Marylou: Good morning everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week, I have an extremely fun guest. The reason it’s fun is because Erik Luhrs is known as the Bruce Lee of Revenue Generation. How is that for a title? He’s the world’s only Neuro-Revenue Strategist. Just that combination is a mouthful but it’s also really important to us because he really has that master practitioner status of NLP. I’ll let him talk about NLP and what that’s all about. It’s a very important topic in the work that we do, especially since we’re into persuasion. We’re trying to get people to open their hearts, their doors, their offices to us, to come in and have conversation.

Erik is also the creator of Revenue Mind. He is the bestselling author of Be Do Sale. He’s got a number of other works that I won’t steal all of his thunder, I’ll let him talk about. He works with clients to rapidly scale their revenue by using what he terms as the path of least resistance, Fox Business News, Selling Power. He’s been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, he’s everywhere. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce you all to Erik Luhrs. Erik, welcome to the podcast.

Erik: Thank you, Marylou. Thank you for having me on.

Marylou: Let’s tackle that first title. How the heck did you come to be known as the Bruce Lee of Revenue Generation?

Erik: Well, just like Bruce Lee, it was a progression. I studied martial arts for a couple of decades and Bruce Lee is one of my idols. I really like how he approached martial arts because his entire construct was, “Use what’s useful, discard what’s useless.” He was constantly of all thing.

If you actually researched martial arts history, he went from studying Wing Chun and then he came to America, he studied boxing, he studied wrestling. He changed the names over the course of time of his system over and over again to fit with what he was doing. He was constantly into evolution. I’ve kind of taken that construct to myself in what I do in terms of the business world.

The way that the moniker got, I can say it just happened that way. What actually happened was I used to have an entire wall, filled this wall up with quotes from him, because you’re an avid fan. I was coaching a client, I want to say this is seven some odd years ago maybe. I was coaching a client and really quoting a lot of Bruce’s quotes to him, they were all germane for that day and giving him a new perspective on what going on with his business and helping him change what he was doing. I kept quoting and quoting.

At one point, he just stopped, he said, “You’re like a Bruce Lee of sales.” I heard that, I was like, “Wow.” I said, “That’s awesome.” Then I sat and wrote that down obviously. I sat on that title for a year. I was terrified because I said, “That’s big boy stuff.” You go out there and you say that, you’ve got to have everything to back that up. It was like, “That’s a mental if you’re going to take it on, that’s a big mental to take on.”

After a year, I finally said okay, I got to go. This is me, this is what I do, etcetera. I put that name out there. Instantly, everything started changing. I got to say that was kind of the thing that started opening up the floodgates was people are like, “I got to connect with the Bruce Lee of sales.” “This sounds awesome.” All of a sudden, I started getting attention from everybody.

I was doing guru selling, that was the original thing that I was doing years ago. As I evolved, I started studying lead generation. At some point, I was applying Bruce Lee’s stuff to that. It kind of morphed into the Bruce Lee of sales and lead generation which people knew me for a long time. And then I started studying positioning and I was like, “Okay, now is the Bruce Lee’s of sales and lead generation positioning. Okay, this is getting too big a wall.” What am I going to get in sales coaching and lead generation copywriting.

I said, “Okay, what am I really playing with here? What am I really doing if I chunk up a bit and look at this, what am I really playing with here?” I said, “This is really the revenue generation funnel for the company of generating revenue for them.” That’s where it came from. At the end of the day, it was like, “The Bruce Lee of revenue generation,” because that’s really the entire structure that I play with. Long winded explanation about how my title started as one thing, just like Bruce started as one thing and evolved over time into something else. I kind of find it funny that my title evolved just like Bruce himself did.

Marylou: Well, especially you hit a number of different points and top of funnel which is where my audience lives for the most part. It touches many things. I’ve heard you say copywriting, I heard you say persuasive techniques, I heard you say that you’re doing selling, you’re doing sales [00:06:05]. I mean, it touches so many different skill sets that it’s no wonder you’ve evolved to revenue generation and that is a perfect title because we are responsible for generating revenue for our companies, our businesses for solos out there. I love that connection with the Bruce Lee path to discovery is parallel with yours, that’s awesome.

Erik: He was the man.

Marylou: He was the man. Can we talk right into NLP or do you want us to just slowly get there? I’m really interested in how you’ve applied this. The reason being is because when in my brain, we’re dealing with prospects who run the spectrum from an unaware state to fully aware of our product and services, but we also have to put this element of compelling content and persuasive language into our conversations in order to get people to lean in and say, “Okay, I will take my precious time and give five minutes of it to you.”

How did you get into the NLP side of things? What was that path like and how are you using it now in teaching sales executives to further their conversations so that it can generate more revenue?

Erik: I kind of stumbled into NLP because I was interested in psychology but that came through personal development. Years ago, we’re going back 20 years, I got my first tape set from Tony Robbins. I think everybody back in the mid 90s did.

Marylou: Yes, we all did.

Erik: You look at your bookshelf..

Marylou: Awaken the giant within, right?

Erik: Right, and personal power too. I’m sure they’re sitting up there. The tape version, not the CD version, old school. I got into him and he had studied NLP, obviously I won’t go into his story. He had studied NLP and I started to hear about it from what he was doing and then other people. As I got into personal development myself and then coaching other people etcetera, that was something I was interested in.

I actually started studying from one of my coaches and he was I guess kind of famous in the NLP world with the big guys. John La Valle is one of the big guys in NLP. He’s Richard Bandler’s partner. Richard Bandler and John Grinder were the guys who created NLP. Now, John La Valle is one of Richard’s partners.

My Coach, my trainer had kind of talked him into a corner one day using NLP, at which point John La Valle said, “Look, if you can beat me around using NLP, I teach this stuff and you’ve talked me into the corner.” He basically just gave him, handed him all of his certifications and said, “I’m giving them all to you because you vested me in what is supposed to be my forte.”

My coach, he had no desire to teach NLP but as we worked together, he said, “I’m going to teach it to you and only you but I’m going to teach it different than other people teach it so you can apply it different than other people apply it. Mostly, if you study NLP it’s taught as kind of a behavioral therapy. It was developed basically to help people in place of psychotherapy, etcetera. You can do that, obviously that’s it was created for.

What we did is we tweaked it for sales and for business development, etc. As he was teaching me, we were building my company. He was teaching me and it was integrated. There were guys who do NLP who are the textbook guys. They can spot language pattern or something and do automatic response to things. They’re what’s known as conscious competent, right? They’re the ones who are like, “Oh, he’s using that language better, then my response would be XYZ.” That’s great. I can do that if I have the text book open in front of me. I can be like, “Oh yes, okay I can see that.”

My trainer, he taught me to be unconscious competent because he’s like, “I don’t really care if you’re a nerd who can quote the book verbatim, I just care that you can use this stuff in the real world.” That’s all he wants. He’s like, “I want you to be able to apply this stuff.”

What happens is I’ll go out and I’ll do it but I’m unconscious competent. I’m doing it, I just don’t realize I’m doing it and a lot of times, I just don’t realize I’m doing it. And a lot of times, early on I would say, “I just don’t think I’m getting it, I just don’t think I’m doing it.” He’d be like, “Okay well, I would always record my coaching sessions, let’s play some of your stuff, let me listen to it.” He would be like showing me. “Okay, you’re using this language better than you’re countering them with this.” I’m just like, “Wow, okay.”

Even though I’ve been given the designation of master practitioner, I do it completely unconsciously. Like I said, if you put those textbooks if front of me and I open it up, it’s like, okay, I can teach it. I can walk through the textbook with people. But I’m not the guy who’s on stage teaching this step by step. I’m just the guy who’s like, “I want to be able to do it. I don’t really care about being able to quote it.”

Marylou: Does the knowledge of NLP in your unconscious, conscious state, is that what spawned neuro-revenue or are the two not even related?

Erik: They’re all related. All of the things that I’ve done since learning NLP has spawned from that understanding. I’ve run in a lot of other understandings, I studied quantum physics, law of attraction, not that I go full tangent. I mean, obviously I look at metrics. I do real world and energy world at the same time. I think both are valid.

It has grown from that. At this point, Revenue Mind is what I call the path of least resistance. If we look at how people communicate or if we look at how people try to sell stuff, most of it is done at a conscious level.

Let’s take it from the top. Ultimately, what we’ve got is we want to change somebody’s behavior from not buy to buy. You have a person, you want them to buy, it could be a stick of gum, it could be a $5 million computer system. Whatever it is, you want to switch them from not buy to buy, it’s a behavioral change.

The question is how best to create that behavioral change? Most people use the path of most resistance which is they come to market with something that they say, “Our thing is different. Our product and our service is different.” But it’s not different. They say it’s different because of quality or service or experience which none of these things makes it any different. It’s red instead of blue, or made in America instead of Japan. Meaningless differences.

Automatically, they’re not differentiated from the competition, the market place use them as the same. We’re not making any emotional impact. We’re not changing the feeling of this person from not buy to buy by having a differentiation. What are we going to do?

Well, if our proposition is crap, then we do lead generation. We’re going to go and do our lead generation and we’re going to look at the marketing. What are we going to do? We’re going to look at our competitors, we’re going to look at what they’re doing and we’re going to copy them. We’ll say these guys are making a lot of money or at least we assume they’re making a lot of money so we’re going to copy how they do their messaging, what they say in their messaging, how they approach people in their messaging. We’ve copied our competitors and as they say, “They post, they pay and they pray that this will have an effect.” It really doesn’t.

You have no difference and your messages are meaningless but you still want to create that sale, so now we get down to the level of the sale itself. Now, we have to depend on either having sales people who just hammer and keep contacting or are able to manipulate people into buying things or we have if we’re doing an automated system, we have 20 emails that are just going to keep hitting this person over and over again. It’s kind of like trying to beat the person into submission to say, “Yes.” Even if the person buys, they’re not buying happy. They succumbed to the pressure. Does that makes sense?

Marylou: Totally. You are definitely ringing a lot of bells here.

Erik: Right. That’s why it’s grunt work, it’s a numbers game. You got to follow up, all that hurrah garbage. It’s all about how you get there. If you’re going to try to change that person from not buy to buy, it’s all about how you get there. It’s about using leverage effectively. The thing that stands in the way mostly is the conscious mind of the prospect themselves. Consciously, if you have no differentiation then consciously you’re no different. If your messages sound the same as everybody else, consciously they say, “You’re white noise. You sounds like everybody else.” You just blend in, you’re ignored. Consciously, you come to me and say, “I have this product or service. Here’s the features and benefits. Do you want it? Do you want it now? Do you want it in brown? Do you want it in red?” It’s all conscious push.

But the conscious mind, number one, it’s only 1% of how humans work. Humans function 99% subconsciously. Trying to go act, the conscious mind is a virtual waste of time. When you’re trying to talk conscious and logic to people, the subconscious just shots that stuff right down. It goes this looks the same, this sounds the same, this is the same. The filters just keep putting up wall after wall, that’s why you have to keep pounding and pounding.

If you want a path of least resistance, it’s like, “How do I build a path that has least resistance to me? I got to go around the conscious mind. How do I this?” I look at it at three levels again, positioning, lead generation and then the sales process. If I create a position in the marketplace, if I position my company as being the only one of a kind doing what it does, automatically, it’s differentiated. If I do it and if I make it and I put it everywhere, I want to be that company where people say, “I’ve seen you everywhere. You’re everywhere these days. I don’t know how, but you’re everywhere.” Pure was in pervasive.

If you have this pure less position, already you’re coming from a powerful place as opposed to I’m the same as everybody else, I have no difference. Now, when we’re going to start contacting people, reaching out doing marketing which is a waste of money, I’m going to do lead generation, I’m going to talk to this person, I’m going to try make connections to them as human beings. Instead of trying to say, “Here’s my product or service with these features and benefits,” I’m going to talk to their subconscious.

How is the subconscious communicating with itself about a problem that it wants to solve and I want to get in on that conversation. I want to use those language patterns because when the subconscious starts to hear the way it talks to itself outside of itself, it has no ability to ignore it. It can’t ignore it. Because going, “Wait a minute, only I say that or only I feel that or only I think that, wait a minute. And it has to start paying attention to you. Now all of the sudden it starts paying attention to you and you have this position where you’re one of a kind like, “Wow okay, I’m listening to you. I’m overwhelmed by how amazing you are and how different you are.” We’re really leveraging that communication, that connection, so that by the time we start talking about a sale as opposed to, “Okay, now I’m going to start gearing up to make the pitch and blablablah.” The sale should just basically be a foregone conclusion.

Instead of saying, “Do you want this?” You have the person saying, “I want this, how do I get it? How do I buy this? How do we work together?” It becomes a foregone conclusion simply from the flow of communication. Either you take the path of most resistance, which is how everybody does it, or you take the path of least resistance, you get to the same outcome but one gets you there faster with a lot less expenses because you don’t have to keep posting, paying and praying, and it makes you a lot happier and plus you scale faster and get a lot more good referrals.

Marylou: Okay everybody, I can hear the collective ears like, “How do I do this? What would I do? Where do I sign? What would I do? How do I create these messages that you are talking about?” Tell us a little bit..

Erik: Isn’t it amazing how I do what I do? I guess I’m unconscious competent. I do this, this is me.

Marylou: Well, my troupes, we love technology. We leverage technology. If we can leverage technology in a way that is authentically pleasing to our prospect so that they are clamoring to have a conversation with us to sign, the bottom line, boy life would be great. It wouldn’t stress us out. But where do you begin, Erik? Where do you start to get to even a level,  not even mastery, just kind of conscious of how to do it.

Erik: It all depends on how hardcore you want to go. When I’m going to work with a client, I look at it and, “This is a radical approach and it affects all levels of a company if you do it right.” There’s ways to do bits and pieces of it. You can say, “Well, I’m going to become slightly more effective at my lead generation.” You can, and it will have a certain amount of increase. You’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to actually develop a position for my company.” Because most people don’t ever sit down and say, “What is the positioning of my company?” They just position by default. They say, “We sell this widget.” And that’s it. That’s their positioning.

Positioning is something that, I broken it down into 12 different elements that you can actually apply. You could start all the way from the top, even before positioning is what I call the three W’s, the who, what, why of your company. If you want to go full bookie and get the full leverage of this, you have to start from the beginning, and that beginning is really you and your company. Who are you? What do you sell? Or what you really do? And why do you do it? And then there’s a number of different versions of  the who, what, why questions that I asked. It kind of put people through the ringer for their company.

If you really want to get it from the top down, that’s where you start because if you look at your business as we’re just here to make money, you’re automatically a me too business. There is no business where you say, “Our driving force is to make money, where you have an original anything.” If you went into business to make money, that’s your reason, that’s you mission statement, that’s your purpose, that’s you’re everything. The world is filled with companies whose only mission is to make money, “How much more money can we make?” And that’s fine, but those companies are the ones who are going to spend cash on marketing, etc. because they’re just out there pushing messaging, pushing content creation and white papers or whatever the hell it is that they’re using, videos.

You can just do that, or you can say, “Look, I want to have a business that is fun, that I enjoy and that scales itself because it’s really working outside the conscious mind. It’s not meeting that resistance.” But to do that, first, we have to really know who we are, what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. Then, if I know that, then creating the position becomes a hell of a lot easier because I’m not just trying to make crap up. It’s flowing form our purpose. And then, if you got a really powerful set of positions, then lead gen becomes even easier because the messaging just basically starts taking care of itself so that by that time again, you’re leveraging onto that individual human being. They’re being overwhelmed by your alignment with your core values of yourself, your business, etc., your position on the market place that makes you one of a kind, your messaging that’s speaking directly to their subconscious needs is also being overwhelmed.

If you want to start, you could just say, “Look, let’s look a little bit at the messaging. Are we talking right now?” If you really wanted to start at the basic level. My messaging is my lead gen or even my sales process. Am I pushing people? Am I hounding people to get a sale? If I’m hounding people to get a sale, that means I’m using the path of most resistance. How can I start drawing people out? You don’t draw people out by showing up at their office door and say, “Got five minutes?” You draw them out by putting something in their hand that makes them say, “This resonates with me. This is interesting to me. This is something I want to pursue.” How are you doing lead gen? Are you drawing people out or you’re pushing people back into their shelf?

Marylou: Well, I think with the onset of technology, we’re all getting lazy and we are doing not necessarily the spray and pray approach, but we are doing the hound, hound, hound, hound, will you buy from me now, will you schedule an appointment with me now, approach, without giving any value as to the why. I also know that there are people listening in on this call who work for larger companies and when you say, “It’s got to start at the top, at the position of the company.” They’re kind of stuck. I mean, they’re in companies that have marketing departments and there’s messages already coming out from there. But is there a way that a business developer sitting in a cubicle in a large company can take some of these principles and apply them to their personalized emails for example, or do you really need the echo system in order to really effect change?

Erik: Well obviously, if it comes from the top down like the top, top down, you’re going to have the greatest effect. You’re going to have an avalanche effect which is beautiful when it happens and that’s when you start getting companies that are growing at 200% to 300% a year.

Let’s just say you’re an individual and you’re trapped. My first thing is make sure it’s the job you want. If you feel like you can’t express yourself fully, maybe you should look for something else. But let’s just say you’re in that situation. At that point, you have to say, “Okay, let me do this for myself then.” I’ve had sales people who changed what they call themselves. They have been a sale representative and they changed their titles to something else because that allowed them to start embedding their mission or their positioning into what they did. Why do you sell what you sell? Because if you sit there and say, “Well, I’m sitting here and I’m selling because I want to make money.” Then guess what? You’re just exactly the same as the company that’s the only purpose is to make money.

Marylou: Right.

Erik: Do you truly love what you sell? Do you think it’s really valuable? If you don’t, then get to square one which is find a job selling something you do really believe in. If you really do believe in it, why do you believe in it? How do you believe that it brings value to people? How do you think people are missing that value? How do you think that you’re not connecting with the needs or the wants, the problems that it solves?

Again, you can put yourself through it, who are you in this company? What are you doing? Why do you do it? Looking at your position, what do you call yourself? “I’m Eastern Regional sales rep for toiletries,” okay. But if you love the toiletries, then, maybe you want to change what you call yourself to James Bond of toiletries. I always get my man, the Canadian Mounty of Toiletries. We always get our rep. We always get you clean. You can play with it as much as you can.

Again, being in a corporation, there’s only so far. Some companies will allow you to play with what you call yourself, some won’t, but you want to say, “How much can I play with my messaging and really talk to the person? How much can I play with my position and really change the perception of who I am at least when I am contacting these people?” You can play, but if you have boundaries, you have to say, “Okay, I’m playing it inside these boundaries.”

And then don’t be afraid to push the boundaries, don’t be afraid to go to corporate. Your boss is boss and say, “Look, I want to use more messaging. I want to change these messages because they’re not as effective as I think it could be.” Very rarely is somebody in the position where they’ll say, “I don’t want to listen to any idea that might make us more money.” I’ve seen it and it’s painful but it’s rare. Most people will at least give you an ear, if you make a valid point. You can do it.

Marylou: Given the fact that we’re entrenched in this are we a fit and making sure that we’re working with the right people, what kinds of companies or people do you work with and how do you go about working with them?

Erik: Good question, thank you. I work with a small amount of companies because when I’m doing this stuff, it’s kind of intensive. I like to work hand in hand with companies. What I’m always looking for first is smaller companies. I’ve worked with huge corporations. I’ve worked with the Microsoft and etc. out there. But smaller companies, mid-size companies, smaller companies, they’re more flexible, they’re more able to change. I’m looking for the people who drive revenue at the executive level, who drive revenue in the company; CEO, CRO, CMO, CSO, because they’re the ones that can affect that sort of avalanche thing going down the company.

I look for people who are daring and bold because, if you get in there, if you say, “Hey look, we really want to escalate revenue. We’re doing 15% a year raw and everything else like that. We’re looking for 100 to 200% increase. We want to really rip the doors off this things.” You’re talking about a whole scale change to the company’s mission, the company’s purpose, the company’s positioning, the company culture and it’s not an easy thing.

Going in and saying, “I’m going to do some new copywriting.” Yeah, that’s simple to get in there but if you’re looking for really creating that path of least resistance, it’s a top down kind of thing. Not too many people are willing to do it and you have to have the resources. If you’re a sole entrepreneur, can you do it? Yes, but you’re not going to be able to make nearly as much change because you’re chief cook and bala washer. But if you have a company that has a marketing department, that has an inside sales department, that has salespeople, that has the resources for a revenue funnel, then you can make a lot of change a lot faster.

Marylou: The other thing to point out is a lot of the folks that listen to this podcast are starting off maybe as a start-up and now they’re trying to move upmarket, move into enterprise based sales where now all of a sudden instead of one stakeholder, one buyer, you’ve got three to five to seven to nine depending on how large a sale and revenue volume you’re looking at.

Given that the strategy you’re talking about is a per persona type of strategy, I can only imagine the amount of work to create messaging and the right messaging for each of the people sitting around the table in their relative position in the pipeline. Because top of funnel people that we see to get into meetings and to do demos or having those first conversations may not be the same people who are actually affected by the close.

This system of yours, how do these books, the Revenue Mind, the GURUS selling system, Be Do It Sale, are those good starting points for someone who is really loving what they’re hearing today but can’t necessarily change the world overnight? But as you mentioned before, it’s important to be able to create a compelling reason why you want to change your title or why you think the messaging should change. How do we get to that point where we are confident in our argument that things have to change in order for us to get the revenue we’re looking for?

Erik: Well, there’s kind of two questions in there. How do we change ourselves or how do we set up to sell to a group buying?

Marylou: Both. I think it’s kind of first and foremost, I love this idea. I’m sitting here as a sales exec, I love this idea. I’ve got to convince my management. We should try to go down this path, but I think I need to get smarter first. Where do I begin?

Erik: Okay, certainly Be Do Sale, you could pick it up, it’s available on Amazon. It was born out of GURUS Selling which was the first step as I told you about, I started with GURUS Selling about nine years ago. It’s certainly a good first step and it has a flavor of what I was talking about today. But if you’re looking for a wholesale understanding, I always say I’m willing to talk to virtually anybody. You can certainly reach out to me. You can go to the website which is revenuemind.com or you can look me up at LinkedIn. I’m pretty much the only Erik Luhrs on LinkedIn, or just google Bruce Lee revenue generation I think, search that on LinkedIn, that will pop up too. Contacting me or checking out the website is probably the easiest way to get on board with the whole of what I was talking about today.

Marylou: It’s just amazing when you think about, I mean, probably all of us on this phone call right now, except for you Erik, are in that camp of path of most resistance and we’ve got lazier as technology has gotten better. We hide behind the hammering effect. I’m not saying all of us do that, and I’m really trying to get us to rise above that.

But boy, people hate the term USP, Unique Selling Proposition. They don’t know how to do it, they don’t understand it, they don’t see why it’s necessary. I mean I’ve had people write to me because in my book, I ask them to do a SWOT analysis that does six factors SWOT. It’s not nearly a comprehensive of what you shared with us about your positioning statement and I get pushed back on that all the time. All the time.

What I’m hearing loud and clear is that we have to know why we matter and have to be able to articulate that subconsciously to our buyers. That’s a very tall order but you’ve obviously accomplished that with clients. Tell us a couple of success stories if you have time like, who have you worked with? You don’t have to name names but where they were when they met you and then what happened after they started deploying some of your methodology?

Erik: Sure. It’s usually deployed in bits in pieces. One of my favorite stories is a software from a specialized software firm. Their software is built on the back of some IBM structured software systems. Very specific, very niche and in the industry, not sexy, right? Basically, what the software does is it helps to secure and handle high volume transactions like bank transactions or airline ticket purchases, a lot of back and forth and everything else like that.

When I started working with them, they said, “Okay, we pretty much get all of our business or the vast majority of our business by going to this IBM trade show that IBM has every year and we go there and we talk with potential prospects and everything else like that. We have been going for years. When we go, we get a lot of people come and fill up the fish bowl trying to win whatever we’re giving away. And then, we make the phone calls and nobody even remembers us, let alone what we do. Did I win my iPad? No. Then I have no further need for you.

Marylou: This is sounding familiar, it’s scary.

Erik: They were like, “What can we do to increase and also, our sales cycle is taking 36 months here or even longer.” I sat and said, “Okay, tell me about this trade show that you’ve been going to for years,” and they explain. I said, “Do you have pictures?” “Yes, we took pictures the last couples of years.” He showed me pictures and I said, “Okay, everything’s white.”

Their signage in the back is usually white with either blue or red lettering, they have the company name, and then they have the list of features, benefits, four or five bullet points of why our software is great and wonderful, what it does. They said, “How many rows are these?” “Three or four.” I said, “200 booths all the same color, all basically the same signage.” “Yeah, yeah.”

What’s happening is all the people in that trade show floor, when they walk in the floor, they’re going into a trance. When you look at the same color everywhere, the same shapes, the same colors, the same everything, it puts you in some unconscious state. You’re moving and so it’s passing by you and you’re going into a trance. You didn’t even realize you’re going into a trance. The only thing that stops you is you’ll see a thing for an iPad, a contest for an iPad. You get used to pulling out the business card.

They’re not even looking at the solutions, they’re not even looking at what your thing does or anything. Subconsciously, their brains are like, “I can’t even handle it.” Don’t look up, just look down at the table and see what you can get as a freebie. That sucks because they’re trained now to look down, to not even look at the solution. I said, “Okay. First thing we have to do is to break the trance. Your booth is going to be black. You’re going to be the missing tooth.

Marylou: I love it.

Erik: They were like, “Huh?” Instead of putting up a list of four or five bullet points of the features or benefits that your software supplies, I said, “I want to talk to the subconscious mind instead.”

What are the biggest pitches and complaints that you hear from your prospect? How would they describe their problem? What we ended up having was signage on the back was two different sides. A man’s head on one side and a women’s on the other, and then a couple of different word bubbles coming out of the heads. One of them was like, “Who is the F squiggly line after this dah dah dah dah genius who decided we should use three softwares instead of one?” “Who’s the blankety blank that decided that we should do this?” “How am I supposed to blankety blank do this when I only have this much time?”

Actual thoughts. The actual complaints that their prospects had. Not only the features and benefits but the pains, the concerns, the things they say to themselves. They don’t give a crap about your solution, they can’t even see your solution until they realize what it’s a solution to. I did that and I said, “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get less people walking in and no contest this year. You’re going to get less people walking in because they’re going to be scared. They’re going to be because they’re white, white, white, black. They’re going to get a lot more people looking but a lot less people walking in.

Marylou: A lot of looky loos, yes.

Erik: A lot of looky loos but less people walking in. The people who do walk in are going to be a lot more qualified. Because now, they’re going to understand what the hell you’re working on. They go, they have it, course, what happens? Less people walking in but the validity of the prospects increased 50%.

Marylou: Wow.

Erik: They were telling me, I was talking with one of them, she took me out for lunch about a month ago, one of the main head salesperson. She was like, “Yes, now all of a sudden, these things are closing after 18 months as opposed to 36 simply because we [00:42:30] the process of getting on the same page. That’s just one application of lead gen in one environment, kind of stuff we’re talking about.

Marylou: That’s awesome. I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. I want to make sure everyone knows that I will be putting all your contact information into the show notes area. Again, Erik has how many books out there now?

Erik: Right now for books, the only actual books is the Be Do Sale. I am working on one for Revenue Mind, but don’t anybody hold your breath just yet because I am kind of busy.

Marylou: But he did say that he is happy talk to any of you who really think that what you heard today is something that will add a lot of value to your company. And it is now, we all know this, it’s all about the white noise out there and how do we get through. We’re constantly looking for ways to be able to communicate with our prospects in a way that they notice us. Erik has the key to that. I hope that you all visit his site, study what he is doing, reach out to him and then from there, the sky’s the limit it sounds like by how much revenue you guys can bring into your company. Erik, thank you so much for your time. I very much appreciate you coming on the podcast.

Erik: Thank you Marylou.