Shut Up and Listen

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuilidnglifestylesshow.com. I also invite you to grab a free copy of “The Wealthy
List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Jonathan: You’re listening to List Building Lifestyle. Welcome back boys and girls
for another list building adventure with your man, Mr. Igor Kheifets.

Igor: Hey Jonathan, let me ask you a personal question.

Jonathan: No.

Igor: Please.

Jonathan: [laughter] Alright.

Igor: You’re married right?

Jonathan: Sure am.

Igor: Do you listen to your wife?

Jonathan: That is a great question and I listen as much as humanly possible.

Igor: Wow, you’re so much better at this stuff than I am because one of the
biggest complaints I get from my wife is that I never listen. And truth be told, I
don’t, somehow I get distracted with anything really no matter how small of a
nuance comes into my space, I seem to immediately just shut off everything that
comes from her and focus completely on this other little thing. Not sure why I do
this, I might have gotten it from my father which seems to be a very convenient
excuse but you know that is probably why recently like I couldn’t really ñ me and
my wife are going through this rough patch where I constantly fight with her about
these tiny little things and I realized these fights originate because I just
don’t listen. Now the reason that I bring this up is because most people when they
go out marketing and selling, when they go out trying to sign people up to their
business opportunity or even just you know into this service maybe they are
coaches or consultants whatever the case maybe, you know most people just don’t
fucking listen.

Jonathan: Hmm.

Igor: And that seems to be one of the biggest problems I see out there because if
you really think about it people buy when they feel understood and accepted.
Listening is the simplest and the cheapest concession we can make to basically get
people to comply with our request to whip out there credit card and swipe it.
Right? And in spite of what most people believe listening is not a passive thing.
It’s actually the most active thing you can do to influence other people to comply
with your wishes. Jonathan: [laughter] I like the idea of getting them to comply
by listening that’s a great concept, Igor.

Igor: Yeah, while most people when they think of the concept of selling or
marketing and they think, ìOh I have to talk a lot, I have to be a smooth talker,
I have to be a fast talkerî, well that is actually not true. My copywriter
mentor, Ross Bowring, he is one of the slowest talkers I’ve ever met in my life.
It takes him forever to think of ñ to create a sentence in his brain and then
kind of have that thought translated into a sound of some sort and for it to leave
his mouth but you know he is one of the greatest influencers I have met in fact
somehow he convinced me to pay him thousands of dollars each and every month for
coaching and mentoring and some copywriting work as well and then at some point he
was a partner in my business and he was getting a percentage of all my profits.

Jonathan: Wow.

Igor: Now one of the greatest things this guy knows how to do is to listen and
feedback to you what you just said and so when you talk to Ross, you can’t help
but feel understood and accepted and you feel that connection at which point all
the skepticism and all the doubt kind of goes out the window and you realize that
this person has your best interest in mind and that as a skill set could be the
most vital skill you can have as a marketer of your business opportunity.

Jonathan: Igor, I think you’re way, way, way underselling what you just said
because being an active listener and being able to make people feel understood
makes you a better human overall. Igor: Yes and you probably know me better than
anyone else at this point, you know that I’m driven by money first.

Igor: [laughter] People’s relationship’s second but seriously though I realize now
as I’m sharing this ìwisdomî of which I picked when I was doing the high ticket
phone sales for my coaching program and I realized now that I should be listening
more in my marriage. I should be listening more within my family which again for
some reason, Jonathan, I find it so difficult to listen to people in real life and
I find it so easy to listen to people when they are actually paying me money.

Jonathan: [laughter]

Igor: Am I the only one who has those issues?

Jonathan: There is a toll to your listening, right? There is a toll to your ear
canals? [laughter]

Igor: [laughter] Yeah, but all jokes aside seriously if you think of selling as a
process where you’re supposed to be talking and talking and talking in order to
perhaps distract your prospect from changing their mind or realizing your full of
it that is not the case, selling is not supposed to be that way. We already spoke
a few times about if someone is connecting with you about a solution they
definitely have this problem that they want to solve that’s a given. So they
wouldn’t be talking to you unless they wanted to talk you, it’s a free country,
it’s a free world, right, and nobody has to talk to you unless they want to talk
to you. So if you already have them communicating with you, you should be talking
less and listening more. I had this VIP client that’s a member of my Solo VIP Club
ask me something, you know he generated a bunch of leads from his first promotion
with us and a lot of these people wanted to connect with him personally before
they would discuss joining his opportunity which is a great sign. It’s a great
sign that you’re doing something right when people actually want to talk to you on
the phone because most people kind of try to avoid the phone and they treat the
phone as private space, you know what I mean like they are really protective over
their air time.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: He asked me a question. He said, ìIgor what do talk about with these
people? Like I have no idea what to talk about, I’ve only been in the industry for
the last three months, I don’t know enough about it to feel comfortable talking
about it, I don’t consider myself an expert by any means.î I said, ìNathan, look
you don’t have to be an expert and you don’t have to know everything there is to
know about this industry when you communicate with your prospects and potential
customers because at that point they really don’t need to be that person like they
don’t want you to be that person. At that point all they are looking for is to
connect with somebody who they believe is real, authentic and a person that can be
trusted, somebody who has their best interest in mind.î So the question is how do
you communicate that to these people when you talk to them for the very first time
so that by the time you’re done connecting with them for like 15 to 30 minutes on
the phone, they step out of that phone call feeling that they really should do
business with you because they really like you, because they really trust you, and
because you are a genuine individual who wants to help. The answer to that
question is shut up and listen, ask questions, shut up and listen to the answers
and when they give you the answers, ask more questions, ask high quality
questions, ask them questions based on what they just shared with you and if you
do it for long enough with a genuine desire to learn more about these people and
why they do what they do, what are their problems that push them into trying to
make money online and I assure you that they have problems to share with you. Once
they open up to you even if you are a stranger they will feel that connection and
you will feel that connection too. And as soon as that connection happens as soon
as there is this spark if you will, from that point forward you don’t need to be a
slick salesmen in order to convince somebody to join your business opportunity, in
fact I guarantee they will be the ones to ask you, ìHey Nathan, tell me more
about how I can be part of what you’re doing?î There is not going to be any
sleaziness going on and any pressure, there is actually going to be lots and lots
of goodwill because the dynamic of that conversation will be so different to what
they people are used to.

Jonathan: Why do you think that people have this concept that selling is talking
versus what you’re saying selling is listening?

Igor: The culture I guess. I mean we all seen movies like I think it’s Jerry
Maguire with Tom Cruise when he leaves the agency and starts his own thing with
seeing Glengarry Glen Ross with Alex Baldwin where he says, ìClose or go home.
Good father go home and play with your kids, you sell or you’re nothing.î I guess
it’s this culture we live in where everybody thinks of sales as the thing you do
when you want to manipulate somebody and just do something. Wall Street doesn’t
help change that even today. I mean guys like Jordan Belfort; you know they are
still doing that. They are still cold calling and really convincing, manipulating
but we don’t have to play by those rules that’s the beauty of it anyway. I was
never good at high pressure sales because that shit really feels uncomfortable to
me. I was never brought up that way. I actually want to think of myself as a
really nice person that just presents something to people might want and if they
want it, awesome and if they don’t okay no big deal.

Jonathan: Interesting. So I want to share and you’ve already mentioned this but I
want to highlight it for the List Builders, it’s something I wrote about in the
The Podcast Mogul Newsletter awhile back, the Snow White Secret to Sales Success
and it’s the ALR formula, Ask, Listen, Repeat, Ask Listen, Repeat. That’s the way
I do all my sales calls is I ask a question, I listen and if I need clarification
I ask for it and then I repeat the answer cynically and that’s how people know
that you’re actively listening that’s the thing, active listening where you’re
taking part, internalizing it and then repeating it back to them in a cynic
fashion makes them feel understood and I’m glad that you brought that up today,
Igor.

Igor: Absolutely. Obviously being someone who spends so many hours each and every
week listening to me ramble, you got really good at that stuff and yeah I’m happy
that you use this word ìactiveî. Listening is really an active process and it
helps to satisfy one of the most fundamental needs that people have as we
mentioned earlier feeling understood and accepted. Feeling understood and accepted
is one of the three universal needs that pretty much governs everything we do and
at the moment we don’t feel that way, the moment that we don’t feel like we are in
the place, in that place where we are understood, where we are accepted, we don’t
feel comfortable and we never move forward with anything. That is why for instance
ever since coming to Israel, I’ve kind of stuck with the Russian community because
I speak Russian, my family speaks Russian so it was much easier for me to cling to
Russian speakers in Israel than to establish relationships with Hebrew speaking
folks who just come from a different society, different upbringing, and different
language so I felt understood over here and that is why not only I stayed here and
I made every possible decision in my life to keep myself here but not only that I
refused to go there, I refused to consider myself to be part of that community and
that’s interesting too because it’s not just clinging to the familiar, it’s also
resisting, actively resisting the unfamiliar.

Jonathan: Wow. [laughter] There is so many directions I want to go here with you,
Igor but let’s go back to the part where you said getting on the phone with people
and that being uncomfortable so is this really the solution because I hear it all
the time, most sales get made on the phone especially if you have a higher ticket
item and most people are afraid to get on the phone but is this listening, this
active listening that we are talking about is that the way to get over your
shyness of the phone or does it help?

Igor: That’s a really interesting question. First off, a lot of people in our
industry get trained in a way where they are being told you don’t have to get on
the phone. I noticed also that a lot of people wish that the phone is replaced by
say Facebook chat or Skype chat. You know what I mean? A lot of people, they dream
about running a business where they close sales over email and that can be done.
That can be done if you’ve established your creditability in the marketplace and
you got enough real estate that tells your stories that communicates through
mulitiple media channels including written sales letters, videos, and video sales
letters, for me the podcast has been a tremendous boost as far as my connection
with the marketplace is concerned because it’s like having a phone call with like
10,000 people at all the same time so webinars, same concept. Now as far as the
actual phone calls if you are uncomfortable with phone calls, the way for you to
show to your marketplace that you listen is to do this, you want to interview a
couple of your target prospects, a couple of your ideal clients so if you already
signed someone up into your business or you have someone who thinks about joining,
you’re getting some traction, you want to offer this person some sort of a bribe
and just get on the phone with them, not for a sales call but for an interview.
What you will ask, a couple of questions to find out more about their situation
and most importantly what are those reasons why they want to get into the
business, what are the reasons they are losing sleep at night, what are the
reasons that they can’t stop thinking about starting online business but at the
same time they won’t start one, what is their ideal outcome for their online
business, what would they buy with the money they will make online, how will they
change their life as soon as they realize they don’t need a job anymore and like
basically painting a very clear before and after picture to show the
transformation of where they want to go, you know, mental, physical, spiritual,
whatever that is or all three. So as soon as you have that information, you got
what we call your customer profile. You got the avatar, the ideal customer avatar
and what you can start doing now is feeding back this information to the
marketplace in general rather than doing it with one person just feeding it back
to the marketplace and do it through your emails, do it through your videos, do it
through your sales letters and sales videos or if you have a podcast or you’re
doing webinars do it there. In other words what you’re trying to do is you’re
showing everyone in the market that you understand what an average person is going
through. Now does it have to be super, the exact thing that this person is going
through? No, it does not. Does it have to cover each and every single possible
potential client so let’s say like there are five potential clients and it
includes stay-at-home moms and includes college students, it includes retired
people, it includes well-to-do middle class folks that are just tired of their day
job? No, it doesn’t have to cover everybody. It just has to tell a very specific
story that you heard that person share with you on the phone and again this is
what exactly what Jonathan is doing only in writing, you’re simply feeding back
what you’ve been told and by doing so the marketplace knows, ìHey this guy
listensî. It’s a subconscious thing, they won’t be able to tell you that’s
exactly why they decided to work with you, it’s just that this sends a
subconscious signal to the front and back of their brain that says this person can
be trusted based on what they have published.

Jonathan: You can drop the mic right there. You just gave the secret to content
marketing. People are like, ìI don’t know what to write about. I don’t know what
make videos or podcasts about. I’m stuck.î You just gave the secret. Ladies and
gentlemen, just take this run with it and then you’ll be able to afford Igor ten
time over. [laughter]

Igor: [laughter]

Jonathan: Good stuff, man. So anything else you want to say as we are wrapping up
here?

Igor: To be honest, there is no better way to sum this all up with ask questions,
shut up and listen.

Jonathan: That’s it for this edition of List Building Lifestyle. You can listen to
us again next time.

Thanks for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to subscribe on iTunes
or Google. Play to never miss an episode because who knows just one conversion tactic
we share on the show might double your list and double your business. Download the
transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and
don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival
Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival . This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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