The NeuroStrategy™ Behind Buyer Behavior with Jake Stahl

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Now let's get on with the show. This is the single biggest reason people don't succeed in life is that they play not to lose versus playing to win. Hey everyone, welcome back to make it happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Ooh, we're in for a good one today. This one's all about psychology and you all know if you've been following me, I'm way more into the psychology of sales than the tactics and tips anymore. And Jake Stahl, he is not your average consultant. He's a former top tier sales trainer turned psychological strategist, the inventor of neuro strategy and the visionary founder and CEO of Orchestrate, a first of his kind intelligence platform that rewires how companies train, sell, and scale.

And like I said, this was a fascinating conversation because he actually has studied psychology, not like me. I tend to kind of fly by the seat of my pants here on this and try to validate it with other people who are way smarter than me. But, um, you know, he studied, uh, neuro, uh, neuro-linguistic programming. So there's, I was introduced to that early in my career and found it fascinating. And also, um, instructional design, which I have a special shitty place in my heart for, especially, you know, traditional trainers. So we dove into that, but a lot of this was, I mean, this was a really cool one. I think you're going to like a lot of this and how we integrated it throughout the entire sales process of how to connect with people, how to communicate little small tips along the way, the psychology around why people do things and how to engage with them and how to get them to trust you, all of it.

So I, I don't want to ruin it. Um, just listen to this one. And he's got a book coming out in a couple, in a month or so, actually, this will probably be released when the book comes out. So highly recommend checking it out because I find it absolutely fascinating on this one. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Jake Stahl, what's going on? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? God, thanks for having me on. This is such an honor. Yeah, I appreciate you reaching out. I was pretty curious about this conversation as we were kind of prepping for this. I was saying I'm a novice in NLP and, you know, focusing on EQ way over IQ because I guess that's where my strength is because I know college wasn't exactly it.

Um, and so I'm really curious about good. I've always said to people that I don't really like sales books, like on the tactics and tips and stuff like that, because whatever those come and go, but psychology that doesn't change much. And so for reps to read about psychology and how to communicate with people is so much more powerful. So I'm really excited to kind of get into some of this stuff with you. I'm thrilled to be here. So this is great. Love it. So let's, let's start as always, um, you know, kind of background story here, right? Like we can all look on LinkedIn, uh, kind of see your background, but you got some interesting and I'm, and I'm always curious kind of where your curiosity came from when it comes to psychology and business too.

Cause you know, that was your major, right? You're a psych major and a business minor. So what were kind of some of the early influences that got you interested in that, um, parents, whatever you were doing. So walk us through some of that stuff. Yeah. My dad was a small business owner. Uh, he owned a pharmacy in a really tiny town in Pennsylvania. Like it's the type of town that imagine this, do you remember when the Thai beanie babies were out? Oh yeah. Yep. Okay. Well, when the Thai beanie babies came out, they were super popular and then they died off and right as they died off, my hometown got them. So that's how far behind the times we were. So, uh, my dad owned a pharmacy and I was always privy to his business meetings.

Uh, I would go to rotary club with him sometimes. Uh, I would be in the business meetings with him. Uh, he would take me to the bank when he'd go for loans. So I got a lot of business exposure when I was growing up, but I think the thing that always fascinated me were, was you're always taught from the time you're a kid, you're unique, you're special, you're different, and we're not, I mean, 90% of the time we're all thinking the same way we have the same fears. So it was always that dichotomy of hearing that I was different. And yet seeing that everybody we talked to thought pretty much the same way I did. Uh, and that led me to really get into sales and understanding human psychology. Uh, so I got into financial services sales to start and rapidly became number one in the region where I was, but I really wanted to get into pharmaceutical sales.

Cause that's my dad was a pharmacist. So they got me in, in there, uh, I started working for a company. I became number one in the nation for that company. Then they launched another product. I became number one, the nation for that. And then they asked me to become a trainer and things just kind of kept building. And it's almost like the universe said, Jake, you're supposed to be doing this kind of thing. So we're going to just line up all the stuff it takes for you to walk down that path. And, and that's what I wound up doing. So in college, I, I took psychology and business admin, so I could dig into the human mind a little bit more. And that led to my fascination with social psychology, which is the study of magic words and phrases, I call it.

And then I got into NLP and I got my master's certification there. And that's how I started coaching pulled. So let's talk about NLP. Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of conflicting, uh, opinions about NLP and how it's leveraged. I know Sandler is huge into NLP. And for those of you who are listening, neuro, not natural language processing, we're talking about neuro-linguistic programming, um, which is, you know, the, the three types of communicators, right? There's visual auditories and kinesthetics, and we all communicate in slightly different ways. And so there's, once you recognize that you can start to change your language, your, all these different things to connect with people more.

So that's my very broad understanding of NLP. Um, could you give us kind of your perspective first on what it is and, and then we'll get into how you see leveraging it or, or how it's meant, how, how you can leverage it in sales. But talk to me a little bit about after my preliminary understanding of NLP, what's your kind of, what's a little bit of a deeper meaning of it? Yeah. So there's going to be an NLP people out there that probably disagree with this description, but this is kind of the way I see it. I think everybody has two profiles. So we have the one, we show other people, and then we have the one that is the real decision maker. It's all of our kind of gut reactions and our emotions and our feelings.

And to me, NLP is how we talk to ourselves when we talk to ourself and how well we understand why we make the decisions we do and how we can change that. And at the same time, it gives us an uncanny understanding of how other people make those decisions and how we can talk to them in a way that helps bring out that information. And NLP so often is like, oh, you can influence other people to do your bidding. And, you know, it's, I can make you hop like a bunny. It's, it is so overblown. It's kind of like the master masons. You know, the masons have this spaceship. They've all, they're all going to leave the earth together. And they've, it's just, there's a lot of urban legend that takes place, but anybody who goes through NLP training, they go through a remarkable self-discovery process.

They start to learn why they think the way they do and, and maybe how to deprogram that. And that leads to a great understanding of other people also. See, that's interesting. Cause I, cause I looked at it as how we communicate and you're positioning it, but you're positioning it more on how we make decisions and why we think the way that we do. So it's much more of an internal thing than an external thing. It's a little bit of both. So by understanding myself, it helps me get a grip on how others do it as well. But in my opinion, and again, some NLP people are going to disagree, but to me, NLP is as much an internal journey as it is an external journey. So, you know, Tony Robbins is really our poster, right?

So when Tony works with people, he not only helps them understand their exterior motivations, but he helps drive their interior processes, right? How to do, how to do pattern interrupts and how to understand where a fear comes from and overcome it. That that's internal. So then the external kind of naturally follows. Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check out some of my sales training programs at jbarrows.com and use discount code podcast for 20% off the individual packages. If you're not interested in training or you don't think you need it, then you can still support me by leaving a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2. If you've already gone through my training before, you can also sign up for my newsletter on jbarrows.com where every single week I put out a newsletter that breaks down what I'm learning out there, some of the new tips and tools and tech and resources that I'm coming across and some stories from the streets of train wrecks that I go through and stuff not to do.

So if you could do one of those things, either sign up for the membership, give me a five-star review or follow me on the newsletter. It would mean the world to me. Thanks for your support. Now let's get back to the show. Yeah, it was funny because, you know, I went to a Tony Robbins. Like, you know, I did Salesforce.com, their keynote, and they had him doing it. And I, you know, and I'm, I'm never, I'm not like a motivational speaker guy and I've never really bought into that. And I kind of roll my eyes to it. Right. And then I've heard, I heard about Tony Robbins, obviously. And I, you know, and walk the coals and everything like that. And so I kind of went in as a skeptic, like, all right, whatever.

And no joke within 10 minutes, I'm, I'm standing on the chair, I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. I'm hugging the guy next to me. I'm like, I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm like, how did this happen? And then when you peel it back, like he's, you know, he's always got flashing lights and music and he's running across the stage and he's getting you to hug the person next to you or change your state and all this. So he's like tapping into, regardless of how you actually communicate, he's, he's connecting with you. And I think that was the big awakening for me was to your point. I don't necessarily know if I, I, I, it was a reflection on my decisions or how I think, but it was a reflection on how I communicate.

And, and I always knew that I was, you know, I, I was slightly different, you know, than everybody else, whatever I communicate the way I communicate. But when I recognize the different types of communication styles and realize the impact that one had on the other, I was realizing, wait a minute, this is why I'm not connecting with a large portion of the group. For instance, if I'm doing training, wait a second, you know, cause some people communicate just like me and they're going to be locked in where other people's I'm running way over them with, with my approach and not getting them engaged. So that really kind of shifted the way I trained a lot when I realized that from a communication standpoint, but I haven't reflected internally about how to make decisions.

Yeah. It's amazing. And, and I don't mind telling you during my NLP journey, I, I cried a lot. There were a lot of emotions. You just touch while you're doing the training that you really didn't know you had and different triggers that bring up things that you didn't know were your triggers. So the journey itself is amazing. I really think NLP should be taught in high school, not even for the communication aspect, but just to get in touch with your internal self. It's, it's just astounding. And what amazes me to this day is that it's still largely regarded as a pseudoscience. Yeah. There's really no clinical research that says, Hey, this works. And yet when you see a masterful NLP practitioner, like Tony Robbins doing it, you're like, Oh yeah, this works.

This works. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the key. Like you talk about like, you know, getting people to do whatever it's in. And I talk a lot about this in sales, you know, there's a big difference in my opinion between influence and manipulation. Right. 100%. Right. Manipulation is what bad sales reps do. Influence is what great sales reps do. And I think people do need to be influenced because sometimes they just don't see that force through the trees or whatever their actual situation is. And so I think that's important to figure out how to use this for the powers of good, if you will. Yeah. And I think the part people get confused, to be honest, where they look at the manipulation is actually a lot of times, in my opinion, where the reframe takes place.

So, you know, well, a good example is, and I always use a doctor example because it's just easier. So if a doctor says to you, listen, you have cancer, there's a 30% mortality rate. That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is good news. You have the cancer with a 70% survival rate, right? That's a reframe. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of people say, like a great example is loss aversion. So if you don't do this today, what does it look like in three months for you? A lot of people say, oh my God, that's manipulation. See, I don't see it that way. Because so many times we look at what we have now and what we could buy now, but we don't think of what happens if I don't buy that and three months passes.

So I think in my opinion, and in 30 years of experience across six countries, it's really panned out is the reframe is what a lot of people look at as the manipulation piece. Yeah. I mean, I don't, yeah. I mean, look, I mean, the facts are the facts, right? I think loss aversion, are people like four, three or four times more likely to avoid loss than they are to achieve gain? Isn't that, uh, isn't that something around those lines? I can give you a great study. So there was a study done on gamblers and what they did was they wanted to see where the gamblers addicted to winning or not losing. So did they get more joy out of winning or more joy out of not losing? And they found overwhelmingly that gamblers were addicted to not losing.

And it's just incredible to me. So the not losing is that loss aversion piece, right? But you would think people would be addicted to the, Hey, I won a thousand dollars, but they're more addicted to the, thank God I didn't lose a hundred. That's a, you know, it's interesting because I ask, you know, some athletes that question. And I say, Hey, what, what do you get? Do you like winning more? Do you, do you hate losing more? And inevitably it's the, I hate losing, right? Like winning is okay. It's almost like an expected thing. Like I'm, I'm going to win. Like that's the mentality I'm going to win, but I fucking hate losing, you know? So, you know, so it's like, as soon as you win something, it's like, yep, thanks.

You know, I kind of expected that to happen. But if I lose, it's, Oh, that's what drives you. Like Michael Jordan's a perfect example of that, right? Like every year that he didn't win the championship, he would go to the gym every day in the summer and work his ass off. So that, cause he hated losing, you know, liked winning, but he hated losing. So I think that's, I'd be interested to see if that, that pans out with athletes in general, just like with gamblers, right? Most of them hate losing, but I'll be curious if kind of the elite athletes had the same, uh, percentage, uh, of, of not, of hating to lose versus love, loving to win. That would be a cool study to do. I wonder if that's been done.

I'll have to look that up. But when I coach people, I will tell you that to me, this is a single biggest reason people don't succeed in life is that they play not to lose versus playing to win. You don't have a winner's mindset. You have a just please, God, don't let me take a step backwards mindset. And again, I'll bring it to sports. You watch that in sports all the time. A team's up by 14 points in the fourth quarter or whatever it is. And they go into the prevent defense or whatever, basketball, something like that. And it's, and inevitably all of a sudden it comes down to last shot and they're like, it's like, no, go for it. Just keep playing the way you're playing. Like your shit, because it's, it's a, it's a noticeable shift too.

Like they play one way to get to where they are. And then when they get to that comfortable level, then they play a totally different way. And, and it ends up a lot of times falling apart. So I would agree. So let's talk, I'm going to ask one more and then we'll get into some other concepts that you have that I've kind of dug into, but instructional design, you, you went and you got certified in instructional design. Help me, help me out with this one because I I'm kind of the anti-trainer trainer in the sense that I always say, I'm not really a trainer. I'm a sales guy who happens to train. Right. And, and I just have this, this gut feel that every, cause every time I've gone through training, you know, or like had my content work with an internal company and they, oh, is it instructional design?

I'm like, no, whatever. And then I'll have somebody come in and try to put instructional design around my shit. I'm like, this just isn't the way sales reps learn. And my frustration of the traditional instructional designers, trainers, I just have this response to them. Like that, this isn't how sales reps learn. Like I get what you're trying to do here with the gears and everything and all this stupid shit, but like, I don't, that's not me. That might work for more traditional company roles, like in how other people learn. But I feel like sales reps are just a little bit different when it comes to this shit. Is that me just having an ego or is there something real to instructional design and how it needs to be adjusted for different types of personalities, for instance?

Yeah, no, it's, it's not you. So instructional design often gets the rap of, Hey, so you put a cute little emoji on the PowerPoint slide and Hey, you know, you do this cute little exercise in class, but instructional design at its core goes a lot deeper. So there's literally at least a dozen different instructional design methods. Um, some people believe heavily in one, other people believe heavily in others. Uh, when you get an instructional designer coming out of school, a lot of times you'll find that they have one or two that they pick that that's really what they rely on, but the true instructional designer designs to their class. So if I'm going to design for a group of accountants, that's going to be a lot different than if I designed for a group of salespeople, which is also going to be a lot different.

If I'm going to present at a clown college where I know that's going to be a completely different set of people. Right? So instructional design, again, all my opinion is all about knowing your audience, knowing what's best going to work for them, what's best going to work for them, the data that you need to present. And again, with accountants, they're going to be all about numbers and data and outcomes where salespeople are going to be about the experience and they're going to be about just understanding. And the other piece that's built into that is how much do you want them to retain? And is this a short-term training or a long-term training? You know, there's a lot of rules of thumb that say that depending on what you're training, it's going to be a short-term thing or long-term.

I can show a quarterback how to hold a football, but in order to learn how to pass it, 15 years. Right? So there's a lot that goes into good instructional design and it's not just what the slides look like. Like I won an international competition of a thousand people. I won a gold award, thousand people from all over the globe. And a lot of people came in with the exact same thing. I came in with something completely different geared towards all audiences, different learning styles, different types of visual, audio, kinesthetic. And it led to that. But being a training snob now, like you, when I sit through some training sessions, I think, man, you have no business designing stuff. Exactly. Like you missed the mark.

Like I, again, and maybe it's because I'm not an academic, you know, and I kind of roll my eyes at, you know, fundamental, like teachers who have never done anything. Right. Cause I'm like, yeah, that sounds great on a, on a slide deck here. It sounds great in a presentation, but when I go to try to apply that, it's not going to work. Do you think that, um, different professions attract different types of communicators? So you've mentioned accountants versus sales reps, right? And you talk visual auditory kinesthetic. Do you think like more accountants are like kinesthetics versus sales reps are more like, you know, visuals, or is it usually pretty even keel across industries? It doesn't really matter.

See, it depends. I have seen studies with NLP that say that certain career paths attract certain types of people. And there's also the theory that if you're not that certain type of people, you may be less likely likely to succeed on a personal level. I'm not sure. I believe that. I think people can meld and adapt. Um, but you know, we talked about visual auditory and kinesthetic, but NLP also talks about taste and smell, right? It's just that there's a much lower grouping of people that, that sit in that category. But I would argue somebody who responds well, the taste and smell might be great in cooking. So maybe the best cooks know how to smell and discern and taste. So, you know, my gut reaction is you don't have to be a certain way to succeed, but I could see how certain careers would draw certain modality types.

So let's layer on the kind of the discipline factor here, because you also have some really interesting background. I'm curious when this happened, both your chess background and your black belt, right? So talk to me about, cause those are very strategic, um, but also very disciplined. Um, I don't say professions, but you know, and you're like things that you do. So when did you get introduced to that and how did that kind of help shape your perspective on, uh, people on, on, on sales, on business and all those things? The chess background came from my dad and my grandfather. They were both excellent chess players and I really enjoyed the thought of doing battle. I thought it was great. I always looked at chess as a battlefield.

And, uh, the interesting thing about chess is once you get past like the first 10 moves, there's billions of variations. So it's never anything you can memorize. It's something where you can do your best, but the greatest grandmasters of all time, it's all they did was study past games, who did what and when, and how did they do it? And my own frustrations with chess are what made me reach a certain height and then just stop because I didn't want to do all that studying. But I always enjoyed chess because it was kind of your mini kingdom, the ability to get in there and do some battle and come out victor or, or defeat. And yeah. Do you think that, do you think that gave you the baseline for your adaptive conversation blueprint approach?

where it's like, so, you know, yes, there's, cause I know you don't like scripts, right? No, I didn't scratch. Well, actually let's back up to that. Cause I, I used to have a really, um, hard stance against it too. I'm like, fuck scripts, you know, turn into robots and all this. Right. But there's scripts, then structure. And I was always a structure guy. Give me structure so I can play within that structure, but don't give me a script. But when you're in sales and you don't even know what you're doing, like you literally start your job day one, you don't have any training, the button, you know, and you're like, go make some cold calls. Like there is a place for a script now started, but, and you should adapt very quickly after that.

But I, I've kind of loosened my like fuck scripts mentality here. So like, help me understand kind of what your perception of scripts is. Yeah, no. And, and you bring up a great point. And I have had this discussion with people before I agree that they need a launch pad. So you need a structure. You need to know the basic rules of thumb. The place where scripts really take a backseat for me is when I go into a company and they say, our scripts aren't working, or I go to a rep and they're like, I follow what they tell me to say. And here's a great example. Oh God. So let's just share this for a second. So I had somebody come out from one of these gutter guard companies not long ago, because we bought a house, getting a lot of leaves in the gutter.

And I really wanted the whole gutter guard thing. So I had a rep come out to the house and he had this, it must've been 16 page sales guide. And he insisted on going through every page. The company is saying to you, I don't trust you to do this on your own. So that just drives me insane. So the person never learns about me. And by the time the guy was done, it would not have mattered what the price was. You're out. Just not interested. And I think that's the danger we get into. And that's why things like AI and mass marketing are now getting me tainted as well, because it's just another well laid out script that you're sending out. And here's the piece where I'm going to generate some hate mail, and please, I'll take all of it.

Companies wonder why they have a 10 or 20% close rate. That's why you're creating a script and a language that appeals to 10 or 20% of your prospect group. And when you look at your CRM and say, we only closed 10 or 20% last year, so that's going to be our basis for this year. Oh, so you're going to take a past failure and make that your future goal. Oh, when a company comes to me and says, we're closing 10 to 20% and we'd like to go up by about 5%, I don't think I'm your guy because I'm going to rip it up 20%. But you're going to have to sit and learn and you're going to have to toss your scripts. And I think that the crutch, and unfortunately, I think a lot of scripts are kind of cross that manipulation versus influence barrier, right?

And the perfect example of this is, you know, just go to a timeshare. Just go to a timeshare pitch. And I wrote this blog post a long time ago called 11 Lessons Learned from Getting Drunk and Accidentally Buying a Timeshare, right? Because it was one of those things I knew what was happening to me, but it was like they brought me down such a logical path that literally by the end, I was like, like, shit, like I should do, you know what I mean? And I knew inherently, I'm like, I don't want to timeshare, this is bullshit. But man, it got me down to that point where I was like, oh my God, now the alcohol didn't, you know, help the situation. But it helped the timeshare sales guy. Well, not until after I returned it, but that was different.

But I think there is that kind of manipulation factor of scripts because they, hey, they work because they got traps in them and they got, you know, tiebacks and they have all these different things that have, you know, the Wolf of Wall Street, the cold call where it's like, hey, all this stuff, why wouldn't you do this? Those type of things. But how do you, so how do you talk, how do you address adaptive conversational, like what is your adaptable, your adaptive conversational blueprint? Like, what is that all about? Yeah, so it's broken into three pieces. And when I have both individual clients and corporate clients, and the one thing I always hear is, oh, business development is about networking and finding the right prospect.

It's not. It's three pieces. It's perception, conditioning, and coding. If I can understand those three pieces of anybody, I can then sell anyone. And I don't need a script. Perception, what? Perception, conditioning, and coding. So let's talk about each of those a little bit. Everybody has a perception of me, and I have a perception of them. And we have perceptions that guide us. So a great example is, most hotels you go to, when you're looking at an elevator or you're waiting for an elevator, there's a mirror there. Well, that mirror came about because people perceived they were spending too much time waiting for an elevator. So they needed somebody to alter their time perception. And oddly enough, it was brought up by a maid from a five-star hotel chain that the best way to alter time perception is to give a mirror in front of an elevator.

So that's where people dial themselves up and get ready. And before they know it, the elevator's there. Interesting. Okay. So perception is everything. And companies have mastered this. Uber is a great example. So you order an Uber, and people hated waiting for that. So Uber gives you their name, their license plate, a map showing you where they are. They're altering your perception of time. So if I can understand what person's perception I need to change, I'm 90% of the way there. Okay. So you talk about this, and I think it goes to conditioning, but you talk about breaking the conditioning. So from a sales rep standpoint, I always say, look, as a sales rep, the client barely believes 50% of the shit that's coming out of my mouth.

Purely, like just me walking in the door because I'm in quote unquote sales, right? So they're guards immediately up. They're assuming I'm going to go through the motions, do some dipshit, you know, ask some basic questions, then drone through a demo. So how do you break that in the, you talk about breaking that in the first kind of few seconds of the conversation, a few minutes of the conversation, and so that we can earn trust. How in, and actually let's put this in even more context, in this world. So in, and when I say this world for people who aren't watching this and listening, I mean like the zoom world, because I think when it comes to face to face, we have a lot more leeway. Right. To, to engage with people and, you know, develop rapport, but in this world, it's brutal because the, all the control is on their end.

Like they can start the meeting whenever they want, they can end the meeting with everyone. There's no problem just saying stop as opposed to like literally physically kicking you out of the office. So how can you uncondition them or break that condition perception and build some trust in the first five minutes of a conversation? Well, keep in mind that the perception and conditioning pieces are two totally different pieces. So the perception is what do you perceive of me and what do you perceive your problem is? So if I can determine that quickly, the rest of what I'm going to do is going to be very easy because the conditioning piece then comes in. And the conditioning piece is how am I conditioned to respond to a salesperson?

And the way most people are conditioned to response are with condition responses. I've got one already. I have to talk to my spouse. The price is too high. Maybe next year I've tried it and it sucked. So you have all of these condition responses that come up, but I'm going to challenge and say, as salespeople, we create that condition response in the first seconds of the call by saying, hi, how are you? What is more of a condition response than fine? Thanks. How are you? Yeah, there you go. Our lives are filled with condition responses. Honey, I love you. I love you too. Sir, can I help you find something? Nope. Just looking. Right. We're filled with condition responses. So if I can break that, I'm going to break that chain of conditioning.

So when I get on the phone with somebody and everybody's going to throw hate mail my way again, research who you're talking to. Hey, if anybody sends you hate mail for that, then they shouldn't be in sales. If I'm going to get on the phone with you, I may get on the phone and say, John, I am so glad you took the time today. Thank you. I've listened to the last five episodes and my favorite one was this. Completely breaking the conditioning because you can't come up with a condition response. So if I can open up that battlefield right away, that is going to change everything. See, it's funny because I do that and I did it without really thinking about it, but now I'm very conscious of it because, you know, almost every meeting starts with the client, you know, arms crossed, sitting back in their chair, waiting for the rep to ask their stupid gray, how are you doing today?

Weather crap. And then let me ask you these questions, whatever. And, and what I try to do is get that from you leaning back to you leaning forward in the first five seconds or 10 seconds of every conversation. The way I do that is by, I don't let you guess that I prepared for this meeting. I tell you I prepared. So I'd be like, Hey, Jake. So I'd be like, Hey, Jake, you know, thanks for taking the time. You know, Hey, look, as I was preparing for our call today, I actually noticed on your website, you know, this press release where it talked about this. So I was kind of curious, like, and that right there legitimately goes from like, they break out of their, Oh my God, this is just not some normal bullshit sales thing.

And they're engaged or on the flip side, I go so personal, but when I say personal, like sometimes the first five, 10 minutes of a conversation has zero to do with what I'm there to talk to them about because something came up, which is why, you know, and I'm, I'm curious on your stand on this. So, so my background, right. Everything now we used to have, be able to relate and some people super cheesy, like, Oh, you're a fisherman. Right. But, but now that like most of, you know, your backgrounds, I can see some stuff, but it's hard for me to relate to you. So what I've done is I put shit in my background for you to relate to. So when you log in art, star Wars, you know, basketball, shelters, like all these different things.

And I tell you like seven out of 10 times, it starts with that. Somebody's like, Oh, who's that ball sign by? Oh, what's that? What's that skyline from? And now I know they're like, if they say ball, then sports, so I can go down that path. If they say, Oh, the art, then I know they're kind of art centered. If they say star Wars, it's like, cool. If they say whiskey. Right. So now I got something to talk about and it usually changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. Yep. I would agree. And I think you said something really key there. And I teach this to my clients all the time, the first two to five minutes don't talk about you or yourself or your business at all, unless they are so bent on what you have that you have no choice.

But as soon as that two to five minutes is up, you're talking to a completely different person. But the problem is a lot of salespeople today will spend three hours on YouTube trying to find a cat video that made them laugh a year ago and won't spend 20 seconds getting a quick overview of the person that they're going to talk to next. And in a book I just wrote, that's coming out at the end of November, I talk about making a sale before you even talk to them because your presence, the way you show up, the way they view your LinkedIn profile is telling them reams of data that they're using to prejudge you and creating a lens with which to view you when you get on the camera. Absolutely. That's why brand matters.

Like when reps don't think that brand matters, I'm like, you have no idea who's watching. So make sure your LinkedIn profile is filled with all your accolades and how many presidents clubs you've been to. You know, like make sure you're posting stuff not just on sales, but, you know, on the industry that you're focusing on and all that stuff. Because people, it's amazing, you know, clients do way more research on us than we do on them, you know, in general at this point. And it's scary. And especially now with AI, there's zero excuse. There is literally zero excuse. Within five minutes, I can get up to date. Now, it's not always right 100%, so you can't just make sure it's, you know, you're stating facts.

But man, I could skip the line pretty much, like pretty quick. But here's the beauty of that. Let's say you do get something wrong. You introduce that you're human. And that makes you even more palatable. So, you know, we get so afraid that we're going to get something wrong when the reality is there's been social psychology studies done that show when a speaker goes on stage and spills coffee, they're more likable than the person that goes up and speaks on the topic that the audience wants to hear about. People love human. So, even making mistakes is a brilliant piece of building trust and rapport. I think even on speakers, right? Like the ones that get up there and like they're, you can tell they're nervous and they're trying to get, and then they learn, then the ones who go, oh man, I'm sorry.

I'm just super fucking nervous right now. Like I'm freaking out. I'm standing in front of a thousand people. I haven't done this in a long, you know, for a minute. It's like immediate, like I'm now relatable. Like I love that that person is relatable. Whereas the person who just stands there and continues to go through their robotic script and you could tell they're nervous. You could tell they're sweating their ass off. It's like, dude, let it go. Let us all like just break that fucking barrier there. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. I would agree a thousand percent. So, that covers the two pieces. You have the perception, the conditioning. Once I break the conditioning, last thing is coding. And the coding goes back to NLP, behavioral psychology, and social psychology because we are all coded to act certain ways.

We're coded to reciprocate. Somebody does something nice for us. We want to do something nice back. If they talk about loss, we want to avoid loss. So, there's some coding that we, for the most part, have very difficult time controlling. So, if I can understand perception, how their conditional response, and how they're coded, the rest of the sale takes care of itself. All right. Nice. What's your take on mirroring as it relates to NLP, right? So, kind of the cheesy version of mirroring is, you know, the, like, you put your hand on your face, I put my hand on my face, you lean back, I lean back. And, you know, the theory is that if I mirror you for a while, eventually I can take over and start to influence your style.

So, when I lean in, you lean in, right? Chris Voss talks a lot about mirroring people's, like, language where they kind of throw up all over you with an objection. You take three words and you say it with upward tone inflection. So, where does that fall on the line of manipulation versus influence? So, I think, first of all, let's take a look at the definition of mirroring. I think mirroring is often looked at as they sit back, you sit back, they tilt their head, you tilt their head. So, a lot of it is physical mirroring. But it really, to Chris's point, Chris Voss, it goes a lot deeper than that. Tone, rhythm, volume, pacing, that is when you really get in the groove with somebody. And to me, it's not manipulation because if you watch two friends that are not in NLP at all, they do it naturally.

They literally get so in tune with each other. They're talking the same. They're acting the same. They laugh the same. That's just mirroring. All of that is built on a simple premise. We like people who are like us. So, if we can get to be very much like them through mirroring, we tend to like them more. And the philosophy then in NLP is, if we can get so in tune with them, we can then pace them. So, if I speak faster then, they'll speak faster. If I slow down, they'll slow down. And the experiment that they often give you when you're doing NLP is, once you think you've mirrored somebody and really gotten in line with them, try making a gesture and see if they do it back. And if they do, that's kind of the test that you're in sync with each other.

So, do I think it's manipulation? I don't because we all do it naturally. Mirroring is just the act of doing it intentionally. Gotcha. It's funny because I used to have such a thick Boston accent. Like, so thick, right? Like, when I went down to college, it's like I grew up in Southie, right? Like, when I went to University of Maryland, like you were talking before, like, I was almost like a party trick. People, because I'd be like, oh, yeah, kid, let's go down and drink some beers, punch you, you know, that type of stuff. And be like, Jesus, what are you? And so, it was so bad. And I was getting interrupted almost all the time, like, basically making fun of me, right? So, I spent an entire semester pronouncing every single word and being very deliberate and definite with my pronunciation.

And I felt like I sounded like an idiot. But what it did was it took that, the accent away. But what it also did, this weird thing, is it flipped it to now I pick up on accents subconsciously. So, for instance, if I'm in a group of 10 people and one of them has a British accent, process turns to process without me even thinking of it. And so, like, down south, like, if I go down south, all of a sudden I start saying y'all and those type of things where if I go up north, it's, you know, A and those types. So, I find it odd because sometimes I feel like it's insulting because, like, it feels like I'm mocking. You know, like, when I'm conscious of the napping, I'm like, I don't want them to think I'm mocking, but it genuinely is not something I can control anymore.

Does that tie to, does that mirroring and that ability tie to empathy? Does it, like, how is that, how does that get in without being conscious? Because it isn't conscious for me anymore. It's funny because some scientists have said they discovered mirror neurons. So, it's almost like it's built into us to a degree. You know, they say that people have been married for a long time, start to actually look like each other, as well as finishing each other's sentences, et cetera. So, I think we can make it intentional. And the more intentional we make it, the better we're going to bond with people. But I also think, based on the science I've read, that I think part of it is, it's part of our DNA.

Mirroring is part of what we do and what we respond to. And if we see somebody we like or talk to somebody we like, those mirror neurons light up. We're pretty excited about that. Yeah, and I think that's kind of when I do train internationally. And, you know, you can almost see the, hmm, like when I say process or Zed or something like that, there's this kind of hint of like, is he doing that on purpose? Or, hey, he's been here before, he gets it, right? Even the way that you pronounce a certain town, right? Like Melbourne, like if you go to Australia and you say, oh, I'm here in Melbourne, right? They know you've never been there before, right? But if you say, oh, I'm in Melbourne, they'll be like, oh, oh, so you've been here before, right?

And there's like just that small shift in how you say something kind of gives that familiarity, even though you're not anywhere near familiar with that region or they don't, you know, they don't think you are. Yeah, we just moved down south not long ago. My wife and I lived in the northeast for a long time and we just moved down south. And a place like Clarksville or Martinsville is not Ville, it's Ville. So it's Clarksville or Martinville. And it took us a while to get used to that. But every time we said Ville, they're like, you're not from around here. It's like, no, no, we're not. What's up, Yankee? How are you doing, Yankee? Exactly. So we didn't have that southern drawl and we didn't use the Ville.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I agree. It's nice. Let's now kind of tie things up here with Strata because you have this, you know, signal, trigger, reframe, anchor, transfer, action. So how does this play out in like a real conversation? Walk us through that process. Process. Sorry. Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because when you spell out Strata and you talk about the acronym, it sounds long and complicated, but it literally happens in seconds. So the first piece of Strata is signal, and that's what am I reading from you before you even say a word? Tension, shoulders, head nods, squinting, tight jaw. What am I picking up from you before anything's said? Is that conscious or subconscious, by the way?

I would say it's both. We do it unconsciously, but I think when you start to become more conscious of it, you start to see more. It's almost like you see red cars all the time, but until you buy a red car, you don't really notice them. Then they're all of a sudden, they're everywhere. Reticular activating system, right? It's that noticing. The second part is trigger. So what is our conversation triggering you? So you may say to me, hey, listen, that sounds awfully complicated. I'm not ready to buy your product because there's too much involved. Well, it's not that it's too complicated. It's that it's triggering your need for order, and it's triggering your need for safety, and you're triggering your need for time management because you don't want to spend a lot of time on it.

So I want to understand what my voice has triggered in you, and I'll give you a great example. I was in a conversation with a man and a woman prospect the other day. We're on the phone at the same time. And the woman came on, and I'd never seen it before. She had glasses that matched her earrings, so the plastic frame matched the earrings. And I said to her, that is awesome. I said, I have never seen anything like that. Immediately, she started fidgeting with her wedding ring, twirling it, pulling it on and off. Most people would ignore that. But I triggered a lack of comfort in her. I took it from business to personal, unintentional. And maybe she was reminding herself that she's married or telling me that she was married.

Something was going on, so I had to reframe it. I had to pull her away from that and back in. But most salespeople will not notice those things, and they'll keep plowing forward. So I need to know what that trigger is. The third thing is the reframe. How do I reframe what they're thinking into a different way? And we talked about this a little bit earlier. Great example is I wanted to build a garage under our new house, and I was fixated on it. Got to have a garage. Got to have a garage. And my wife said, Jake, what you're really looking for is a place to store your stuff, and a shed will do that. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's true. So we built a shed. How'd you reframe that woman with the glasses, for instance?

Well, what I did was she had said to me when we first got on the call that she did a bunch of research into orchestrate my company. And I said to her, I said, the same way you focused on your glasses, you paid attention to the exact detail of my company. I'd like to hear what you found out. Hand went away from the wedding ring, back to business. We were all set and ready to go. So sidebar on this, do you ask questions to kind of gauge, like, I tend to try to ask an open-ended question early just to see how much they elaborate. Because if they elaborate on it, and it's a lot more, then I know it's kind of more of a relaxed. But if they give me one or two word answers, I know I got to get down to business, right?

So do you do that early in a conversation too? 100%. And I'm sure, like you, I'm big into Socratic questions. So not just the throwaway questions, but the ones that really get them to think. So yeah, Socratic questioning is huge for sure. After you reframe, you need to anchor what you just talked about. And you and I both know what anchoring is, but just for the audience real quick, anchoring is when somebody gets really fixated on one thing, and it's the thing we want them to focus on. So in this case, I wanted her to anchor on the research that she did in the company so that we could focus exclusively on that. But you and I both know anchoring goes much deeper. Somebody comes in, they're anchored on the price, or they're anchored on the length of time it's going to take for them to see a benefit.

So anchoring takes place in a lot of different ways. The next thing is transfer. Can I ask real quick on anchoring? Because there's also this thing that I've been exploring about anchoring with more of a hypothesis, right? So there's anchoring on a topic, but then there's instead of me coming in and asking you, for instance, like an open-ended question, like, oh, you know, or shit and saying something like, tell me about your priorities, right? Which puts a lot of mental bandwidth on me to try to figure out and whether I want to tell you about it versus me walking in and say, hey, Jake, you know, we're working with other BPs of sales and SaaS like you, and they're telling us that kind of some of their main challenges right now are X, Y, and Z.

And based on what I've learned from you, my hunch is you got the same thing. So like that anchor and the psychology around that is they're far more open to either correcting you and going into detail or elaborating on that anchor than they are answering an open-ended question. Is that, is that right? Oh, 100%. And they, they always say the best way to flatter somebody is to pick out something they're wearing or something that they've said. And the reality is the best way to flatter somebody is to ask their advice. Yes. That's the best flattery there is. So yes, anchoring that way is, is brilliant. And I applaud you for doing that. So cool. Just make a joke. I've shifted a lot of my discovery from solution selling back in the day of just asking you all these questions and then producing my solution to coming in with a perspective and a hypothesis on how, what your current situation is, what other people like you are doing and how I might be able to help.

I'm not, I'm not, and I, there's, there's a fine line I'm trying to walk here between my hunch, if you will, versus an assumption. And that, that line, I'm not a hundred percent there yet with how to like perfect the delivery of my hunch versus me assuming what your problem is. Yeah. No, I could see how that would be a fine line to walk. Right. I, it all comes down to verbiage and how you present it, but it's, there, there is, I'm trying to teach it and I, I can do it. And I know how just inherently I do it because it's genuine. How do you communicate that? Right. But how do you teach it going back to instructional design and those types of things? And EQ versus IQ, right? Which is challenging.

So, okay, cool. So, and it's funny, let's, let's touch on something real quick there though, because they've actually proven that when you get somebody to talk about themselves and their theories and you let them elaborate, it's chemically equivalent in their brain neurotransmitter wise to eating a chocolate cupcake. Nice. Same, same serotonin, same dopamine type of release as eating a cupcake. So it's really cool. The reward response we can give someone by letting them just talk about themselves and their ideas. Have you ever seen one of, this is a great example of this. You ever seen a crazy stupid love with Steve Carell and, and Ryan Gosling? No. So you have to see it just for this part alone, right?

So Steve, just Steve Carell, his wife cheats on him, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then he's like trying to come. Now he's an older guy. He's got kids and he's like now back on the dating scene. Right. And he sees Ryan Gosling, who's just the stud and he's getting laid all the time at the bars. And so Ryan Gosling now partners up with him to try to save, you know, his pathetic self. And he's like, well, how do you do this? And he's like, all you have to do is every time she asks you a question, just flip it right back on her. And he's like, don't ever answer a question. Just always. And she, and so Marissa Torme, like in Steve Carell, they meet. Right. And she's like, oh, so what do you do?

He goes, what do you do? And she's like, no, seriously. Like, what do you do? He's like, what do you do? And why'd you come? Why'd you come here? Right. And literally he just mirrors every, and eventually she breaks and starts talking about herself and telling them all. And at the end, she's like, oh my God, you're such a good listener. I love you. And then, you know, and the whole thing. And he's like looking over at Ryan Gosling, like, what the fuck? Like, I haven't done a damn thing. And she now loves me because he just kept forcing it back on her to tell her, you know, let her tell her story. And I tell my wife this all the time and other people, like, you can be the coolest kid in the room without knowing anybody by just saying, tell me more about you.

Tell me more about you. Like, you will be everybody's best friend because that dopamine rush, if you will, of letting people talk about themselves is real. Yeah. And the psychology behind that is fascinating because when they get that dopamine rush, they don't tie it to the conversation. They tie that to you. So now they get a similar rush when they see you because they're anticipating it. It's fascinating psychology. And yet so few people take advantage of it. Well, that's why it's so obvious to me. But like, you know, the pitch, you could just watch body language when it's the weirdest thing. And I feel I realized this early in my career where, you know, for the first half of it, like you say, it was an hour long meeting.

First half, you know, speak two ears, one mouth, make sure the client speaks more than you. Right. So like I would ask 35 minutes worth of questions and be super engaged. And the client would literally kind of be like, all right, cool. And then presentation mode would come. And it's now it's my part. And you physically watch like because when I go into presentation mode as a sales rep, the client goes into presentation mode and they that now they stop leaning forward. They lean back. They cross their arms. They bring their email over right below their eyeline so they can check it while you're droning through your shit and you've just lost all engagement. That's why I threw my slide deck out a long time ago when it came to sales, because I would get the hey, that sounds and I tell reps this to pay attention to this word after your presentation.

You know, you've done a terrible job when you hear this word and it's the word digest. Usually it goes something like, you know what? Yeah, that was great. You know, a little time to digest what you just told me there. You know, why don't you circle back in a couple of weeks? We'll take it from there. Is that like if you hear that apologize to the person you just wasted their time? Because it's our job to help them digest the information. I love it. Yeah, that's great. Love that. That's fantastic. Yeah, the words digest, marinate. Let me marinate on that. We can actually on that one, right? That's the death knoll of a conversation. And it's funny. I got it. Let's take an aside just real quick.

I got a client last year. She called me out of somebody else recommended me to her. And out of the half hour conversation, I think my fathom note taker said I talked like 3% of the time. And it was funny because I got off the phone and I thought I didn't say anything about me or what I did. I just heard her out. And it didn't bother me because I know that's the secret. And within a half an hour, I had the email. She said, don't think it wasn't lost on me that all you did was listen. When can we get started? And that was it. And I did nothing. Yeah, it's so many people. And I, again, kind of pick up Chris Voss on this one. Like, people just want to be heard. Like, I think that's like a human trait, nature, human, whatever it is.

Like, I just, I want to feel seen. I want to feel heard. And if somebody can take the time to do that in a sales call, in a coffee shop, it doesn't matter. That if you can make someone feel heard or seen, like, you make an impact on their lives, regardless of what you're selling. And I think that's such a powerful thing for people to understand. Yeah, and the seen part is the wild part, right? Because 80% of communication is nonverbal. So are you picking up on what you're seeing? Are they being seen? And, you know, you said you read body language. And I think that's fascinating and just such a great topic. But, yeah, that's a huge piece of it. Well, that's why my fear right now, this whole generation of sales reps that have grown up behind, you know, this, right?

And in this digital world, because I remember early days when I was selling, you know, and I would go to networking events, right? And before I knew anything about how to sell or communicate with people, I felt it. Because I would, like, barge into a conversation, you know, shake your hand. And I would start pitching, like, hey, you know, we're the leading provider of, and I would watch you get uncomfortable. I would watch your eyes look here instead of here. I would watch you try to get out of the conversation. And I could feel, I wouldn't just watch it. I could feel it. You know what I mean? I could feel you wanting to leave the conversation. And then I, and inherently, I was like, I didn't get taught this.

I didn't get, you know, there wasn't a book I read about it. But I'm like, something's going on here. I don't, like, this isn't working. So I started to adjust on the fly. And I don't think you get that in a digital environment, in a Zoom call. It's definitely much harder to read, people. There's no question about it. So let's finish up with transfer in action. Talk to me about transfer in action. So after, after the anchor, after you anchor somebody, a lot of reps think, well, now that I have them centered there, then I, I have their attention. And you do, but now the job is, how do you transfer it? How do you make it their idea? And I don't mean sell them. I mean, how do you make it their idea?

So I've just presented a lot to you. It's filled with a lot of flaws. Let's pick it apart together. You know, so you get them involved. They call it the Ikea effect. How can I get somebody else involved in the building of this? That is the weirdest, that is the weirdest, like, paying more for something you built and getting, like, Ikea's got it figured out. Like, the fact that they figured that shit out and people still buy that stuff and go through the pain of putting something like that together, like, God bless them for figuring that shit out. I don't, I don't understand that psychology because I hate putting together Ikea shit. I know, I know, I know, me too. I like their furniture, but I do hate putting it together.

So once you make the idea theirs, then is the critical piece of getting them to take action. So read their signal. Have you triggered something? Reframe it. Anchor it. Make it their idea. Get them to take action. And again, it sounds like a lot, but this takes place in seconds. It's just how conscious are you of this taking place? And a great example of signal is your headshot. I tell my clients all the time, there's three things in a headshot that pre-sues someone. It persuades them before you even talk to them. Straight posture, leaning forward, big smile that gets the eyes involved, but the biggest one, tilt to the head. Psychologists say slightly exposing your jugular makes you look trusting of them and they want to trust you back.

Those three things in a headshot have been proven to make a difference. So that's part of signal. Love it, man. Awesome. Well, we could, I mean, there's a bunch of other shit that we can dive into here, man. But in the interest of keeping this into, you know, the range of acceptability on podcasts, let's wrap it up. I know you have the book coming out on the room. So talk to me a little bit about the audience, about where you can find out more information about you, what you're working on, and the book and all that fun stuff. Yeah, so you can find out more information at thejakestall.com. So you can go there, or you can go to my company website, which is orchestrate.com, which is O-R-C-H-E-S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T, because it's the straightest line of success.

You can find me on social media at jakethemindmechanic. But my book is going to be called Own the Room, How to Communicate to Be Seen, Heard, and Respected. And it walks you through the steps of strata, and it gives you exercises you can do to become better at reading a room and even being read better. So how do you establish your presence, and then how do you read a room so you can communicate with it better? Awesome, man. Well, I think, like I said, for me, I'm way more interested in the psychology of sales than I am any sales tactic, technique, book, because tactics and techniques, they come and go, right? What worked six months ago at this point ain't working anymore, but psychology doesn't change, right?

Like you talk about reciprocity and all these different things, like that is just hardwired into us as human beings. And if you can really tap into that, that's why these days I'm telling people, go get your psychology degree, because understanding how people work, especially in a world of AI, is going to be a superpower. Because so few people actually do know how to connect with people at a real, real foundational level. Yeah, I think the warnings that I'm giving my clients are use AI because it's great, but just remember, you eventually have to talk to somebody. Yeah, yeah. It's that Gary Vaynerchuk hit me with this a while back in 2017, because I saw an AI bot write an email faster than I ever could, even back then.

And I had met with him at his office, and I was like, Gary, I just saw an AI, something right, better, faster, more personalized than I ever could. I'm like, what does that leave us? And he said, he goes, look, don't try to beat the tech, you're not going to beat it. He goes, but be the last mile. He goes, let it do all the heavy lifting. Let it do the research. Let it even write the email, whatever it is. But right before you hit send, right before you have that conversation, just humanize it. Because as long as there's a human on the other end of that call, email, whatever it is, then we got a chance. Now, I keep saying, I don't know what's going to happen when robots start to buy shit. When they buy stuff, all bets are off.

I don't know what to do. But as long as there's a human on the other end buying something, there's going to need to be that human on this end to try to engage with them. I would agree. Awesome, Jake. Well, thanks so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Hey, thanks for having me, brother. This was a great conversation. Yeah, absolutely. So hopefully everybody enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at all the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile, you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey, thanks again for listening to the show and for all your support throughout the years. This is one last reminder to check out my training programs at jbarrows.com or leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2 if you've already gone through my training or sign up for my newsletter. Any of those will help ensure I can continue to bring you free content and great conversations like the ones you just heard without having to annoy you with sponsors. Again, let's make it happen in 2026 together.