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Andres Lares is the managing partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute and the author of Persuade – the 4-step Process to Influence People and Decisions. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Andres explains his 4-step process to influencing your prospect’s buying decisions. You'll learn: Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Andres Lares Negotiations Expert Resources: Andres on LinkedIn The Shapiro Negotiations Institute Book: Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be looking at the four-step process to influencing buying decisions. Today's guest is Andres Lares. Andres is the managing partner over at SNI. He's the author of Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions. He's been featured in Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Entrepreneur, ABC, Fox, and many other places as well. With that, Andres, welcome to the show. Andres Lares: Thank you for having me. Will Barron: More than welcome, sir. You are coming on the show to talk about a topic that we've covered a bazillion gillion times on the past, influence persuasion. I love covering it, because everyone has different insights, different aspects to this. Am I wrong? This is one of the most fascinating topics that two humans can talk about, right? Andres Lares: I was about to say, you can't cover it enough. It's one of those things that if you think in your professional life and your personal life, you really can't avoid. Negotiating and influencing is something you do all day, every day. The Art and Science of Influence and Persuasion · [01:00] Will Barron: For sure. Okay. I want to ask you a really lazy, loaded, leading question, because I think it ties into the content from your business, your training, and the book and stuff as well. I think this'll give us a starting point for the conversation, and we'll see where we go with that. With that, Andres, can the, I'm going to say, the art and the science of influence persuasion really be broken down into just four steps? Andres Lares: As I think about the answer that, two things come to mind. The first is, I did economics in university. I took a very much, in the economics discipline, really, models are meant to balance giving you something that's practical and actionable and meaningful, but also being simple enough that at the end, you are capturing what you need to capture. Otherwise, very quickly, you get lost in the weeds. Andres Lares: I think that's the mentality around this four-step process. The second is, it's not necessarily the four steps only to influencing and persuading. It's more the four steps in the decision-making process. As a result, you take advantage of those, and by better understanding those, you're better able to influence and persuade. That's the structure behind it, if you will. The Four Step Process of Influencing Buying Decisions · [02:00] Will Barron: Sure. Give us the high-level overview of these four steps. Then, we might not cover them all, but we'll break down some of it, and we'll see if we can leave the audience with some practical steps to improve their ability to influence and persuade. Andres Lares: Perfect. The four-step process is, and I build this up like Maslow's hierarchy, if you will, for those that have taken psychology 101, in Maslow's hierarchy, it's a pyramid, and the base layer is building credibility. Building credibility, without it, if you think about a commercial that might have a dentist, when they're selling toothpaste, they might have an athlete. Why is that? Because you want to build credibility, you want people to listen. Andres Lares: It's that base layer. Without it, people, they don't care. There's so much noise out there, that that's what allows us to figure out, is this someone or something I should listen to or not? Credibility. “People make decisions emotionally, and then they justify rationally. And we can't say that enough because all too often, especially salespeople, are trying to persuade others with logic. “Here's the five reasons you should do this. Here's five of our clients that should make you feel more comfortable.” The reality is, people make decisions emotionally then it's the logic that helps them justify it.” – Andres Lares · [02:59] Andres Lares: The next step is engage emotion. Really, perhaps the key takeaway of this model is really that, people make decisions emotionally, and then they justify rationally. Really, we can't say that enough, because all too often, especially salespeople, really all of us, are trying to persuade others with logic. Here's the five reasons you should do this. Here's five of our clients. That should make you feel more comfortable. Andres Lares: The reality is, people make decisions emotionally. Then, it's the logic that helps them justify it. They're sleeping at home at night thinking, “I think I did go with the right decision, because,” whatever the logic is. Then of course comes the logic. First, you build credibility, then you engage emotion. The next step is the logic, and you demonstrate logic. The key there is to do it in a very practical and precise way. Andres Lares: Then finally, those first three steps were actually from Aristotle. In 350 BC, he taught ethos, pathos, logos. That's credibility, emotion and logic. Of course, I say that to practise what we preach, because with a little bit of extra credibility, if you don't believe us, who is this guy telling me this? Aristotle's someone you probably trust, and there's a lot of credibility there. Andres Lares: We added on top of that, is facilitate action. I think as a salesperson, anyone can relate to, “Will, is this something that you really want to move forward with?” Oh yes, it is. “Are you excited about,” oh yes, I am. Then, all of a sudden, you don't hear back, and all this momentum is gone. Facilitate action is meant to do that. It's talking about, okay, what are some ways we can keep that momentum, to make sure that the wheels don't fall off? Credibility and Why It’s So Important in the Sales Process · [04:30] Will Barron: When we talk about this, I've not got my iPad idea, otherwise I'd draw this out, because I think visually, this would make a lot of sense. When we talk about credibility being the base, if someone does not … A salesperson selling some kind of, I don't know, a software product, Sam the salesperson is selling software product. If he's not credible, can he or she lean into the credibility of the company? Then, if they're not credible, does that just then wipe out any chance of influencing a potential customer into making a purchase? Andres Lares: For the last part, it does wipe it out, because we won't even give the light a day. If Sam the software salesperson knocks on Will's door and says, “Hey,” and basically, it stops after that. You don't listen. You want to move on to the next thing and just discredit it. What happens is, how do you do it? Most salespeople, most people don't really have credibility necessarily. They're reaching out, potentially cold. That's of course why warm leads are so much more valuable, because there is credibility. It's passed on, because Will knows I'm this, or knows Sam, or whoever it is. “One of the ways to build credibility is to borrow it. What you would do is you'd borrow from your company, you would borrow it from peers, you'd borrow from experience, etc. The easiest one is company.” – Andres Lares · [05:3] Andres Lares: If you don't have that, then that's exactly what you do. One of the ways to build credibility is to borrow it. What you would do is, you'd borrow from your company, you would borrow it from beers, you'd borrow from experience, whatever you borrow it. The easiest one is company. If you're in software sales for a large firm, then look, you don't have to necessarily think about Will specifically and what I know, but you've got confidence that, if you're a Microsoft salesperson, we've all heard of Microsoft. There's trust there in the almost trillion dollar cap that it is. Andres Lares: That's absolutely one of the ways to do it. How to Borrow Credibility From Your Company, Peers, or Sales Managers · [06:15] Will Barron: I just want to be … Because some of these conversations I have, we end up in all theory, 45 minutes go past, and there's nothing practical. I want to layer as much practicality as we can into this episode as we go through this, Andres. With that said, if somebody's listening to this and they're going, “Crap, I don't have that much experience in this space. Maybe I'm just straight out of college, my first sales role, and the company I'm selling for is a startup. No one knows who we are.” Will Barron: Is it practical to advise that person to gather as much experience as they can in that role as they possibly can, but then maybe move to a big organisation, and make selling as easy as possible for themselves, by being able to leverage the credibility, borrow the credibility, to use your wording, of the company, of amazing clients and previous deals that've been done? Andres Lares: There is something to be said for that. I think at the same time, you don't necessarily have to go to the bigger company to gain their credibility, because then you can get your own credibility and borrow it from elsewhere, not just the firm. Just as a unique example, what does this look like too? I think you said something about practical, and I do want to get to that, because I think for listeners, okay, how do I do this? Hypothetically, I'll give an example from us in our world. Andres Lares: If we're talking to a pharmaceutical company, what's the best way for us to use emotion, but also at the same time, build credibility? Those first two steps. When someone explains, here's the challenge that I have. It's one of the questions that we ask right up front, why are you calling us? Tell us more about your situation. The first thing we'll do is briefly walk through other examples where you've dealt with exactly that kind of situation. Which, if you're a startup, as long as you have at least more one other customer, hopefully there's going to be some overlap there. Andres Lares: You don't necessarily have to say, “Hey, look, this is Microsoft or Amazon or Cisco. Of course, you've heard of us.” You could say, “Will, you talked about the challenge that you have, where you are having X, Y, and Z. We've dealt exactly with that sort of situation. Here's what we did.” You walk through A, B and C. What happens is, you don't even have to get specifically to the client name, but your ability to understand what their challenge is, and start getting to some ideas around solutions. You haven't laid out a framework, because you probably don't know enough to do that, but you've at least walked them through saying, hey, not only did I listen to you, but I've also been through similar situations before. Andres Lares: That's an example of very simple way to borrow credibility from the experience you have as a company. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to point to that, hey, trillion dollar company, the big one, it could be a startup that you've never heard of, but now, oh, okay, they understand me, they've done this before. Will Barron: Sure. I think a layer on that as well, there are billion dollar, trillion dollar companies that no one's ever heard of anyway. Before we hit record, I mentioned my first sales job, job at a company called Johnson Matthey, multi-billion dollar company, mine most of the precious metals on the planet. If you look up the prices of precious metals, it's usually set by Johnson Matthey. No one's ever heard of the company. I think two thirds of all catalytic converters in cars use the precious metals, which make up the main price of a catalytic converter, from Johnson Matthey. The Benefits of Being Specific During the Sales Process and What it Does to Your Credibility · [09:10] Will Barron: Again, no one's ever heard of them. When you start to use storytelling, you can finesse, is that a fair way of describing this? You can borrow credibility without having to name clients, and still talk about big numbers. What am I trying to get at? I'm trying to walk a line here between, we don't want the audience to lie about a customer that doesn't exist, but it's also appropriate if we can't name company names and stuff, to still tell stories. Not being able to talk specifics is not necessarily, or should not, not being specific, be a barrier to someone telling a story, or is a story still effective at building credibility, even if there's a reduction in specifics, names, locations, and people within. More general stories still built credibility. Andres Lares: I think there's a lot there, that starts getting into the nitty gritty, I think it's worth dissecting, because I would say specificity is important, but specificity in who exactly the client is, when exactly you worked with them, isn't as important. Specificity is important, because it makes it more real and more relevant. An example from the book, we talk about how in just a totally other example, if you say that a price is $10, versus you say the price is $9.59, it conveys that $10 seems like a general number that's been rounded up, and then $9.59 gives automatically the brain of the other side starts to think, there must be a reason it's $9.59. It's almost a more credible number, that's less likely to be negotiated down. Andres Lares: That's an aside, but that same specificity concept translates to the story. People understand at this point that, hey, I can't tell you exactly who this client is, or whatever may be, but the specificity piece is important. You want to be more specific about the challenges they face coming in, and the solutions you provided them to overcome that. That's when the specificity I think is most important. Not necessarily in exactly what industry, exactly what company, who exactly you worked with. Andres Lares: Those sorts of things, you can get away with. That's what makes the story more compelling. The idea is you want Will to sit there and think at the end of that conversation, that I've been through a situation like this before. I trust that because of that experience, I'm a valuable asset to you, that can help you find an optimal solution. That's really what the story's saying, more than, “Hey, I've done this before with company X specifically.” Will Barron: Got it. On that then, is this, and credibility might be the easiest one to do this upon, but is this measurable? Can we say, this person has X credibility, this person has Y credibility? Again, I'm thinking of this from the perspective of the audience, where they want to improve, but it's very difficult to improve that something, if you can't put a number on it, or if it's anecdotally, “Oh, I trust that person, but I don't trust that person.” Can We Really Measure Our Credibility? · [11:59] Will Barron: Can we measure credibility specifically? Then we can touch on some of these other points as wel…
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