This episode’s for you if you have a difficult client situation to manage. At some point or other as an agency account manager, we have to manage difficult clients. It’s kind of part of the job. And in this interview, I love how Dr. Mark Goulston weaves some practical tips and examples of how to manage difficult people into his engaging stories. If you’re old enough to remember the OJ Simpson case, like I am, he also shares how he was subpoenaed to appear at the trial, and how he handled the moment the lawyer tried to bully him. I highly recommend Mark’s book, ‘Just Listen’, it really does include loads of tips for managing difficult clients.
(NB: This episode was recorded and published before the death of F Lee Bailey on 3rd June 2021)
If you’re in an agency account management role, or maybe you have a team of account managers, and you want to have a roadmap and a playbook to grow those existing accounts by adding more value, expanding the relationships and also being comfortable asking for referrals, then check out my Account Accelerator programme. It starts again in September 2021. And you can find out more details by going to: www.accountmanagementskills.com/training or drop me a line at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:00
So I am delighted that Dr. Mark Goulston has decided to join me again, I’m absolutely thrilled to have him on the show. I had such a great response from the last interview. So I’m really excited about diving into this one. So a little bit of background on Mark. Dr. Mark Goulston was a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. He’s a popular speaker and the author of several best best selling books, including ‘Just Listen‘, which I have in my hands here, which I’m reading for the second time, which is still blowing me away today. ‘Talking to Crazy‘, which is on my next reading list, ‘Real Influence‘ and ‘Get Out of Your Own Way‘. And Mark, ‘Get Out of Your Own Way’, am I right in thinking, it’s been in the market for 25 years. And it’s now currently in the top 10 bestselling books on the Wall Street Journal?
Mark 00:54
Right, it made the top 10 this past week for non fiction ebooks. And it was 10. But it squeezed its way in there. Hey, top 10 is top 10.
Jenny 01:06
Well, that is unbelievable after being out there for so long. And Mark hosts the extremely popular podcast ‘My Wakeup Call with Dr. Mark Goulston‘, where he’s interviewed prominent figures like radio and TV host, Larry King, who was also a good friend of Mark’s, and leadership guru, Ken Blanchard. He also has a regular LinkedIn live stream called ‘No Strings Attached’. He’s the inventor of Surgical Empathy, a process for getting through to anyone by going to their psychological core, and unlocking what’s holding them back. His unique background has made him an indispensable and sought after expert and change facilitator to Fortune 500 leaders, entrepreneurs and educators. I’m really honoured to dive in today to my questions to Mark. So Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark 01:55
That is so much to live up to.
Jenny 01:59
But I haven’t even mentioned other things that you’re doing. You just sound… And I know that you have a course which I would really love to talk about later if that’s okay.
Mark 02:07
Absolutely.
Jenny 02:08
Great. So Mark, my audience is principally agency account managers. They’re managing client relationships on a day to day basis. And one of the big things that agency account managers tell me is they struggle with difficult clients sometimes. And I know that you’ve got so many different strategies and advice and stories to share where you can help. So I would love to dive into some questions. Is that okay with you?
Mark 02:37
Can I give a tip that right out of the gate?
Jenny 02:41
Sure.
Mark 02:42
So I’ve been doing a presentation to some accelerators and accelerators, these have about 15 startup companies. And recently, I’ve been speaking to them about how do you pitch to an investor? But this could also be the challenge for your agencies when they’re talking or pitching something to a difficult person. So, you’ll have to adapt this but one of the things I said to these start-ups is I said when you’re pitching your company to an investor and they smile, do you think it’s a yes? And they say “yes”. Well how often does this smile turn into, “what’s our next step, where do we begin?” And the start-ups said “never”. I said that’s because investors do not smile. Now, your difficult client, in all likelihood, don’t smile. But if you get a sense that you’re having a conversation and it’s getting worse, what you say, but you have to say this with some confidence, you say, “Can we press pause right now?” Don’t say it, say it assertively, but not… And they’re going to go “What?” “Yeah, can we press pause?” And that’s going to disarm them. And what I said to the startups in the accelerator, they said when you’re talking to an investor, but you might be able to use this with a difficult client, I say, when they pause, you could say “when we started this conversation, we were like this. You’re an investor, you have money. I’m a company that needs money or if you’re selling to client from agencies. You’re a client that needs marketing or advertising or something to get your name out. And I’m one of those companies that can do that for you. And we started like this unless you were just being polite, which I am sure you’re too busy for that. And guess what? Our conversation has gone like this”. And this is you the investor, this is me the company, this is you the potential client, me, the agency. And “what’s happened is we started off like this, and you were listening for something or looking for something and we didn’t cover it”. And they’re gonna go” What?” “Yeah, yeah, I think we started out equal, otherwise, you would have cancelled the appointment. But you were listening for something or looking for something, and we didn’t cover it. Now, obviously, when I prepared for this, I tried to sense what your needs and wants are. And you know, what’s most important to you? But I didn’t get it right, so can you fill me in and tell me what that is?” And you have to practice this. And you get, and what’s going to happen is you have confidence. And they’re going to go “what?”, you could say, “Yeah, what are you looking for and listening for?” Now, if it’s a client, you can pause and say, “Can I tell you what other potential clients have said to me when I asked them this question?” And by this, what’s happened is you have disarmed them. They’re a little bit discombobulated and they go “Yeah”. “Like, I don’t know if you can relate to this. But what some of my other clients have said, is, when they buy a service, it really needs to exceed expectations. Because when they bring in a service, and it doesn’t work out their boss is on them. Why did you buy that? Why did you get us into that? And so I don’t know if you’ve ever been through that, you know, potential client. But can you understand how someone would be thinking that, that what they’re listening for? Is this going to be something that if I say yes to, I won’t regret it?” Is this and can I tell you something else that the client’s say, and by this time, if you practice this, they are hypnotised. They may even lean in and say “give me a little more”. What they’re really listening for, looking for is they’re bringing in a service that does so well, that they get a promotion. They’re listening for something that at their next performance review, their boss says, you know, that service that you brought in, you got for our company, sales have exploded, and I’m getting a raise, and so are you. So can you understand how they might be listening for that? Can you see how this changes things?
Jenny 08:02
I love that for so many reasons. I think it interrupts the pattern to start with, doesn’t it you, you grab their attention? Because one way or another, you’ve lost their attention, then you’re talking about what other clients are doing. And in my experience, people lean in, say, well, what’s everybody else doing? So and it shows assertiveness, I think that’s the key thing, Mark. I love that. That’s a great pattern interrupt. And it reminds me actually of you, you refer to your in your book, ‘Just Listen’, you refer to the Stipulation Gambit. And in your book you described a boy that had a stutter, who was going for a job interview, and job interviews weren’t going so well. And he wasn’t getting the jobs. And I don’t know if you remember this story, because I know you wrote the book so long ago. But you suggested that rather than letting people pick up the fact he had a stutter, during the interview, that at the beginning of the interview, he said, Listen, you know, I have this problem. I stutter. And sometimes I don’t know when it’s gonna happen. And what you’re describing there, is this pattern interrupt, isn’t it kind of tapping the brakes? Do you mind if we pause things? And do you think, I can imagine someone listening to this Mark and thinking, wow, have I got the confidence to say, Can we just pause for a minute? Do you think that there might be people out there that would? Well I only because I know so many account managers that might be worried about doing that.
Mark 09:38
Well, you have to practice it because it’s not so much the words, it’s the tone. There’s something that I talk about, I believe, in ‘Just Listen’, and in ‘Talking To Crazy’. It’s called the ‘wince confrontation’. And what that means is when you’re going to confront someone with something that they may not want to hear or may not like to hear, you want to wince as if ‘it pains me to have to say this’, so the wince confrontation would be instead of being overly confrontational you wince and you go, can we pause for a second? And that’s what I call, I have all these terms assertive vulnerability, when you say, “Can we pause for a second?” One of the best examples of assertive vulnerability, and I’ve coached leaders, many places. And there’s a phrase that I say, is the best expression of assertive vulnerability with your people, with your investors, if they’re getting a little bit nervous, how, because of stock price, and you say, with this tone, I need your help with something. It’s not like waah, waah, I need your help. It’s, I need your help with something. And when you, or, I’d like your help with something? And can you see that when you say it that way, it’s going to generally cause the other person at least to be curious. At the very least, they’re not going to be afraid of you, because you’re not assaulting them. You’re saying, I’d like your help with something.
Jenny 11:23
It plays into someone’s feeling of helping to lean in, doesn’t it? And so you’re making yourself slightly vulnerable by inviting them to help you. So again, I think that’s a fantastic way of managing the client relationship. Mark, tell me you also just happened to drop in the book, that you were at the OJ Simpson murder trial, as a kind of psychiatrist there, that had been asked to be there. And this story, specifically related to bullying. Can you remember the story? Because I’d love to hear it from you. When you were effectively being bullied by one of the lawyers, I think he was trying to bully you.
Mark 12:06
Yeah, so I’m not sure how many people in your area followed the trial. But most people seem to follow the trial, at least in America. And I was an advisor to the prosecution. And so that meant that I would come to the court probably 25-30 times during the whole trial. And I would make observations that to me were hidden in plain sight. And they said, We don’t want you in our strategy sessions, because you just see things we don’t see. So I faxed them probably 220 pages, but it was a double murder. I’m not someone who’s going to turn it into a book, what I faxed to the OJ Simpson trial, people say you’re crazy. Everybody else wrote one. But, you know, being somewhat empathic, this was a double murder. This is not a circus. In fact, when I leave the courtroom, I would go out the side door, because there were other advisors who would go out the front door and wave off the press. And I said, this is, there’s something wrong about this. And so there was one day, September 5 1995, in which 80% of what I know about dealing with difficult people I learned. And on that day, there was a participant in the OJ Simpson trial, a Detective Mark Fuhrman. And during the middle of the trial, he came off like John Wayne, and there was a famous lawyer F Lee Bailey, who had promised the world that he was going to break him. And he didn’t break them during the cross examine in the middle of the trial. And they subpoenaed me during the middle of the trial. But the building I worked in conveniently fell down in the earthquake, and there was no building. So I never got the subpoena. I have it on my wall somewhere, but it never came to me. And so the trial moved on, and they couldn’t find me. And so it was the end of the trial. And if any of you remembered, I know it’s really old. This police officer Detective Mark Fuhrman and was associated with having never saying he’d never said the N word, that awful word, it’s still awful when you hear it. And so what happened on that date, he was downstairs in the courtroom, and I was sequestered upstairs. So I didn’t know what was going on. The rest of the world was watching him take the Fifth Amendment because he didn’t want to incriminate himself. And I didn’t know that was going on because if he hadn’t incriminated himself,F Lee Bailey was going to question me about, you know, if I’d coached him if I’d done anything, I didn’t do anything. I did send faxes to the prosecution, but they never really told me what they use. And so it’s 7pm. And F Lee Bailey and one of Johnnie Cochran associates, Carl Douglas come in. And I am being accompanied by Bill Hodgman. He was one of the prosecutors who started off in the trial with Marcia Clark. And an interesting thing happened about 4pm. You know, I’m there all alone, you know, sequestered. And I got a little paranoid, I thought, they’re setting me up, what’s going on down there. And so I didn’t know what was going to go on. And I don’t even know why he came up to interview me because after Detective Fuhrman took the Fifth Amendment, there was no reason to ask me anything. But he came up anyway. So what happened between four and 5pm. And I think I have a little crazy something in my head, I push myself into situations that scare me. And I never panic, I get smarter. I mean, I must have a screw loose in my head. And one of these days, I’m going to discover the secret to peace on earth. And I’m gonna have a stroke and die with a smile on my face. I mean, it’s crazy. But anyway, so I figured out F Lee Bailey, and in that time, I figured out 80%, of what difficult people do. And so F Lee Bailey comes in around 7pm with Carl Douglas. And there’s Bill Hodgman. And what I realised is all difficult people. And these are not only the bullies and the venters. These are the whiners, these are the people who are sullen. These are the people that drive you crazy. Which is why I wrote ‘Talking to Crazy’. So, he comes in. And what I did is like sort of fiddled around with my paperwork. And because I wanted to lull him into a false sense of security. So he’s seated across the table from me, and he says Dr. Goulston, Dr. Goulston, and I’m kind of fuddling like this. And Bill Hodgman says, “Mark, Mr. Bailey’s here to ask you some questions”. And then I swear, I looked up at him, and I grabbed on to his eyes, the way I’m looking at your eyes See, when I look and grab onto someone’s eyes, I can take them anywhere, like I’m doing with you. And so I held on to his eyes. And I learned that by the way by because I was a suicide prevention specialist. And I would grab on to the eyes of someone who is wanting to kill themselves. And I’d hold on to their eyes with this thing called surgical empathy. And I would say, you’re not going anywhere. So it came from a good place that I learned to, to hold on to people’s eyes. So picture this, I’m holding on to his eyes. And then he says “Dr. Goulston, we don’t exactly know your role. We know you’ve been here through different times in the trial, and we’re here to ask you about things about Detective Mark Fuhrman”. And here’s something else I learned. When people use innuendo. He wasn’t asking me a question. What they do is they say something and they try to get you to go Uh huh. Uh huh, huh. And innuendo is like putting a hook in your neck and reeling you in. And so he says those things, but instead of saying, haha, I had this eye contact, I go. And so instead of going, aha, I blink. He does this for a few minutes. And Bill Hodgman looks at me. And he says, “Mark, you haven’t said anything”. And I looked at Bill and I said “he hasn’t asked me a question”. I mean, I really figure this whole thing up. And so F Lee Bailey, at that point kind of flinched a little bit, because, you know, I guess he thought, Oh, this is a different kind of conversation. And I kept holding on to his eyes. And when I looked in his eyes, my thought was, I’m not perfect, but I’m not protecting a double murderer. What’s your story? So that’s exactly what I was thinking the whole time. And then what happens is all difficult people they push us from frustration, to anger, to outrage, because if they can push us into outrage, we will do whatever we can to keep from getting enraged, unless you’re happy with being enraged, but a lot of people are uncomfortable getting enraged. And so when you’re using all this energy to keep down how enraged you feel. And this can be someone who’s whining, this could be someone who’s sullen. So he’s escalating. And there’s a point at which he says, as he said in the trial, “so you’re here to say”, as he said, with Detective Furhman earlier in the trial, he said to him, “so you’re here to say that you never said the N word”. And those were the famous part of the trial. And during the cross exam that’s what Detective Fuhrman said. So F Lee Bailey looks at me and says, “so you’re here to say that you never coached, medicated or did anything to affect Detective Furhman’s testimony?”. So he’s pushing me, you know, into my rage, because he picked up speed. So are you tracking with me on this? And so he reaches that point, where I’m supposed to be provoked. And I look at his eyes. And I pause for seven seconds. And I haven’t let go of his eyes for the entire time. And it’s seven seconds. I can see the people in the room are all waiting for me to answer. It’s like this EF Hutton commercial, what’s Mark going to say? And I go ‘ahem’, and everyone leans in, oh, he’s going to talk. And I think to myself, this is going so well. I count to seven again. And then I said, and then I used innuendo. I said, “Mr. Bailey”, he goes, “Uh huh?”.
Jenny 21:38
You were reeling him in.
Mark 21:42
I said “my mind wandered the last five minutes. And it sounded important what you were talking about? Can you repeat everything you said?”
Jenny 21:57
You knew he was being a bully, and trying to manipulate you. But you knew what his game was?
Mark 22:02
Yeah, which is to provoke me off balance and go for the jugular, which is what difficult people do. And he goes, “huh?” I said, “Yeah, my mind wandered, my car is parked in a lot. And it’s locked. And I don’t know if I can get it out. But it sounded important what you were talking about. You want to run it by me the last five, six minutes”. So he looks over at Carl Douglas, as if to say what did I say? Because if you’re a bully, and we won’t mention certain political leaders in the world, when you bully people, and you get them so upset and angry and off balance, you didn’t have to have substance because they’re so busy trying to protect themselves. And then you just go and push them off balance. So that’s that was his M.O. and this is the M.O. of a lot of difficult people. And then after a couple of minutes, he looked at Bill Hodgman and says “I don’t think we have any questions to ask. Dr. Goulston, I don’t think we need to bring him on the stand”. And then as he gets up to leave, I said, “Mr. Bailey, I have a question for you”. And Bill Hodgman says “Mark, Mark, it’s the end of the trial. It’s okay”. And, I said, and he looks at me. And then he looked at Bill Hodgman, like, Who’s your little friend? And I said, “You know in the trial, they said, you know, you can’t unring a bell that once the N word came out, that’s what was on people’s minds?” And he goes, “Yeah”, I said, “Well, yesterday, you accused me of having a relationship with Detective Mark Fuhrman. You know, that’s out in the news”. And I didn’t have any relationship with him. And he is probably the most despised racist cop in America today. And Bill Hodgman says “Mark, Mark, they didn’t spell your name, right. It’s okay. Just let it go.” And I said, “just like you can’t unring a bell, you slurred my name yesterday, do you have any idea how we could unslur a slur?” And he looks at me like, like, what the heck is going on? And so he leaves the room. And I gather my little papers together and he comes back and he looks at me and he says,” I will trade you a retraction in tomorrow’s newspaper, if you tell me what you figured out about me”.
Jenny 24:27
What did he say?
Mark 24:30
I shrug my shoulders because, you know, I didn’t care. You know, I? I didn’t tell them what I figured out about him. But what’s the lesson from this and thank you for your rapt attention. I guess it’s a decent story. But you know what it teaches is all difficult people get to us. Because if we have trouble really feeling enraged, they can do things that are so appalling, are so exasperating, that they push us into wanting to say cruel things mean things. And we’re uncomfortable with that. Plus, we’re afraid that if we say that it’ll really provoke them further. So here’s how you deal with difficult people. And if you’re listening, I have an exercise for you. And I don’t know if you can do this on your, on your phone. But the exercise is take out a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle of it. And on the left side, write down all the people that are difficult in your life. And on the right side, write down the list of all the people that are wonderful. First thing you have to do is make a commitment to thank those people who are wonderful in your life. Because a lot of times we just focus on the people that are difficult. But if we shortchange the people that are wonderful by failing to thank them, failing to be grateful to them, it’s letting the bad people win. Now, with all those people on the left side, when you interact with them, never expect them not to be difficult. If they are fine, then consider that gravy. But always expect them to do something, say something, push back and hold a little bit of yourself back. And when they say that, let them say it because they’re doing it to manipulate you or bully you. And you can say to them. “Could you repeat that again? Or you could say, could you say that over to me? Because the way you said it and got my mind all triggered? I couldn’t even listen”. Or you can say “it sounded important it, could you try that with a calmer voice so I could listen to what you said, because it sounded important.” And I like using the word important because it flatters people. And almost no one tells people they’re important. So you can try those things. Probably the easiest thing to do is when they do that, or say that, especially if they’re venting is to go, Huh, just tilt your head and go Huh. But what will happen is they will, they may escalate. And, if they do, you could say “yeah, and that sounded important, too. Can you repeat that again?”
Jenny 27:40
Wouldn’t that enrage them more if you say, because I’m thinking in a client scenario, if the client is coming at me, is bullying me? You know, maybe they’re being aggressive? Or, you know, directive? How would I do that in a polite way?
Mark 27:56
Well, you want to, if someone’s bullying you, what you have to do is you need to make a commitment to yourself that you will not be bullied. If you lose the account, you’re going to have to say to your boss, you know, I know you want me to close this deal. But the person is a bully. And if you’re, if your boss says I don’t care, you know, they’re a customer, a client. Well, then your boss is being a little bit of a bully. But then you can say to your boss, you can say okay, I get it’s a big client, coach me through it. When they say such and such and such and such. So here are some other things you can do that are disarming, that might be easier to do. And when they say whatever they say, you can say to them, again, pause for at least two seconds. Because if you get provoked, they have the better view. And you can look at them and say “what’s that about?” And they’re gonna say “what?” “Yeah, that to. What do you mean?” And they’re going to be disarmed because they didn’t succeed. You could say “what, what happened? What happened to you, you know that you’re getting it off your chest in this conversation. Something must have happened to you that you’re getting it off the chest in this conversation, because we don’t even know each other. You know, and can you tell me what that might be?”
Jenny 29:43
So you’re calling it out, you’re calling out their behaviour, rather than just sucking it up and trying to respond. You first of all, refuse to be bullied and then second, call out the behaviour straightaway. Because the bully doesn’t like to be you know, they’ll choose somebody else probably wouldn’t they?
Mark 30:01
That’s what they’ll do. They’ll exactly do that. And it’s interesting. Oprah Winfrey has a brand new book out with a Dr. Bruce Perry. And if you go to 60 Minutes Overtime – Oprah Winfrey – trauma informed treatment. So I think she did a book with Dr. Bruce Perry because she did a story on his programme. And in 60 Minutes Overtime, a reporter asked her about it. And she said, it was the most game changing and life changing story I’ve ever done now apparently was because she just wrote a book with them. And it’s in the New York Times bestseller list. And when the person asked Oprah, “what was so game changing about?” She said that,” you know, when you do trauma informed therapy, your approach to people is that when they act out or act up as kids do, something happened to them to cause that?” So unless a person is dyed in the wool, evil, and really angry people are not necessarily evil, something happened to them to trigger it. So Oprah Winfrey’s whole approach now is what happened to you? What happened to you to cause that? And apparently, she was owning up to the fact that that was something that when people acted up, she wasn’t that pleasant.
Jenny 31:34
Wow. And this concept of trauma? Can you give me some examples of what might have been a triggering a triggering trauma to for someone to start behaving in a way that they become a bully? Like what could have happened to them?
Mark 31:51
Well, you know, abused children become abusers. And a lot of times what happens is when they’re children they were the target of abuse, or they watch one parent abuse the other. And they felt a combination of fear, terror, fragile, and inside, they said to themselves, when I get older, no one’s going to do this to me. Or what they noticed is that the bully in the family if it wasn’t bullying them, if one parent bullied the other, they may grow up and say, Well, I guess the way you get your way is to bully people. And so what happened is they probably noticed it going on in their life. And, and again, we make a promise to ourselves unconsciously when I get older, I’m not going to do that. In fact, I want to make a segue, because you did mention, I have a course out if you go to himalaya.com/defeat. And actually, if you put in a promo code ‘defeat’, you’ll be able to see this audio class that recently launched called ‘Defeating self defeat’. And in it I give 12 episodes. And so here’s an example of what we’re talking about childhood and trauma. In the first episode is about procrastinating. And when I talk about two procrastinators, is we procrastinate not because we’re disorganised or lazy, we procrastinate because we’re lonely. And the reason for that is when we were young children, we often did things that we didn’t want to do that was really painful. And we made a promise to ourselves, when I get older, and I get out of the house, I’m not going to do something that’s painful. I’m not going to feel powerless to not do it. And here’s my proof that we procrastinate when we’re lonely. All the AA programmes work because there’s a community, you’re not lonely in talking about things that have gone wrong. If you live on a college campus, and the fraternity or the dormitory, the sorority is really a pigsty. If you all say, Let’s clean it up this Saturday, you’ll do it. And here’s something I think you’ll find interesting. I was being interviewed by a radio host, lovely woman. And I said,”What is something you’re procrastinating on?” She said, “Well, everybody says I should write a book. I’ve had a lot of interesting things in life.” I said, “Well, how long have you been putting it off?” “Couple years.” I said “Really?” I said, “here’s what we’re going to do. I said when would be the best time to write for half an hour?” She said “6:30 in the morning”. So we’re doing this on the air. And I said “here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to call you every morning at 6:30 in the morning, which is 3:30 in the morning, my time. And I’m going to say, No excuses, it’s 3:30, I probably won’t get back to sleep, I want you to get in front of your computer boot it up and tell me the question I should ask you to get you writing.” So we did that for a month, I took the weekends off. And she told her listeners, you know, that crazy psychiatrist, he’s doing it. Six months later, she says, “Where can I send the book?” But can you see how so there’s different see how our childhood affects us. And, ‘Defeating Self Defeat’ himalaya.com/defeat. It’s all filled with those kinds of, you know, kind of off the wall views of things that you might find helpful.
Jenny 36:00
I will include that link in the show notes. Thank you, that sounds really, and I would encourage everyone to do it. Because everything I read that you you put out into the world is just so thought provoking, and so practical as well. And in fact, I wanted to ask you another question, based on, you know, again, the account managers role managing the client relationship, you gave another story about your daughter, actually, she was going for a job interview. And you know, typically in a job interview, they ask you loads of questions. And then they say, Have you got a question for us? And you coached her to ask a question that left everybody dumbfounded. And I love the way you describe the story. Because you just you said, you can talk in a transactional way, you know, or you can talk in a transformational way, ask a transformational question. Do you remember the question that you? Could you tell the story?
Mark 36:54
As long as you’re in a transactional conversation, at the very best, you’re a commodity, they’re going to squeeze you on price. You’re never going to get to where you’re showing them value. But one of the ways to break a transactional conversation is to focus it into the future. Or actually, you can break it by going into their core, which we talked about, but what I did with my daughter, she said, Oh, I’m going to be having an informal conversation with someone from one of the big banking firms. It’s not a formal interview, but we’ll be you know, I get to meet him. And I guess we’re going to sort of walk along the corridor or something. She said, “you always have these interesting questions”. And I said, ask him, when he says, Do you have any questions? You know, in the conversation, she said, “I’d like you to imagine it six months from now, and you’re meeting with your boss. And your boss says, Get us more people like you just hired. Because it was one of the best hires we’ve had in years. And so you, then imagine what the hire would need to look like, so that your boss would say that to you.” So maybe what you say to a client, you can say, “Can I ask you a hypothetical question?” And hopefully, you know, even the difficult ones will be intrigued, or can I ask you a question you’ve never heard before? Okay. “Well, I’d like you to imagine, you know, you’re having a performance review, like I have performance reviews. And, your boss says, you know, that agency that you brought in? They’ve done more for us than any agency we’ve had in years. Bring in more like that and I’m going to get a promotion, you’re going to get a promotion.” So you’re asking your client, what would you need to accomplish? So that’s what your boss tells you what your next performance review, what does the agency do? How do they do it? Is it just numbers? Is it that they the customer service is amazing? I mean, what exactly would that agency that you hire look like? So that your boss would say, That’s amazing.
Jenny 36:56
It’s a such a powerful question, Mark. And I think you’re right, it’s taking them to a future state, and then saying what needs to have happened? So one of my account managers, this is what I I talked to them about is if you’re starting with a new client for the first time, you can say something like for you to turn around to me in six months time and say, do you know what, I’m so glad you took over this account, what needs to have happened. And I think the trick here is to go quiet, isn’t it and to listen, and allow them to paint a picture of what they see is successful. Because they might draw up all sorts of old problems that they’ve had with previous agencies, you know, I just want you to get it right, get it accurate. Or I need you to make sure that, you know, you’re keeping me informed, whatever is important to them, they will tell you, and then that becomes the benchmark for your relationship success.
Mark 40:39
I would build on what they say. So one of the things that we talked about in ‘Just Listen’ about how to open people up, is focus on hyperbole. When they say amazing, awful terrible, or they raise their voice. That’s the tip of the iceberg. And if you can get them to open up more, they’re going to want more of you. So when they say, well, the last agency did this, and it was really horrible. Say, let them say that you say, say more about the horrible. So in other words, be sensitive to what they’re saying that has some emotional juice on it. Because normally, they’re expecting you to get defensive, or we won’t do that. Or, you must have been frustrated. Now you say, say more about? What what made it horrible. And then when they say that, keep them talking. Here’s another thing, but this is you got to take this with a grain of salt, because I’m a psychiatrist. When they say what was horrible? Look at them, you could say, did you, what did you feel more frustrated, angry or disappointed? Because when you get someone to say, an emotional word that’s accurate, and they attach it to an event, they calm down. And they’re grateful to you for asking.
Jenny 42:20
Mark, do you think we are losing the art of conversation with everyone corresponding by email? Because in my training courses, I often have scenarios, and I’m literally giving them the words that they could use. And that becomes a lot of what we end up talking about. So what’s your view? I mean, you know, having worked with so many people and so many successful people, do you think the younger generation particularly are transacting a lot via the written word rather than these communication skills? I’m really curious to know your view.
Mark 42:58
I think what’s happened, but again, you got to take what I say with a grain of baby boomer. I think what’s happened is that algorithms have replaced empathy. And what’s happened is, empathy takes too much effort. People don’t have the skills to actually communicate empathically everybody seems to be in a rush. And yet, what will happen is, you know, if you read the newspaper, everyone’s in a rush, and then you read the newspaper, loneliness is up, depression is up, anxiety is up. And by the way, one of the reasons they’re all up and what I’m trying to push out into the world. And this is just the taste of neuroscience when our stress is up and we feel anxious and depressed, or stressed that our cortisol is up. Cortisol is a stress hormone. And, you can lower cortisol by by meditation, mindfulness, but what really lowers it is someone caring about your feelings. Because when you, when someone cares about your feelings, it releases oxytocin and oxytocin counteracts high cortisol. So if you can fit into a conversation, and they’re upset about a prior agency could say, just curious, were you more frustrated, angry or disappointed? Whatever they say. And you just hear it. Now you can’t go transactionally and then go back to selling them. When they say that, you could say, that must have been really stressful. Oh, it was. I actually have an article out there just came out in Newsweek. I’m part of the, I’m a founding member of the news week expert forum. And I think you’ll especially like this, so I hope you’ll put a link to it. It’s called ‘Teaching transactional people the power of empathy‘.
Jenny 45:11
Wow. That sounds fantastic. I definitely will include that link. And can you give us one tip from that article?
Mark 45:22
Well, I can, I can. Well, your time is my time or my time is your time. So what I basically said, because I believe people listen to stories, you know, hopefully, the OJ Simpson story was interesting enough that people didn’t tune out, Now there’ll be some people who are transactional and say, I don’t even know who OJ Simpson is. But in that story on Newsweek, what I talk about is imagine that you have a pushy boss in sales, and they’re on you. And they basically say, Don’t bring me excuses, bring me results. Or I’m depending on you, and everything you’ve used, doesn’t work. Every sales approach doesn’t work. You ask people, they don’t know what to do. And your boss, probably because someone’s pressuring him or her is still on your back. You don’t want to yell at work, because you’ll get into trouble. You don’t want to yell at home, because you know, you’ll create a ruckus in the family. And then what I talk about is, but there’s one point where you go home, and you lose that in you vent. So imagine your spouse reacting unempathically and saying, “You can’t talk to me that way”. You know, “how dare you” and then they, and they then they sort of huff off. Now you might calm down after that. But imagine if they said in instead, like, “Oh my god, what happened to you? What happened? This is not who I believe, this is not who you are, what happened to you?” And then you start to vent, and imagine they get you to open up and you vent more? What’s going to happen? And again, they don’t get into a transactional escalation is you get to vent and your spouse pulls it out of you. “Wow, what was the worst part of that? Oh, my god, did you get scared?” “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to make this”. But can you see how you calm down with empathy? So that’s the story. It’s a short article. And then afterwards, I talk about how you can apply that to your customers and clients.
Jenny 47:38
Sounds spot on, thank you so much for sharing. Mark, I want to be respectful of your time, you’ve been so generous to give me your time. So thank you so much. I think I was spellbound, particularly about the OJ Simpson case, I literally picked that up in the book and I just thought, are there no ends to what Mark is doing? So we will certainly include a link to the course. And it was himalaya.com/defeat. And I’m going to include a link to that. And is there anything else that you’d like to include in the show notes or anything else you’ve got coming up that we could plug?
Mark 48:14
Well, my podcast, ‘My Wakeup Call’ is actually picking up speed. I interviewed Jordan Peterson.
Jenny 48:21
I love Jordan Peterson.
Mark 48:24
It’s a great interview, when you listen to it. You know, he’s very busy. And he’s a little, kind of polite at first. And then after 40 minutes, I thanked him for his time. And it went so well he said, I have more time asked me another question. So we went another 30 minutes. So we had him on. And I’m going to be interviewing the Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte. I just interviewed the CEO of the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team. So and I’m posting two a week and I just have too many lined up. But if you go to ‘My Wakeup Call’, Wakeup is one word. Hopefully you find them interesting. And it would really help you know, if you share them with other people, if you like them. And if you go to Apple podcasts and put up a review that seems to help the algorithm.
Jenny 49:25
Fantastic, Mark. I certainly will. And particularly for our audience, the CMO of Deloitte. Absolutely, that’s another interview to listen to. So thank you for sharing so much value as always, Mark it’s been an absolute pleasure. And I feel very honoured that you’ve spent more time with me, so thank you so much.
Mark 49:42
Well, you know, there’s a movie that’s really old and your listeners won’t know it but you might not because you’re not old, but there was a movie called ‘As Good As It Gets’ with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. And there’s a famous scene in there, where Jack Nicholson says to Helen Hunt, who he so respects, like I respect you, he says, “You make me want to be a better man.” And that’s what you do.
Jenny 50:07
Oh Mark that’s really heart melting. Thank you. And wow, what a blast from the past as well, I have seen it, I am old enough. So thank you so much, Mark. Absolutely fantastic.
