Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
"Why 'When' Converts Better Than 'If' in Marketing
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Nikki Rausch, sales strategist, coach, and master practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). We explore how understanding communication at a deeper level can transform the way you sell, market, and connect with others.
Nikki shares her unexpected journey into NLP—beginning with a mentor’s observation about her body language—and how this one insight set her on a path to over 1,200 hours of NLP training. Along the way, we discuss:
Understanding NLP and Its Power in Communication
- What NLP really is (and what it isn’t)
- The three categories of communication—words, body language, and voice quality—and why words alone make up just 7%
- How to adjust your communication style to create stronger connection and trust
Using NLP in Sales and Marketing
- The role of “toward” vs. “away from” motivational traits in persuasive messaging
- How to balance benefit-focused and pain-point-driven language to appeal to more of your ideal audience
- Why repelling the wrong audience is just as important as attracting the right one
Strategic Word Choices That Make or Break Conversions
- The hidden sales-killer in your copy: why “if” slows down buying decisions
- The simple shift to “when” for stronger embedded commands
- How small tweaks in language can make your offers more compelling
Key Takeaways for Marketers and Sales Professionals
- Marketing is for the buyer who is ready now—stop holding back for fear of judgment
- Flexibility in communication attracts more of the right clients without diluting your message
- Why NLP techniques work hand-in-hand with AI-generated content to personalize and convert
Whether you’re a marketer looking to fine-tune your messaging, a sales professional aiming to increase conversions, or simply someone who wants to communicate with greater influence, this episode offers actionable insights you can start using immediately.
Are you ready to unlock the hidden potential in your words, body language, and delivery? Tune in to discover how NLP can transform the way you connect, sell, and market.
Connect with NIKKI RAUSCH:
WEBSITE: https://yoursalesmaven.com/
CONTACT INFO: nikki@yoursalesmaven.com|
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/yoursalesmaven/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/your_sales_maven/
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolerausch
FREE RESOURCE: Free Training: Seal The Deal: Questions that close sales https://yoursalesmaven.com/imperfect
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. Today, I'm excited to be talking to Nikki. Today, nikki and I are going to be talking about NLP, which I used to think was natural language paragraphs or programming, but it's neuro-linguistic programming. So how did you get into?
Speaker 2:this. Well, I actually got into it from the work that I was doing. So I was a professional sales rep by trade and I am always looking for ways to up my game and, realistically, how I really got into it is I was sitting in one of my mentor's office and I was lamenting about something that was going on in my in my kind of experience and she commented she made a comment about something around what I was saying and my body language, and she said there's a real incongruency here. And I was like what do you mean incongruency? Body language Like what are you talking about? So she started explaining that she had studied neuro-linguistic programming. Body language is a big part of it, and so I got really curious about it, started reading books on body language and then, about I don't know, a few weeks later, she called me out of the blue and said hey, I'm going to take a storytelling workshop in the Redwood forest in Northern California. Do you want to come now? I mentioned now a couple of times she was my mentor, right? So I'm like yeah, I want to go anywhere you're going to be and get to spend a week with you, and in the Redwood forest, that sounds cool. Storytelling? I don't know, but we'll see.
Speaker 2:And so we did. We went to this workshop. It was a week long workshop and it turned out that the person who was teaching the workshop was an NLP teacher, and so I had a really great experience at her, at her workshop learning about storytelling, and in there during one day at lunch she offered for those of us who wanted a little bit of extra coaching from her around learning how to tell a story, well, that we could stay at lunch and she would do some individual coaching with us. And when she was doing her individual coaching with me, she made a comment about something that I was doing when I was telling the story and she said try this, try this other thing. And so just to kind of get into the details, the weeds here, she was commenting around the fact that I was smiling the whole time when I was speaking and I'd been in sales for many years at this point.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to smile, right.
Speaker 2:That's what you're trained to do.
Speaker 1:Even when you're on the phone, you're supposed to smile, so they can hear the smile in your voice Exactly.
Speaker 2:And I grew up in an environment. I was raised by my dad, I have three brothers and I was always the like smile, you know, told as a girl, smile, be pleasant. And so when she said, did you know that you smile the whole time you speak? I was like, yes, like this is one of my superpowers, like smiling. And she said, well, what would happen if you relax the muscles in your face and just spoke? And then the rest of the people that were, you know, also stayed during lunch. They were like, oh, so much better. So when I got back the next week and I was back out on the road doing presentations, so when I got back the next week and I was back out on the road doing presentations, I remember at a presentation somebody came up to me afterwards and again I was using this like letting the muscles in my face relax and not, you know, not smiling the whole time. And a woman who was in the audience and there was probably, like I don't know, 40 people and there were quite a few of us that were presenting that day and one of the women in the audience came up to me and she said, man, when you speak, you are so credible and I was like, whoa, this is great feedback. So I dug really deep.
Speaker 2:I started studying NLP with this teacher. I used to, for two years, one weekend a month, get on a plane, go spend the weekend studying NLP. I became a master practitioner. She ended up moving up to Washington state which where I was living at the time a few years after and asked me to start assisting her on the side.
Speaker 2:So I was using what I was learning, you know, in my sales career and having a lot of success with it, and then I started assisting. So at this point I have over 1200 classroom hours in NLP and, just to give some comparison, most people that have the same certification that I do have less than 40. So it's pretty intense the amount of time and what I've dedicated. I would say like, I like to go deep, I like to really learn things and it takes me a long time because I'm not a fast learner. So, yeah, and that's how I got into it and I've been able to incorporate it into what I do now, which, as a sales strategist and coach, I can help my clients from the sales side, but bringing my NLP experience in to really build stronger communication and connection with people that they're interacting with.
Speaker 1:That is such a cool story. I mean starting off with your mentor and then taking a trip, and then, you know, having one tip, even right, that really changed things. That's huge, and I feel like I need to massage my cheek muscles so that they can relax. But I don't know if they do that because I'm so used to smiling all the time whenever I'm like camera light go. But yes, no, I think that that is just so cool. And so now you're a sales strategist and your company is your sales maven. I think Sales maven, Sales maven, okay, and we'll definitely always, as always, have contact information for Nikki and her company in the show notes, so be sure to check that out. So you sort of glazed over it a little bit. But what is NLP and what?
Speaker 2:isn't it so? Neuro-linguistic programming neuro stands for it really represents the way you process information in your brains, the way neurons are firing, connections are being made and linguistics is language. So that is the way you speak, the way others speak to you, the patterns that we have around that, any internal dialogue you have. And then the programming is about habits and patterns because, realistically, most of us show up and communicate from a place of a pattern, a habit. And so when you can start to understand habits what is going on with the way you're communicating and the way the other person's communicating, you can start to pick up. You can pick things up, but you can also learn how to make some adjustments. So I would say it's the study of communication that's the most basic way to explain NLP, and it's learning how to adjust your style of communication to make it more comfortable for the other person to be in conversation with you. So, for instance, if you've ever been, you know you met somebody for the first time and you feel that instant connection, like you have a an hour long conversation. You look down at your watch and you realize like we've been talking for an hour but it feels like five minutes because it's been so easy. Like. Those are people who you kind of naturally fall into this like connection and it's easy to be in conversation with them and it feels really good and you enjoy it and you almost get this experience of like I don't know where you've been all my life, but I feel like we were just destined to meet, like we were just meant to know each other. Right now, on the flip side of that, you meet somebody who has a very different style than you and it can be kind of exhausting to be in conversation. So you have a 10 minute conversation with this person and it feels like it's been two hours and you feel like you need a nap after that conversation. That's somebody who has a very different style, and so it takes more energy to be in a conversation with somebody who has a very different style than you.
Speaker 2:So the way I bring this into my work is learning how to make adjustments and this applies also for your clients that are really interested in the marketing aspect of it as well is that it's learning how to adjust your style. It's learning how to write copy. It's learning how to put content out into the market that attracts your ideal client in a way that it's like, oh my gosh, kendra is speaking right to the heart of my issue, my matter, like the things that are really important to me, and also, at the same time, it allows you to repel the people who aren't a good fit. So they're not sucking up your time, they're not, you know, getting onto your email list and causing it to. You know, get so big that now you have to pay all this extra money for people who are really not ideal fit for you. So that's how I bring it into my work, so you talked about smiling and then you talked about copywriting.
Speaker 1:Okay, so those sound two different things, very different. Yeah, how is it both?
Speaker 2:or is it Well, the body language? So if you think about okay, there was a study done years ago around the way in which we communicate. So if you think about a pie chart, right. So I think I heard on a podcast that you love Excel. Is that true? I?
Speaker 1:do love.
Speaker 2:Excel. Okay, I thought I heard you say that.
Speaker 1:I do love Excel.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're probably familiar with the console, right, a pie chart, right, like you can make really cool pie charts in Excel. So they say you can break communication down into three main categories. So we're communicating in multiple ways all the time. So these three categories of communication there's the words. That's one way of communicating, the words that you actually choose. And then there's your facial expressions and your body language. That's another kind of category, facial expressions, body language, one category. And then third category is voice quality. So that's your cadence, your pitch, how fast you talk versus how slow you talk, all these things. So we've got these three slices of pie in the pie chart. Now, when you are communicating, live in person with somebody, you have all three slices of pie to use. And these categories they say that 55% of communication is facial expressions, of body language. So that's a pretty big chunk. So this idea of like smiling versus not smiling, this is one that will impact that body language. So if you're in person with somebody or on video and they can actually see you, this will really take, it will really matter. Okay, so that's 55% of the 100% of communication.
Speaker 2:Now the next category, the big category, is voice quality. So they say, that's 38% of your communication. So when, if you're only on a phone call with somebody, for instance, or they can just hear your voice, you know, on a podcast, for instance, you're really only working with that 38%. Now there's things you can do with your voice that will sometimes depict like oh, it sounds like Kendra might be smiling right now, or oh, it sounds like she's like kind of teasing, a little like we can do these things with our voice and inflection, right. And then, when it comes to copy, you've got I don't know if you've figured this out yet, but you really only have 7% left of the total communication and that's your words. Now there are things that you can do with the words when you're writing copy that will repel people and or attract people right, like we want to attract our right people. We want to repel the people who are the wrong people.
Speaker 2:And this is where it really matters, because if you only have 7% of all of communication to work with when you're writing copy or when you're putting out marketing content, that is just words. Those words that you choose, they really matter because they're doing all the work that your, your facial expressions and your, your voice quality they don't even get to contribute, right. So it's learning how to adjust again, make some adjustments to how you're showing up and what is the message that you're trying to get across? Because you can say something live, in person, to somebody that might come across like if you didn't have inflection in your voice and they couldn't see your face, they might think like dang Kendra's being harsh, but because they can see your voice or your voice, they can hear your voice because they can see your face, they might go like, oh, she's being playful, right, but when you're writing it, if they're reading it as wow, she's harsh. Like that's not a good thing if you're trying to attract somebody. So the words that you choose really matter when it comes to copy.
Speaker 1:And I think one of the things that I picked up on that I think is so important, is that you want to repel the people you don't want. You are not for everybody, you shouldn't be for everybody. If you try to be for everybody, you're going to fail, right, because you're going and you don't want to repel the right people because you're trying to attract them. Right, you'd rather repel some other group of people that aren't the right fit rather than trying to, like, walk some middle line, and I think that that's so important to note and that your word choice does matter with that. So let's talk about NLP and marketing. What are some tips to better understanding how you can leverage it with marketing?
Speaker 2:Well, one is that it's it's the way that you phrase your benefit statement, for instance. So when, when you're talking about what are people going to get out of this program that you're offering, for instance, the one of the things that can happen is we have what's known as motivational traits, and there's different motivational traits and they're context specific and you know there's a lot that goes into this, but I'm going to give you the very general kind of overview that will be helpful, even if you just take away this right and you don't go deep into it. But one motivational trait is that certain people are motivated towards having something. They want to accomplish something. They want to be successful. They want to achieve something. That is that toward motivational trait and that can show up in language, and I'll give you an example of it in just a second. Now, the opposite and this is on a spectrum, by the way, like you know one side is going to be toward and on the other side of the spectrum is the away from strategy motivational trait, the people that want to avoid having something bad happen. They're sick of dealing with X, y and Z, they're ready to let go of. Those are the people that are motivated, that really resonate with that language. They're motivated away from something right, they're ready to get away from something. And the one example I heard years ago it's like some people will run their fastest to win a gold medal, whereas other people will run out flat out fastest to get away from a German shepherd. Right, and you might be thinking in certain contexts, but for you it might be one or the other, or you might fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:Now in your marketing copy, what can happen is your strong motivational trait will show up in the way that you write your copy, and the drawback to that is you might actually be eliminating a good portion of your ideal clients because you're not speaking right to the heart of the matter and because you don't necessarily know. Oh well, my people are only toward people, which is fine if that's the case, but that's rarely the case. And so if you write in a lot of toward language like, the benefit of this program is you will achieve this X level of success. And another benefit of this program is you will have a new sense of confidence. Right, these are all toward type statements, but if somebody is like I don't know if I believe that, I don't know if I can really achieve that. I don't know if I'll really be confident. They'll doubt that in the marketing right and so it won't ring true to them.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're willing to put in some away from language and not just write all toward language, then it might start to give some wiggle room. It might be for the person who is more motivated to. The away from will be like you'll stop second guessing yourself, right, which you can also say like being confident and second guessing yourself are kind of the same thing. But when you think about who is going to be attracted to that language, it's not always the same. So you want to learn how to alternate your copy and so usually I will say if you're going to have, let's say, five bullet points as far as benefits of a program, if you're going to have, let's say, five bullet points as far as benefits of a program, you want to have kind of a mix right, so you might have three one way and two the other. So I tend to write towards. That's the easier for me. I'm more motivated towards achieving versus.
Speaker 2:You know the like which I think in marketing you hear with us all the time is people are always like focus on their pain points, right Like hammer home those pain points. But if I only see away from language and marketing, it feels very negative to me and it doesn't attract me. I'm okay with a little bit, but if it's all like you know you'll, you won't risk, you know, getting cancer because you're eating X, y and Z and you'll stop feeling bloated all the time. And all these away from statements, it's like but what's the good, what's the upside here? This is all just the downside stuff. So we want to mix and match. So again, if you're going to have three towards statements, you should have two away from, and or vice versa, whichever way feels easier to you, that's okay.
Speaker 2:But you do want to have a mix in your messaging because it rings more true to somebody that will fall somewhere on that spectrum and you won't be eliminating the people who have that little bit of you know kind of are drawn one way or the other and that doesn't make them necessarily an ideal client or not. Now, if you only want to work with high achieving people, which we see all the time in marketing, but for some people that feels unrealistic, now it doesn't mean that the person that you're going to work with doesn't want high achieving, but that language may not really speak to the heart of them, so it doesn't mean they won't be a good client. It just means that you need to add some flexibility to your copy. And I will say that when I think about NLP and when I teach and the work that I do, I always go back to my all-time favorite quote. This, to me, really speaks to the heart of what I'm kind of talking about here, which is blessed the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.
Speaker 2:And what I'm suggesting is to learn how to add some more flexibility to how you're showing up in a room.
Speaker 2:Because if you show up in a room and you've probably experienced this where somebody kind of walks into a room or they walk into a conversation with you and they just have this attitude of like hey, this is me, take it or leave it, but I'm not going to change and this is who I am Now, when we see people like that and we experienced that from the outside we look at those people and sometimes we think, like I push away from that right, like I'm like, oh, that person's coming on a little too, like they think they're the end, all be all and everybody else is wrong, right, like that doesn't feel good.
Speaker 2:So when you can add some flexibility to the way that you are marketing, it shows that you can kind of speak to the heart of anybody's matter. And again, I'm not talking about like to the heart of anybody's matter. And again I'm not talking about like I still believe in repelling people Like I want to be really clear about this. But let's not eliminate or and or have people self-select themselves out of your offer because you only use motivational traits that speak one way or the other. Add some flexibility and you'll find that that flexibility will allow for your ideal clients to show up more fully, because it's you're, you're speaking more to the heart of where, and we're not all one way or the other. We tend to fall kind of somewhere in the middle of the spectrum or somewhere on the spectrum, one way or the other. But we can't just say it's all or nothing, because if it's all or nothing, people will opt out.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it depends too, you know again, on where they're at in their buying journey too, as to what they're feeling.
Speaker 1:You know, if they're ready to pull out that credit card that you know, away from pain point might really be the thing that puts them over, whereas another person might be really excited and really focused on investing and you know the pain isn't you know what's getting them there, it's the opportunity right. And so having that balance, I think, is really important. And I think one thing to note is, you know we talked about repelling some people and attracting others Away from and toward. Messaging doesn't change that person right, it just talks about their motivation, and so you can still have a person that has, that leans towards one or the other, and still be your ideal client, and I think that that's that's really important. So can you give me a couple of examples of some strategic word choices?
Speaker 2:I know you gave us a little bit here, but here's a big one in marketing, and so and I know I'm speaking to a marketing expert, so you know, push back, that's totally fine. I'm speaking at this from a from a sales standpoint, and I'm speaking at it from an NLP standpoint. Okay, so one of the ones that is way overused in marketing and I would really encourage people to take a step back and really look at this is if there's this little word that marketing people love to use, and the word is if. Now, I'm not a poet, I'm not saying this is not a hard and fast like never use if in any of your marketing. But when it comes to helping people make the choice to buy, to sign up for the program, using if is a mistake, and the reason is is because we say things like in marketing, we'll write in our copy, like if you're ready for X, y and Z, do this. Well, what you're really saying to the brain is hey, slow down, think about it, are you sure? Are you sure you're in? And when somebody is ready to buy, you shouldn't be slowing down the process. So, instead of using if, like if this resonates with you and you're ready to make a change, do this right. Instead just say ready to make a change, do this. That's what's known as an embedded command, and it takes that like forward momentum, like, okay, I'm ready, yes, now I'm supposed to do this. It's not like, hey, think about it, are you sure? Because that's not going to help you in your marketing. So this if statement I'm not a fan of.
Speaker 2:I am also not a fan of using if when it's like if you agree with these you know, bulleted list here then this program is for you. If you want this, then here's this program. If you are tired of that, here's this program. I actually want you to use when instead. I think it's stronger. I think it separates you from all your competitors out there who are all using if and it says when you're wanting this, when you're tired of that. Here's the answer, because it's when. Is this like? When this happens? I am now making the decision. I'm ready to take that next step, not if, not think about it, not like, are you sure? No, it is all about when, do this? So that's another example. Is this this if versus when? I'm a big fan of when, and I think you'll find, if you insert when instead of if, and if you go back and look at your sales pages, look at your last, you know, email promotion.
Speaker 2:I have four sales pages with, if all of her so it's so common right Like and this is not a like, I'm not bashing anybody who uses it, because everybody uses if it's such a common phrase, but I want you to stand out. We want you to stand out. We want you to make it easy for people to say yes to signing up for your thing, or buying this or buying that, or making this change in their life that they're ready to. So if you go and look at your statements, your if statements, and you just put when in there, I will say that 90% of the time when works just as well and better.
Speaker 1:All right, so I'm definitely got some homework to be checking that out after this. This has been a fantastic conversation. I really really appreciate your time and how deeply you're you're sharing about this right, because I think it's so important to know really word choice matters. I mean, we're in a world of ai. I love ai. I shout it from the rooftops, it saves me a ton of time, but it's not always doing the conversion right.
Speaker 1:You have edit, you have to personalize and you have to know enough about your audience to really be able to make it work for you. And, I think, a better understanding of language right of communication and specifically what we were talking about with NLP or neuro-linguistic programming. I think it's very important that people acknowledge that AI is part of that. But you're really going to add that difference maker. You're going to really create that balance. You're going to attract and repel the right and wrong people with the edits that you make to the content that AI creates for you, and I think you know again that I think that makes it just so important right now. Now, before I let you go, I do have a question that I ask all my guests, and that is this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
Speaker 2:My biggest marketing lesson learned is that the reason that I market is for the ideal buyer, for the person who is ready to take action. And just to explain what I mean by that is I find that a lot of times people hold back putting content out into the market, putting their, their offer out into the market, to marketing themselves, because they think, well, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, or I don't want people to judge me, or I don't want people to think I'm being you know, being salesy or too aggressive, but you aren't marketing for the people who aren't ready to buy. You're putting yourself out there and you're marketing for the person that it's like oh my gosh, like Kendra, where have you been? All my life I've been waiting for you and I needed this right now, here today. And it's because you marketed it, because you put yourself out there, that this is available and that I can have some solution that I'm looking for in my life. And so I get over very quickly the like.
Speaker 2:I'm worried about people's judgments and I'm concerned that, oh, if I send this email, people are going to unsubscribe. I don't care anymore. I send the email for the person that's like Nikki, I've been waiting for this offer and I put myself out there in the podcast and in the content that I put out into the marketplace, and whether people agree with it or don't agree with it, it's not for the person that's like oh well, I have a different opinion and I'm going to clutch my pearls and be offended about something that Nikki's saying about sales. That's not who I'm marketing for. I'm marketing for the person who's like finally, here's somebody who's talking about sales in a way that resonates with me and I feel like I could learn something from her and I need her in my life. That's who I'm marketing for, okay, so I love that because it's not perfect.
Speaker 1:Marketing is not perfect. That's why this show is called imperfect marketing, right? You? Just you got to go with it too. You may not think you may not be sending that email because you're worried again about what you said.
Speaker 1:People judging you, and you know, is it ready enough? Is it polished enough? Are they going to think you know something's wrong with my hair or my voice, or whatever it happens to be right? I've said this numerous times because I heard it on a webinar. This is like I don't know four or five years ago now, and this woman said you're just not that important to me. And it's like, yes, exactly, you are just not that important to me. And so, when you take that view of it, you are that important to someone else and not your hair or your.
Speaker 1:And so when you take that view of it, you are that important to someone else and not not your hair or your voice or anything like that, but you're that important to somebody when it comes to um, if they're ready to buy right, if you've got the right fit for what they need, they will be so happy that you just sent it.
Speaker 1:They're not going to be judging all of those other things because you know really, you're not that important right To them. They're important to them so, and what they've got going on is what's important to them, and I think that that's that's our really really good marketing lesson learned for everybody. So, not if, but when you are ready to reach out to Nikki, be sure to check out the show notes. She also has a little free me offer for you guys. There too, that's there, and I see, and I always close the show with if. So, because you learned something today, we're just going to skip one and go with because because you learned something today, it would really help me out if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of imperfect marketing and have a great rest of your day.
