Learn the Magic Words, Become a Sales Master: A Conversation with Phil M. Jones

so the mistake that many people make is they pitch too early they pitch too soon they hit too much resistance too much friction what selling is is earning the right to make a recommendation that means that you should never ever ever ever look to make a recommendation to anybody unless you could say the words first because of the fact that you [Music] said Phil thank you so much for joining me on the letto business podcast oh man it's great to be here thanks for having me on the show I always love these episodes when I could say this is a first for me and the first for me is I've gotten a lot of speakers and introductions to speakers where maybe I know about the book I read a little bit the summary here and there or chapter here and there your book I actually I heard about it I read it from cover to cover and then I booked you for the interview yeah yay check it out well thank you for having me here it's h it's good to be able to go deeper and see how it can serve your audience absolutely so for for our audience I want to start from the GetGo I think based on what I read about you that you were an entrepreneur way way in the earlier years like I think you were still in school yep yeah kied off this whole thing when I was 14 15 years of age so let's start there because I think there's something there for all of us to learn from sure where do you want to start what do you want to learn so where did you get that entrepreneurial spirit and to start something at 14 years old I think it was more I understood hard work and Endeavor my dad is a self-employed contractor and has been running his own business forever too and when I wanted things that I wasn't in a position to have provided for by ourselves by the means that my family existed is I started to understand well how could I take that into part of my own hands so my first business was me just knocking on the doors of my neighbors asking them if they'd like to have their cars washed and some said yes and a few said no and most just asked me how much I would charge and we quickly built that business out over a year or so where I had kids in the year below that were're cleaning the cars and was making more money than most of our school teachers and I think it was it was more just a nobody said I couldn't there was not anybody around me saying that no that isn't a way that you could do things and I became passionately interested in stories Like Richard Branson's stories is you know I remember in my you know early teens Etc that I want I wanted as my birthday gift was like the Richard Branson autobiography not a new remote control car or a pair of sneakers Etc is I wanted to be able to learn and I've always been curious about how other people have made alternative lives for themselves as opposed to just go and take the status quo and that's lived in me since as far back as I can reme remember very interesting because you mentioned two things over here that I could also relate to and I think uh a lot of guests on the show have been touching on those two things one is that some entrepreneurs by trade in in the earlier years when they had a chance to play or to play away their time so to speak right they chose to to do productive stuff I think that's one thing that I've seen in your story as well and the Curiosity we know that most successful entrepreneurs have a high level of curiosity in the mix of other skills that they have I think it's an important it's an important trait for entrepreneurs because that gives them that advantage point of not saying you know what been there done it maybe we move on no no no let me let me find out how it's being done yeah and I think that has been a big part of my world and equally the number of individuals that have had the the privilege of being able to learn from is is you find that people that don't say wow and instead they ask the question how they don't live in awe of somebody else's success what they do is they look to understand reverse engineer take the pieces from that that can then be useful for them in their world and they take inspiration and then application from the clues that have been laid down by other people before them and none of us have got unique ideas none of us are coming up with anything from a blank page all we're doing is adding value insights or take onto something that had formerly existed and there are many Clues out there in the world if you're curious enough to go looking for them MH so I want to um get right into the topic of today which is obviously what you're teaching in and and your recent book and even the earlier book was all about the power of words that's right um you started off I think the first book was for actually kids I want to ask you about that before we get to the the book that you just released the latest book which which is like gold really really every single chapter but why kids and why the importance of words for kids well the the kids book actually didn't come first is is I written 11 books my first book was a book called toolbox which was a business owners book which was sales skills for non- sales people and that's like what many people do with their first book Is they take as much as they know about a subject try and cram it between some pages and and called it a book and my second book was a book called Magic Words which was actually a very quick fast turnaround book that came as a bet during a a small business Mastermind group where people were talking about how hard it was to publish books and I said it was easy you could probably do it like in a month and they said put your money where your mouth is and there I was to turn a book around quickly and I wrote the book magic words in a short period of time by taking a two-page PDF that I'd utilized for a training course run a few weeks prior blowing that up into the book magic words and what was interesting through a career of training sales skills to non sales people is you'd meet people long after the fact of being in training programs with them and they'd be saying things like Phil I still remember your magic words still using your magic words and it didn't matter what I'd share in principles or philosophies or strategies what people would want is the precise language to use in key moments to be able to drive results and when I went through my Geographic move from the the UK to the US Circa 2016 2017 I thought I needed to write a new book for attention to speaker bureaus and to try and isolate more of my business from a global business to being a North American Business and then quickly realized why on Earth would you write a brand new book when the book you wrote was magic words that had a lot of resonance with an audience that had been successful by its own right was something that I badly produced first time round it was a lazy ship to work for the purpose of producing a book quickly like almost an EP or a mix tape of a musician's work that potentially could have been fully mastered and produced properly and exactly what to say was born out of that exactly what to say is the rewrite of magic words and wrote that 2017 and what I love about it is you're here today talking about it like it's my new book and it's still to me my new book I mean launch mode with the book the whole time we've sold now nearly 3 million copies translated into 30 languages but it is my life's work encapsula a tiny little book that you can read cover to cover in an hour that helps ow with success language yeah and and I think it's very valuable and obviously we we'll share the the link to the book because I think everybody should read it and actually in preparation to to this show I actually already released that you know the title of the book for some of my groups that should get a um a hold of the book Thank you so I want to divide the conversation into two segments one will be sales people in particular and one will be more leaders leaders in companies what bothers me very much and I've spoken to so many sales people sometimes you could see a salesperson they're made for the job they're great at what they do but somehow they don't yield results and therefore they quit like I would say a little bit too fast and they move on and then they stumble on this job and that job and really they're meant to be great salesp people just don't have the right words they don't have the right way of convincing or actually having a solid conversation in a way that it's turning into results and I think a lot of the concepts and and what you teach is about driving a conversation for results what's your take about it and where is the starting point for a Salesman where do you see people going off in conversations and therefore not yielding results and let's use some of the some of the chapters in the book or some of the concepts in the book that we could drive that conversation to good results and our listeners should just appreciate that you know from a concept perspective success in selling has nothing to do with you success in selling has everything to to do with how you can help people realize that what you have will help them with the problem that matters in their world it's helping to be able to demonstrate a solution which means that you have to do the work to realize the problem was worth solving so the mistake that many people make is they pitch too early they pitch too soon they hit too much resistance too much friction what selling is is earning the right to make a recommendation that that means that you should never ever ever ever look to make a recommendation to anybody unless you could say the words first because of the fact that you said because of the fact that you said blank blank and blank then for those reasons what I'd recommend is blank blank and blank even take a simple example like a HVAC company that somebody's concerned that their air conditioning units are broken down and there's a big difference between you saying like this is the latest and greatest new air conditioning unit that has 37,000 Giga bongers and 22 million whatnots and and a handful of blank and I can do you a special offer versus because of the fact that you said that you see yourself living in this home for the next 10 years and that what you're looking to be able to do is to minimize energy cost on an ongoing basis and have something that runs quieter for you and your family and not need to have ongoing service constraints for those reasons my recommendation would be that we look to the right solution to professionally upgrade all of your air conditioning units throughout the house household at this point in time that's only a relevant recommendation if the information is true from the other person's circumstances if they're a landlord and they're looking to get a tenant in there for three weeks and minimize expense and then possibly sell the property in 18 months time that might not be the best recommendation correct so it's slowing the process down in order that you can speed the outcome up that means your recommendation is delivered with enough conviction that somebody fills that recommendation was made for me there wasn't a recommendation about your opinion on the product or service that that was a recommendation about your professional advice based on my unique sets of circumstances what that means is is and many of the words in the book exactly what to say designed to help with this is the skill is asking more Curious questions to collect a more meaningful body of evidence that means that when you do a make a recommendation it has enough weight and strength to be believable viable accepted and celebrated by the person that's on the receiving end of that recommendation so let me ask you a follow-up question to this because we see some so many times where you come prepare to a conversation and you have your process so to speak as far as which type of questions you want to ask which type of information you want to get but sometimes the other person isn't and the other person is just abruptly trying to get to the bottom line or getting to that okay how much will it cost me or soort of speak and and you get frustrated because you have a process that you want to follow and that person is trying to dictate the process that you should actually continue the conversation what are some practical ways how to you owning the process of the conversation you cannot own the process you can only but own the outcome so can you give me an example of a contextual scenario that we could work with here and we'll just jam on it for a second what might be the specific scenario that we can we can work on here so we creative agency we speak to new clients all the time and let's say we have a a process of the intake process of understanding the client's objective understanding the client's needs what type of work have they done in the past what work what didn't work and so on and so forth then explaining our process and then explaining what we going to offer and then ultimately give them the proposal saying well like how much you going to charge me for a Rebrand like like what's the price for a new website look we're just looking for a new logo back and we're going through a reinvention for a merger like what's it going to cost for make us look like a new company exactly okay the first rule to remember is the person who's asking the questions is in control of the conversation so when they're peppering you with questions if you're giving answers to those questions then what you're doing is playing lap dog or you're dancing to their Chun exactly if you have a process to follow you can't force somebody into your process what you can do though is to help somebody realize that the process has being built for them if they meet a certain type of criteria so if you're working with a company that's potentially looking at you as a partner from a Rebrand point of view and they're saying what's the price what's the price what's the price what's the price what's the price what's the price what's the price then you might respond by saying are you looking for the cheapest partner to work with right now or are you looking for somebody that can truly articulate the kind of message that you're looking to bring towards your future customers nice they say well I'm guess we're looking for the partner I it sounds to me that you do have some concerns about pricing and that perhaps the reason that you're asking that is is that you want to make sure that we're not wasting each other's time and they say yes you say well would it help if I gave you an understanding of what other organizations have invested in this kind of outcome in the past they say yes and you say well we have some that have managed to achieve X Y and Z for as little as ABC and we have others that have had more complexity and more points of application of that Rebrand in brochures and websites and signage and further application that have invested as much as blank so now that you understand the range of what something like this could be are we in a situation that we can continue on understanding more about you your organization and your objectives so we can understand whether there's the right kind of fit together are we in the ballpark of the kind of fees that you thought that you might look to pay for something like this mhm so you can't say I'm not telling you I'm not telling you I'm not telling you because we don't know enough about you yet like you know enough to be able to say like is it $5,000 or $50,000 you know enough to be able to say that people of your organizational size in the past that were looking to achieve X Y and Z have paid somewhere like blank in the past but you need to earn the right to be able to make that recommendation to help them realize they're in the right shop just like you like to walk into a restaurant having seen the menu having understood the prices of what many things would be so you know you can sit down with confidence to order whatever the heck you like right because you know there's going to be no sneak attack of pricing but everything is about questions so so basically what what I'm getting from this and I think this is very helpful for listeners to take pay attention is as much as the person might interrupt your process you try to answer give them enough information give them enough information that they're allowing you to go back to the process yeah and to understand why that process could be valuable to them only if they meet certain criteria see the first gateway question is are you looking for the cheapest agency or are you looking for an agency that truly understands you that could do X Y and Z they might say well no I'm just looking for the cheapest agency so you might be able to say well like I can save you a lot of time right now and save me a ton of time right now too and let you know that we're not going to be the cheapest agency got it the way that we work is blank blank and blank and blank and blank to help people achieve blank blank and blank and blank if what you're looking for is something different than that then here are three resources that you might find valuable welcome to canva here's fiber.com have you upw work nice so let me ask you a very a question that comes up so many times sometimes you could see that you're going through a beautiful conversation and the person is following through and you're leaving that conversation in a way where the person's you know you really you put on the phone and you tell your Co you know your co-workers your boss Your Leader whatever it is I think I nail this you know like we have him they're gonna get back to us in the next few days and we're closing that deal and then all of a sudden the person goes missing an action and then you never hear from that person again or you hear from the person a flat out no and how could it be so far apart the one person on the phone feeling that or the meeting feeling that we we have this and the other person totally not in Sy you can have a good meeting with somebody that doesn't result in a guaranteed long-term relationship like both those things can exist and both be true isn't that the meeting was not a good meeting it isn't that you didn't bu Good Rapport it's often the something was missing on their end and that something is something you don't know often comes from you closing too soon so say for example you do have a good meeting with somebody and you're leaving that conversation with they're going to get back to me in the next two days 4 days 6 days two weeks Etc that's where the disconnect comes from if you left the ball in their court and you've got no control in this conversation there's no skin in the game for equity for them to be able to tell you the truth so we end up saying things like I'll leave it with you and they'll get back to me and thanks for the information I'll get back to you next week with what it is we want to do and you're like this is awesome you playing like it's done but it isn't done so you're now stuck in this Checkmate position because the only thing you can do is then follow up Chase Circle back touch base be pushy and and be a thing that you didn't want to be so we sit in this awkward situation of like they ghosted me and what did I do wrong and what changed at their end or I guess the competition just undercut us or whatever it is is the story that you tell yourself as to why it didn't happen but the reason it didn't happen is that you didn't set up the never- ending conversation that had trust and equity on both sides so say you have a great conversation what's what's the harm in saying so what's your decision making process from here and allowing them to answer that question and who else is involved in moving forward with a project of this nature and how can I help you support those individuals in that decision-making process and when would it be a good time for us to talk again for us to navigate what the plan is from here they say in a week or two you say is there a day of the week that is better for you to be able to schedule a conversation they say earlier in the week is better than later you see I know we're both busy people and finding time on each other's calendar could be difficult trying to catch each other in a unscheduled moment is highly likely to be imposs so why don't we put a Connect on the C right now for Monday or Tuesday two weeks on from now at a time that's agreeable for both of us that means if we don't speak before we'll at least speak then nice so is it fair to say like if you know people reading through the book and the magic words a lot of it is built around building curiosity with the other part making sure that the person is invested in the conversation versus just you just talking and doing everything yep and many of the prefaces of words suggested in exactly what to say are they tools to strategically insert curiosity in questions that otherwise could have come across harsh or pushy and an example of which is there a sequence of words in the book that read what do you know yeah and we've gone on to involve that in the real estate version of the book and in our certification programs because people miss the tonality that's intended with a question of that nature what they think I can't say to somebody what did you know about real estate I'm a real estate guy right I never I never wrote it that yeah but you can ask the question is well what do you know about all of your options when it comes to working through a process like a business Rebrand yeah what do you know about the steps involved in getting to an outcome like this what do you know about the timeline of how it's going to work from A to B to C to D to e and what you're achieving when ask a what do you know question is you're looking for the other person to admit that they don't know enough exactly which puts you in the driving seat of being able to say things like well would it help if I walked you through that process would it help if I shared those options with you would it help if you provide some insights there that could help you in your decision-making process and they'll be like yeah and that could be as simple as well what do you know about the difference you get from working with us versus ABC alternative they say not much you say well would it help if I walked you through those differences so you can make a more informed decision all this is is people make smarter decisions I'll tell you I'll give you like personal feedback when I read that chapter and I adopted it in our case is what do you know about PEX group like you yes you reached out to us we are branding a marketing agency but is that the only thing you know or because that's where I get oh I saw my friend told me they rebranded and this is the project right away gives me gives me understanding of the knowledge the depth of the knowledge if they understand what we do collector right you you learn quickly the context of what they know about the subject that you're looking to try and explain and it's very yeah it's very helpful because sometimes as a salespeople listening to the show sometimes we meet with people and we we say just because the person reached out to us he probably knows everything about us no they heard a name they may be calling five companies and they don't know how to differentiate between the five it's your job to own the conversation and making sure that every stone is is on is you know turned upside down so to speak and sometimes to even help them understand you know what are the metrics to look for in differentiators and not even necessarily to say why you're better than somebody else but just help educate on the landscape of that there are different levels of service that exist inside most professions and what those differences are so people can decide whether they you know they want a Burger King a Ruth Chris or they want to go for a wago's sake right it be any of those things and they're all viable business models for the right CC the right time what is one more let's touch one more of the concepts in the book that you feel that was very like based on feedback it's an eyeopener for a lot of people reading the book I mean it's a book that I put together with the goal of not wasting a single word so I'd like to believe that every example of words in there has Merit and I could reach for anyone right now but to be helpful to the listeners that are are on this chain of conversation we just introduce the words what do you know exactly and let's use it even from your agency point of view is is what do you know about the group and you get some context well after they've shared that that context I'd probably ask a further question from the book which is what is your experience question so what is your experience of working with a professional marketing and branding agency because I want to take it wide because it might be that well I don't know a great deal about PEX agree but but I do know from the 10 years of experience of being in this and this roll and this R and this roll some do this and some do the other and some do this so I'm I'm putting a second tap on the same question to color in the context the third sequence of words that comes from the book that could be useful is again we'll put it into a stack here so that you're starting to see how words can work in sequence is the ability to to volunteer help with the preface of the words would it help if I'm not would you like me to shall I or I will would it help if would it help if I walk you through the kind of level of service you'd get from us would it help if I could introduce you to one of our past clients that could help you understand from their experience would it help if I gave you maybe two different offerings of how we could help solve that problem so you could see the difference between the two and make a decision as to what level of support you're looking for at this time when I say would it help if I'm almost guaranteeing an answer of yes would it help if they can only answer the very specific question that is phrased or posed well yes that would help okay therefore that's what I'm going to go and do then is to take that so you're just hedging the momentum in a conversation towards the outcome that you're looking for and much of the success of what people have gone on to talk about they've achieved with understanding the ewts methodology at a deeper level is this ability to slow the process down instead of it's a punch for a punch or one question that covers everything which is you know why did you want to choose to work with us or yeah what you need me to do to help you to make a decision any of these like big trying to cover lots of distance questions is the ability to cover the distance you're trying to cover in 5 6 7 8 nine 10 moves and I view it like when executed to a high level you've got tools to play chess whilst everybody else is playing checkers yeah it's beautiful and I think a lot of salesp people make the mistake they want to get too fast through the process and and what ends up happening is they lose in the process they lose actually the relationship that they're building and making sure that they're on the same page throughout the conversation yeah you you want a level of certainty in the recommendations that you're making that you're sure and they're sure that this is the right path to move forward is if you're guessing or reaching or pushing you're leaving too much to chance let me ask you a question about you have dealt with a lot of salespeople and you have spoken around the world to so many different professionals I've asked this question from other guests in the past I want to hear your opinion about is this process trainable like or you would you say certain people are just not made for it and they cannot follow the process to be a good salesperson um my experience would be that almost every human being on the planet was born with some of the inate abilities to have raw sale skills most three-year-olds on the planet can ask a series of Curious questions can push with a level of persistence to guarantee an achieve an outcome that was the outcome they were hoping to achieve I haven't met many three-year-olds that don't hold that skill set yeah so what happens is his life trains it out of you learn things like it's rude to ask you learn things like I want doesn't get you learn to believe through life that you shouldn't be pushing towards achieving your objective or to be asking for things that are out of sync or out of the moment so I think given that most human beings have had Sal skills training out of them they can probably have them trained back into them if they're prepared to allow themselves to be trained now like some people are coachable some people are categorically not coachable now the same person could be both sides of that line depending upon how they choose to show up depending upon what switches move in their own mind depending upon their acceptance towards personal growth so it isn't like these people are and these people aren't it's like last year this person wasn't but this year this person is so they are trainable skills yes I think that many of us have natural behavioral patterns that could be more conducive with being successful in that area many of us have traits around our attitudes or our passion towards a product sector or a group of people that given over indexing advantage or disadvantage in one of these areas there is trainable growth in all the areas of sales Improvement and trainable growth though takes time is this to me as a profession and just like the accountancy profession the legal profession the graphic design profession it's not you've been on one course for five minutes and you've got this figured out you read three books and you're now a grandmas it's a commitment to say this is a learnable trainable series of skills that requires continuing education continual application and professional levels of refinement and review to help you reach a level of growth so it's a long-term commitment not I went on a killer training course and now I'm a badass exactly what I liked about the book is that it's a combination of of conceptual change of you know the way you look at things and and see things plus the practicality of those phrases so for our listeners if you're going to be picking up the book it's not only pay attention to the phrases pay attention to why those phrases were chosen right because then then then it gives you the concept of I'm way wider than just a book it's 23 sequences of words that are positioned as magic words it's not really it's 23 principles around influence and persuasion that are disguised as words and what I've learned to be true is that if you try to teach people principles they struggle to find examples but if you teach people examples they trip over principles and they get there a lot quicker beautiful I want to I want to switch gears as I mentioned before I want to speak about leadership because we live in a world that leadership is different than managerial skills people are now hungry to have phenomenal leaders where they in an environment they they could grow and one of the number one things I have seen and the hundreds of leaders I have met with or employees on the other side of the aisle is they want to see from their leaders two things they want to see Clarity of where we're going and the vision and everything where the company's going but more importantly they want to have phenomenal communication between leadership and the rest of the team right so everything you teach is about The Words which communication is the essence of communication is the words being used that's on feedback that's on strategy that's in everything everywhere uh what could you share as far as how leaders could adapt to some of those Concepts or the thought process behind some of those Concepts to be better leaders okay I believe the work that we teach is universal to all areas of life and as we've expanded our certification programs and now have 37 licensed partners that teaching the work into variety of different corners of the world is I've got further reinforcement that the application of this work is is really quite Universal first things first though our core principle is that the worst time to think about the thing you're going to say is in the moment you're saying it how many leaders have found themselves needing to backtrack on something that came out of their mouth because they didn't put enough thoughtful thought into it at the front end it happens way too often the other thing that gets missed there is the phrase that I shared is that the worst time to think about the thing you're going to say is in the moment saying it how many leaders have hundreds of high impact moments in their careers every single day that they haven't taken the time to isolate which are the moments that matter more than others I would argue that every leader has five to 10 moments a day where the success in those moments has an over indexing impact upon the overall success they're looking to try and Achieve and it could be that one of those those moments is the 15-second interactions they have with the majority of members of the team as they wander through the office and they ask that how are you how is your weekend type question like is that being done with the right level of connection intent sentiment support that it could be doing or is it going through the motions it could it be perceived as going through the motions is there an opportunity to be able to open a conference open a conference call open a zoom call share the state of the nation is there a 10-minute window where you are presenting something that you could cast your vision Etc that because you're pretty confident in speaking in front of a group that you show up for and you dial it in and you're a solid six out of 10 where with some more thoughtful thought and understanding the impact that that moment could have had you could have done some work ahead of time and been a 7 eight n out of 10 in that moment and the influence and impact that had over the organization as a whole could have been a appreciating escalating positively significant moment instead it was fine there's nothing wrong with it it's failure to isolate the moments that have the biggest impact in your organization and you've touched on it even in the question is people are looking for confidence in vision and direction of whereas we're going and then feeling of connectedness of you see me you get me you understand that I am the most important person in my life and that you see my part to play in the bigger overall mission that we're trying to be able to get to so some of that comes down to learning to be pulley and not pushy and that could be even using words like so just imagine blank and how would you feel if blank and could it be possible blank one of the areas where leaders are always forced to have tough conversationist is when you give an employee feedback on their productivity or their success and so on and so forth what are some practical tips on that that it should be very receptive and it should be a positive moment even if the concept of the conversation is maybe a negative thought or a negative piece of feedback starting a conversation where you're looking to deliver either constructive growth-based advice or some form of disciplinary action shouldn't come as a surprise should come with permission and should allow enough space in it for there to be good reason why somebody's performance isn't delivering at the level that you'd like it to be and this is about being graceful in the setup so sometimes you might want to have 10 minutes to talk with somebody about their performance and what the leaders do is they say things like Havey you got a minute and they sneak attack somebody because that was a time that was suitable towards them they steal the momentum from whatever they were working on at that period of time they pull them into a corner and office Etc and share with them the number of things that they should be doing differently or better that could achieve better results and they don't get the Buy in from that individual because the individual wasn't prepared for that type of conversation it was unfair it was a stick attack just like we utilize it for follow-up in the sales process utilize a set of words that are when would be a good time to keep us in control we' use the same in a leadership capacity so we might say look when would be a good time for us to get 10 15 minutes together today to talk about your current results and all that's going into achieving those results and they say well like you know I could maybe do something in the next hour or can we do it later today or can we do it at this point in time in the in the future so they give some time back I see you getting excited there as well in the interview is that you may have popped a cord out as well from your head so you got that back on are we rocking yeah yeah we're good we're good I heard you so so I want to ask time we' get you permission yeah but now that you've got permission to have that conversation you have to build a frame for it and this's a frame we talk about in exactly what to say for real estate and then again in our certification programs it's a framework I call ofq which is opening fact question and you're looking for a polite opening a mutually agreeable fact and an easy to answer question so in this feedback type scenario is say I was giving it to a colleague of ours called Jim my opening would be hi Jim the mutually agreeable fact or facts might be you know it's been 18 months since you started here in the role and when you started in the role that you set out with a goal to be able to achieve blank blank and blank and the plan that we put into place to do that was blank blank and blank you see how I'm sharing these mutually agreeable facts they're like yeah that's right there right that's right the easy to answer a question I'd say are those still are those goals still in alignment with your vision or is something else changed and I'm going to get a yes no response on that but if they say yes which they're highly likely to do you can then ask the question is well how is your current performance in line with those goals and what do you feel might need to change for the performance to be a to step more in that direction but all incurious questions helping somebody go through a process of self-discovery there's no tell we believe that curiosity is the fuel to grade conversation and the challenge I'd share with your listeners right now is could you give an entire day of your life without giving a single piece of advice everything is delivered in questions curious questions to help other people discover the path forward or by themselves without you sharing with them what to do by I say not giving any advice that doesn't mean disguising advice as questions it doesn't mean saying things like have you considered have you thought about have you tried because that's advice disguised as a question yeah it's allowing people to write the next chapter of change that they're try to create in their lives through the guidance that you provided them with skillful curious questions it's so powerful because if you do it in this way the person follows along with your conversation and anytime you're just trying to push an agenda the person is pushing back pushing is pushing back yeah it's amazing wow and in terms of key performance indicators we call it k key results areas in terms of at one point you need to give negative let's say you want to let go a person does any of those principles apply on those when you're ending a relationship well you could still use opening fair question hey James it's been 10 months here since you started in the role and when you started in the role that you said that you were going to be able to deliver blank blank blank and blank and our expectation of where you'd be at this point in time was blank blank blank and blank how do you see things working out at this time well you know excuse blame denial blah blah blah blah right they comes back see help me understand this is if you were in my shoes right now what would you be looking to do with somebody that was providing your level of contribution towards the organization powerful or i' probably look to be a to F I said well you see that we're a little Kinder than that the way I see it from here is you have three options option number one is you could look to change the reputation that you have with every single other member of the team including myself you could reinvent yourself look to be able to be the version of yourself that you said you were in the interview and change everybody's opinions and perceptions of the way that you work in the valley that you can bring by showing up differently as early as this afternoon alternatively is you can keep showing up the way you are right now work through detailed levels of managing performance find yourself in challenging reviews and challenging push back and challenging frustration as we try to manage your performance making it difficult and challenging for both of us or by alternative is you can surrender your resignation make life easy for both of us and take everything you've learned here and not make the same mistakes when you're in your next role out of those three options which one do you think is going to be easier for you that's powerful it's all method is what it is like this is this is just knowing how to play the notes and realizing that with structure you can bring creativity this is great and then and I think once people will pick up the book and they learn so much more I want to end with the following question which is you know you've used words like magic words you've used the word you know the Power of Words we're all human and we know we need more positivity in the world and less of the negativity in the world that's right what are some either stories you've heard people after they read the book and they so understand the Power of Words how could we use it on the daily in our daily lives to change our relationship with a spouse a cooworker a neighbor a friend yeah I I I think all of the words in the book Empower you to be more Curious less judgment so in every single area of your life there's a strong possibility that Curiosity could serve you better I challenge people to deliver less advice if you're anything like me you've probably been at a point in your time where you delivered exceptional advice in the past like incredible advice some of the best advice you've ever given for entirely the wrong problem so slow things down understand what's really going on in other people's lives show people you understand their problem and they'll trust you with the solution try to sell people on your solution they'll say that's not the problem and if we're looking for positivity understand the you can change your world by changing your words and everything that leaves your mouth is either helping or hurting if it's not and it's neutral then it's a waste remove anything think that's hurtful replace it with helpful and watch how more value you bring to the world and an example of this that I think could be valuable for everybody it's the simplest of swap of examples is and catch the irony in this is to never speak in absolutes and when you say always never everybody everyone you're creating friction because it cannot be true everyone is saying this always happens nobody would ever think that nobody believes that that would never be the right thing to be able to do is remove those absolutes from your language remove black white replace it with gray and allow yourself to get into the mess with other people and see more things from other people's point of view cuz nobody is all right and nobody is all wrong there's always a space in the middle that we get a chance to see things from other people's point of view and in the world that is being encouraged to be so polarizing as it is for many of us right now particularly in North America is is find the space to understand in every conversation you might not be right and see what you can do to see things from other people's point of view and that means swap your always is for oftens or frequently or almost always if you need to but never always never never rarely infrequently occasionally next never but remove the absolutes and play in the possibility of change and if you play in the possibility of change then change can happen this is been beautiful where's the easiest way for people to find out more about the book or everything else do you do I mean the book of exactly to say you should be able to find it anywhere and everywhere that you are best served in receiving your books in hard cover in ebook in audiobook Etc wherever you bought other books you should be able to find exactly what to say if you want to continue the conversation with me safest social network to find me in a per as a person is is philm Jones UK um there and respond to DMS and share a continued conversation there and if you just want to go deeper on the work go to exactly say.com and you can learn more about what it is that we do there great for the links resources as mentioned this episode check out the show notes at www.p group.com podcast we will link to the book we also link to the website and also link to follow Phil because he has a lot of words to share let's close with the four rapid fire questions are you ready I'm ready number one a book that changed your life oh how to win friends and influence people from D kigi yeah still a winner on on the show number two a piece of advice you got that you'll never forget when you're comparing yourself to others compare the whole of you to the whole of them that's amazing number three anything you wish you could go back and do differently oh a thousand things a thousand things I'm grateful of all the lessons but there's many things I wish I had the chance for do over four too many to list at this point in time and last and final question what's still on your bucket list to achieve still on my bucket list to achieve is true Financial Freedom by the definition of the precise life I'd like to be living right now is maintained by passive income producing assets that feels like it's set up with a thousand years worth of Legacy beautiful Phil thank you so much for joining us I know your time is valuable that is why in the name of our listeners we'll forever be grateful for sharing some some of your time with us today it's been a blast my pleasure thank you thank you for having me [Music] likewise