[INTRODUCTION]

Welcome to this episode of The Elite Advisor Blueprint Podcast with your host, Brad Johnson. Brad’s the VP of Advisor Development at Advisors Excel, the largest independent insurance brokerage company in the US. He’s also a regular contributor to InvestmentNews, the Wall Street Journal, and other industry publications.

[00:00:26] Brad Johnson: Welcome to the Elite Advisor Blueprint, the podcast for world-class financial advisors. I’m Brad Johnson, VP of Advisor Development at Advisors Excel and it’s my goal to distill the best ideas and advice from top thought leaders and apply it to the world of independent financial advising.

So, welcome to another episode of the Virtual Advisor Series. I literally just got done live streaming with Simon Bowen. He’s the creator of ModelsMethod.com, the genius model, and really to try to put into words what Simon does is almost impossible because, from my experience, he is the foremost expert in the world that I’ve ever run across of how do you create sales diagrams, models in our industry, think about all of the whiteboarding a lot of financial advisors do. And the reason I had him on the Virtual Advisor Series is now many of us are having sales and client conversations via Zoom and Simon does his entire business this way.

So, he popped up the tools he’s using to take a whiteboard and create a digital version of that where you can interact live on Zoom, and to say he crushed it is an understatement. Literally, we live-streamed this. I had question after question flowing in from our Virtual Advisor Facebook Group. So, he obviously resonated with everyone on there. He covered at least six to eight different models that applied directly to financial services. So, here’s high level just a few things he hit and then I’m just going to get on to the conversation. The one disclaimer I would say is you have to watch this. You can’t listen just on audio. Everything that Simon’s doing is visual. He shared an iPad, he diagrammed, he walked through the framework what he calls the choreography to each of these whiteboards to get them to resonate with the end-user or the potential client. So, make sure if you’re listening on audio, go ahead and hop out to either our YouTube channel.

[00:02:25] Brad Johnson: There’ll be links right here below in the show notes that you’ll want to watch this episode because you’re going to lose, according to Simon’s statistics, 83% of the context if you just listen audibly. So, a couple of things I took from it. Number one comment Simon said, “Drawing draws people in.” So, he deconstructed that. That was really powerful. Number two, he went through his exact setup, so all of the technology he uses to draw on a Zoom and deliver this digitally as well as send copies of the drawing. So, his technology setup, the apps he’s using, how he shares his screen, all of that was covered during this conversation. And then number three, he talked about having a process, which goes into a lot of the methods he talked about to take the sales knowledge in the founder’s head for many of you, the lead financial advisor at the firm, and how creating these models helps you translate and explain, helps really take that gap between the value and how you explain it to your end audience and translate that to the rest of your sales team. So, he deconstructed a lot of that as well.

So, lastly, before I get to the conversation, Simon was super kind. By the way, if you’re just now listening on audio via the podcast, you would have had full access to this live stream as it happened if you’re a member of the Virtual Advisor Facebook group. So, a couple of ways to get there. Just go out to Facebook, search for The Virtual Advisor. It’ll pop up our group. Just ask for an invite. Or number two, if you go to TheVirtualAdvisorSeries.com, all of these past episodes are archived in The Virtual Advisor Series and there’s a link right there to ask to join the conversation. Simon already dropped three different pieces of value in that group, a link to a webinar he was doing 36 hours later, a CreateMyModels.com where he visually walks through some of this and one other piece of value as well.

[00:04:25] Brad Johnson: So, if you don’t want to wait for these to go live on the podcast, just join the group and you’ll get them as they happen live Q&A and be able to join the conversation and many of our past guests are actually in the group adding value as well. So, that’s it. Without further delay, onto my conversation with Simon Bowen. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:04:50] Brad Johnson: Simon, we’re live. Welcome.

[00:04:52] Simon Bowen: Pleased to be here. Other side of the world but just pleased to be here.

[00:04:56] Brad Johnson: Morning for me, evening for you so thanks for staying up a little later for the audience here coming live in Australia.

[00:05:03] Simon Bowen: Pleasure.

[00:05:04] Brad Johnson: Well, Simon, as we kick off this conversation, I just want to throw it right to you out of the gates. If you were going to give advice to financial advisors out there right now, navigating this new virtual world we all live in, what would you share with them?

[00:05:17] Simon Bowen: What people are looking for right now is they’re not looking to be sold because they’re looking to be led and that doesn’t mean they’re not going to buy. So, I think the tone of what the markets after these days is for someone to hug them and then challenge them to make some decisions. So, if we’re thinking about how we interact with people in the marketplace, everyone wants a hug but the best clients they’re now willing to be challenged and have the question asked. So, what are you going to do? You’re going to not plan for your financial future anymore? So, hug and challenge is kind of the tone I’ve been saying to people and figure out how to sell on Zoom. Figure out how to sell on Zoom.

[00:05:57] Brad Johnson: Well, speaking of that, I think that’s really good advice right now because that’s what everybody’s trying to figure out. So, I’m going to give a little bit of background for those that aren’t familiar with Simon Bowen. I’ve now heard. I’m trying to think the very first time I heard about you, and really what you do, which is really hard to describe, by the way, as I was trying to describe it to the audience, but I know Taki Moore, I was at a dinner with him, and he literally pulls out, we’re talking about something and he pulls out a little notepad and start sketching. And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, do you know Simon Bowen? Because this is where I got this.” And then the next thing I know, I’m talking to John Bowen, who runs CEG, and obviously plays in the financial services space. The next thing you know, he’s popping up a Zoom, and he’s sketching out and he’s like, “Hey, you know, Simon, right?” And I know you were also at Mastermind Talks, Jayson Gaignard where we met briefly. So, anyway, can you describe what it is? Your website is ModelsMethod.com but can you describe and maybe you do it via sketch, whatever is easiest, what you do for financial advisors?

[00:06:59] Simon Bowen: Yeah. Well, the issue is a lot of people have a complex product or service that they sell and you can’t sell complexity with complexity. The only thing that sells complexity is simplicity. And so to be, I’m not a fan of the term thought leader because everyone’s using it these days, but to be the sage in the market, to be the wise person in the market, you need to be the person that captures complexity and distills it into something really simple, but profound. People, I think are a bit over and the pandemic has really highlighted this and, of course, people thinking about this. People are way past perceived value now and they want profound value. And so, for 25 years, we’ve been working with governments and big business and multinational companies and things like that, helping them sort of positioning to the marketplace and sell in really powerful ways. And I’m just going to actually step you through an example of what selling with a model is. So, what we do is we capture these complex ideas and thoughts into visual frameworks.

And I’ll explain why this works in a minute. It’s actually, once people know why it works, it just immediately makes sense. But what I find helps is to give people an example, and a totally unrelated example, to financial services because it was probably, interestingly, the one example I thought, I don’t know that that’s in our wheelhouse. I don’t know if that’s something that the models would work for. I’d be speaking at a conference and a lady came up to me at the break and said, “Would your models work for my business?” And I said, “What is that?” She said, “We sell expensive baby gift toy.” I went, “Oh, retail. Well, that’s a dumb sector. Are you online?” “No,” she said. “We’ve got a shop in the middle of Sydney and it’s expensive.” I go, “Well, let me think about it.” And so, about that break, I said, “Well, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to get a piece of paper printed like this and laminate it.”

[00:09:02] Simon Bowen: Because her salespeople are 16 and 17-year-old schoolgirls, working part-time on Saturdays and after school and stuff and they’re not highly motivated to make the sale. They’re there to get paid for their hours and that’s it. And so, I said, “And try to teach them how to sell as a challenge.” So, I said, “I want you to get a bit of paper and I want you to get three circles printed onto it like that and have it laminated, and get some whiteboard markers and put the paper onto the counter with the whiteboard markers, and I want you to organize your shop like that according to those colors,” which she did. And so, people come and say, “Hey, I’ve got to go to a baby shower or a christening or something like that. And I’ve got to buy gifts. Do you have any ideas?” They come up to the counter. And now the girls say, “Okay. Look, you’ll notice the shop is organized in colors the same as this piece of paper,” they put up on the counter.

“Around the outside in the gray zone are gifts that acquaintances and distant family would buy and they range in price somewhere from $50 to $150. On the blue circle are gifts that close friends and family would buy and they’re kind of $150 to $250. And in the middle of the store in the red zone, we call this the heart circle. These are the people that are going to have a meaningful impact on this child’s life and these gifts are kind of greater than $250. Tell me, what’s your relationship to the child?” Grandparents are spending 250 plus. Close friends and family are spending 150 to 250. She contacted me and I said, “I don’t know if it’ll work but that’s kind of what came to my head and try it. See what happens.” She kind of rang me, I don’t know, about two weeks later because I totally get that people selling have fun with it.

[00:11:00] Simon Bowen: So, someone says, “I went to university with the mother.” “Oh, well, you’d be out on the green circle.” And people fight to get off the green circle. They go, “No, no, no, we were very close at university. I haven’t seen her for 10 years, but we were super close. I’d be in the blue circle.” Okay. Well, the average spend per customer has just gone up. And so, we take the process of selling, and we turn it into these really powerful visual models. We’ve been able to take a one hour to 90-minute financial planning conversation down to 15 minutes and close the sale with one model. Quite powerful. We have a company in Australia called Austal Ships and their shipbuilding company and they’re currently building about 15% of US Navy fleet, and we can capture their entire offer in one visual model. We call it the genius model. It takes about 10 minutes to walk through.

And when they did that, you know, here’s how we build and sustain ships for battle. And the rear admiral looking at me, “How come no one’s ever explained it to us like that before and so succinctly?” When you capture complexity in a really succinct and simple way, they can’t not look at it. And so, I’ll share some models as we go through this today that are much more specific. Although, if you think about this from a financial planning perspective, you could so easily ignore what’s written on there at the moment, but a financial planner could so easily start a conversation with a prospective client saying, “Look, there’s kind of three levels of service that people are usually looking for when it comes to a financial planner. There are those people that are looking for off-the-shelf financial planning service. These folks are probably a salary earner and they want a retail super policy, or something like that.

[00:13:04] Simon Bowen: And they’re going to wait until they’re 65 and they’ll probably see what they’ve got left at that point in time. There are some people that are a little more deliberate about their financial planning and they still want to be able to access and utilize off-the-shelf services, but they do want some annual advice. And then there are people who really understand the importance of staying on top of everything that’s actually going on and they want some real expertise, ensuring and monitoring to the very best of their ability through a really customized and specific solution. And it would be really helpful for me to know what you’re sort of looking for.” And who’s going to pick this? Now, clearly, the price goes up as you get closer to the center without us having to say that.

So, we use this kind of model to take the lowest price away from the buyer as an option before we even start talking about money and get them to start to think about how they want to engage with us. So, what are you looking for some kind of some annual advice with some sort of retail products and, you know, we kind of check and you really want to customize, pretty focused, personalized level of expertise in your financial planning and your wealth planning. And most people really want to be in here, a lot will say, “I want to be in here, but I’m probably going to have to take this because I’m not sure they’re going to be able to afford that but no one’s going to want to buy this.” There’s a truth in human nature that is probably worth writing down. One of the best ways to sell is to sell to everybody’s narcissistic self. Most people would love to be first. Most people want to win. But nobody wants to lose.

[00:15:03] Simon Bowen: And so, when you position without saying it because what I’ve just done with this model, there’s a whole lot of psychology that sits below these models as we build them. What I’ve just said with this simple little three-circle diagram is these people lose and these people win, and these people are somewhere in the middle, “Hey, where would you like to be?” without actually saying that. Now, no one wants to be out here with the crowd. Everyone must somehow be close to the center. And so, they’re just three circles, but stupidly powerful if used the right way. So, that’s kind of an example of how we take the story sell and sort of visuals. And there are some pretty solid reasons for that. I’m happy to take any questions you’ve got but I can also jump into why this works and then we can talk about some specific models that might be useful to folks right now.

[00:15:58] Brad Johnson: Yeah, Simon. So, you’ll notice I just stayed out of that conversation because this is so good and so I wanted you to just walk through kind of the methodology as well as the psychology of how and why you do what you do. As a reminder, to those watching the live stream right now, I’m going to be taking live questions. So, the Virtual Advisor Facebook Group, go ahead and hop out there. If you’re not in the group yet, along with 500 financial advisors worldwide, live streaming this, go to TheVirtualAdvisorSeries.com and you can enter the group and we’ll take a live Q&A and my team will be feeding that to Simon. So, if you’re in there watching right now, just go ahead. If you have questions, put them in the comments and my team will help facilitate those over to our side. So, with that, Simon, what I would love because I get peppered with these questions all the time, what is your rig setup as far as the technology you’re using to do this right now? Because I know we’re going to get a lot of questions on that.

[00:16:53] Simon Bowen: Sure. So, I’m using an iPad with an Apple Pencil. The pencil is the key. You know, one of the things about selling on Zoom particularly is when you lose these, I’m just going to set this up for you, when you lose the power of being in the room with somebody, you lose the ability to sell off personality and presence. And so, you’ve got to turn to process and performance. And so, we view the models as process somewhat. So, I’m using an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. It’s the pencil that makes the thing work, basically iPad Pro. I’m using some software called Ecamm Live, which feeds into Zoom, but I’m on Mac. But on PCs, you can use things like Wirecast or OBS, and they feed into Zoom and that allows you to share the screen, put yourself up there in a thumbnail up on the right-hand corner like I am. I’m running two webcams.

So, one that’s on me. The iPad is connected straight to the computer. So, the iPad appears as a camera inside Ecamm Live. So, there’s a couple of things that I can do. If I turn off picture-in-picture, well, I can end up in this bigger kind of view and have bigger screens for people so that I kind of right on it. Then I have another camera that is a webcam that’s sitting over the top of my iPad, because stupidly, as it turns out, people love to see and go figure. People love to see. They go, “Turn on your camera. We love to see you draw. We kind of want to see your drawing the way you do it,” and it’s just much more organic. It’s much more engaging.

[00:18:52] Simon Bowen: We’ve tested the whole drawing thing, as opposed to using PowerPoint slides and stuff. And the drawing is much more effective. When you draw, you draw people in. When you click through a PowerPoint, you push them away. So, this process of drawing organically, although we’re digital, we’re going over a digital platform, really engaged with people in a different way. And now just flipped over to the iPad video streaming. So, I’m using an iPad, Apple Pencil, and an app called Notability. And I’ve tested lots and lots of drawing apps and for working in front of audiences, Notability is really the best one I’ve come across. If people are on Windows devices, the iPad will connect to it, but I also know a whole bunch of people that have bought an Asus. You can get like a small Asus second screen. If you’re traveling, it just sits next to your computer.

And if you plug the Asus into a Windows computer and use Bamboo, which is an app and the Asus pencil, that second screen actually acts as a tablet and let you do the same sort of thing in Bamboo. So, there are ways technologically to do this in any platform. The Zoom has a whiteboard built-in but you’re going to draw with your mouse and it’s just really, really clunky and difficult. So, I spent 25 years selling to corporate Australia, and initially, I used to go in with a large sketchpad, not lined paper. And I would draw in a sketch pad and people would say, “Hey, can I take a photo of that?” And as soon as they say that, I know the sale is made. Then when the iPads came out, I started drawing on the iPad at the table and they go, “Could we get a copy of that?” And I literally could tell them, “Let me email this to you,” and hit email and email the note to them and away they go.

[00:20:50] Simon Bowen: So, before I’ve left the meeting, I’ve drawn a bunch of stuff, I’ve emailed the file and walked out of the room. And one of the issues is, in today’s world, you must operate with a technological advantage. If you don’t show up with good tech, you’re a dinosaur. Now, it doesn’t matter if you’re selling tech industries or not. If you don’t show up with good tech, you’re a dinosaur. As they interact with you, you don’t use tech well, that’s a problem in today’s world. I’d rather not have to say that to people, but it really is.

[00:21:27] Brad Johnson: Well, especially now. If it wasn’t before, two-and-a-half months ago, it’s 100% true now.

[00:21:34] Simon Bowen: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:37] Brad Johnson: Simon, I want to throw you a question from the audience here. Eliseo asks, “Can you draw on top of a PowerPoint with this?”

[00:21:44] Simon Bowen: Totally. So, PowerPoint on the iPad allows you to draw in it. The problem with drawing in PowerPoint is the pencil in PowerPoint is not that great. So, this file I’m drawing on at the moment is actually a PowerPoint file that I’ve saved as a PDF and put into Notability. And so, as I walk through this file, I might shade things and then on the iPad, if you just pop up from the bottom like this, it’ll cut straight across the PowerPoint. I don’t have a presentation running at the moment, but I’ll just run one.

[00:22:23] Brad Johnson: So, basically what you did with that PDF, you save some blank slides that just had the models method kind of watermark up in the top corner there.

[00:22:32] Simon Bowen: Yeah, correct. Absolutely. So, I’m happy running a PowerPoint, going through a series of exercises, and then I might have just a random PowerPoint I’ve picked up, and then I might have something loaded into Notability. If I just drag up from the bottom, I’ll flip straight across to Notability. So, I can flip in and out of PowerPoint and Notability at will and run a super-effective presentation off the iPad. I do all my drawing in Notability because it’s just a better program and I mostly draw. I seldom use slides just because of the engagement there.

[00:23:06] Brad Johnson: Have you in your travels, because I know you make it to the US quite a bit or when we could travel…

[00:23:12] Simon Bowen: Prior to February, yeah.

[00:23:13] Brad Johnson: Yeah. Hey, now you’re traveling virtually. So, did you ever cross paths with a guy named Dan Kennedy?

[00:23:22] Simon Bowen: Well, not personally. I know I’ve been in some of his rooms and I got a whole bunch of people that have been in his inner circle and things like that, and there’s a guy in Australia called Mal Emery who’s probably been the biggest kind of Dan Kennedy messenger into Australia, who’s a very close personal friend of mine. Because he got really unwell, didn’t he for a while?

[00:23:51] Brad Johnson: He did. I think he recovered, but he was in rough shape for a bit. Well, the reason I ask is going back to, I wrote it down, “Drawing draws people in,” it reminded me of something Dan Kennedy said. I was in a training with him probably 15 years ago now. He was telling a story about Houdini. And one of the reasons he became this world-famous magician was the concept of dramatic demonstration. And so, the escape from a straitjacket was not a big trick. It was like a common trick back then. The difference was he would just hang himself upside down 15 stories up, raised up, feet first by a crane. And it just talked about the way he communicated the trick and demonstrated the trick is what led him to be the most famous. And what connected right there is you could easily have these pre-drawn and on a PowerPoint.

[00:24:47] Simon Bowen: Yeah, totally.

[00:24:48] Brad Johnson: But you’re basically using a dramatic demonstration where you’re doing it on the fly very organically, conversationally that’s kind of drawing people in. Can you go into some of the psychology or why you do it the way you do it?

[00:25:00] Simon Bowen: Yeah, absolutely. So, when we think about using models, you know, a model for us is three things and we actually usually start with geometry. Geometry gives you the dimensions that you’re playing within that particular idea and the dynamic. So, a triangle is a three-part dynamic and you need all three sides. Otherwise, the whole thing collapses, as opposed to a three-circle Venn diagram says, if you’ve got all three, that’s great, but if you lose one then you still get something. And so, geometry sets out a dynamic, and it also sets out a number of dimensions you’re working with. Then the second aspect of the model is the information that’s in it. And that’s specifically context and content. Now, context gives everything meaning, everything meaning. Imagine you buy a brand new car and it’s the first new car you’ve bought. It’s got 19-inch alloy rims and the darkest street-legal window tint you can get and it looks fantastic. And you pick up at five o’clock so everyone sees you driving home.

And you drive through a little bit of bushel. We call it bushel. You call it I suppose woods or forest or something. And this little 10-year-old kid steps out in front of the car, throws a rock at the car and smashes the headlight, and then just stands there. You know, what do you do? And most people will say, “You get out and shake him and say, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’” He says, “Sorry, mister. I didn’t want to do that but I was out for a walk after school with my mom and she’s collapsed in the woods back there and I don’t know if she’s alive. I need help.” Now, his action is dangerous no matter what. The action of throwing a rock at the car is dangerous but the context that his mother’s collapse is desperate and dangerous. If he was just hanging around with his mates after school, he’s delinquent and dangerous. The context gives a different meaning unless it’s a different response. And then the concept is how you address it. Every model should carry a context and concept. One of the things that gets lost in the sale all the time is the context. Context is why this really matters and here’s what it is.

[00:26:59] Simon Bowen: And where we tend to go in the sale most often is here’s what it is, and then here’s how we do it. And then this just gets lost. And the moment that’s lost, the buyer has no frame of reference. And then John Bowen often says, “You got to be a master of framing in today’s world.” And then the third thing that we really realized was if we build really powerful choreography, where we walk a pathway through the model, and then we deliver punch lines at certain points. Tell me what’s your relationship with the child is a punchline. So, I studied stage magic and comedy to be able to create choreography for models, and the joke setup, and the trick is really a pathway to set the viewer up. And then you have a reveal or punch line to switch paradigms in a hurry. And when that paradigm switches, everything changes. So, we have a structure to what we’re doing and there’s a reason why this stuff works and two models will tell us that.

If I think about the vertical as an intensity scale from high to low, and the horizontal is time and effort, the time and effort required to get someone to align with your idea, the two most important systems in business is the system for thinking and the system for influence. Now, people don’t think of them as systems. But a business is only as good as the idea on which it’s built. That’s a Michael Gerber thing. And so, when I talk to people, I talk about your business is only as good as the idea on which it’s built and the thinking of the leaders that are leading the business. So, what’s your system for thinking? And then what’s your system to influence people to make choices in your favor towards that idea? But if you’ve got a great system for thinking and a great system to influence, most of the rest of the stuff will take care of itself.

[00:28:58] Simon Bowen: So, what’s your system of influence? Staff to work hard, suppliers to serve you, customers to buy from you, banks to lend you money, regulators to stay out of your way. What’s your system for thinking and influence? And we realized, you know, I get hired by the government. They put 200 people in the room that are warring about something with each other and collectively are all warring with the government on a policy and they say, “You’ve got two hours to get them to agree.” And I go, “Okay, that’s been my job for 25 years,” and it’s not a particularly stunning plan. If I’ve got two hours, I just frustrate them for 90 minutes and try and get to the three-quarter mark. And at the three-quarter mark, I say, “I think I can draw this for you.” And I go to the whiteboard, and I draw a model and start getting them to fill it in with me. And we get a model at the end and they go, “Why didn’t you just show us that at the start?” The trick is we didn’t have it at the start. You know, I facilitated it out of the room, but you’ve got to build enough energy in the room for them to want to actually work together.

And so, for 90 minutes, like, “What do you think about that? What do you think about that? What do you think about that?” And they kind of go, “We’re not leaving here without something.” I go, “Okay. I think I could draw this. Just draw a model.” So, what actually happens is humans and this is such a key thing in selling, humans have a high level of intensity for resistance. We are hard-wired for resistance. We have an automatic system for saying no. Your customer has an automatic system for saying no. And we know that’s true because if you go into a shop and the shop assistant says, “May I help you?” you’ll say, “No, thanks. Just looking.” But why? I mean, they have been offered to help. Three minutes later, you go, “Have you got one of these things?” Like, why did you say no? It’s hardwired. Now, that by itself is enough of an issue but on the other side of this, we have a low intensity and no automatic system for acceptance.

The moment I kind of realized this model, conversion is simply the process of the reversal of these two curves. That’s all. Simply the process. So, flipping the curves. Prior to that, we’ve got this whole period in here where we’re selling and trying to influence. And because people want to do it in the shortest possible time with the least amount of effort, they tend to resort to pressure. And if you fill a vessel with pressure, you just expand the size of the vessel. You push the curves apart. We figured out that if we put a model in front of people, the curves flip almost immediately. I’ll explain why that happens in a minute. We get to hop over to the other side of this and instead of sell, we can facilitate. So, imagine an architect saying, during this phase, “I’ve got a great idea for a house. You should build it. Let me talk you through that.” And they could talk as much as they like and the curves will not flip.

[00:31:57] Simon Bowen: But then the architect says, “Let me show you a model of the house, which is a floor plan, a model of the house.” You go, “Oh, I like that. That looks good.” Now, it’s not the architect in a verbal contest with you. It’s the architect and you working on the house together, and everything changes. Now, the architect goes, “Well, how many PowerPoints do you want in every room? Where do you want to put this door? How many windows do you want in each room?” Now we’re working on this thing together. Well, exactly the same thing happens when we put a model in front of somebody, when people go into that gift shop. We’re working on this together and we pop out the other side of the curve. It’s incredibly powerful in terms of how fast. What a model gives you is speed because there’s so much you just don’t need to say. Think about how much harder it would have been for me to explain this without the model. Wouldn’t have been able to, you know, in all likelihood.

[00:32:59] Brad Johnson: Could it mean behind that old saying, a picture’s worth a thousand words?

[00:33:02] Simon Bowen: Totally. Well, human language is limited and if we think about how people receive information, and then I’d like to get onto some stuff from a financial planning perspective.

[00:33:16] Brad Johnson: Simon, this is so good. I don’t want to interrupt. We’ve got like three questions, but I’m going to keep rolling and I’ll feed them to you once you’ve kind of completed.

[00:33:23] Simon Bowen: I’ll do this one model and then we’ll get to some questions. Alright? If we just communicate with people in words only, now that’s spoken or written, because even the written word, people read out to themselves in their head, right? If we think about how information comes to us from the world around us, it comes in through the senses, 3% comes in through taste and smell. And licking and sniffing are not recommended selling strategies. So, that account, they’re gone. About 3% or 4% comes in through kinesthetic touch. 11% comes in through the ears, oratory. 83% comes in through the eyes. Why would you not use that 83%? And the ears are logical. “Here’s what you should do. Blah, blah, blah.” They go, “I’ll think about that.” The eyes are emotional. You hear a really sad news story on the radio. And then on the evening news, you see it on the television. You get a much bigger reaction when you see it on the television.

And so, the first thing that we’re endeavoring to do is to, first of all, let me cut this bit down here. When we just use words, the listener says, “Okay, I hear you,” but you know what, it’s just noise. If we give people visual access to your context and concept, they kind of go, “Okay, I hear you,” and they go, “Oh, I see. Well, that’s interesting.” When we see stuff, it becomes interesting to us, then if we give people because the human brain is a many making machine, it wants to make sense of things and making sense of things is really about giving structure. So, when we give people structural access, because over here, we could use stock images.

[00:35:22] Simon Bowen: But there’s no structure in an image in a stock image, like a photo of somebody. You have two people shaking hands. What the hell does that mean? But if we give people structural access, what we end up with down here is them saying, “Okay, I get it. I get the structure. I get it.” And now this becomes believable. Once I get the structure, it becomes believable. And so, when we can get people into that situation, where they’re saying, “Okay, I see. I get it.” Now, this is desiring, but there’s another kind of zone to this model. It’s this little corner up here. I call it the super green zone. If these were scales from one to 10, in terms of how you deliver a model, if you deliver a model above an eight on both of those scales through great choreography, desirable turns into buyable and buyable at speed.

So, why would you ever continue to just sell in that quadrant? And why would you use a medium like Zoom and just selling these two quadrants, as opposed to the opportunity to actually do both of these two things? Now, why would you have the talking head on Zoom without some kind of structure or some kind of visual framing for people? And I know that the sale is working when I hear people taking photos that they’re in, when I hear people clicking the camera. Now, I’ve been cheeky in the sale. When I’m making a sale one-to-one to a client, I’ve heard someone take a photo of the camera I go, “You know, rather than taking photos, why don’t we just work together?” And they go, “Yeah, right. What does that look like?” “Well, you pay me and we start. It’s kind of pretty simple.” And so, it’s super powerful. There’s a lot of psychology behind why it works. The last thought and then we’ll deal with those questions, from the time we’re little children, what’s the first thing a child puts on paper? What’s the very first thing a child puts on paper?

[00:37:28] Brad Johnson: Well, I’ve got three. So, I should be able to answer this. I’m thinking the little stick person is one of the drawings.

[00:37:35] Simon Bowen:  Like how about this? And you go, “Oh, is that mummy?” And they go, “Yes.” You go. “Oh, you’re so clever. It’s so wonderful. You’re amazing.” That all they draw is circles, squares, triangles, and lines. And so, people sometimes say, “No, I’m not good at drawing.” I’m saying, “Can you draw a circle? Can you draw a square? Draw triangle? Draw a line?” They go. “Yeah.” “Well, that’s it. That’s all you need.” That every model is made up of that somehow. And from a very young age, they draw these pictures and they get such positive feedback that this kind of imagery evokes a really positive, deep emotional response. Then I go to school and in school, they say, “No, you’ve got to form your I like that. Have another go.” And so, the written word becomes onerous and a lot of people have a very negative reaction to language. And the oldest form of communication with our indigenous people, 60,000 years old, the oldest forms of communication is cave art.

And so, when we do this stuff, we’re hitting really deep psychological triggers for people in terms of how it engages with them. It’s a ton of psychology behind this thing. But you want to dive into the questions and then I just want to leave people with a couple of models tonight that will help them with their selling straightaway.

[00:38:53] Brad Johnson: Yeah, for sure. So, I knew we were going to run into this, Simon. It was too much good stuff in a short amount of time but we’ll try to keep going. A question from Melinda. What are your thoughts on pre-recording versus organically creating? Do you do anything where you sell on pre-recorded webinars with drawings?

[00:39:11] Simon Bowen: Yeah. So, particularly selling on Zoom, but in any sale, if you think about the emotional movements of a sale, once a customer realizes they, okay, there’s something that I need to resolve, a problem, there’s tension. And tension kind of causes them to go, “Who could help me with this thing?” Like, who in the market could help me, and why would I do this? And so, we have a couple of models that we call pre-frame models. We use the bell curve in a certain way. And these pre-frame models are basically saying to the customer, “We’ve worked with so many people in this space, that we know that people are either red, yellow, light green, or dark green. This is good. This is bad. This is good. This is bad. Where are you?” These are highly calibrated, these models, so that we know that the bulk of your customers will drop into these two zones, into the yellow zone. And they kind of go, “I’m yellow zone. I don’t want to be there.”

Now, the fact that you’re putting the model in front of them, it automatically implies that you can solve that problem for them. That can easily be presented as a recorded piece. Once this tension is established, then desire kicks in and this is them saying, “What is it exactly? What do I get from this?” And we use an iceberg, which is really a triangle, which kind of outlines superficial value, useful value, and deeply meaningful value. And I want to demonstrate this a little later. When they go, “Okay, I want this,” the next thing is confidence. So, I got this desire for it but I need confidence. How does this happen? And our flagship model is a thing we call the genius model, which captures the genius of your business and what you do in a framework that takes about 7 to 11 minutes to walk through, and leaves them with no doubt that you actually hold the solution.

[00:41:07] Simon Bowen: And then once they get through confidence, it’s about commitment. These are the emotional movements of the sales process. And commitment is really about when should I do this? And when is this thing we call the futures model? Do you want to be on the green line going up, the red line going down, or the yellow line in the middle staying about the same? And understand that the longer this goes on, the bigger the gap gets. So, when would be a good time to stop? And I go, “Well, now seems like a good time.” Yeah, it kind of does, doesn’t it? And there’s a choreography through all of these. And there’s a really big kind of concept in selling. I want to draw a line down through the middle. The how is the tipping point. So, everything up to this point, when a customer shows interest, they’re kind of building desire and in the first half of the how, they’re doing that because of their situation, because of what’s going on for them kind of right now. And that causes them to have interest in you and other people.

The decision to purchase from you, specifically, you specifically on the other side is a result, and this is the big thing that I really want people to get, is a result of their history, them, and others. So, what I mean by that, they haven’t been too good at sorting this out themselves in the past and neither have other people been too good at helping them. So, people buy you specifically because of their history, not because of your skill. And so, what they need, people every sale is an insurance policy. They’re buying you because somehow, they see you as a form of insurance. And so, this model, this genius model is an insurance policy to say, “We’ve got such a tight framework on this. You know that’s going to work.” And if the models were built, they look and go, “That’s totally going to work. And no one else has actually explained it to me like this.”

[00:43:08] Simon Bowen: So, we would normally say you can use video on all of these. We almost always deliver this live because that’s your big reveal, right? And we usually do this live because that’s the big reveal. So, in a sales sequence, you might have a pre-recorded evergreen webinar or something like that here, an email sequence has a couple of videos in it, then the sales conversation in here where you cover off the last two models in the process. And it’s slightly different from different industries and things like that, and the price point of the product and so on. It needs to kind of be mapped out. But here’s the thing, even if you do models badly, they work. Yeah, all the time. I’ve got people going, “I messed it up completely, but I still sold.” It’s just ridiculous because, A, very few people are doing and, B, they just resonate. They just connect. I had a client last week, we built this model, and they said they went blank but articulated these middle bits. And they went blank and couldn’t remember what the three big circles were. I said, “What did you do?”

And they said, “So, I asked the audience, ‘What do you think on that side and on that side? What do you think we needed one and two in order to get this thing here?’” And the audience went, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and it triggered this thought and went, “Yeah, it’s this thing.” “And what about this one down here?” “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” He said, “Yes, it’s this thing,” but he put the audience’s words into the model. “Okay, what do we need on this side?” “Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah” “Okay, what’s this thing?” Now, the audience has built a model. It’s really hard to disagree with the model you built. And at the end, guys, so that’s what we do to help people who’d like to join us. And everyone’s just built the model they’re about t