Overview:

The podcast discussed the importance of using a trust-based approach in written communications, especially emails. It recommended focusing first on the problems or issues customers are facing rather than immediately promoting your solutions. An example email was provided that addressed specific customer problems humbly and asked for help, rather than making an overt sales pitch. Sequencing information to build trust before credibility was also advised.

Using problem-focused subject lines and dot dot dots in messages to imply continuation without pressure were additional tips shared. The discussion highlighted how articulating customer problems in their own words can create better engagement and results.

Takeaways:

• Trust-based writing focuses on understanding and connecting with the customer's problems rather than promoting your own solutions.
• When communicating with prospects, focus first on understanding their problems and determining if you can help before discussing your solutions.
• Use a "trust-based mindset" and focus on "getting to the truth" with customers by openly understanding where they stand.
• Start communications by focusing on the customer's problem, not the solution. Spend more time on the problem than might seem needed.
• Reverse engineer your solutions to articulate the customer's problems in their own words so they feel understood.
• Ask for help from prospects rather than immediately offering help, to build rapport and trust.
• Transform sales emails and communications by removing promotional elements and focusing on understanding the customer's situation.
• Use problem statements in email subjects and LinkedIn outreach rather than focusing on solutions or the company.
• Add "dot dot dot" to the end of messages to imply an open dialogue rather than a one-way pitch.
• Articulate customer problems using their own language to show deep understanding of their situation and needs.

Automatically-Generated Transcription:

Excellent. So I think we'll, we'll start with, since I've done the, done the lead in with, with Mr. Mr. Ari Galper. Ari's the, I guess, the leading authority in, in trust based, trust based selling. And Ari's going to be talking about trust based emails today. So basically, you know, how to communicate. Via email, so we don't get this, you know, this whole situation where, you know, you send out a proposal, you follow up and you just get sort of stonewalled and, and blocked and that sort of thing.

So, uh, yeah, Ari, I'll, I'll, I'll hand it over to you to, uh, to take it from here. Okay. No worries. Appreciate the, uh, the audience today of esteemed fellow peers, I must say. So actually this is going to be called trust based writing, not just on email, but applies to anything you do pre sale. So let me see if I can share a screen here.

Not yet, Scott, do you want me to make you a co co host? Okay.

All right. Great.

So I'll just preface this by saying this is a course that developed earlier in the year. I launched my membership group and I went through with them and they loved it. It's changed everything in their writing process and their sales process. That's why I felt comfortable bringing it to you. And I just sort of grabbed the key key module of the four modules and again, our time to kind of walk you through it and just some context.

So for those of you who don't know my work in the sales area, I've been over 20 years, but my work's very conferring and very opposite of everybody else in the sales business. And we teach a whole philosophy of mindset around trust based selling. And I'll walk you through it in a second, but just kind of, I'm going to apply this concept.

So basically any communication pre sale that's required for lead generation, reaching out to people. And I will do one example as well. Of how I re transformed a communication piece to get results. Give you just a sense of... The framework of how you can apply it to what you guys do as well. So, that's trust based writing.

And, you know, the whole concept starts with what we call a certain trust based mindset you have to put as a filter prior to writing things that go to potential clients or prospects in your process. Sometimes we just, you know, write in a way that we feel is good and it'll work, but there's a way to... We look at your writing on how it will receive in advance of actually writing it.

So we have three core principles behind our, our, what we call trust based mindset. The first principle is always be diffusing pressure. When your message arrives to the prospect, whether it's on the phone or email or SMS, always think about what I'm writing. Will this put pressure on them that I'm trying to sell them something?

Is that the message I'm sending in my words? Or can I remove that prior to writing to this, the prospect? Main principle is the idea of what I call getting to the truth with people. What that means is creating this sort of sense of, of, of vulnerability with somebody pre sales, they feel comfortable opening up to you and telling you where they stand from the beginning, you're not playing games with them and having to chase them.

And the last principle, this idea of. What I call focusing on their problem first, not the solution first, and that's where it gets kind of messy for a lot of people who want to promote what they have to offer, or they spend a bit of time on the problem part but then they spouse the time on the solution part.

These are kind of the lenses I'm using as I'll be kind of walking through what I share with my members around this whole way of thinking and mindset. So, the real key is. Is your right pre sale is to not make it about, you know, make it about them, not about you. And I, and I tell my, my private clients fall out of love with your solutions and fall in love with your client's problems.

Because if you stick in that side of the fence or that side of the world, as long as you can, things just happen naturally. So you want to always start with the problem first in your communication, writing or verbal and staying there a long time more than you might think. So they ask you for help versus you provide help in advance of them asking you for it.

They actually own the problem first, which really solves a lot of problems at the beginning. So that's kind of the whole idea. So your writing really should never start with the general message of I have something for you. I have a solution for you. I've got something you need to see. I've got ways to help you.

You probably all get this on LinkedIn right now. More and more every day from people saying, have I got something for you? Here's my calendar link 15 minutes and I'll show it to you. Or have I got this webinar? This it's constant. And that's just basically 1980 selling translated through LinkedIn. It's the same exact methodology of, Hey, let me show you what I've got.

You're going to love it. It's fantastic. It's the same thing. People are still conditioned. And brainwashed to use the same mindset process. They're still just porting it from wherever they were now into all the new mediums, which is causing so much noise out there that I'm hearing more and more professionals saying LinkedIn doesn't work for me anymore because it's just too much noise.

So we have to break the pattern. And so the focus isn't really about what I have for you. The focus should really be, do these particular issues or problems resonate with you? That's the starting point. Of your written and marketing communication with a new prospect because they have to first own the problem before they're ready to solve the problem.

And sometimes we as marketers jump into a quick and say, Oh, I can help you with that. Oh, I've got a great solution for you. It's like a psychologist in a patient. If the patient doesn't own the problem, they're the worst patient because you got to like all them through the whole thing. So, in essence, the same thing here.

How do we get it? Our potential prospects to resonate with us at hello. How do they connect with us right in the beginning of the process? And you, the way you do that is by not talking about your solution. You just describe in details, the problems that you help people solve. And if you're targeting the right market, they should resonate with those problems.

And that's the real key to this is really targeting the problems, the right customer. And then you line everything up from there. And then that kind of rolls back. To the solutions. There's a lot of work that we do around that whole connection, the problem at that level. And sometimes we, we, we get so in love with our solutions and our products that we have to, it takes us some time, some time to mentally reverse engineer what our solution is back to the actual problem we help people solve in a way, in words that we can use that they understand versus marketing terms that we are Understand.

And sometimes what we do is we actually sell the future. We say, oh, if you get our program, you'll be able to change your life. You'll be able to get more products or more profits, whatever it might be. And sometimes people can't think past tomorrow, you know, they can't think past today. And here we are selling the future, and there's a disconnect there.

So it's about grounding yourself in, in their issues from the beginning. So the main goal, presale as, as far as I, I see it is this, it's to uncover. The truth of their situation and determine if you are a fit to work together or not. And you never assume a fit for the beginning of your communication process with them.

Sometimes we just can't help ourselves, but to find someone who needs to match and say, Oh, I can still help you with that. You've got to see my program. And you feel the sense of like, you want to help somebody and, and you can't go there yet until you're, you make sure you're a fit. With them and they have the right problem, which requires you to take a bit of his hatched process and be more doctor patient relationship with them where you're diagnosing the problem for us to make sure you have the answer.

So that's kind of the core theme there. So this, this, this whole concept that I teach can apply actually to multiple scenarios. One is. All your email communications inbound auto responders follow up emails that you send to people pre sale also applies LinkedIn communication like what you say to somebody once they connect with you how to reach back out to them without promoting yourself and getting into that zone.

Everybody hates so much. It also applies to any external communication. It might even Tweak the way you write your sales letter letters. I might tweak your articles. I might tweak your messaging a bit to get more and more refined and more focused. So you connect down to the deep level of the problems where they resonate with you and resonate means they, they stay themselves deep inside.

She or he just gets me. They just, I don't know what she wrote to me, but just, it felt so right. And that emotional connection is what now triggers the inbound momentum towards you. Versus the other way, which is trying to promote your service and solution, which will get obviously people from that, but you'll lose a whole bunch because you didn't start from their perspective.

That's kind of preamble to all this. What I've done is. I've, I've taken an example and I'll show you in a second, but I will, I forgot to mention to this idea that the written communication can be quite tricky because it doesn't contain any verbal tonality. It's just words to be misunderstood. And it lacks a human touch in terms of writing.

And you're aware of this, but you have to ask yourself, you know, what can you diffuse the pressure in the message? How will they be received? Be careful not to push them away. And make sure there's a connection there. So let me give you an example that I can walk through is kind of this talk and then we can open up the q& a.

So here's a classic example of a of an email that one of my members showed me in one of our workshops to help unpack for him. So this is a message he's been sending out. And I just changed the name of the company name as a cold email to get leads, to get people to respond to him and I'll read it to you, dear John.

My name is Michael Johnson. I'm with XYZ company. We are a leading provider and back office operations software with many clients, such as da da da da da. I'm writing you to see if you or your company would be interested in a demonstration of our software. It'd be a 15 minute, 30 to 30 minute brief demonstration that we could do at your convenience.

Our website that, uh, List many testimonials from customers that describe how we've improved the productivity, as well as complete details about our services and products. I'll give you a call next week to see if we can set up a time for a demonstration. It's really Michael. So how would you all feel if you got this email from somebody?

What would you probably do? Delete it. Right. I might, I might Google, I might put dog and pony show. com into the URL. Sure, sure, sure. But so this is the most common message going out right now by people trying to reach people. Not exact word, but essentially the same general sense of it. Let me kind of break down why this, this, this doesn't work now.

And my blue comments here are my comments. In the first line here, right? So here is starting out with, with the word, my, with me, me and I, I, it focuses the whole thing immediately on, on, on you, the person, not on them. That's the first mistake. Then we are leading back office. This is like the second line is like a mini presentation.

It's like a mini pitch designed to show off their client lists, kind of impress people with who their customers are and the writers assuming. That the receiver is interested. That's why they're already beginning to sell before they even send the message. It assumes that the prospect wants to solve a problem.

There's a lot of assumptions in that email, and there's a lot that has to happen for, for that person is ready for that email, but this goes on all the time for marketers and tell people who just kind of reach out to people as a normal reach out. The second comment there in my third paragraph is I'm ready for a demo.

So here they're already. Assuming and offering a demonstration of the solution without even, you know, engaging and that sets off alarms right away about, oh, here comes a sales pitch and the wall goes up, the pressure goes up and then there's the next session about the website and the next, the next slide covers that.

So I break down this paragraph here. I explained the paragraph really is just a lot of assumptions. It's a typical sales approach. It assumes the customer wants to go check them out. And it's not really, there's no trust in this at all. There's no trust building. There's no humility. There's no connector at the human level that allows the person to kind of feel to breathe and connect back.

It's just, Shuts it down. And then the last one here is I'll give you a call later to set up a time. That's of course, very, very sumptive. After all that, you're assuming the person wants to even talk to you. And then this reinforces that this is all about the appointment and getting the appointment, which really is their sales process that they, they've been taught to do, which is make the contact, get the appointment, show the demo.

Move them forward, make the sale. That's the numbers game because the more of those things you play, hopefully the more sales you make, right? That's how most companies run their business. So they might, they run it on a process, on a rails like that, but we don't realize is how much you're losing because of it, not how much they're making.

It's the whole losses where the last opportunity is. And then of course the bottom here. He writes the word sincerely as a, as an ending point, which is quite a, quite detached and very aloof and very kind of cold. So let me kind of show you my rewrite on this. I'll explain kind of the thinking behind it.

So it looks like this replacing the other one. Dear John, not sure if you can help me out or help me, but thought you could possibly point me in the right direction. It starts there. Would you happen to know who in your organization? We'll be responsible for diagnosing or solving productivity issues related to your technology infrastructure, specifically underperforming service, outdated software upgrades, or out of date computer hardware.

I'm with XYZ company. We specifically help companies solve these types of problems. Any help you can provide would be graciously appreciated. Warmest regards, Michael. Any observations on how this is a little different than the other one? Before I get an explanation behind this, how does this feel versus the other one?

You're asking for help at the beginning, which diffuses them. Yep, definitely. Okay. I'll, I'll walk through point by point without thinking behind the languaging on this. So the first line is you're right. I'm sure I can help me out, but by the right, by starting off with humility, not knowing where to go on the typical pitch, you're asking for help.

Human nature is to help people who ask for help. When I teach people to make outbound calls, when they normally say, hi, my name is, I'm with, we are a, they get shut down at hello. I teach them to say when they make outbound calls. Hi, my name is Ari, and I'm hoping you can help me out for a moment. If it's delivered that way, I swear to God, almost a hundred percent.

You'll always hear this. How can I help you? It's just human nature to do it right. Same concept, but now put in writing. Would you happen to know who in your organization would be responsible? And I, of course, I list out very specific problems there. Now, what I'm not doing is offering any solutions. What I'm doing is addressing specifically the issues that I know.

The solution solves. I had to interview this guy to get out of his head what the issues were, because he's in love with the solutions. He can't wait to talk about it, sell it, but I had to get him to think about what other problems that it solves for people, because those problems. Is the connector, the receiver has to say to themselves, Oh, right.

We got those issues that creates movement forward without pressure. They're acknowledging the problem that I'm with X, Y, Z company. We solve the issues. And here again, he's only reinforcing that his company works on those problems, but does not say anything about how he solved those problems. Because what I discovered is psychologically was that potential customers and buyers, they don't really care about how you solve the problem.

What they care about is if. You're the one to solve it or not, which means all they care about is if they can trust you enough, let you in their world to understand them better, not your solution. That's too premature. Discuss your solution. So in the last last couple of lines and any help you provide, we appreciate it.

That's that's had some warmth into it. Empathy, you know, some caring and the languaging in there. And of course, I prefer warmest regard versus sincerely warmest regards humanizes and makes it comfortable and soft. So, uh, he tested this and out of the 10 zeros he got, he, with this, he got five, 50 percent response rate in this approach.

Now, all my members are copied this and using it and tweaking it and getting responses back because of the transformation of the mindset and the language and the approach and all that. That's just an example that I wanted to show you guys and give you a feel for. What I'm doing on the writing piece, taking the sales concept over to trust based writing.

So happy to open up a chat comments and thoughts about it, Scott, or what do you ever think about it? Yeah, no, that was, that was excellent. Thanks Ari. I think I've, I've, I've screenshot of that, that, that email or that message. So I'll throw it out to the group for, for, for Q and A's. What, yeah, what, what questions, questions do we have out there?

Hi Ari, Judith here. Hi, how are you going? Good, thanks. Thank you for that. I had a practical question. I noticed in the email that you transformed, you didn't put any proof, like after the we help organizations with issues. Do you feel that it's too soon? You want them to come back to you and then you would prove yourself.

So we don't want to say we've worked with or we get results or anything like that. We're to keep that very low key until they respond to us. Here's the thing. If they don't trust you first, they don't believe you anyways. So no matter what you say, I work with CNN or IBM or it, it's just noise for them.

They've heard this a thousand times, promoting brands, promoting themselves, so to them, it's just a pitch. And so that's why it's important to sequence out your credibility elements in a linear fashion after the trust is created at the right timing. For do I work with my private clients on it's a sequence their process pre sale to make sure that trust is embedded first before you add other elements that.

They may not believe her true. So are you suggesting things like, you know, in a signature panel, I tend to use proof in there. Should I keep that in the email signature and not obviously put it in as copy? Or should I remove it from there and simply do warmest regards, Judah? No, I think signature is fine.

I mean, I have one that I guess finisher is fine. I just don't think you have to double it up, but no, I keep it, keep the signature fine. No problem. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's, that's more subtle. You're not saying it it's embedded in, I guess it's some kind of graphic or something.

And sometimes that's the real key to all this is really understanding what they have to go through first in their own mind to feel comfortable with you with, with, with people before we start to promote ourselves. The tendency is to, when we get an opportunity to start promoting ourselves, and in many cases they aren't ready for that yet, they have to feel comfortable with you as a, as a human being.

Good question though, very good. Yeah, no, that's, that's good. Any other, any other questions? Yeah, I've got one. Scott, if Ari could help me with this. He asked me for help, Ari. He's already a great student. Yeah, listening to the master, Ari. Hey, how do you put a subject line on an email? Oh, great, great. So, everyone asked me that.

So, the expected thing to put in a subject line is typically the solution. Oh, or something around the company name or the solution. But what I encourage my clients to do is to basically choose one of the most specific issues that you solve for people and put the problem in the subject line and make it dot, dot, dot.

So maybe in this case, underperforming servers, causing issues, dot, dot, dot. That's the subject line. Or if you do marketing for people, it's, or maybe converting, not, not converting or losing clients. From the first call to the second call, dot, dot, dot. So you, you, the subject line is a very, very specific issue that, you know, they probably have, which is inarguable, which means they have to, they would probably open it because it's not, they know right away, it's not a promotion.

Thank you. Good stuff.

That's, that's actually really good. The, the core, the core problem in the, in the subject line. Any, any, any other questions.

And by the way, for LinkedIn, if you want to connect with people as well, it's been working really well with my clients where they, once they make a connection, they write back a message that basically doesn't sell them or their services. It just says something to the effect of, you know, nice to meet you, appreciate the connection, we're just curious if you're having any of these issues.

And it literally just lists out the very clear issues, and that is it. There's nothing else. And they get responses back. Oh, you know, I, we, we are have that going on right now. Yeah. So by, by, by, by stripping out all the promotion and engaging initially on the, at the problem level, it just, it's magical. So, so if you did a LinkedIn post, you might, you might start with that great to connect.

Are you just curious? Are you experiencing any of these issues? And then if they respond. Is there any sort of tricks on how to go back and forth? How quickly to... Yeah, yeah. If they respond back to that one, then you go deeper on the issues. You don't move them forward anywhere. You just, you go what I call down the iceberg, where you literally say...

He writes you back and says, yeah, actually we are looking, we have, do you have issues with viruses in our computers and all that kind of stuff? You say, really? Oh, okay. How, how long has that been going on for? And what are you guys on so far to work on that dot, dot, dot. I love my dot, dot dots because you always want to add a dot, dot, dot.

At the end of your message, never a dot, never a full stop, because that came from my old days. I used to do live chat on my website. I learned a long time ago when you do on live chat, when you chat with people, if you put a dot with them, they feel this ending point. When you add dot, dot, dot, they feel like it's continuing.

It just never ends. And we've been using that now on LinkedIn. It's worked great because it's not like you're, you send a message and then you kind of send it off. And it's like, it's just, it's like, it's this live chat dialogue that never ends. Yes, yes, that's good. So essentially, rather than doing, because I've seen LinkedIn strategies and obviously Julie knows LinkedIn very well, but where you might go, you send them some content and then you send them some content, maybe the fourth message you go, hey, let's have a meeting.

But what you're saying is, This probably shortcuts that process. And it's also zigging while everyone else is zagging. Well, it starts with, with the problem. It starts with, do you have it? How long has it been going on for? What are you going to, a

call. Now that's too fast. That's what we all, a lot of people do is they jump too quickly to a More high touch moment and the person is not ready yet and they're they're ready when the problem is previously discussed and they sense that you connect to the problem and you don't have a hidden agenda to sell them a solution that you're not promoting yourself in any way in the dialogue and that makes you pure and safe to connect with which is the mistake everyone else makes everyone else jumps in too early and starts talking about next steps.

Yep. Yep. Is there any, is there any metrics on, on that when, you know, like how many emails you send out, what, I know it would depend a lot on the niche and all of that sort of thing. Well, you got to really test the languaging per niche. You have to tweak, tweak the languaging so that the problem is written in a way.

Where they feel like you work with them next to them in their office, like the words themselves are like, how did he know that we have that exact issue yesterday morning in our office? How? That's weird. That feels so weird.

It's not about the testing between A and B. It's about how good you are at articulating their issues in languaging and in words they describe themselves. Yes. And that, that, that is a bit of a transformation in people's minds because we live in our product and in our world, the world of our products. So we see everything from our view of what our solution is.

So we use languaging around our solution, what it can do for people. And that sometimes comes across as marketing, languaging, jargon, and that doesn't connect to the, to the user around. Words they would use around the problem. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's really good. Like, for instance, I, when we talk to someone who's a non marketer and their problem is, is they aren't converting.

I would never use the word conversion. Because that's a marketing term that marketers use. Like, I would say something like. You know, are you losing people from the point in which you have a call with them to when they want to become a customer? Is that where the hole is in your process? They go, Yeah, well, then you have a problem losing people between that spot.

That's where I would never use languaging that they it feels highbrow. Yeah. No, ab absolutely no, that's, that's great. Well, what, what we might do now, thanks so much for that, Ari. There was some, yeah, key, key takeaways there, particularly the, the problem in the, you know, in the headline. I think that's, that's great.

So what we might do now, we'll, we'll go into gr breakout rooms of, we'll set up four, four breakout rooms and go into, into those, the theme of the breakout room is really, you know, how do I get. better results from my, you know, written, written communication really with, you know, with clients. So, yeah, so we'll go into, into four groups of, of three and then, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll be about around about 20 minutes and then we'll come back in for a recap and then following that Tom will be telling us about the JVs and, uh, yeah, and we will, I will set them up now.

So we might go into groups. And, and see what the biggest, biggest takeaways were. So Anoop, what was the biggest takeaway from your, your group? I think it was mainly around building the trust through questions and being natural in the whole process. So the curiosity that comes with the questions in a natural way, rather than making people feel like, like they are being interviewed.

And, uh, also using the whole credibility material to gain confidence, even before you start talking to someone. Yes. Yes. That's, that's good. That's good. And, uh, John.

I really liked it. I really liked the way that it dives into the problem or just, just opens the conversation about the problem. I thought that was really good. And the bit that. I didn't really appreciate before was around that humility at the start, which I think is a really, really powerful thing too.

And we also had some, some other cool LinkedIn tips that came in the group as well around replies and so on. And the inbound stuff, what was the exact words out of curiosity, that was another thing that I took away from the I think Julie had a really good book she recommended. Yeah. What was the book called?

Smart Calling by Art. Sobzak, S O B C Z A K. I think it was. So, yeah, if you, if you ever want a book review, give your book to Julie because she will sell it really, really well. And which group did I miss? Um, only two groups. I know we had three. Oh, our group as well. I was just, we were talking just the, the synchronicity between that simplicity that we often forget in the complex, like we're all trying to be really sophisticated, but.

That whole thing about the headline and even just then when John was talking about the humility, it's like there's the headline and then the humility, it's kind of diffuse, it's like, I, I can solve this problem and then the humility is. I'm also going to see if, like, there's that, it's like the headline's really powerful and really expensive to get their attention, but then the humility, it's like, I'm sure there's something you could do with that, Scott, like that whole, those two decompressing moments of dealing with someone's initial contact just diffuses that, like you're saying, Ari, about that selling component.

It's more of, A person of authority coming in and going, Hey, I can help you here if you need it. If you don't, I'm going to move on to the next person. Very good. Yeah. I think that's good. And, and I think that the important thing to keep in mind, John asked me from a copywriting perspective, what I thought, and I thought, well, ultimately copywriting is salesmanship in print.

It's not hypey. It's not, it's not about hyping people up. It's not about. It's about if, how would you respond to people in the real world? And truth is you're not going to tap on someone on the shoulder in the street and go, Hey Ari, do you want to buy my, you know, buy my shoes? You know, like you're going to say, Hey, I was wondering if you could help me or that's the way you're going to approach them.

So I think it, it goes. I think it fits in with copywriting perfectly. It's just being, always being contextual to the situation that you're in. So yeah, so I thought that was, that was great.