It's Epictetus. Epictetus? Easy for you to say. Whenever you find yourself blaming circumstances, flip your perspective and you'll see that what has happened aligns with reason. Wow. There's a few different ways you could take this, but I want to maybe make this episode a bit more actionable. Okay, mate. And give some tips and tricks for people that are listening. So when we think about that and we think about human biases, we are wired for negative information.
Okay. So what we do is we do something in sales called negative framing. the way that we ask a question will go for no rather than go for yes. And I was, I've been working with somebody recently and they were hitting a lot of gatekeepers and they were ringing people up and going, hi, is John in today? Yeah. And that leaves it open to, and then to what I said, I said, just try this for me. John's not in today. he? Different, different kind of question.
John's not back from lunch yet, is he? So how do you invert the question? How do you flip it around so that you're going for no? So what, do you see this work? I think an area that people will find really useful is on price, right? This comes up a lot. Price, well, how do you bring it up? How do you do it? Right. So there's a couple of different ways. We might have talked about this before, but just to reiterate, when you're delivering price, if I was delivering it to you, you tell me how much does it cost? I'd say, well, Jack, I hope you're sitting down. It's going to be a lot more money than you were willing to spend.
Probably, I'll be honest, someone from what you've told me that's in your position, I actually don't think you'll go for this, but no, no, I really, really big, a bit of drama behind it. And then when I go, it's a grand, they go, oh, right. But what I've started doing is going, I'll tell you, but if it's ridiculous, you've got to tell me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go on. I say, so it's a grand, but as I say, you might tell me that's ridiculous. Every single time, that's not ridiculous. No, no, that's not ridiculous. But.
Maybe the traditional salesperson will go, it's only a grand for a limited time only. It's a thousand pounds. Yeah. They deliver it like that. And I think you'll find that framing things in that way, you get a much more honest, receptive response. I do it everywhere. I do it with, you know, closing a call for a meeting rather than going for when looks good next week. I'd say I'm guessing it's a bad idea to find some time next week. No, it's not a bad idea. so much different. And the reason for that is
think if I start to try and persuade you and push and go for a yes and try and force you into, if I could make you 10 % better, what do you think about sitting down with me? All that sort of stuff. You feel viscerally like, I want to kind of push against that. But no is safety. Room to say no disarms the chimp in the brain. There's not that fight or flight response of mine being pushed into something. Going for no is a really powerful thing. Give me some other examples where you use it. Can I give you an example I've used in my personal life?
He is it with my partner recently. Oh, yeah. I like this. I like this one. So we were walking around the Trafford Center. Other centers are available. And we she wanted to try a blank street of the streets are available. Is that a euphemism? It's not a euphemism. It's basically a coffee shop. It's a competitor to Starbucks. And I got a little ice black americano. And when I say it was probably the strongest, best ice black americano I've ever had.
I probably mean that, but I'm also quite fickle and I understand myself. But it was, was, was, it was really good. But I know that my partner, she, she, she doesn't like black, black coffee. She likes, she likes matches. She likes stuff like that. And I wanted her to try it. So rather than saying, you try this? I knew that she'd say no. So what I said is I just held it and I went, it's a real shame that you can't try this. Very good. And she just grabbed it and she went.
Yeah. Let me try it. And what about the coffee? She grabbed it and she enjoyed the coffee. She actually didn't like it. And that's the reason she doesn't like black America. I think it's or incident. So the name of the influence step. No, but I think it's just a, often, I often start like if, I'm inviting people to come on the podcast or reaching out to people, I'll write stuff like, would you be up for it? And then I go back and I delete it. I go, how do I rephrase that? Is there any reason you wouldn't want to? How against joining us?
I just reframe that. So I give people that option of no, because safety lies with no. Exactly. We open podcast requests up for guests with not another podcast request or probably the worst request you ever got that stands out more than just like pleading and please look at the listenership we've got and all that sort of stuff. Please don't do that. Please don't do that. So those different ways you can use no, I'm going to give
couple to round it off, all right? So open the call up, you can hang up or let me have 30 seconds. That's an immediate, I'm going for a now. Yeah. Then I'm going to lay out some problems for you. Here's three problems that are getting vital and solve, but you might not have any of them. Right. Going for a negative straight away. No, no, we have some of them and some part of the call, they will give me a, here's problems, symptoms and all that sort of stuff. And I'll start saying things like, I'm guessing you found a few different ways to fix it and probably all working really well. No.
Not at all. tried a few different things, but they haven't worked. Okay. Well, so it's based on that. probably a bad idea to sit down next week and see what we can help. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
