Intro: Yuri Kruman Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what’s next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world’s great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now here’s Tony Durso. _________________________________________________________________________________ Tony: Welcome. I’m your host Tony DUrso. I interviewed some of the top entrepreneurs in the world and I thank you for joining us. I broadcast every Friday at 2:00 PM Pacific on Voice America’s Influencers Channel and you can listen to all of our shows on your Android or Apple Device. Go to tonydurso.com/mobile and get the app, Tony d u r s so.com/mobile. Before we get going here is a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show, please stay tuned for an important message from Molecule about a breakthrough science that’s finally capable of destroying air pollutants at a molecular level. More Info on them, just the head. So please stay tuned. Tony: Today’s show is with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA Smith, Employee Experience and Business Strategists. Here’s some info on Yuri Kruman. Yuri is a Corporate Employee Experience Consultant, Startup Advisor, Forbes Coaches Council member and contributor to Forbes Entrepreneur, business.com influensive and a number of other top platforms. Here we go. Welcome to the show. Yuri, it’s so great to have you. Yuri: Thank you so much for having me, Tony. I really appreciate it. Tony: My pleasure. I really look forward to finding out more about Millennials, how they think, how to take care of them and the strategy involved. But first things first, Yuri, I’d love to know, we’d all love to know how did it all start for you? What’s your backstory? Yuri: Well, in a galaxy far, far away, many years ago in the Soviet Union I was born in 1983 and I came to the US when I was nine. We settled in Lexington, Kentucky and I finished high school there. I went onto college at the University of Pennsylvania where I studied Neuroscience and Anthropology and Hispanic Studies in Chemistry. But that’s a separate matter. And I went on to start my journey in New York at NYU doing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2004 and within that first year of the program, it became pretty clear that I’m not a very good fit there because my personality is very much, I like to have my finger intense soups at the same time. And that’s not a very good fit with the graduate with a Ph.D. Program, which is relatively focused on a small area of inquiry. So I left after a year and, being a good immigrant boy needed a Grad Degree because otherwise, why is it that my mom brought me here, right? Not to twiddle my thumbs, so to speak. So, I decided I need to go to law school and a lot of people know that either has gone to law school or have considered it. It’s not, frankly, always the best idea, unless you really know you want to practice law. And that wasn’t necessarily mean, but I did my best. I had a number of different internships throughout law school. I worked in a Hedge Fund doing legal and compliance. I did something called legal consulting. Don’t ask what that is. It’s a bit mysterious. I did Insurance Defense Litigation and I was actually also for a summer working at a personal injury firm and I wasn’t quite chasing ambulances, but I did end up on a commercial on a Russian Primetime TV where I was advertising as Cut Sherman and Associates and I was his associates. So, lots, lots of interesting experiences. And actually, at the very end of law school, I had a friend who was trying to find help for a project that the New Yorker is a Fact Checker. So among other things, I ended up working for a week at the New Yorker doing Fact Checking where I got to call my childhood hero, Gary Kasparov and have a conversation with him, which was totally surreal. But I graduated law school into the recession in 2009. And, there weren’t many jobs back then and just didn’t seem like a very good fit for me to go into law. So I ended up going into finance to pay the bills. I worked in, first hedge fund and several banks, doing projects. And, at some point to just realize this is really not a good fit, neither culturally nor a subject matter for what I want to be doing. But at this point, I’m saddled with a quarter million in law school debt and that’s not an exaggeration actually, as a quarter of a quarter million dollars. And what do I do? So a friend of mine comes to me and says, look, you gave me some great ideas in healthcare back in the day. I want to build a company that has a consumer-centric focus, but in health insurance, do you want to work on this with me? Okay so, while I’m working at a bank, Brown Brothers Harriman, this is when the walls, a kind of Anti Wall Street protests were going on across the street. Here I am trying to build a health insurance company from a tech perspective. And unfortunately, it didn’t work out but gave me kind of the direction of going into health tech. So I ended up working in health tech in three separate startups. In one of them, I was doing finance and operations. In the second one, I was doing product management and the third one I was doing special projects, quote-unquote, which kind of means everything between business development, fundraising, investor relations, HR, and pretty much whatever needed to be done. And I’m at a certain point I just said, you know what, as much as I love working in startups, it’s very high risk and you know, you have to drink the Koolaid and I’m just tired of drinking. Tony: That’s too sweet after a while, huh? Yuri: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes you, makes you want to throw up a little bit that sweet. Tony: Yuri, so impressed that what you’ve done and all of these industries that you’ve been in, legal neuroscience, doing commercials, healthcare, newspaper, finance, insurance, technology. I don’t know if I missed anything. And here you are into working with and helping Millennials, it just shows your passion to succeed and be really good at something. And I guess you had to try these other types of industries and businesses to be good or perhaps you’ve used the knowledge you have obviously from all of these to be so good in what you do. Yuri: Yeah, I didn’t set out to do so many different things clearly. And, you know, life sometimes in my case quite a lot teaches you to keep swimming or you’ll sink. So in my case, that’s what it meant. It meant, okay, this didn’t work out, let me go try something else. And, I realized in the process that I had, a formula essentially for how to create opportunities from nothing without any connections and without any experience. And that’s what became the methodology for Master the Talk Consulting, which is my firm. Tony: Right. And you’re known very well for master the talk. And for the audience here, what is the business, you say it’s consulting, but can you define a little bit more? What is it that you do? Yuri: Sure. So it’s two sides of the house. One side is actually executive coaching for mid-career millennials. A lot of people these days want to leave finance or healthcare, large firms, fortune 500 companies, and go into smaller tech companies. Seemingly it’s sexier. You can get paid well even though you’re doing something more meaningful, more connected to who you really are and where you’re going and to where you want to be when you grow up. Because even, at 35 and 40 sometimes people don’t know yet what they want to be when they grow up. So I helped them, I guide them by the hand essentially from that fortune 500 company where they feel stuck and underappreciated to a company where they’re aligned with the mission and values and they’re doing work that’s very meaningful and very much in the channel through which they want to contribute to improving humanity. Tony: This is very interesting. So you help millennials get jobs? Am I saying that’s right? Yuri: It’s not just getting them jobs. So that’s obviously important, but it’s really helping people to understand their unique story, what makes them tick, and then how to translate that into a professional context, meaning a dream job with a clear career action plan that they can keep acting on regardless of what happens with an individual job or company. And that kind of ownership. I really help a person to become more empowered by owning their story, by owning their failures, owning the things that they’ve done, both for the good and bad that follow certain patterns and based on those patterns, that’s what really tells us where this person’s mission lies. And we’ll see even bigger than mission, what movement are they leading and what people are they serving? And that can create a project plan. Let’s see, over the next 10 years, I want to create a company that, I don’t know, empowers people to better health through software, for example. So that kind of thing. That’s one side of the house executive coaching and the other side is HR transformation consulting, which is focused on optimizing the employee experience for companies. Those companies are in some cases, larger corporations and sometimes they’re startups or at least later stage startups where they have the thinking that we want to not just attract talent, but also retain and develop top millennial talent. And we not only, we have to keep up with the Joneses, with the Google, Facebooks, salesforce, etc. But we really need to understand our particular special sauce as we call it. The story around which the company was built and the story around which the company continues, being at the top of its market. And that’s what I start with. I started for every executive that I work with, I start for every executive team I work with by helping them get to the roots of their story by helping them understand what makes us special, what makes us different not by contrast with others, but individually through individual stories and from their flow, all the different elements of the employee experience from well before a person ever comes to work for a company. They come across the website, they come across certain branding or marketing collateral all the way through until they’re recruited. And they’re onboard, they are at the company for Awhile and eventually passed when they leave and they become ambassadors for that company. So looking at that entire continuum, not just at engagement or retention or turnover or you know, elements of onboarding and talent acquisition, right. It’s, a much more thorough and comprehensive way of looking at what it’s like to actually work for a company and how does this company empower me, the employee to become a better person, to become a better professional, to grow in my career. And then, of course, to help the company grow and develop in this particular space. Tony: Quite something. And I invite the audience to check out your site. I’ll spell it Y U. R. I. K. R. U. M. A. N. The testimonials you have of the people who have helped are so insightful. Just love them and check out about Yuri. By the time you read his life story, you feel like you’ve been friends all your life with him hanging out the way you’ve put it together. I’m very impressed and I could see how you actually not just teach it, but you apply it because it’s a really nice job. They’re on your site. Yuri: I appreciate that. Tony: You’re welcome. And you managed to attract a lot of PR and Media. You’re very big with master the talk. How did you get so much media going? Yuri: Well, the first thing you have to realize as a startup yourself, right, is that nobody’s going to do your PR for you. Even the best PR spin masters, not only they’re insanely expensive and without guarantees, nobody can tell your story for you better than you can do it yourself. In fact, if you don’t know how to tell your story, there’s a much bigger underlying problem. So for me, that was kind of the revelation at the beginning that I’ve been through all these crazy experiences and massive challenges and, basically disruptions in my life and professional life and personal as well. And I needed to understand why me, why am I meant to go through all this? Right? For what purpose? So for me then to go and tell that story in print. I’ve always loved writing. I’ve always loved telling stories. For me, it was a very natural transition. I know that to build my business I need to get exposure in top publications. This is the Tony DUrso Show. Just the head, the chat continues with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA Smith Employee Experience and Business Strategists. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. This is the Voice America Influencers Channel; Be Inspired. Hey guys, here’s a quick word on molekule to break through. Science set is finally capable of destroying air pollutants at a molecular level. First of all, molekule replaces 50 years old, antiquated technology molecules. Technology is personally effective and verified by science, but most importantly it’s been tested by real people. Molekule helps allergy and asthma sufferers around the country better cope with their conditions and significantly reduce their symptoms. One customer even said that she was able to breathe through her nose for the first time in 15 years. Molekule is a clean design with a high-quality experience. The apple of air purifiers, you know, breathing clean transforms the way you sleep and molecules technology research is backed by EPA. Check it out for $75 off your first order visit m o l e k u l e.com. At checkout enter Tony once again for $75 off your first order. Visit m o l e k u l e.com. Enter checkout. Enter Tony and here’s the better breathing. We don’t follow we lead join us, the Voice America Influencers Channel You are listening to the Tony DUrso show with key influencers. We’d love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony at Tonydurso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests. Tony: All right, we’re back on the Tony DUrso Show. Today’s show is with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA. Smith Employee Experience and Business Strategists, Yuri consulting, advising and coaching portfolio includes speaking engagements in advisory, work on employee experience, HR transformation, change management, customer experience and PR Media Strategic Partnerships impacting thousands of corporate and startup executives. All right and now back to the chat with Yuri. Yuri: So I started swimming in a number of different Facebook groups. I started realizing that the best way to be featured somewhere is first to add value to people. So before you go and interview somewhere or you know, sit down to tell your story, you need to understand the person that you’re speaking with. What is valuable to them? How do you transmit that value in the shortest, most efficient manner? And, with time I learned what large publications look for, became a contributor at Forbes. I’m actually joined the Forbes Coaches Council by invitation and that carries with it. The right to be published in Forbes on their website. Then from there, I learned how to get on to entrepreneur. I found all kinds of different ways to get featured through score ass. I wrote up a bunch of different articles about what I’ve learned and whatever little wisdom I’ve picked up over the years to get it out to people. And a couple of pieces got picked up. One on Ink, something else got featured on Mashable. Bottom line is I kind of figured out a certain formula for what contributors to these publications look for and what’s valuable to them and then how to reach them, how to pitch them, and then how to tell my story in a concise and insightful manner for each particular audience. And you know, the premise for master the talk is it’s really three fold. You need to have your own conversation in your head straight about who you are, where you’re going, how to add value, etc. And it’s kind of like your internal Twitter. You need to make sure that it’s tweeting the right things and not just random nonsense. The other piece is how do you speak to other people, whether it’s through email, in person, through some other means. You have to understand that other person’s language and psychology in order to transmit value, number one and number two in order for them to feel compelled to feature you somewhere to help you tell your story or whatever it is. So that kind of, understanding that you know, you need to master your talk inside your head. Then you can also at the same time master the way you speak to other people. That really puts you on another level. You know, whether your propensity is writing or speaking or something else. That’s what really gets you featured in a lot of these places. Tony: I appreciate that very much. We have a lot of people in the audience, entrepreneurs, business owners, corporate level execs and so forth, and they’re probably listening to this going great. There are some good tips. You help others, you nurture them, you help them work out their stories so that they own it and give it out. There’s gotta be more to it. Perhaps it’s something you’ve already talked about, but I’d like to open this up a little bit more on how you help others to empower themselves. Yuri: It all starts with me telling my own story. I get very vulnerable whenever I go on podcasts or I write articles, I really try to tell the story as it is. For example, being an entrepreneur, it’s in some ways the last thing that’s glamorous or glorious, it’s actually incredibly difficult. It’s not for everyone. It puts you through crazy highs and lows and you know, sometimes you get bad health news or financial news and you have to deal with all of that while you’re trying to build and sustain a company and serve clients and try to get featured in PR. So for me, everything starts with me getting vulnerable. Ironically, instead of people see me in a light that, oh, you know, this guy is a this and that. They actually see, wow, he’s strong enough to tell a story the way it is. And I think that helps people to open up about their own failures and difficult experiences and challenges. And that really opens the gates. Once you have all of that kind of raw material about someone, you can really help them to mold it into something that’s a much, much stronger edifice. About who this person is, how they add value, and who are their ideal clients. And then you can create a methodology and a business around serving those people who are usually one or two steps behind in whatever process that is the basis for their business. And that can take the form of software or certain other products or services. And that’s what I do. My work, whether it’s in consulting or coaching, is based very much on my own experience in switching careers, changing jobs, being unemployed, being briefly homeless, sleeping with between two couches of friends. You know, it’s based on all of those very, very difficult experiences. And for example, just very briefly when I started my company, when I started Master The Talk a couple months in, my daughter was diagnosed with cancer. And you can imagine it’s the kind of thing that can either really completely take the wind out of your sails or it can encourage you and it can seal you to the point where this is not gonna fail no matter what. I have to make this work for my family, for my daughter, or for everybody. And it’s that kind of thing that instead of making someone look vulnerable and weak, it actually builds their credibility and it helps them to serve their ideal clients in a much more profound and valuable manner. Tony: Sorry to hear about your daughter. How is she doing, by the way? Yuri: Thank you for asking. She is dramatically better since then. But you know, of course, it’s a process. Tony: I know. And the medical expenses have gotta be just out the roof, even with any medical insurance and copay is still, I know, cause my wife is in the medical industry and I hear these stories and it’s like, even if you have insurance, it is such an expense to have that kind of issue that you have right there. I wish you the best on that. Yuri: I appreciate it. Yeah, we’re very fortunate that my wife works for an amazing company and they’ve covered the vast majority of our expenses. But of course, that’s, I don’t know if that’s necessarily atypical for all people that go through this experience. So, you know, certainly, we’ve been very, very fortunate. There are no two ways about it. Tony: Very good at that. Back to the consulting, helping, you’ve got it figured out. Well, let’s put it this way. The Millennial, the person who wants to go out there, he’s got it figured out how to tell his story, who he is. He’s been through his own school of hard knocks. I guess he’s tweaked himself, but now he’s got to figure out what he really wants strong enough to be able to pursue it and make money on a business. How can you help someone find their path on that? Yuri: Sure. So let me, let me go a bit into my extra methodology. This is going to be a very useful takeaway for all the listeners. So there are four pillars to the methodology. ● The first one is life mission. Life Mission looks at you, let’s say 10 years down the road where you’ve built a company. They’re solving a very specific intellectual problem and you need to have picked up between now and then a certain set of experiences, skills, certain networks you need access to, to raise funds, etc. One very simple example: Let’s say, you want to eradicate aids in Thailand in 10 years. What do you need to do to that? You need to start a company, recruited a team, raised a lot of money, create the drug, get it FDA approved, work with a health ministry in Thailand to identify that population, get them the right drug and then Bam, 10 years you’ve achieved your goal. It doesn’t always happen in that neat way, but at least you have your plan and you can adjust where you are based on that plan and you’re not just swimming in thin air. Life’s mission is one. ● Number two is values. You look at the people that you choose to spend time with that are usually adding value to you. Maybe they’re mentors, you know, priest, minister, rabbi, former colleague, professor, somebody like that. Maybe it’s a family member. What is common to those people. How do they bring out the best in you? Are they kind, generous, hilarious, brilliant? How are they empowering you? Bottle that and use that as your reference point for when you go on job interviews or you look for business partners or clients or vendors or investors. Is very, very important because if those people are not aligned with you, you’re going to have lots of problems in your business or in your career. ● Number three. So we have life mission values. The third is outcomes. Outcomes are essentially the channel for how you add value to other people to help them improve their life. What do I mean by that? Some people are born operators, meaning you give them a timeline and budget, they don’t look left. They don’t look right. They get it done on time and on budget. Some people are evangelists, small e, right? They take let’s see their ability to persuade others and they say, come on board, work with me. Invest in me. Here, let’s build this product. Let’s execute on this strategy. And they motivate people to actually bring it off to build some game. Maybe somebody who’s a curator or the help someone to figure out their exact, a financial portfolio. Maybe someone’s a caretaker. They love empowering others to do their life’s best work. Maybe they’re a niche expert in some very small subject around Moroccan Arabic. And those are the most typical things and you have to figure out what is the strongest channel for you in terms of energy, in terms of adding value in the simplest, most seamless way. What is your zone of genius? That’s really what this is getting at. Tony: This is the Tony DUrso Show just the head the chat continues with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA Smith Employee Experience and Business Strategists. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. Change starts here. Change starts now. Join us Voice America Influencers Channel Would you like a lot of people checking out your sales page, your branding page, your podcast, like a lot of us, are you just trying to do it all yourself? Are you taking webinars, seminars, and workshops to learn how to grow your social media and how to bring visitors to your site? Are you downloading free ebooks, buying books, buying classes, doing this and that just to learn how to get more sales, more people, more exposure. Been there done that. Why not just get good targeted traffic and cut to the chase, skipped the extra steps and get the visitors you want. Now imagine how you would feel if you had thousands and thousands of consumers coming in each week and checking out what you have, including downloading your podcast, watching your videos, checking out your webinars, reading your stuff and so forth. Most people can’t do it all. The learning curve is too steep. You need help to get her done. My roots are lead generation and marketing and I have cut through the chase to get a sizable audience. I’ve learned from some of the best these people are the real deal. Organic, that’s what you want. Let me help. Go to tonydurso.com and find clicks on the Navbar. Followed the link and let’s set you up for a trial. That’s Tony d u r so.com and find clicks under Navbar, C. L. I. C. K. S. Here’s to your success You heard that a majority of businesses fail. Don’t be a statistic. Get my book free. The Vision Map bits for your business success. Get it free at tonydurso.com/vision and set up your own successful vision map, TonyDurso.com/vision Here the story; Be motivated; Be Inspired; joining us today. VoiceAmerica influencers. You are listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We’d love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony at tonydurso.com now back to Tony and his guests. Tony: All right, we’re back on the Tony DUrso Show. Today’s show is with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA Smith Employee Experience and Business Strategists. And now back to the chat with our guests. Yuri: And the last piece is role: ● Role-it’s not your title, it’s the way that you react in a situation where you’re thrown off balance. So let’s say you’re traveling in Morocco, you’re with a group of friends and you get robbed by Bedouins. So how do you react? Are you the brilliant strategist who finds a plan to get out of there? Are you the evangelists to collect money, executes on the strategy, persuades everyone, get out of there? Are you the new checks for it? Who loves Moroccan Arabic? You convince the Bedouins to let you go. Are you the person making sure everyone’s hydrated, etc. So, life mission, values, outcomes, and role. Those are the four pillars. Then we look at negative scripts. That’s little Twitter in your head that’s always telling you, hey, you’re not good enough or you’re going to fail or, and what happens if you succeed or oh look, shiny object. Things like that. And you want to get those out on paper and you want to start dis destroying them systematically or contextualizing them to a point where that Twitter is not very loud and you don’t listen to it. And then you have to look at, what I call founding stories. Just as we have the founding fathers, we have a history written by the victors. In this case, we want to not rewrite your stories, just the opposite. We want to dig deep into your trauma, into, certain difficulties that you’ve been through. Challenges. We want to understand who’s influenced you, whom have you influenced. How do you process? How do you process information? How do you make decisions? What kinds of games do you enjoy playing? Is that a strategy word or role-playing, you know, basically whatever other things that are relevant to who you are, meaning maybe your learning style, things like that. And then that makes up a much more robust picture of who you are. And my job is to make sense of those patterns. And usually, when a person gets all those stories out of their system, they start seeing the patterns themselves. And based on that, we tie that to a title and industry and we look at companies whose missions and values are closely aligned with the person, with the client. Then we have the person reach out to decision makers in those companies using pain letters saying: Hey John, I’m such and such. We’ve went to school together. Or nice a Forbes article or something else. Something to lower the barrier. And then you say, may say based research. I understand you’re having issues XYZ in your business. As it happens, I’ve solved issues. XYZ for my own business or for someone else’s. I’d love to do the same for you. Do you have 15 minutes to chat? Okay. Very different conversation. And then that creates conversations, calls, meetings, and interviews. You want to make sure that your body language in the interview is not only confident but as you’re very clear on how you’re adding value and it’s either a good match for your reference point or it’s not. Rather than you doing a dog and pony show a beauty contest, you know, pretty pleased hire me. I’m nice and smart and have beautiful eyes. That’s a waste of time. It’s a bad fit. Don’t go there. But you have to be the one driving that process. Once you’re clear on who you are, what works for you and what doesn’t, you go and ask the right questions and you filter. Either it works for you or it doesn’t. If it works for you, go through the process. Get an offer negotiated up to capture as much of your value as you can and you have your dream job or you have your dream client, whatever it’s the same process. Tony: That’s brilliant. Yuri, I absolutely love the four pillars and I invite and encourage everyone in the audience to check out your site. Again, Yuri Kruman.com that’s Yuri. K. R. U. M. A. N. This is Yuri Kruman, he’s made it. This is the Employee Experience Strategists and you’ve just given us some great information on how we can better maneuver into that better position, whether it’s a job or even our own business. Yuri: It’s my pleasure, Tony. Thank you for having me on. Tony: Thank you. It was great. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Mark SA Smith Tony: And now we have Mark SA Smith join us. Mark is a Business Growth Strategist who works with executives who must build and run a sustainable, scalable, profitable, and saleable business. He does this by educating and coaching them on the executive strategy skill stack, the seven elements that must be in place to be an effective business leader. Here we go, Welcome to the show, Mark. So great to have you on. Finally, we get to interview you. Mark: Yeah, Tony has been really great. I loved having you on my show, the selling disruption show. It was really awesome and of course, I’m delighted to be on your show and share some ideas with your listener. Tony: Thank you so much and it is an honor to have you on this show as well as quite an honor to be on your show. So thank you so much for our audience selling disruption. What’s the URL for that so we can lose. Mark: It is the Selling Disruption Show and I’ve been honored to be recognized as the ninth best sales podcast by Zoom Info and ranked higher than some of my heroes. Tony: Wow. That is quite an accolade well, congratulations to you. All right, mark. Now I have a couple of questions, but first things first, I’d love to know how did it all start for you? What’s your backstory? Mark: Well my mother and father fell in love. I don’t know if you want to go back that far. Okay, so we got that part. Mark: Well, like everybody else, you know, I went to college, got a degree in electrical engineering. Not everybody gets that, but went to college, got a degree, got a job with a big company I always wanted to work for. But in this particular case, it wasn’t as an engineer, it was sales. This was back in the days when HP hired sales engineers to do the selling because it was a peer to peer sales job. I didn’t know how to sell. I know how to design things, how to analyze things, but I figured it didn’t make any difference. I know the products under the customer’s problems, I can make some money. And as you might imagine, Tony, I made every mistake in the sales book when customers said, can you do it? I’d say, sure, can you do it by Friday? Sure. Tony: You know, Mark, you know a good salesperson when he says yes, no matter what. Mark: That’s what it was. Tony: And then you learn by the seat of your pants. Mark: That’s what it was. You know, my sales training was, here’s your phone, here’s your desk. Good luck. Mark: Yeah, I think, I think you and I both had the same supervisor indeed, so I had to figure it out my way. I listened to all the sales greats on cassette tapes back in those days. That’s what you had read the books, interviewed the old pros, and I figured out a heck of a lot about how to sell disruptive products along the way. And my entire life has been selling new technology that people didn’t know they needed to buy. And how do you crack into a market when somebody doesn’t want to listen to you? If you tell them about how great your widget is, they’re like, I don’t care. It’s risky. I’m not going to do it. And so I’ve learned a lot about how to bring products to market that are expensive and require multiple decision makers before you get to a yes. And let me tell you something, it’s not what’s taught in sales classes these days. The old approach of features, advantages, and benefits fails in that type of multidisciplinary environment. And the key reason why is because everybody you’re talking to has a different yes set. They have different things they need to see or hear or feel. The feeling is very different for each of the decision makers and so you have to tailor every conversation to what is going to be a valuable conversation for all players involved and I figured out how to do that along the way. Tony: These are some really great points and I’m going to bring up some because I’ve been through your site and I see that you specialize in that, in that, but mark, believe it or not, I think I’m going to go backwards on this interview today because I’m really curious on how to pronounce your website name and also find out why it has that name. Mark: Oh, that’s a great idea. It’s bija.com B i j a c o and Bija as your wife might know means seed. Tony: Now Bija, has a meaning and Punjabi as well as Hindu. Mark: Means seed Tony: In both. It means seed. It’s the same, Mark: same Tony: Because the languages are a little bit different, but they are…, Mark: Still, still means seed and so as a business growth strategist, which is what you see on my business card seed is the perfect metaphor. Tony: I like it. Bijaco Mark: Yeah, bijaco.com I love a six letter URL. Tony: Now this is, this is a seed in terms of you’re going to take a company from wherever they are and make some grow and grow into something far bigger than they expected. Mark: That’s exactly right. I believe the seeds of greatness are inside of everybody. They just need to be fed and watered, a little light is shone on them and before you know it, everything you need is going to emerge into that great tree from a single little seed oak seed or an only seed. You like the noise. You’re going to tell him, man. Tony: Now Mark, when I, when I talk with a lot of business executives over the years, of course, the number one thing they want is, well more deals, more sales, more customers. Now besides the obvious, I think you have something rather profound and important to say about it. Mark: This is the Tony DUrso Show. Just the head the chat continues with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA Smith Employee Experience and Business Strategists. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. We don’t follow; We lead. Join us. The Voice America Influencers Channel, Your favorite Voice America talk radio network shows and hosts are in your car, outdoors and wherever you need them to be. Listen anywhere. Get our mobile app for iPhone, blackberry, or android at the Apple iTunes app store, like very app world or android market. This is the Voice America Influencers Channels, be inspired. You’re listening to the Tony DUrso show with key influencers. We’d love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony at Tony DUrso.com now back to Tony and his guests. Tony: All right, we’re back on the Tony DUrso Show. Today’s show is with Yuri Kruman and Mark SA, Smith Employee Experience and Business Strategists. Mark is the executive strategy skills summit, authored 14 books and was paid to work in 54 countries. Working in the world of customer acquisition since 1982 Mark uses systems thinking to help organizations successfully bring new disruptive technology to market learning the secret to conducting conversations with customers who don’t think they want or need what’s being sold. He also hosts the Selling Disruption Show podcast. And now back to the chat with Mark. Mark: Well, there are so many things we can talk about, but that’s exactly right. As business growth strategist, I work with executives and helping them figure out how to grow their company and I was certainly one of those aspects is fixing the sales process, especially if they’re selling complex, expensive things to lots of people, lots of deciders rather but a lot of it is helping them get out of their own way. The most amazing thing is when I work with entrepreneurs, they want to do everything, which means their cap is about around somewhere around $2 million. Until they can get out of their own way, then they can grow to about maybe 50 million. And then they have to start thinking like an executive instead of thinking like an entrepreneur. It’s about that time listener if you have a company about that time that you stopped recognizing everybody in your company, you start, don’t know the name of the people that you see in your office. That’s about the time when you have to make that shift to thinking like an executive and executive thinks very differently, has a very different mindset, a different skill set, a different tool, set an entrepreneur or a manager. And so I help people make that transition, through both classes and, written words and podcasts as well as individual strategy development conversations. Some people call that coaching. Tony: I love it. That’s very interesting. Now you also say that you figured out how to speed up, how customers make decisions when it’s something complex or expensive or both. Okay. Mark, how’s that? What’s the secret? Mark: Well, there’s a, there are fundamentally three components to our success when we are selling things. Component number one is the motivation of the person. We’re talking with them, do they want what we’re buying? Does it bring value to their life? Is the reward greater than the risk of bringing it into their life? And I don’t care how good you are or how cheap you are or how amazing you are if they don’t see a major improvement in their life. And this is a critical concept. And if they don’t see themselves as having that as part of their identity, there’s no way they’re going to say yes. The reality is every customer has to see you as a provider, as part of their identity. And you only see this fruit, you know, all over the place. I’m a Chevy man, I’m a Ford Man, I’m a GMC man. And they wouldn’t have think of buying another brand because it impinges upon their, already fixed identity. And that’s a component a lot of people forget about, is the identity aspect of bringing on a new product or a new vendor into their life. And that’s where branding creates such stickiness where somebody commits to a specific brand. So half of our success is about their motivation. 40% of our success is the relationship that we create with our prospect, ultimately with our customer. So do they believe us? Do they trust us? Do they believe that we are acting in their best interest? Are we just trying to sell them something today? Cause I don’t care how much they wanted. If they don’t believe you’re going to have their back, they’re going to choose somebody who they believe will have their back. And that really is about safety. Are you going to take care of me in case something goes wrong? Tony: Now mark, this is completely perfect. It’s accurate, it makes great sense. It’s completely true. However, it takes time to get into the mindset of the person, build that relationship. And you have a very expensive process. So how do you open up the little gates to getting that confidence where you can then do your thing? Mark: All right. So the fastest way to build a relationship is with relevant content. Relevant material, become a person of interest. As an author, I’ve written 14 books, seven of which you can buy and the other seven have my name on the inside. Not The outside cause I wrote them for other people. The reality is that authority is a great way of gaining them. In my business, people will pay me thousands of dollars to do business with me in the first time that they meet me because they’ve watched my shows, they’ve listened to my podcast, they’ve read my books. Now as a general salesperson, you might be thinking, mark, I don’t have that opportunity. Well, the answer is yes you do. What if you whacked out a thousand-word white paper? And when you call people up, say, hey, you know, I just published this document on how do you make a decision? How do you buy what I sell? How do` you improve your processes in an organization that the three questions every executive has to ask when it comes to growing their company. Anything of that nature that’s relevant to the person that you want to sell to. And so offer them something of value. The problem with most salespeople, especially when they’re reaching out to cold list they’re doing cold calling and in the case of cold calling, what we’re doing is asking somebody to give us something of extraordinary value, some of their time and attention and they don’t owe us a thing. Tony: I knew those cold call days, Huh? Mark: Oh yeah. Tony: It’s just not workable. And of course today with social media you can put out content and put out content, but in a way you’re also kind of let’s say hoping, expecting that the right type of person, the relevancy will be there and someone will reach back to you. Otherwise, you just keep pumping out content. How do you make that connection? Mark: Well, of course, every piece of content has to have a call to action and so if you’re offering somebody the opportunity for a piece of information from you, the call to action always has to be. And if you’d like to have a further conversation about this, in my opinion, we always want to sell the conversation, not the offering. If you’re like me, Tony, if I can have a conversation with somebody and they have a genuine need and they’ve gotten money 80% of the time they’re going to buy from me after I have a conversation with them. Listener if you don’t have that kind of close ratio, then we need to work together on that. My goodness Tony: Mark. Now don’t customers or don’t prospects think that, okay, they’ve read this material. It’s very interesting. They know that you have something to say. You have some wisdom, you understand maybe a little bit about what they’re doing, but they know that if they have that free phone call with you, it’s just a sales call. Mark: How well I get to hang up anytime they like. The reality is that we have savvy people to say, Nah, no thanks. Versus positioning yourself as a person of interest. I’ll have, I’ll be glad to give anybody 20 minutes of my time. That’s fine. I learned from everybody I speak. Even i, I don’t want to be like that person, Tony: That’s how a business can get more customers, more prospects by putting out relevant content about their industry or business that will engage those that are potential clients for them. Mark: Indeed, the challenge today is how do we create relevance? The way we do that is, well of all, you have to have repetition. You know, it’s repetitive relevance. It’s solving the challenge or providing the dream that your customers are looking for and it has to be repetitive, there has to be a cadence of consistency. You can’t be one and done sorry folks. It’s a moving parade and it may take you touching somebody a dozen times with your content before they can say, well sure, I trust you enough to have a conversation with you. The next thing you have to provide an expanding value. It always has to be increasingly valuable for people. And you know, Tony, I know that you’re working on your next book and I’m working on my next book and when I work on my books, I publish the chapters that I just finished writing on the web here. They’re free. Read my book for free. Please have it one chapter at a time. Tony: You give it away before people even buy it. Mark: Absolutely because quite frankly, what’s more valuable? Selling a book for $25 or selling a contract for $25,000 that’s an easy, easy one. And the fact that I’m writing the book it creates that person of interest and it’s that repetitive relevance and they trust me and they feel like they’re on the inside when they get to have a chapter of my book before it ever gets published. Man, this is easy. I’ve got a Haiku for you freely give wisdom, pay for its application room for more up years. Tony: I liked that. Very safe. Your wise in the travels you’ve been to, what 34 countries doing sales. Mark: I’ve been, yeah, Tony up into paid to work in 54 countries around the world. I’ve got 65 different passport stamps. The reality is that we’re all people. We eat different things. We may use different words when we swear, but we still love with the same heart, breathe the same air, drink the same water and we still all want the same things. That’s for our kids to live in a safe world. Tony: I absolutely love it. We’re really getting some great focus here on sales and marketing strategies and I want to just remind the audience again that Mark here has written several books with Jay Conrad Levinson. I don’t know who is more ultimate in marketing and setting the pace and the foundation for marketing than him. Mark: No one more prolific than Jay Levinson. He has his name on more than 50 books. I was absolutely honored to co-author three books with him in the 90s along with Orville Ray Wilson and there was the first one was Gorilla TeleSelling, I’m sorry, Gorilla Trade Show Selling. My first book was a 5,000 word little pamphlet that would slip into a business size envelope and I sold 13 and a half thousand of those by essentially sending to magazines and say, print any or all of this, just include this tag where you can send $2 and 95 cents as long time ago and I would get $3 checks in the mail every day. Tony: In genius I love it. Mark, Mark: And then Orville Ray got a hot cold, a copy of one of those and said they presented to J. And J say, hell yeah, let’s, let’s write that book. Then the second book we wrote was Gorilla TeleSelling, which is how do you create relationships when you can’t be there in person? And then the third one that we wrote was Gorilla Negotiating, which is the antidote to the dirty tricks taught to buyers to take the profit out of a sales deal. Tony: I like that, Mark: Of course, to provide the antidote to the dirty tricks. We also teach the dirty tricks and we’re going to rely on your integrity to know which side of the game to play on. Tony: All right, well let’s take a look at that and not the dirty tricks, but let’s just take a look at, is it questions or things to think about when doing the sale? Let’s just take this a little step up a little bit. Let’s go broader. How about some advice on how to do sales? Open up doors, more speed deals. Let’s have it! Mark: All right. So, probably the most important thing to realize when you’re selling is that no longer is a sales decision made by a single individual beyond, let’s say a $500 purchase. And even then it may have multiple people involved. Everybody has a scorekeeper, somebody who’s checking in with them. I have a scorekeeper, her name is Molly, she’s my wife. She makes sure that my blind spot doesn’t get, get me blindsided. And so we check in when we make purchases to make sure that it’s intentional. And then in the business world, of course, we all have scorekeepers our bosses. We have bosses who could be our banker. And so when we make decisions in the corporate business to business world, every purchase decision has an impact on a person’s career. If it blows up, they have to cover themselves some way because, in the world of business, the only way you make serious money is with a promotion and is a little couple percent per year pay raises isn’t how you get money, you do it by getting promoted and the only way you get promoted is by illustrating consistently that you can exercise solid judgment. So if you make a purchase decision and it blows up, then your boss is embarrassed because your boss would never promote into their inner circle. Somebody who doesn’t execute consistent good judgment cause it’s not going to get them promoted because they’re not executing consistently good judgment. So there is a career impact on virtually every decision made. Now if you hold that into context, what that means is that you have to illustrate that you are the safest choice and you have their back. So today is very different than selling 120 years ago, which is the basis of our traditional sales methodology that we teach today. I mean, we might rewind to that little, Tony: I wasn’t selling 120 years ago, so a little foggy on how their sales tactics were. Mark: Well, fundamentally the feature advantages and benefits sales methodology was invented by John Patterson who was the of national cash register NCR, the original it company, and he wrote this is 16-page book called the Book of sales arguments and he was selling cash registers to one decider. Nobody, but the shopkeeper had to decide and the methodology was so powerful and so effective that in the 1930s one out of six executives had been through the NCR sales school. It still continues on today and it works great if you have a single decider, low concentration type of sale, but the folks that doesn’t work when you have today’s multi decider, high consideration sale type of products, that’s what I was really referring to. Patterson was really an interesting cat. If he pissed you off, he would have his workman hall, your desk, which back in those days was made out of wood to the front yard and he would set it on fire. Oh yes. Tony: That’s a lawsuit today. Mark: Patterson was the one who invented the phrase, you’re fired. Tony: Literally on fire. Mark: No kidding. It’s written up in the Dayton register where Patterson was located. There are new stories of him doing that, so we’ve got the evidence in the newspaper. So carrying on here, so that means is that today we don’t have to illustrate that we’re the best choice. We have to illustrate that we’re the safest choice. Tony: I liked that and I like that there’s so much advice here. There’s so much to talk about. There’s so many places I could go, but I do want to make sure we have a mix of entrepreneurs, business owners, we have corporate level executives, we also have people career minded. Everyone wants to get better ahead in life. You’ve given some great advice on how to move up the ladder, that you’ve got to really focus on getting promoted. That’s for the person who’s in a career and doing well. The only way you’re going to make more money is by getting promoted. I get that. How about the other, whatever percentage that is business owners, people working for a business owner, more entrepreneurial, what advice would you give them to get more deals, speed up deals, or do we already cover some of that or did you get it as you give it all away? Mark: Let’s add just another piece to that. To speed up deals. Really the whole idea is that since you have to reduce perceived risk, let me share with you very quickly the seven Ps of risk reduction. How do you perceive? Tony: This is what I want. The good stuff all right. Mark: This is the good stuff. Now keep in mind that if there’s any perception of risk, it delays or stops sales. And the thing I want you to think about is this risk is fear objectified. No executive would ever say I’m afraid. So they say I sense risk. Tony: Ooh, it’s the code word I don’t like. Mark: It is a code word. And so keep in mind that risk is always a judgment. What is risky to one person is riskless to someone else. And experience is what decreases perceived risk. So as we have a lot of new people coming into the job market right now we have crossed over half of our workers are now millennials. They didn’t have a lot of things they have to learn. We have to give them new ways of doing this. So there are fundamentally three ways to reduce risk and mitigate them. Number one is experienced, number two is equipment and tools. And number three is the environment that you’re in. And the environment is one of the places where guarantees can help a lot. So, that, just kind of a quick kind of intro to that, but let me share with you the seven Ps. Number one is proof. You have to prove that you can deliver what you’re promising and what they’re expecting. And you do this of course with testimonials and case studies and assessment tools. And the thing to keep in mind is the proof has to be relevant up to the decision change. So their score scorekeepers have to believe that the proof is relevant and you have to have a preponderance of proof. It can’t be just a single data point. So the proof is the first p. Second P is process. Show them how it will work. Keep in mind that an executive will never agree to a project that they don’t know how to manage. That’s so important, I’m gonna say it again. An executive will never agree to a project they don’t know how to manage. So you have to show them what this is going to look like and what the steps are going to be like and bringing you into their life.And what happens if something goes wrong and how are you going to contact them. So it’s all about essentially project management. The more expensive and complex, the more project management that’s required. Even for a simple purchase, you need to illustrate what it’s going to be like for them to get it up running. And if there are problems who you’re going to call and if they don’t like it, how do they get back to you? So that’s a process. Next is progress. The idea is you have to illustrate that they have an ever-expanding understanding about what you’re offering. And that’s one of the things that the content does is it makes, it gives them the experience. It gives them the education they need to feel comfortable and confident and purchasing from you. It’s one of the ways we can reduce risk before they even have a conversation with you. Oh, I know how to buy this stuff. I know how to make a good decision. And so one of the ways that we can do that is, point out that they’ve made progress from your conversations. So here’s insider secret that’s going to increase your sales rapidly. And if you hired me to come in and teach you how to do this, this is one of the first things I would teach you. And that is you start meetings with what would make this meeting valuable? What would make this conversation valuable? You start every conversation that way and up shocks them. You’re not here to give me a pitch. Nope. I have no idea what to tell you. I just start off cold, I could tell you stuff that you hate and that’s not gonna work. So what would make this meeting valuable? And in our conversation you start off, you know, shared with me some things that can help people accelerate deals and then we end the meeting with what is the most valuable idea you got from our conversation. That bracket is what illustrates that you have relevant value that also clues you into what they find interesting. So you can give them more of just that. That’s progress! Tony: That’s very good. Mark: Progress every meeting, every meeting, start out with what would make this meeting valuable. Use the value because that’s what you’re trying to illustrate. And then what did you find valuable Tony: Mark If our audience goes to be Bijaco.com can they see the seven principles? Mark: There is an article up there on the seven principles. Absolutely true! Tony: Good, good, good. Well Great. I welcome the audience to go to Bijaco. Again, I’ll spell it B i j a c o.com and check out the seven principles and everything else about this is Mark SA. Smith Business Growth Strategist. Amazing stuff! We haven’t even scratched the surface. We put a fingerprint on the surface of this material. Mark gotta have you back. There’s so much more to discuss. Really appreciate you taking this time with us. Tony: Thank you, Tony. It’s a delight to be on your show. If I could make one other opportunity for my guests Selling Disruption show is my podcast, but also I conduct a two-day event to help executives help entrepreneurs and managers think like executives it is called The Executive Strategy Summit. I do it at least quarterly, although it’s starting to get enough demand where I’m doing it every six months, every six weeks or so to full two days, 20 hours intense shift to help you create a sustainable, scalable, profitable, and ultimately saleable business. And if that describes you, my friend, let’s check it out. Let’s have a conversation to make sure that it’s right for you. Tony: Mark, is this of a physical venue or a Webinar? Mark: Got to show up for this? No, this is transformation. I can’t take an entrepreneur and transform them into an executive unless they’re sitting in there with a group of other people going through that same transformation. Otherwise, squirrel I got to check my email Tony: Mark where’s this located? Mark: It’s located across the United States, although I’m also talking about doing them in, Australia as well as the UK, potentially even Singapore. Tony: Nice. And if we go to bijaco.com, we’ll find out more about that. Mark: There is a link to the executive strategy summit or you can go straight to the information page, executive strategysummit.com Tony: Okay and also at your website, if someone wants to hear your podcast and find out more about it, the link is there? Mark: Top of the page it’ll take you to the podcast site. Actually, have the podcast as a separate site and we can talk about why at another time. But there are really good reasons why we do that. Tony: I love it. Mark SA Smith Business Growth Strategist. Thank you so much. And again, bijaco.com- B IJ ACO.com. Thanks again, Mark. Mark: You’re welcome. Tony. I got one more thing for you. I’ve got to tell you this. I’ve got to tell you this. Tony: Tell me, tell me, tell me. Mark: You are the most downloaded show on my podcast and this year, so thank you for me and on my show. Tony: Oh, that’s, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of people out there like my shows, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That’s very nice. Tony: And for my amazing audience, thanks so much for listening. Remember, success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds be righteous. Join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, 1:00 PM Pacific Time on the Voice America Influencers Channel.