The Psychology of Selling: Trust, Confidence & Human Behaviour in Business

Selling is not just about persuasion, targets, or closing deals. It is deeply connected to psychology, emotional intelligence, resilience, communication, and understanding human behaviour.

In this episode of Ella Podcasts, we explore the psychology behind influence, negotiation, confidence, rejection, and why some people consistently succeed in high-pressure business environments while others struggle to build trust and connection.

The conversation explores the emotional realities behind sales performance, the pressure of rejection, how desperation can quietly damage trust, and why authenticity and emotional intelligence matter more than ever in modern business. As consumer behaviour evolves, people are no longer simply buying products or services. They are responding to confidence, connection, trust, reputation, and how understood they feel during interactions.

Joining me are Ella Sherman, Dr Jonathan Marshall, Gary Brookes, and Nuwanthie Samarakone.

Who Is This Episode For?

If you work in sales, leadership, recruitment, business development, consulting, customer relationships, or communication-focused roles, this conversation offers insight into the emotional and psychological realities behind influence and trust-building. We explore how rejection impacts confidence, why resilience matters in competitive environments, and how emotional intelligence increasingly shapes professional success. Topics include sales psychology, negotiation, communication, consumer behaviour, storytelling, trust, authenticity, online reputation, confidence, relationship-building, and why human connection still matters enormously in modern business. Whether you work in corporate sales, leadership, recruitment, entrepreneurship, or simply want to better understand how people make decisions, this episode offers practical and psychological insight into human behaviour and influence.

💬 Quotes:

• “People buy from people they trust.”
 • “Resilience matters more than perfection in sales.”
 • “Desperation is often easier to detect than people realise.”
 • “Human connection still matters enormously in business.”

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Trust and emotional connection strongly influence buying behaviour.
 • Rejection and performance pressure can significantly affect confidence and resilience.
 • Emotional intelligence and communication are becoming increasingly valuable business skills.
 • Authenticity builds stronger long-term relationships than aggressive selling tactics.
 • Storytelling and emotional connection often influence decisions more than hard data alone.
 • Social media and online reputation now heavily shape consumer trust and perception.
 • Adaptability, curiosity, and relationship-building remain critical in modern business environments.
 • Strong communication skills continue to separate high performers from average performers.

⏱️ Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction
 1:03 The Psychology Behind Sales
 2:46 Trust & Consumer Behaviour
 5:32 The Emotional Pressure of Sales Targets
 8:14 Rejection, Confidence & Resilience
 11:26 Why Desperation Damages Negotiations
 14:43 Communication & Relationship-Building
 18:37 Storytelling, Emotion & Decision-Making
 21:04 Social Media & Consumer Trust
 24:52 Human Connection in Modern Business
 27:56 Final Reflections

Conclusion:

Sales is rarely just about products, pricing, or persuasion. More often, it comes down to trust, emotional intelligence, communication, resilience, and understanding human behaviour.

This episode explores the psychological realities behind influence, rejection, confidence, negotiation, and relationship-building in modern business. While technology and consumer behaviour continue to evolve, one thing remains constant: people still want to feel understood, respected, and emotionally connected before making decisions.

For many professionals, success is no longer about having the loudest pitch. It is about authenticity, adaptability, trust, and the ability to build genuine human relationships in increasingly competitive environments.

If this conversation helps even one person communicate more effectively, build stronger relationships, or better understand the psychology behind influence and trust, then it has achieved exactly what it set out to do.

 🔔 Don’t forget to like, share, subscribe, and join our Ella Podcasts community for more honest conversations about business, psychology, leadership, communication, and modern working life. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hello, I'm Ella, and this is Ella Podcast. Selling is everywhere. Does a good salesperson use persuasion or manipulation to close the deal? We're looking at the psychology of selling and what traits the best salespeople display. Sales is about human behavior, not just tactics. Here to discuss this topic are Dr. Jonathan Marshall, a Stanford and Harvard University graduate and a leading clinical psychologist and former professor. We also have Gary Brooks. He's the head of business or a financial technology provider with a background in consulting and sales training. And we have New Anthy Samakone. She founded an HR consultancy and search firm 15 years ago, and she scaled up across Asia Pacific. She regularly pitches to FTSE 500 as Forbes top 100 brands and government agencies. And so, Jonathan, why are there so many books on the psychology of selling?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

I think for a mixture of reasons. One is you can learn how to sell, and selling is so important for so many businesses. But also so many salespeople are depressed because of the rejection they're experiencing. So any kind of top-up of how do I become more resilient? And one of the techniques I have. But I think underneath it all is the anxiety that if I were just a tiny bit better, I would be a really good salesperson. So many salespeople have this anxiety of how do I get good as good as that other guy. Right. So I think that's behind it.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Makes a lot of sense. And Gary, what are the traits that make a successful salesperson? And can anyone be coached to sell?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

There are multiple traits. Um, and I'm in the process of hiring now, so I mean we need to talk later. I always used to say attitude, skills, uh, and knowledge, but I I genuinely think it's resilience. If if you've pitched to somebody for ten times and it's late in the day, and you're gonna go and make another call and you feel like you're gonna get rejected again, there's not many people that are willing to accept that that rejection, right? They're just now pessimistic, they're gonna go, it's never gonna work. It's very difficult to teach resilience, um, but I think it's probably the most important trait is to have that mentality, have that motivation to it's not really not taking no for an answer, it's making sure that no matter what someone says, you can still go back and and do more and not really let it impact you. And I suppose it's that thing that leaves you with that okay, I screwed up today, but I'm gonna have continuous improvement, I'm gonna go back tomorrow and I'm gonna try again. And not everybody has that, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I'm sure it can't be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Optimism, I'd say. Like it's it's it's sort of solid optimism. People who are aren't very optimistic, they get a ton of rejections, well, I can really take you down. But someone with indomitable optimism is going to be more resilient in these situations.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

I think it's also the ability to pivot, right? And think differently when you are getting those no's and knowing that it's not necessarily personal, but it's something about well, how do you change your own mindset? Um, but also mirror what's what's being told to you. What feedback are you getting? And how do you make sure you change tact so you're not getting those nine no's before you're getting it?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

You have a certain amount of self-awareness for that, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:11

You do.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Um so yeah, and I think that's a part of coaching is holding up a mirror to somebody. But I uh it's interesting to talk about optimism because I once did a training course years ago. It was called sales optimism. And you could almost map someone's optimism score from zero to a hundred to how they ranked in the organization. Because the people in the at the bottom, the the the pessimists, but they call themselves realists, of course, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:33

They were generally the ones that perform it, but they were generally the ones that call themselves realists.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

That were putting themselves at the bottom. And the short answer was can you learn how to be more optimistic? Uh and actually you you can as long as it hasn't gone too far, right? So it is something that can be learned, this optimism. But I think optimism resilience, it's it's kind of uh, I mean, they are they are pretty close. Pretty close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Are they inherited traits?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah, there are per certain people that can't fail, right? If they come from a place where they know they have to work for a living as opposed to knowing there's no consequence to selling, where they have to do, they have to pick up the phone, they have to execute well on a sales call, because the alternative is much worse, then um I think you're gonna find those kind of people are gonna be a bit more hardworking. But I've seen people that are extremely wealthy that want to improve themselves, um, but the latter are generally rarer. You know, you the people that really want to um be successful and and not want to fail, that's that's a nice little motivation to have.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

And Nuanthi, what's the biggest mistake salespeople make when turning a pitch into a formal proposal from the years I've seen this and looking at my own team and sort of coaching and training them to make sure we understand our customers and understanding geography and things that are changing geopolitically as well that can impact a sale. It's really knowing how to be yourself but also understand who you're talking to and who the audience is. And I find a lot that we you sort of move at such a pace, because you want to move at a pace when you're selling as well, but then you kind of get lost in the process and you get lost in the rules and regulations that come through to you based on who you're selling to as well. And so as a result of that, you forget who you are and what you stand for, and you can go from the optimistic salesperson to the realistic or pessimistic point where you're like, well, is this gonna work? Is there a deal here? And I think the biggest thing is don't get lost in the formal process. Really take a step back and humanize it.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

That makes a lot of sense. And Gary, what stops salespeople from hitting their quotas?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Oh, a thousand things. I mean, you can execute yourself. I mean the key was I don't like the term if I was selling to Jonathan, for example. Let's just say I was meeting.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

If you sell to me, I I'm a sucker.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

But let's just say I'm I'm talking to you and I and I might quickly just look at my watch, or I might say that's not important, or I might dismiss a question that you've had, or I I might miss a cue. There's a thousand ways to file when you when you're um pitching. But I think the main thing is focus and prioritization, I would say. So salespeople only really control two things, where they spend their time and how they execute. So they need to make sure they're calling on the right people, and they need to get really good and persuasive. And it's not even about being energetic sometimes, it's just about I think we all know there's certain people that you would buy from because people buy from people that they trust and they connect with and they demonstrate capability. And if you're too smooth, it may not develop the might around a trust, and if you're too timid, you have that same problem. So I think it's the ability to know your own style and adjust your style to the buyer to make them feel a little bit more comfortable. It's a complex, complex business.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

And I'm sure you've done really well at sales because you do always come across as being authentic and a nice guy, but you know your stuff, and I guess that's a winning combination.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

I always say to the salespeople I'm coaching, if you pitched to a room of nine people, three might definitely buy, three probably wouldn't, and three might consider it. Um the better you get, you might get seven people saying yes, um, if they're all qualified buyers. Uh and and really it just depends. It depends how well you execute in each individual case, right? It depends on other things too, like the competitive landscape, the alternative, the budget, all of the other, all the other things. But I think the the important thing is that um you can't. I I I watch salespeople people's career and they tend to do this, they tend to sort of fluctuate, and I think once they get here at the top, they stop being inquisitive and they stop being genuinely interested, and they may be finishing other people's sentences for them. And then I see people that are struggling to make their number and they're on a sales call, and there's that little whiff of desperation, and that's bad in any walk of life.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Those two things, like I know I was just reading a study of a million sales calls, and they found that the salespeople who seemed genuinely interested in the other person both talked less, so they talked 46% of the time, whereas those who did badly talked like 70% of the time. And the other point of they seemed less desperate. They seemed like, you know, I can take it or leave it. And that both of those things are very attractive, apparently, to a buyer. I mean, you would know from the ground, I'm just reading the studies.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

I hang around with salespeople, and there was a guy in Hong Kong that used to sell UK properties approaching 1997. And let's say there were four properties that were available, he might say, Look, this one's already gone, and there's an offering for this one. But I really think you should, and then suddenly the people just want, you know, the things that they can't have, right? Um, and then if the person says, Well, like this one, you might say, Well, yeah, he had basically he used to make strong recommendations, not suggestions. He would just say, Really think that, look, if I can get you this one, if I can switch the other buyer over here, would that be something that you might and just a very simple technique, right? Um, you used the word manipulation earlier. That's quite manipulative.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, I forgot.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

I don't think it I don't think it's fair, and it's it's not a word you want associated with a professional, but um there are there are techniques that you can use and and and learn from people, but I think I I appreciate when someone's not obviously pitching and building rapport and they do seem genuinely interested. But the desperation thing, it's just bad in any kind of do you know the guy from The Simpsons, the Gil character, you know, that's always you know the guy? Maybe you don't see he's he's like this salesman that can never sell his thing, he's like the secondhand salesman, and he's always so desperate, you know, come on, Gil needs to feed his kids. Um I always think of that when I see, and I I I do lots of mirroring on sales calls, so I'll sit and and you know make notes on somebody and see how they pitch and how well they do, and you know, that kind of thing. And it takes a lot of a lot of skill. If if you let's just say you had 100k to go before you hit your target and you go to sales club in Bahamas or you know, whatever it is, and you go and meet a potential buyer, and then you pitch a particular product, you say, Have you got issues with this? And they say, Yes, we do. And they say, But our budget's only 100k, and uh we need to make a decision, you know, really, really quickly. Now it takes a real, it's it's really quite a brave decision to then go, okay, instead of jumping in and saying, We've got this thing that's 100k and that'll fix your problem and you know you can do that, as opposed to saying, let me just understand it a little bit more. When you say this is a problem, who's impacted and how are they impacted? Across what areas the business is this going to be? So you could turn a 100k deal into something significantly higher if you just have the courage and the the focus on the other person to do it. And again, that takes that takes a little bit of courage to do, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:33

Especially when it comes to finances and and budget checking, because it's it's not a it's not easy, it's not something it comes naturally, right, Gary? Would you agree? It's not a it's not like you just have to be inquisitive.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

We do. And if someone tells you something, you don't take it as at face value. Yep. If someone says, I know psychologists never let you get away with something flipping, you know, like Yeah, you always do that. Well, hang on, when you say always, give me So if someone says, Oh, you know, one of my favorite questions, which people don't really ask, is when someone is looking to do an evaluation, I always say, So how are you going to evaluate each of the vendors? And there's always a silence. And my job is not to break rapport with anybody or make them feel like I'm trying to make them feel uncomfortable. So I always look for that reaction. And if they go, and I go, is it price? The price is important, but is it functionality, is it support, is it reputation, um, is it uh, you know, after sales service, is it security? Is it something else? Then they might say, Well, all those are important. So, well, how do you prioritize those? So, you know, once you understand what they're gonna, how they're actually gonna evaluate, it's a lot, it's a lot easier. But again, it becomes with if I'm too smart with that, they're gonna go, this guy's a bit too. It's like I said, it's a minefield.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

He doesn't get us. Yeah, he doesn't get us around.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

I mean, talking about that is um when you ask a salesperson why did you win, they'll always do the same thing. They'll go, look at this face.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Look at this beautiful face.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Do you know what I did? You know, I did this, I did that, and then when you say, Why did you lose? They'll go, Well, it's just marketing and then the pricing, and you know, whatever. So, you know, that that never happens. So managing salespeople is um is always a little bit of a challenge because um you're managing the ego of the company.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Sure. And Jonathan, what distinguishes the top salespeople from average performers psychologically?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

I think what you were saying earlier about resilience, optimism, uh coming across as being interested in people, having people have the sense that you're looking from my perspective, and that point about you're willing to walk away. You're not pushing, you're not desperate. There's something very attractive about someone who's, you know, take it or leave it.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

Yeah. I recall when I first started the company and left from corporate. It was my early 20s, and there wasn't really a sales manual per se. And so I remember getting all these knockbacks, and I sat down with a a very close mentor, a friend, and I said, How do you learn this? How do you learn what to do and what not to do? Like it's not a you don't get taught this in school, it's not a subject you can pick up at university. And I remember them looking at me going, you've just got to do some more research and talk to more people that are selling. Because otherwise, I mean, he wasn't even from a sales background, so he was kind of like, just go talk to people. And I remember talking to a few people, and anyway, I ended up meeting with um Alexis New Zealand, and I said, How do you train your teams to sell? And they were like, Oh, so the CEO said, Come along and you know, check out how it's done on the on the field, and so I did. And interestingly, it was about the experience you leave with a potential customer and not coming across as desperate. You know, why would you pay for a Lexus versus versus a Porsche? And you know, yeah, you could surely go Japanese or uh German, but that was not the point, it was more about the experiential cell. And I walked away from that going, wow, that's such a change in that kind of psyche of how do you leave someone at the end of a conversation?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

What does experiential cell mean?

SPEAKER_03 13:58

You could have a great conversation, you come across super curious, you'll have the energy, you're mirroring to some degree what um they are about, what the corporate's about, or what the brand's about. But it's coming down to how do you make them feel when you leave? So you might not have even got a deal straight away. It might be one of those maybes or possibilities in the future. But you want to give them that real opportunity to be yourself in the process, but for them to be themselves too. Because, you know, most times when you're selling, they're representing their own brand too, but you're still dealing with a person and their own ego or needs or requirements or KPIs. And so it was really about that experience of how do you make them feel when you're leaving the room.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

And you said to be memorable for the future, because certainly, you know, I I've been working in finance and have hired many companies based on their pictures, and sometimes you know, you just remember that person, and you you might then recommend them to you know a friend of yours in another business, or you might five years later hire them when you work for a new company. So it does mean a lot of that first impression. And yeah, what are the best methodologies for sales coaching, Gary?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

I mean, I always say that you know, whatever works, but um, I think it's the best methodologies. I mean, there's there's a few out there. There's one called Grow, which is goal reality options way forward. There's another one called Graph, which is I think goal reality, I can't know what the A is, but but um, you know, whatever there's a few, there's so many acronyms in the in the world. But I think the the more important thing from a methodology is just that it's uh it's just making sure that you have a framework, a structure from which to coach. And and then it's really more important than about the questions that you would ask somebody. So with using GROW, if you said what's the goal, well, the goal is I want to be a great salesperson, well, how measurable is that, right? Um, I want to do 150% of my number this year. Okay. What's the reality? So where are you today? And that's where they get involved because if they think that they are the greatest, it's going to be difficult to then, you know. So that's why you take the personalities out of it. It's not just my opinion. This is the goal. The reality is based on the data and then the options to get there, and that could be double your activity, it could be do more training, it could be, you know, approach it in a different way, and then the wrap-up or the way forward is really just to have that agreement and put some uh measurable time frames on it. So, as a methodology, that's the important thing, but it's not it's not the methodology itself, it's about the questions that you ask around that methodology. So is something you just said really just stuck in my mind about how you I just remember JP Morgan, you know, the American industrialist that people buy for two reasons: the right reason and the real reason. And the right reason, if say you're buying a car, it could be this many miles to the gallon, this is the budget, this is the colour, this is the engine size, all of that kind of stuff. And then the real reason is I kind of want a German car, I kind of want a BMW, or I kind of want to, because that that's the feeling, right? It's that's feeling um, and so that that that feeling is is the important thing. And I always say the most difficult thing to sell to is indifference. If somebody's like, Yeah, well, if you don't do this, think about the financial consequences or the consequences to the business. And if they don't really believe that, or if they don't really feel that, it's a very difficult pitch in that. That I think that's leaving knowing how they're gonna feel about something, whether that's oh, I could go out of business if I don't do something. Whether they do it with me or not, doesn't matter. They've got to feel that, right? Yeah. If you can make that connection, then you're gonna be you're gonna be in a lot better, a lot better position.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

That's why you've been so successful, hey.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Well, I I don't know if I've been successful, but um it's always nice if somebody takes on board the coaching. I always find that people that I've coached in the past, I can normally, if I do it to a room of 12 people or 50 people, I can more or less figure out who's gonna be good at the end of it.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Um that's something that it seems to me salespeople seem so good at is judging you quickly. That's sort of like a quick read of personality. I'd say salespeople are right up there with Secret Service.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, but you know, because they don't have time, right? To do students. They're judging you real fast. You're gonna be really, really quick. And and but normally the people that write down a listen come back and ask questions and then take me up on the offer. I I do I do pro bono stuff. I say if you want to want me to coach on a deal or whatever, give me a call. And the amount of people that do it, maybe it's my pitch, I don't know, but it's very, very small. But the people that do, um, I've had some real successes in that.

SPEAKER_03 18:27

It might be ringing you, Gary.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

There's always something to learn, right? Definitely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

And then the one thing, how do you balance storytelling with hard data? That's a tricky one. And there's a bit of an art and a science, but I think um part of the storytelling is, I think, to your point, Jonathan, about reading the room and knowing who it is that you're sitting in front of, because part you you've got to mirror that, but you've also got to change how you tell that story. Definitely working on the indifference piece, I think is really important. It's something that I do like to lean in because it it helps the potential customer or the individual work out what they're missing out on or what the possibilities are, whether it's positive or negative. And then I guess from a I guess when you think about the the overall process, it's it's going back to the where do you, you know, what do you want to achieve, what do you want to see? And it's actually spending time listening to them because they will tell you the data they need to meet as well or need to fix, or the the challenges that they've got ahead in the business. Um, and then it's ensuring that you can actually fulfill that. And if you can't, that's cool. At least you know that and you're being really honest about it up front, which I'm really big on because you can't solve the whole world's problems. And you know, from a recruitment perspective, um, if you're moving talent around across borders, what we did 18 months ago is not what we're doing today. Um, that's changed. And but the customer doesn't always see that, and so they're like, Well, but you've done this for us before, and it's like, well, yes, but the world has moved on, and here's my approach and my suggestion, and taking them on board from an advisory perspective, because when they start to really trust and build that trust in you, you can absolutely pivot and show them the way forward, and that does end up leading to hard data. But I'm really big on the data piece. We sometimes do the research prior and say, if you're thinking about this skill and this role, you know, there's a unicorn out there. But here's the reality if you extended it slightly beyond this, and you can take them on that story.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And what destroys trust fastest in sales interactions?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Lots of things. I always have this uh the a list of no-nos, which would be if a salesperson comes to me and says, So tell me about your business, I I just want to I want to scream.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

That is a cringe worthy line.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

In the days of AI, you can do a lot of you can do a lot of research. Yeah. Um, and you can make, I mean, a few assumptions, but it's always nice to give someone a and not a disingenuous, you know, you can't say, Oh, that jacket really stoots you, you're gonna be like, Oh, this guy's too smooth. But you could say, you know, I saw you on that podcast, and what you said I didn't agree with. But um I and then you're you're into a much better conversation, right? Yeah. I've screwed up many, many times. My first sales job, a guy had a recent bereavement, his his wife, and uh they said, You know, he needs to go and he needs to sign, he said he would sign the deal today. Can you go and see him? This was in you know the the 1980s. Um, and he said he's okay to receive you. So, okay, fine. So I went there and I said, Oh, how's it going? Oh so you know, I mean, but I've never done that since. Yeah. Because he just looked at me and I felt this big. Uh and he knew that I was young and a bit of an idiot, so I think he kind of gave me a break. But there's lots of ways to screw it up. Uh so that that feels trust. Well, it used to be that I think in the kind of nineties it was always like best best product, then it went to in the naughty kind of best solution, and now I think it's just about being most responsive. Um, because I think that if you if you don't call when you say you're gonna call, or if you um don't deliver on something, that Uh that's not good from a trust point of view. Even if you call and you're crap, at least at least you're being responsive and you can maybe get another chance at it. But you know, it's tough otherwise, especially in the in a commodity industry where people have always got other options. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

And Luan Thi, when clients push back on price, what strategies turn that objection into an opportunity?

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Well, there's one part where if they're pushing back on price, can they really afford it? If they can't, then thanks very much. We don't really want your business. And really quick, just turn that off because they might be lovely. And don't get me wrong, I keep in touch with that because it's really important to do that. But um it's it's not it's not going to go forward. The other side of it is essentially working out that indifference, working out, you know, where where is the budget coming from? Where's the actual sale coming from? Where's the pain point? And who's got the biggest pain point in the business? And six out of ten times at times, you're not talking to the person that's got the biggest pain point, not regionally, not sometimes even globally. It might just be coming out of HQ. Um, it's navigating who you're talking to and how you're getting that story across and making sure that there is budget. And if there is, how do we move forward? And it might be in chunks. I mean, with government agencies, uh, you know, they've got a set limits when you're working with them. So you've got to kind of go, okay, well, that's limit A for this phase. And then here's how we could see this going from B to B to C transparency in that case. And they'll bite, and it's it's chunk selling, is what I call it. There must be another term, I don't know, Gary, but um I call it a how do you just build the chunks? And next you know, you go from a hundred thousand to a million dollars without really making working that out. But everyone's winning.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

I've been selling for 30 years, and only once on this continent has someone bought without without negotiating. Oh, really? And that was British American tobacco.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Deep pockets.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Maybe. Because when I presented them a proposal, the guy said, Okay, where do we sign? I was like, No, no, no, no, no. That's not how it's supposed to go. They're supposed to say this is too expensive and we can do that.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Why would you do that?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Exactly. I'm being sarcastic. I didn't do anything. I just said, okay, thank you very much. It was a good deal for them. But um, I think you know, when anyone talks about price, the first thing it should be a home run for any salesperson. If I said you're too expensive or you're very expensive, I would just say, Oh, thank you very much. And then I'd just be quiet. Because it's a validation, right? Yes. Um, and if someone says to you, look, we we can't we can't do business at those kind of rates, um, but if you can drop it 20%, we can talk. And if you suddenly went, okay, we'll drop it 20%, I'm like, well, that was easy, yeah, right? What value is in your product?

SPEAKER_02 24:35

You could have asked for 40% of scale, not 20%. That's it, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

So you you have to you have to say, well, look, you know, you can either get really cocky and just say, if that's your budget, I can recommend a couple of other players that'll do it for you. Um reverse psychology, or not, actually. Um, or uh, you know, you can just say, look, in order to do that, then I'm gonna have to impact the service in some way. So maybe we can just go through that and see which we can take out for you, right? Because it's just it's just so easy and so quick to discount. It's it's a real, it's the biggest challenge today, really. It's just that uh, especially I've been running APAC, so I can I can pick countries that are gonna be going for uh discounts. Um you know it's just it's uh it's it's a tough one. But you know, like I think what you're just saying there, it's qualification early. Um and I think once you once you do that verbally, what I like to say is when when someone's talking about it, I say, okay, well that involves this, that, and that. And the range for that is probably somewhere between just picking a round number, a million dollars, and a million five. Have you budgeted for that? And then shut up and see where you know, see where you're at. Because that's the only time you have really to kind of qualify where you're gonna be and if it's gonna be worthwhile. Um, because otherwise you are, like I said, you only have two things you can control. Well, you spend your time, what comes out of your mouth. And if somebody's only got 100k and you don't find out until you're right down the sales cycle, you've wasted your time. And that's frustrating too.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Yeah. My question for Jonathan: how has social media and short form content changed consumer psychology?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

To be honest, I don't know a ton about that topic. Um, I think it's changed a lot that people become much more uh immediate, they're they're they're looking on the first impressions to affect them, but I imagine you can answer that better.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Just from a research point of view, you know, if I if I if someone is pitching, um I'll I'll have a look at their LinkedIn for one, I'll have a look at their company for one, I might put them in AI and see how they rank. Um, I'll look for negative reviews. There could be a hundred fantastic reviews, like looking at the what was how bad was the negative one? Um so I think it just helps from a validation and a research point of view, uh, social media. But the thing is, when you leave the building, right? I I was looking for an investment reading and someone connected me with a person that's uh running a fund. And perfectly lovely guy, we had a cup of coffee together. When he left, what do you think I did? Straight on social media. I was looking at the fund performance, I was looking at individual reviews, I was looking at and I was doing my own research. Not saying I didn't trust him, but social media has uh you can say it's helping helped in that regard, but if you get a negative review, um it can also be quite poor. Um, I remember I was trying to, I was I had a job role recently, it's not really sales, but it was for a sales role, and I was shopping in cold storage, and this person applied, and I looked and I said, Oh, oh, that kind of I know that I won't mention the company, I know that company. I had a friend that used to run that company. I copied the name, I sent him an SMS. Do you know this person? Should I should I hire him? He came back, no, two words. Okay, so from application to evaluation to consideration to rejection before I'd even bought the spring onions. So that social media can be and obviously that person, I knew that kind of person, you know, but I knew that person, I trusted his judgment, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:54

So well on that uh missing note. Thank you for joining us today on Ella Podcasts. Selling and pitching aren't really about a product or service, it's about psychology. While people are seeking solutions, they're also buying certainty, identity, status, emotion, hope, and relief. If you understand human behavior, you'll have an advantage. Influencing skills and confidence are key to closing. If you want to suggest a topic for our next episode, please join our Facebook group at Ella Podcasts and message us. Please subscribe, rate, and share this podcast. Sending you a big hug.