Christos Provistali: Exploring the Power of Emotional Connection in Business

in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home hello everyone and welcome back to the show today we have a tremendous episode for your conversation with christos provostalis a former guest services manager at walt disney turned to one of the best customer experience speakers that i have seen maybe ever in my career and i first heard christos at paradiso's mastermind in utah it was a phenomenal phenomenal presentation phenomenal conversation the way that he approaches customer experience made me rethink some of the things that we do at rogue risk made me rethink some of the things i do with this podcast and how i deliver really anything to the marketplace and i took a ton of notes uh after christos's uh presentation out in utah spent probably an hour with him afterwards just just talking to him about what he does and um think christos is just a tremendous guy i think he's got a wonderful story he's got a lot of value to bring to us and it is such a pleasure to have him on the show uh before we get there just want to give you guys a big shout out appreciate you you know this podcast is now on its own we are no longer part of the agency intelligence feed so if you know someone who was listening through the agency intelligence feed um they now have to subscribe right to the direct uh ryan hanley show feed to get it so if you're not subscribed and you're listening to this somewhere um and you're not seeing it in your podcast player the reason is you were probably listening it through the ai feed and you now need to uh resubscribe to ryan hanley uh ryan hanley show feed directly i know that's kind of a weird thing but when you leave a network like that uh this is just what has to happen so appreciate you guys appreciate you for subscribing appreciate you for listening and uh if you love what you hear uh we don't run ads i don't run ads for the show uh i do that on purpose i want this show to grow uh through organic kind of word of mouth i want it to grow through delivering value to you and you wanting others to hear it and i don't want anyone to ever be able to take away this podcast from me and from you uh by running ads and being able to cancel it it's gonna grow on its own and it's gonna be its own living breathing thing and um that to me creates sustainability and longevity in the work so with all that being said i love you for listening to this show let's get on to christos my man christos what's up buddy how are you i'm very well how are you nice to see you yeah you as well you as well how's everything i see you're you're making the rounds man you're uh you're making it happen you're doing all the things in your industry yeah in your industry i'm uh doing all the you know running the circuit i guess yeah yeah is that fun you having a good time yeah man just nice people i get to meet like um i was with mr merrill and his um son brett for a couple days they had me there for and just good people like just i learned just as much as they learned from me i learned from them um and just nice man i'm you're talking at insurance soup yes yep i'm well i'm actually emceeing insurance soup so i'm sure i will be able to drop some nuggets but i'm not doing any presentation or anything oh nice man great my mom and i will be there oh very fun oh that'll be great yeah i'm looking forward to it uh insurance soup is a group that i have not spent a lot of time in or with so it'll be a you know i think it'll be a new group of agents that i've i haven't spent a lot of time with so i'm excited for it because you know and you're probably finding this out like you know there's i don't want to call them clicks because that's not exactly what it is but you know there's kind of people that run in certain loops and those loops tend to stay together just out of the nature you know human nature and i love when you can find like a new pocket of agents or people uh in our industry that you haven't talked to before maybe aren't as familiar with you or your work and um uh that's always a fun thing so uh i'm definitely looking forward to that okay excellent yeah that'd be really cool nice man so dude i uh you know for everyone listening at home um i was i heard you first at paradiso's mastermind thing in utah and you know so everyone kind of knows um so i'm sitting in the back and i i don't know if it's my adhd or what it is but like i you know i i i i like can't be right into the group and i always kind of have something else going on and um frankly and i please don't take this personally a lot of times um i i find and i'm sure people find this with my own i find other speakers to be really boring so i just you know so i'm kind of like half listening and all of a sudden like you said something i was like oh i really like the way he put that together and i was like oh wow yeah no that's good and geez that's like a really engaging story now then all of a sudden like you had 100 of my attention and i was like geez this guy is really good and i really liked the way your style and it was very authentic and real and storytelling was great and and then uh very tactical practical takeaways and and wonderful absolutely wonderful and then um you know we we connected and backed and i'm telling the stories to the people at home now i know you know you were there but like we connected and back and we start chatting when like the rest of the conference is going on and crystal center just in the back wrapping and i was like you know i was like dude how much how much did you get paid to do this and you know he told me and i was like you need to like triple that number i was like i was like i remember you telling me that i was like you're way too good and your story is way too much power and what you're delivering for that and and mostly because um dude i just think you have an incredible message so you know i'd love and i know people are starting to get familiar with you a little bit in the industry but uh and and i'm sure as you continue to grow you'll interact with even more groups but i'd love to just start with like you know we don't have to do the whole thing because i want to talk to you about a lot of different topics but maybe just like the the the 50 cent tour on a little bit of of your backstory and um kind of what what your thing is that you are bringing to the market so um you know i was a former guest service manager for the wealth disney company for years and i uh had the pleasure of working at their flagship resort um the grand floridian resort and spa and um i learned a lot working for the company uh through their internal uh education arm but i also learned a lot from my executives at my resort uh because uh they had to be really on top of their things every day we're serving you know a governor's coming in with their family and coo of intel is coming in a first lady of mexico tina fey every day someone so we really had to be on top of what we're doing and um i learned how to think when it came to customer experience that's what i learned um and my family and i own um a restaurant going on in our 30th year now um and uh i everything i learned i took to our family business when i rejoined uh my brother owns and operates the restaurant and i was uh able to join him for a few years um and then i had a successful exit at the end of 21 uh and then uh that's when i was uh really cranking i've been speaking for a few years but a couple years ago i was speaking in just in connecticut uh last year was new england and this year has become you know across the country um and i teach people what human connection really is and how do you really connect whether it's your your customer your employee your family member um and i really get to deep the classes is really deep you know we talk a lot about emotion uh what emotion really is i thought i knew what it was uh and then then i was like well i don't know what it really meant um we talk about perception how people see things and how people understand things and then i talk about self-awareness a lot of people ryan are just not self-aware they're not aware of how they come across um some do some don't and they have to we have to figure that piece out first before you learn how to be able to uh serve and take care of your clients so um that's what the class is about um i basically teach you um all the things that i learned uh working for the company and things i learned along the way in uh my hospitality uh journey yeah and you know i'll just give the plug now guys if you're if you're looking to improve your customer experience chris this is a no-brainer to bring in so just i'm gonna i'm not gonna bury the lead on on why he's here today but i would like to jump in because uh to some of the three topics that you just brought up and this is where i want to spend the most of my time because one of the things that i uh i asked you a question um and during your presentation um mostly because i can't help myself when i have a thought i really struggle with not expressing it but i said you know you we were talking about emotion we were talking about leadership we were talking about self-awareness and you know i i struggle with um this concept of how much like how much of yourself do you accept versus how much of yourself do you change right like like there's there's this you know you know you read self-love and what you got to love who you are and all those things and and and i believe that to be wholly true at the same time i think that sometimes that's used then as excuse for well i'm just this way and you have to deal with it right and i always struggle with how much how much of myself because i tend to be a very lean forward you know i'm i'm i have pretty pretty hardcore adhd i'm i talk fast i think fast i push i'm competitive like that's a big part of who i am but at the same time those aren't always effective leadership skills or those aren't always effective leadership strategies and i think the question i posed to you was like you know so i'm going to butcher the question in essence but i was like you know is it okay to be an asshole like like you remember that yeah and and i got a ton of feedback on that right a ton people are like people people and i'm talking like a 360 degree range of questions about my question and i and i which made me think that it was interesting if not i'm not sure if i properly posed it to you but um but it was like that part you know and i think it plays into customer experience right like is this just who we are and deal with it or just just who i am and deal with it or is it hey i'm going to love myself because it's who i am today and i'm going to build and how do i know which pieces to build upon and change so i'm sure there's like 15 questions in there take it where you will but that's kind of where i wanted to start i remember when you asked that and if first of all i was like what's this question i'm like oh now listen when it comes to self-awareness right we're we all have i think a little bit of self-awareness and then some people that are self-aware just like you said before some people actually know they're an asshole and they know that they come across like that now that's on them right now if you're okay with that with yourself with your business with your customers and you continue to grow and you continue to flourish and your employees are happy and everything is positive in every way you know i who is to say do you need to change are you not are you asking for feedback from your closest people you know not a lot of us i mean you could ask from feedback from someone you hardly know because you're going to probably get the answer that you actually want but when you ask it from the people that are close around you your right hand person at work your partner your parent your closest relative that's when you get the real feedback now do you change listen that's that's an answer only you answer do you want to is there a benefit to it is there not a benefit to it do you enjoy the way you are is it a detriment to your personal life and professional life is it not do you scale it back to be assertive instead of aggressive do you know i would love to be able to give you an answer as to like oh yeah you have to you don't that all depends that all depends on all those things that i that i mentioned to you but um i have met some people that don't know how they come across and when you let them know they're they think you know they usually thank you and they say thank you i didn't know that and then some people are like oh no i know i'm that way and i'm like oh okay if it doesn't bother you to to be that at least you know that's the way you come across so i know i didn't give you a straight answer because there isn't a straight answer yeah you know yeah no i think i think it and that's fine i think that um you know there probably isn't an answer i think that the the conversation is so important though so much of us we want to be a thing and it is almost impossible to feel 100 that thing and so we're always kind of striving for it especially people who are trying to improve and it's very hard to know like even when you've had a certain amount of success being a certain way it is very hard to know which pieces need to con you can continue to improve on and which pieces are part of the building blocks of what's got you there that's that's a very hard thing i think to wrap your head around i think especially for leaders and especially for individuals in the insurance industry uh you know the you know kind of my brothers and sisters in arms here because they were successful for a long time doing business a certain way and for most of them the world has changed during their tenure and in by change i mean faster communications things like social media you know if you were kind of a hard ass or didn't really have much of a personality but you were really good insurance agent 15 years ago that didn't matter people came to you because you were really good insurance agent today we live in a more touchy-feely world we live in a place where one social media post can can change people's perspective and um you know we have to kind of cultivate that image to a certain extent and i think that's a very challenging thing for people it is um they have to know how they come across so they have to know they could be great at a certain thing uh when i work with some leaders and i work with their staff i'll i'll say hey listen that some of these people are so they have such a high iq and so intellectual but they have a very very low eq and they're probably meant to work on the computer in the corner of the room and not talk to anybody at least your customer but maybe you can convey you can have someone else to be able to actually be the front line person with your client because this person is so intellectual and so great at what they actually do but they can't they come across in a way with with no malice just um you tend to see this a lot with super high iq people very intellectual uh they lack certain social skills and they lack um be able to pick up on social cues on themselves and on other people so um those people are very important uh in the workforce but they're just not meant to be able to speak to the consumer yeah yeah i think the self-awareness is a is a very difficult thing um i might be it is especially difficult as well when you're interacting with someone who maybe you give feedback to or ask for feedback and you give feedback to and they don't accept it right you're like look i know you see yourself as x but you're coming off in the world as why and they're just like nah you know i mean it's if that's a very difficult thing to work with too um especially team members or someone you're trying to mentor or build in their career um it is such a roadblock when people are unwilling to see themselves for how the world sees them and i think i think it's okay to have a a good strong self view but if that view is not based in reality um you're gonna continue to run into roadblocks over and over and over again and it really impacts your ability to connect to people because they're you're expressing in a way that is disconnected from what they're seeing and um it is that's a tough thing it's a it's a very there's always a disconnect in that communication and kind of the human connection piece 100 and 100 yeah if i was a good podcaster i would have framed that as a question instead of a statement uh okay so let's talk about let's talk about what uh what emotion is so i um in my own life talk think express emotions i'm i'm um very expressive human being uh it has been emotions have been something i've struggled with uh so i'm interested in what are emotions and i and really i'm particularly interested in you you even said in your in your kind of your intro that emotions were not what you thought they were so i'd love to know both what they are and how that differs from what you originally thought they were you know i didn't know that they were so emotions control the quality of your life um whether you know it or don't know it or accept it or don't accept it i didn't know that they were so powerful um they're really powerful um so powerful that i mean just over 100 years ago dale carnegie uh one of the most famous um self-development authors uh of our time um said understand when dealing with human beings you're not dealing with creatures of logic you're dealing with creatures of emotion um there is no decision that we make in our life without the input of emotion um and if you think you're making an actual logical decision that means you'd have to be listing a never-ending list of variables and coming up with a logical conclusion so us as human beings we're taught to add emotional input in there um whether you say it's your gut feeling or you did your research to come up with that every single decision has emotion put into it um you know emotions i i say this in the class you know uh the the receptors in our brain that are responsible for the intake of alcohol and narcotics are the same receptors in our brain that are responsible for where all of our emotions lie so the same way you act when you're emotional is the same way you act when you're intoxicated you say or do something that maybe 12 24 hours later you regret you know they're they're very very powerful and i can tell you this what's up guys sorry to take you away from the episode but as you know we do not run ads on this show in an exchange for that i need your help if you're loving this episode if you enjoy this podcast whether you're watching on youtube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform i would love for you to subscribe share comment if you're on youtube leave a rating review if you're on spotify or apple itunes etc this helps the show grow it helps me bring more guests in we have a tremendous lineup of people coming in men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance leadership growth sales the things that are going to help you uh grow as a person and grow your business but they all check out comments ratings reviews they check out all this information before they come on so as i reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you i need your help share the show subscribe if you're not subscribed and i'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because i read all the comments or if you're on apple or spotify leave a rating review of this show i love you for listening to this show and i hope you enjoy it listening as much as i do creating the show for you all right i'm out of here peace let's get back to the episode the people that have a lot of emotion in their life they have a disproportionate amount of chaos in their life because emotion and chaos actually go hand in hand so i just learned and i just you know i learned that um also that large companies um like disney um sell emotion they don't actually sell necessarily a product or service so large actual companies sell emotion so you have to know and understand them and the emotion that disney sells is happiness and you have to know and understand what your company sells in order for you to sell it and when you figure that out your job is to evoke the emotion that you want your client to feel so that's my little take on emotions and um what they are what they aren't i this was the part of your presentation when i was kind of like every single insurance agent every single insurance organization every single company needs to hear this right this this was what like kind of pushed me over the edge when i was listening to you and i was just like this is this is something that i had i had never really wrapped my head around it in the way that you package it and obviously i don't want you to tell the whole thing because i want people to pay you to come do workshops for them um but i this idea that you sell emotion i think when you hear it you're like yeah that makes logical sense but we don't we don't do that right we're like we sell insurance and it's protection and here's the price and you need these products and or i sell t-shirts and i got all the different colors or i you know and this this this idea of figuring out what emotion your your product your service evokes and then figuring out how to position your product in a way that it actually does that um this it feels like a fairly it feels like absolutely what you have to do like it feels wholly right like just intrinsically before you really dive into it it feels intrinsically right and then but it also feels very complicated so if i'm sitting here and i'm like wow you know i hadn't what what emotion does my product sell and look there's a lot of insurance agents listen there's a lot of people that don't sell insurance that listen to the podcast too there's both um so like when we're when we're when they're first sitting down when they're first starting to wrap their head around this concept because to me this is the this is the meat and potatoes this is the this is the really good stuff like what is what do you start thinking like where do you start with that idea um where do you start thinking through how can you start to get a sense for what the emotions are that your product actually evokes so the name of my class is called what do you sell um and that came from um meeting it wasn't even a meeting and when i'm an executive came into my business unit at disney when i was working there and asked me say christos what do you sell and i was like you know i was a restaurant guest service manager and i just pointed to the menu and i started going off the list i was like this guy can't read the menu uh and then he's like chris like read the menu what do we sell as a company and i was like oh shit this is not going to go well so then i said we sell theme park tickets we sell hotel rooms we sell merchandise he goes it's not what we sell i was like and he went through his whole thing and at the end he's like christos understand we sell an emotion but you have to know and understand what we sell in order for you to sell it how do you you thought we sold flatbread pizzas and theme park tickets and that's where your mindset is he goes we sell an emotion we sell the most desired human emotion there is we sell the emotion of happiness and that's when when you know and understand what you sell your job is to evoke the emotion you client you want your client to feel when i work with realtors i do a lot with realtors and lenders let's just say a bank as a lender i go do you sell money or do you sell a sense of creating wealth you ever talk to to your customer and say i just want to let you know buying a house is one of the three biggest things we do in life and you are able to afford to buy one and in 20 to 30 years when your loan is paid off you're either going to have an asset that really appreciated and you'll be able to keep or you'll be able to pass it on to your family and help them create their wealth that's what you sell you don't sell money every bank sells money when you actually have that one minute simple genuine conversation that's what you sell and insurance in your field ryan insurance is boring right like i have so many insurance policies with my family's restaurant and me personally and even when i talk to my insurance agent like i'm like oh man you know i love them that's why i'm still with them but their job is not to sell me insurance their job is to sell me in my opinion safety and security i need to hear from them listen it's your job at your family's restaurant to sell as much food as possible it's our job to make sure that nothing happens to any of your assets and if they do you make sure that you're covered that's my job to do that's how you sell safety and security not necessarily going through the whole policy and be like hey listen you should probably get this coverage and you should probably do that let them know that you're emotionally invested in them because when people are emotionally invested in you they become less critical and less objectively observant about you when i know that my insurance agent is so into making sure i'm protected and i feel that i'm never switching i feel safety insecure i can't feel the insurance policy that's not what you sell now there's some companies that actually don't know what they sell i've actually sat down with a couple ceos that were very i give them a lot of credit you know i sat down with them after i did the class and they said to me i thought we sold this you just made me realize that we don't sell that and they're like we need to change the way we think we we sell this and i go yeah your product is probably going to tend to evoke an emotion that you want your client to feel so you selling your product evokes some type of emotion tap into that emotion to get that from your customer so it's my long-winded answer to uh you know and there's some insurance agencies and there's some lenders that might be just sell money and that's their thing and there's some of them that might sell a sense of accomplishment some of them might sit say to them hey listen i just want to let you know not too many people can afford to buy a house you should be really proud of yourself maybe that's what they sell every company even within the industry is different they just have to they just have to actually know and understand what they sell yeah i wrote down when i was listening to you in that moment and i this is something i'm working into my business every day now and i still you know you just have to bang the team over the head with it over and over and i tell stories and we're working on it in our messaging i uh so i've used protect you know protection security all those kinds of things and i think those are good words but the word that i wrote down when i was listening to you in utah and it kind of changed my viewpoint on insurance and and that's i mean i've been doing this for 17 years that's saying a lot uh and i think it speaks to the quality of your message is i wrote down the word sustainability and the reason i wrote down that word was when i was thinking about insurance i was like what does protection mean well when i think about protection i think like a shield i think like a bodyguard out in front of the business right if the flood is coming you know moses parting the water this house you know stays or whatever right like uh um and i i i was like we don't sell that because if the flood comes the house is gone okay uh if the fire happens the building's gone i'm not a firefighter firefighters protect we don't really protect and we don't really sell safety maybe a little bit you can do risk management stuff on commercial lines you can help people like make their business a little safer for sure but again safety is kind of an illusion and in a sense you know the universe is going to do what it does and you can live be a little safer for sure yeah there's risk management things you can do but but but again it's kind of on the business owner to have a safe business so what do we do well when you have the worst day we make sure you sustain we make sure that you get your business back we make sure that that you get that thing back that you had because i'm not going to be there throwing buckets of water on your on your business when it's on fire but what i am going to do is make sure that an insurance company with a check that is appropriate shows up and hands it to you and says rebuild you're still in the game you're still in the game it's a it's a it's a it's a extra life it's a it's if there's a video game you go to chain i got another life it's back right here it is like you thought you were done but it's not game over yet you you had the right insurance so now you have to keep playing the game and look it's this sustainability is a tough word it's i don't love it from a marketing perspective people don't necessarily think that way i have to think of maybe a better easier way of describing what i just described to you although sustainability is the actual word that i think of i just it's tough to market the word sustainability however that concept has really changed the way that i think about insurance and really the way that i've started to position you know i started talking about it like we're we're the foundation upon which you grow your business right we're we're we help you sustain you can't branch out and put an addition on your business unless you have unless you have insurance unless you know if something shitty happens you're gonna get the thing back right you can't reach or otherwise you're going without a net and that's fine if you want to play that game but that is you are rolling the dice there there and that's a whole different thing right so like we don't protect we we don't provide safety necessarily i think we do in a in a in a ethereal sense but not in a real sense right there's no security we're not i'm not an alarm company but what we do do is we help you sustain we help you get through your worst times new orleans exists because of the insurance industry regardless of what mainstream media writes about it the only reason your new orleans exists today is because of the insurance industry the only way that city was put back together was because of insurance money and we help that community sustain and you know not me personally but the industry as a whole and um i that was holy change that is an entirely that is a mindset shift that i had listening to this thing that you did in utah okay so i guess you said sustainability yeah i understand what you're saying but in a sense yeah you're you're making sure that they're gonna be okay yeah you're gonna make sure that they're they are safe in a way meaning like if that happens and you're you'll be back you'll be back and this is not your last day you know so in whatever way you phrase it or you know whatever verb that you use you have to let them know that this is not the end you know you have to know and in whatever way you express that and show that all of us communicate in a different way and all of us you have different communication style than i do and you also will communicate different to each of your clients depending on how they receive it and how you you know how you view them and um what relationship you have with them so they need to understand in your industry because they don't want to think i don't want to think about insurance that's the last thing i want to think about i want to think about growing my business constantly it's the only thing i want to grow you know i don't want to deal with them you know i've built a relationship with my insurance agent that i'm like you do what you need to do when you send me the email that what we did you know because that's that i don't you know i'm not into it i don't understand it well just make sure i'm very well protected from every single angle um have you had anyone push back on this idea have you had anybody after you do this you you break this concept down what do we sell uh and have them go nah nah that's not it have you had anybody push back or have you converted you know when people hear this do they start to they start to think of their own buying decisions their own buying habits the products they use and they kind of put themselves in that place or have you had anyone push back on you or or uh or question uh this concept no one's really pushed back on it um there's some people that have asked questions i've asked them um you know i've i've some of them that are at some point to question be like well how did you come up with this conclusion and this and that and i said oh wow you're wearing a rolex watch and they're like yeah and i was like wow i'm like you know i have a watch on that's about 20 dollars and i go why did you why did you buy that and they're like well you know i told myself at the 10-year mark if i still had my business and if i hit a milestone i i need to i need to buy this for me i want to buy this so i said how do you feel he goes i feel very accomplished and i go well rolex sell status and success is what they sell and i said you bought right into it and they looked at me and they go oh shit and i go because it's how they make how it makes you feel yeah so i said you know so whatever way if you're wearing a a 10 t-shirt and all of your t-shirts have superman on it for some reason there's a reason that you wear that because it makes you feel a certain way you know um i've had some people that are new into the workforce um that just didn't get the concept didn't really question but they're like uh i'm you know and then i'd find out i'm like well they're like we just graduated college my boss told me we have to be here like we understand it but we're like we and i'm like well you haven't experienced enough life to be able to but i've never had anybody that said you know i've had someone say to me before in the middle of my uh in the middle of the class uh kind of like a uh orion moment uh say um it's kind of easy to make people happy at walt disney world though don't you have like other examples and i said you know and i have to think about this right because i'm like is it easy to make people happy at walt disney world i mean the expectations are this high and i can't pull mickey and minnie out of my pockets right so that's why you know i started using examples from our family business of what we did to create such an amazing little business small business that you know has revenues exceeding you know over a million dollars in a 1200 square foot space um so i had to give real life examples of thing we did that are not that made them go oh okay and i said it's not it's not necessarily what you do for companies right and i can't i can't stress this enough it's not necessarily the product or service that you sell like it it almost has nothing to do with it it's how you make your customer feel during and after the transaction how do they feel about you you know we our pizzeria was in this pizza contest in our state and the one of the most popular news channels ran a pizza contest and they ran it according with the college basketball with brackets and it was 800 pizzerias nominated and then we were at 64 32 16 8 4 we ended up third and it had to do with taste had to do with people voting now do we have the best pizza in connecticut i don't know it's actually a subjective question people were sending us texts and emails and customers and family members and and acquaintances and people across the country be like we're voting for you we're voting for you we're so what do we sell at a restaurant i mean why did that happen it didn't happen because we have the best pizza it almost has nothing to do with it it's how we make people feel when they come in we want to make sure that they feel like they're part of our family because i could tell you this i'm not a part of their family our customers are a huge part of mine huge part of mine because we can't do the things we do in our life without them and i make them and we make them understand that yeah you know you think about harley davidson right you're a badass you're free spirit right you think about you brought up the example of rolex you're accomplished you're successful um bentley for cars right uh uh you know go to go to uh everyone's favorite guy to hate andrew tate and his popularizing bugattis you know what i mean and what that means to be some elite a-hole you know kind of thing like but but a status symbol at the same thing like all these things everything and you know i i i spent a lot a lot of time thinking about this um again you're you're i've been waiting you know so everyone knows christoph is a hard guy to get on the pies very he's a very in demand man no i'm kidding we just haven't hooked up yet to be on the podcast but i've been waiting for this because it was it was a very uh it your your presentation really was very very meaningful to me and i've spent a lot of time thinking about these concepts because you know i was like you could almost you could almost start a business based on the feeling you want to create for people and then back into the product you could say i want i want people to feel patriotism i'm going to start a t-shirt company i want people to feel uh unique you know uh like uh like um you know like a unique and special i'm going to start a whatever i mean it literally doesn't matter you could start a a a beaded bracelet company that has some sort of slogan on it that you know makes people say hey this is the tribe that i'm with like like i i it doesn't matter you can you can back into all of it um if you if you understand what you're doing and i and i hadn't wrapped my head around that i hadn't wrapped my head around around that concept of it quite literally is the emotion first and the product second and i think that it does end up happening the other way most often right someone creates a product they figure out how to create emotion around it but you don't need the product to start the business you need the emotion that you want them to feel and then the product really could be whatever could be a derivative of the emotion 100 100 you know um i use the example of nike um their slogan is just do it you know and i was asked you know at disney from my executive like what does nike sell and i go sneakers that's not what they sell and i go what are you talking about he's like what's their slogan i said just do it he goes they sell motivation and inspiration is the only thing they sell they said how do you feel when you put those on i said when you ever see a commercial during the olympics made by nike you're on the verge of tears it shows someone that had some type of hardship that was able to pass the finish line that was able to do that they're like that's what they sell why are they a leader and i was like okay and that's when he said like large companies real large companies focus on emotions yeah you think about like um that movie uh that just came out about michael jordan and nike the air or whatever it is uh what a great movie yeah great movie great the whole thing was awesome and uh you know you think about it like people wanted to fly so they bought jordans right i mean that's what you did you wanted you thought that if you put jordans on and you jumped up into the air you were michael jordan that's what you thought you thought you could dunk you thought you could do all the things that he could do just by having those sneakers on and it sure they were a status symbol too i'm sure to a certain extent and they showed that you know whatever you had taste but man when it didn't matter how cool you thought you were when you had him on what you really thought was i can dunk like i can i can jump you know what i mean like that's what you wanted you wanted to be able to do the the iconic flying from the foul line like you're you're picturing yourself with the shoes on in the air as if you're michael jordan and i don't care basketball fan or not you couldn't help yourself when you put those things on you know it just was it uh i man i i think that you're so dialed in and i think that you know i think in the insurance industry the obligatory nature of some of the products allow us to get away with not not doing this right and i don't mean that in in any way other than uh i i think that we've been able to skirt by in some regards some of these some of these thought experiments and some of these concepts because some of the products are mandatory and then you know people just have to have them so so it doesn't feel like you're selling emotion but um you know you look at the best salesmen and and women that you come across especially in insurance they don't even talk about the product they literally they don't even talk about the product they don't even you know you can have you know x mod tools and three comparison chart this and and um and you know i i have this process that i take that i take my sales team through and i've shared a little bit around i call it our one call close process and we don't even talk about price literally you don't mention price you don't mention it in the entire process people like well people price shop online i'm like no they no they're not price shopping how many how many individuals in the world go you know what i'm gonna do today christos i'm gonna call five insurance agents today and see like what's going on that's that's what i feel like doing today that is the last thing in the world that anyone actually wants to do they just they don't they they but they're searching for trust they're searching for someone that feels like they're gonna deliver right they're they're searching for whatever that emotional connection is that they in that they particularly are looking for in that relationship but but so much of our industry just defaults to you know product and price product and price product and price so okay so say i'm a product and pricer and uh and you know my let's say i have a board of directors that mandates that i install the uh uh the the what do you sell method but i'm a product and pricer how do you start to dig in to change my mentality to start to see the way the world uh start to see the world from your view um assuming that there is a problem right now i'm not just killing my numbers and hitting a thousand percent growth every month and figured out some you know i need to change i have to improve but i've been a product and pricer for 30 years how do you start to dig in and start to break that shell and get them to understand this process getting to in terms of like teams or like the end consumer uh like this this business unit uh leader you know they need to improve and and it's been mandated on them that they come to your class and they got to turn production around and they got to think differently and they've been told hey look this method over here this is the method that's going to get us there being a product and pricer it's not getting it done how do you start to change their mentality right you know to to start to see this what are what are some of the core concepts that are gonna that you think start to crack that that that product and price mentality and start them get thinking emotions first first of all they have to be open to it they have to be open-minded um i could tell you how to you know when you meet a closed-minded person because they don't stop talking and they don't let you uh talk at all they're closed-minded and uncoachable so first of all when before i even do this class for companies when a company will hire me i will actually ask them because at the end of the day my job is to my job is to make sure that the company the leader and everyone really gets a lot out of it but i ask a lot of pointed questions and i ask how long has your your employees been there how long have they been doing this have they been doing this for 30 years are they uncoachable are they closed-minded and i said because if they are i'm sorry but you're gonna pay me for no reason so i'm not for you and let me tell you how much companies appreciate that and i said because i'm not i don't want to just come and talk for 90 minutes it what is it going to do and then some of them say i need to give you a call back and and some of them will call me back a month two months later be like so you made me realize that we needed to actually change some people here that because if we're going to be bringing an education and constantly feeding our sales people with and giving them their tools they have to be open to it and they have to be open to learning so they've actually changed people around put people in places um and then they'll end up bringing me in so when i'm coming in i'm already going to be in a space that people are excited to hear me they're excited to learn and they're excited to learn a new way of thinking uh on just on a deeper level uh because at the end of the day i don't want to waste the company's money on me when it's it's not gonna and let me tell you for anyone that's listening if you're a speaker if you do things like that be so honest with the company that hires you it's going to come back to you tenfold i promise you and they'll tell all their friends yeah so i think that's the that's the biggest thing is just be open-minded to wanting to learn a different way because if you're stuck on price and you're stuck on product there's nothing that i'm going to tell you that's gonna you know you have to be open to wanting to receive that information yeah what part of this conversation have we not discussed yet what are you sitting there going man you know we we beat up this part but there's a whole section of this that we haven't got to yet is there anything we haven't touched on i think um the the whole class has to do with how we connect right um and what i deal with a lot of sales people that are really good at sales right but they're um some of them are assertive some of them are aggressive but uh some of them are really good listeners right uh and i i at least share uh you know i'm not going to tell you i don't provide you with scripts and oh if someone says this this is is your that's not what i do i i just teach you a different way to think and one thing that i bring up in my class is um when you're having a conversation with your client and they're talking obviously listening is one thing but there there's something called ryan if you've heard of this the term called like attracts like um it's called the law of similarity right so people tend to want to do business or build a relationship with someone they like someone that they have commonalities with and i'm not talking crazy commonalities while they're talking at the end when they're done you say oh wow your son goes to karate my son goes to karate oh you guys go to uh this school my son just graduated from that school and when all of a sudden you have commonalities a bond starts to form whether you know it or don't know it now and you you take that and you build from that people really want to work with other people that they have some similar interests and or characteristics behaviors with so that's the only piece that i like to talk about a little bit in terms of sales is like not just listen listening is great right and not interrupting but also being like oh wow we have this in common because that makes you real that makes your customer realize that oh wow they're a human being on top of selling me whatever product or service they're doing so i think it's really really important to understand um you know the law of similarity um absolutely yeah and i think your lesson around choosing who to work with is very important as well we we you can you can create this emotion driven product and all these things but if you're if you're marketing or trying to shove someone who doesn't appreciate that emotion or isn't looking for that particular emotion down that funnel they're not going to be interested they're not going to want it because it's not what they actually you know i think a lot of times we try to try to round peg a square hole or and and and and then we you know we we push back on the process and it's like finding you know i i always i i didn't say it the way that you said and i think the way you positioned it is better but i used to say what you know especially with marketing like you get out what you put back if you put out price shoppers if you put out price shopping content into the world you get price shoppers back if you put out a certain type of emotion into the world you get a certain type of emotion back and and we have to be very cognizant of what we're putting out into the world because that is exactly what we get back the world the world and individuals is going to mirror what we put out and if you're not getting the type of customer you want it is most likely because you are not putting out into the world what the type of customer you want wants 100 because like you said you put out price tools and price tools and price tools guess what you're gonna get price shoppers yeah you put out just facts and figures hey everybody just want to let you know make sure during a storm you do this this and this useful information what type of value are you adding to their life right you're going to get those type of people be like you know what i understand your price is this opposed to that but you're you're constantly educating me you're constantly giving me information like i i feel a lot more safe with you than you know and if you even end up being a little bit more expensive it's so much worth it because you put out what you want to receive right yeah just anything in the world i think it's tremendous hey man i uh i've loved our conversation i think that what you were doing is absolutely wonderful i hope that more people in the insurance industry will reach out to you if they want to do that if they've listened to this and they're like geez you know i gotta get one of these workshops in or i'm an event planner and i'd love to have you speak what is the best place to connect with you they could just go right on my website it's christospeaks.com ch-r-i-s-t-o-s-s-p-e-a-k-s.com or they could just call me 860-428-9314 i'm about three months out booked but i'm reserving things right now for january february march of next year it's awesome dude i think that like i said i love the work you're doing i love the message i think it's vitally important to the insurance industry and all industries and if you're trying to better the way you speak to your customers uh and the way you interact with them i think bringing christos in is is an absolute must guys i appreciate the hell out of you and i wish you nothing but the best my friend thank you very much thank you so much for having me this was really really nice so close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call this is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients in under three years during the pandemic no fluff no endless follow-ups just results fast based in behavioral psychology and battle tested the one call close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible if you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning visit master the close dot com that's master the close dot com do it today