for ramping for onboarding and even ever boarding is existing reps

[00:52:05] you know like about that is so lacquer is really the best medicine for a struggling sales team I mean usually medicines the best medicine but I guess in sales that there's no actual illness so maybe you're right maybe you're going to something but again I keep saying it

[00:52:24] but it's not even about the laughter it's about comedians like like I'll use this another real life stand-up comedy experience when I get on like my favorite thing to do when I was doing comedy

[00:52:34] on a regular basis was I'd like to watch the opening ten minutes of a show because I sort of looking but improvisers making up as they go along they're never going to repeat again stand-ups are

[00:52:46] are honing and we're crafting honing iterating we're finding bits and messaging to get reactions after night to flick on switch after switch and I might write a joke about I don't know online dating apps or social media or gifts or using pop culture references from that that 25

[00:53:06] year olds would get and I'm much older than that but if I go into the room and I notice that it's all people kind of like mid 40s and older maybe those jokes aren't kind of fly and so my favorite

[00:53:20] thing to do was like we to understand my audience going in being able to recognize is this going to be received and guys I've really had gone off on a tangent and don't

[00:53:31] fully remember the exact question that I was asked so I apologize so I just I ramble a little bit there's an apology to that yeah that's okay that was good I think you know getting you were telling

[00:53:45] the story about your CRO saying that the biggest benefit was it you got them to think and I mean I just see that is is we talked earlier and I've had more and more conversations around this

[00:54:00] is that we're not helping people think we're giving them scripts and telling them to go and smack them on the back and say go be successful anything we can do to get them to understand who they're

[00:54:12] talking to better to slow down enough to try and you know whatever however you want to say and put yourself in their shoes understand their world a little bit better and just have more

[00:54:22] of a conversation I think it's just so refreshing for for people on the other side to just have a chat I mean I had a conversation this was a couple months ago like I got somebody on and you know we're

[00:54:35] on a team's call and I asked about something in their background and they lit up and they started telling me all this background and information and and about their their history with their their

[00:54:48] son and daughter around this thing and dead it out and I just kept asking them questions it was totally intrigued and we're like 22 minutes into a 30 minute meeting and we never talked about

[00:54:59] anything other than that they're like oh my gosh I am so sorry you know you were going to do even worry about it like this was an awesome conversation and of course we rebooked for later

[00:55:09] it was a much better conversation if I had been focused on I got to get my demo done I would have lost all opportunity to connect with that person to enjoy the process let them

[00:55:21] enjoy the process that person ended up not buying from me but I've gotten two referrals from them because I left the humanity win and just let the you know follow the humanity conversation where

[00:55:34] it was going is that the large pencil? Yeah I did set there's a client already yeah but no no isn't it yeah. You have right then so we we have a new comedy team forming here Johnson and Carlson

[00:55:51] looks like they're going to get together and be a comedy team here so we'll look out for that we'll look out for that on you definitely been inspiring that's the first time that's happened on our show

[00:56:02] where we had comedy teams being rated there so John if someone wants to learn more about what you do your business work and they find you obviously LinkedIn is the best spot to find me but also john

[00:56:16] cilic.com, jawin, sc li g dot com is my website and I would say those are the two best spots to get hold of me okay and come with a joke depends a good one you pull reach out to you with jokes

[00:56:34] and does that happen often? The odd time and there's been a couple that have definitely maybe laughed there's been a couple that maybe go you don't understand how this works. But they're good prospects for you they're self qualifying for you that's perfect. They usually

[00:56:52] snills reps with no budget so you know that's a bad one. See and that's it that's why I always use dad jokes I can use so an else is humor to add humor into a conversation without having to trust

[00:57:03] that I could create something funny. I got to add something though but when when a team of reps works together and they write 30 40 kind of jokes that I teach them to write and one or two of them

[00:57:17] is brilliant it's for everybody to use across all their outreach and communication so you don't know we can't depend on everyone to create their own how do we leverage one that's going to resonate

[00:57:28] with our audience? Good point. Very good point. No I really do agree with you john as the process is the value here right the process that they go through is the real value it's not the joke itself

[00:57:40] it's the process that there it's going to be really really impacting. Well thank you this has been awesome you know Carson Branden I think what john went over today and I think even last week on

[00:57:51] the show this kind of puts a bow on a lot of the things that we talk about right at modern styling building relationship these are real tactics for doing it which are really really I think amazing

[00:58:04] when I think we need I think we need to do an episode soon too on talking about themes and consistency we've gotten a little bit away from that but yeah everything the car was talking

[00:58:14] about with john's talking about really helping people more practically get into like hey you know here's your three themes that you talk about with an each theme you've got some sub themes but

[00:58:23] this helps you create that consistency I know like Carson you do that naturally you know and then for me it's always three themes on your humanity because you got to bring your personality and

[00:58:34] your humanity be to it and I just I feel like so much of that I see more people are using LinkedIn the amount of people that that publish is increasing not dramatically but it's increasing

[00:58:47] probably because of AI which means we just have more crap to weed through but as more people are starting to try and use it getting that getting that refined and you say if you're putting the bows on

[00:58:59] being human like Carl was all about me we we got to know ourselves or else none of this stuff matters john you're talking about knowing yourself enough to to show up in a way that somebody's

[00:59:09] it can capture their attention and they're going to let their guard down a little bit and I think you know us doing one again on what are the what are the things that you do talk about because

[00:59:20] random acts of publishing just don't add up to a whole lot of success well said all right well thanks again john Brandon Carson is always thank you I'm glad you made it thanks john but you wanted I

[00:59:34] were going to have a good time if you didn't show up so we were right we were for our council we got here eventually all right and Margaret and Anthony and Becky and Luke and

[00:59:46] Bob of course a low-honda Bob everyone else in there thank you so much that was a really really active day today in the comments and yeah great that was awesome yes sorry sorry we're up a separate well thank you john and to our audience until next time

[01:00:04] happy modern selling thanks again guys thank you for joining us today on mastering modern selling if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to subscribe for more insights connect with us on social media

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