More conversations less presentations

Ice Breakers podcast episode 

Master the Four Core Skills 

Free Magic Words for Prospecting audios 

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

You better networkers come, the ultimate podcast for networkers and direct sales, network marketing, MLM, or any sales side hustle. You'll learn the skills for the how-to and the mindset to make it work. From the author of over 20 best-selling books and over 25 years in the business, here's your host, Pete Strider.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

If you're looking to make prospecting easy and pain-free, or should I say natural, this episode is for you. Just over a week ago, I got back from Las Vegas, Nevada, was able to do a keynote speech at a live event. I love doing events over Zoom, but live events is so much more powerful. So if you're able to go to a live event, I highly recommend it. Whether I'm speaking or not, definitely hit up those live events. And when I went to the live event, I always like to prepare a couple of weeks out. So I always ask the coordinator or the leader, you know, what would you like me to cover? And it's always hidden into the core skills. Sometimes it's said in different words, but it's always either rapport, icebreaker, sometimes closing, sometimes presentation. But most of the time it is rapport and icebreaker. And it's always something as far as people don't know what to say, or they say the wrong things, or they don't say things natural, or they're shy and don't know how to bring up their business. Or they it's always fills in to those two core skills out of the four, which is rapport and icebreakers, 99% of the time, which I 100% get, because core skills in any business, in any profession, is always the most important. In other words, it if we want to learn leadership, if we want to learn follow-up skills, those are great. But if we have nobody to talk to or nobody in our organization, those skills don't make a difference. So the core skills in any business is always the base. Think about if you're like my daughter is doing aviation. So in order for her to fly a big Airbus A380, which is you know four engines, double decker bus, she needs to know how to fly a small Cessno 172 single engine. Or even better, she needs to learn what makes lift and what makes thrust and all the core skills of aviation. So any think of any business, any career. It's always the core skills first and then learning more. So I love the core skills, and because of that factor, but also I just love live events. And one of the main reasons I love live events is because we can do some interactivity. Right now, you're listening to an audio. You can listen to our audio books, you can listen to audio live workshops, you can attend uh the master classes, webinars, or there's a little bit uh back and forth. But most of the time when you're listening to audios or when you're listening to any sort of training, it's normally one-way communication. So live events, whether it's at a big meeting or even your one-on-one coaching as well, there's some interactivity. There is some ways where you can practice things instead of just listening and hopefully it works out. Let's practice, let's make sure these things feel natural when you're saying these phrases, when you're asking these questions. So my thought is always let's have more conversations, less presentations. And how do we have conversations? By knowing what to say and how to bring up your business in a non-spammy way, in a comfortable way, so you can feel at ease talking to prospects, whether they're somebody that you know personally or somebody that you just met. So when we teach the core skills, when we teach a little bit of rapport, a little bit of an icebreaker, and then we have a conversation just by asking some few key questions. And by the way, I won't go into too much detail. I'll add a link to the absolutely free podcast episode on icebreakers, which includes some reports. That's episode number two. And I'll put a link there as well. I'll also put a link to the core skills audio pack if you want to go in depth, whatever works best for you. But I want people to have something they can use right away. So I want to put a link to that free episode. And after people learn the phrases, we get people to interact, we get people to partner up and practice these phrases because the first time you do anything in life is always hard. Even if this person that you're talking with is 100% on your side, even if this person you can't say anything bad, it's always easier when you practice. So you practice in front of a live person, it gets comfortable, so you may have to adjust what you say, and then we start the conversation. So ask questions, leave it kind of open-ended, they have conversations, and things tend to magically happen. And yes, when you're at an event, everybody's on your side. They're not gonna be super negative. Now, some people may have fun and be super negative with you, but most of the time it's gonna end in a good result. But when we're out in the real world, no matter how many times we practice things, yeah, every once in a while we're gonna get a no. Okay, no big deal. The timing's not right, and you can listen to the follow-up episode on this, or sometimes you're just not a good prospect. There's always somebody that's like way too negative in the world. Like some people you don't even want as a customer, let alone a distributor, let alone a leader. Like they're just not they're not a good person. Like the people that win the lottery and they go, Oh, well, you have to pay taxes. So that 1 billion is only 500 million, or oh, I I like my new uh brand new sports car, but oh, now I have to use premium gas. Like, there's always somebody that's way too negative that you don't want. So when we talk to live people, like people that aren't in our business, sometimes you're gonna get negative, sometimes you're gonna say no, and that's just how life is in everything. But when we're focusing on having a conversation and not a presentation, magic happens. So when I get people to interact and say, okay, here's what to say, here's some questions to ask, let's start a conversation. It's almost impossible for me to get the attention back because people are having conversations, people are smiling, people are having fun, and that's how our business is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a little bit natural because we make every single major decision in a conversation, not in a presentation. Sometimes there are presentations, but it's always those questions that we ask or the conversations that we have that really makes the emotional decision to purchase or join a business. And here's the best part: if we just learn some key phrases and some key questions to ask, we stand out from the crowd. We stand out from the noise. Because most of the time, as technology is improving and more people are on their phones than not on their phones, sometimes social skills aren't natural for most people. So if we just learn just the basics of social skills, we are so far ahead of everybody else. And we stand out by asking questions instead of pushing agendas, pushing information. If we just learn just a couple questions will make a huge difference in our careers. People will remember us. Even if we goof up the questions, people are like, Wow, uh such a nice person. They asked about me. That's what they're saying in their mind. And of course, the other key ingredient is consistency. But it's so much easier to be consistent if our conversations are natural. It's so much easier to be consistent when we're not afraid to talk to people, so much easier to be consistent when we're asking questions. It's so much easier to be consistent when it just comes up, it becomes a habit. We don't even have to think about what questions ask or what we need to do every single day to build our business. So the big question is, how many conversations can we have today? Not tomorrow, but today. Or if you're listening to this at night, what conversations can you have early tomorrow morning? And the easiest conversations to start are what I call no agenda conversations. Just engaging people in a conversation and the people that are the easiest to talk to are the people that are paid to talk to you. So if you get coffee every morning, if you get groceries, if you go to uh a store, if you go to uh anything where people are being paid right now, they're so much easier to talk to. That doesn't mean prospect them, that just means asking how their day is so far. I it's it's shocking to me how many times we don't return the favor or we are on autopilot. Most of the time, how's your day so far? Good, how's your day? Good, right? Boring, lame. Or should I say, doesn't really create a conversation. But if we get rid of the autopilot phrases, or even just our inflection in our voice makes a massive difference. So, okay, when you go to the grocery store. Most grocery stores there's uh cashier and someone that bags the groceries. Now there's different grocery stores, depends on where you live. Let's just say there's two people. Most of the time the cashier has to ask, you know, oh, how's your day so far? We were able to find everything you needed. Yeah, there's there's the canned questions that they have to ask. Now, if you just say yes, no, yeah, the kind of closed questions, but what if you ask them, hey, how's your day so far? Hey, uh, how are you doing today? If you really feel uncomfortable asking these questions, say, I'm just curious, how's your day so far? I'm just curious, how is your day? It makes it so much easier to talk to people. And most of the time, the person that's bagging the groceries, they don't have any interaction with you. So most of the time they don't even say hi. They're they're busy bagging the groceries. They sometimes they ask, sometimes they smile, sometimes it's normally very little communication. Go out of your way. And SM How's your day so far? I'm just curious, how's your day so far? Just those simple phrases, which don't even lead towards our business. There are no agenda conversations. Makes a huge difference. There could be a ripple effect, it could be you know, there makes may make their day a little bit better, may drive a little bit nicer, they may be in a happier mood, it may make absolutely zero difference in their life, but I can guarantee it's gonna take you less than five seconds to go out of your way to have a no-agenda conversation. It may spur up a conversation. While they're doing their work, and it's kind of cool. And yes, there are phrases that you could use to lean towards your business. Oh, do you enjoy working here? Or, you know, all the things that you all the things you can say, but let's just kind of start with no agenda conversation if you're just getting started, and then learn what to say after you've started up that conversation. Just start out with no agenda conversation. It's gonna make a huge difference in your confidence. Again, I will put a link to episode two, which is Icebreaker, which kind of includes a little bit of rapport building skill as well as a link to the complete audio mastery package for the core skills, whatever you prefer, just make sure to learn something new today or have a no agenda conversation today. And if you have learned the core skills and practiced the core skills and still having a little bit of an issue putting all together, I do offer some one-on-one coaching. Just shoot me an email and I will definitely give you a special discount because you're a listener to the podcast episodes. Because if you listen to the podcast episode, it's going to be so much easier for me to coach you. And most of the time we can get things done in one quick session. Also, I do speak at live events. Most of the time they are over Zoom, but I love in-person events as well, especially in Las Vegas. But I do travel all over and speak at events. Most of the time it's the core skill, sometimes it's leadership, but uh whatever skill you need covered, shoot me an email, and then we can kind of see what's best for you. Again, I hope you receive value in this episode. I look forward to sharing another episode with another successful networker next week.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

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