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Brain Driven Brands
How to Teach Your Team to Activate the Buyer’s Brain: (Feat. Dr. Trautmann)
00:26:34
In this episode, Sarah sits down with international neuroscience and behavioral expert Dr. Thomas Trautmann to talk about the elephant in the room…THE BRAIN. We uncover the essential neurological processes that are hindering your sales, why your...
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Brave Brands. I don't ever have good opens for this show because I'm just. I don't know. I don't know how to do good opens. And I feel like openers often, like, go so long that I just wanted to get to the content. So my opener is usually just, welcome to the show. Today we have a lovely new guest. I'm super excited to chat too, because this is somebody that's very well versed in the same topic that I am, but you're doing it in like, a very different capacity for a different audience in a very interesting way. So. Welcome Dr. Troutman to the show. Thank you for coming. I'm so excited to chat with you because anybody that loves psychology is just like a cool human in my book. And you tend to get me a little bit better because Sarah tends to get really nerdy about all of the brain science that goes into everything. So, yeah, I'm excited to hear about your experience, but you want to start by telling us who you are, kind of what you do and who you do it for. And then I have many questions.
- [01:01]
B
Yeah, who I am? Well, I am a German who was born in Switzerland, who's living in France, who lived in Ireland, and who loves international clients. And my. My passion is about helping business owners and executives to elevate their clients to elevate their own business. Because, I mean, the mistake everyone does, it's always my business turn runs around me, you know, it's about my business, my name, my brand, my products, my, my, my. When in fact it's the worst you could do. Because on the other side, your clients want only one thing is make me great. You know, I mean, it's not your fault. It's. You were taught like that. You know, 97% of people still think that it's the way to do things. You should be rational. You should. You should throw in their face, you know, as many features as possible and as many great things about yourself and about your company when in fact the brain in front of you couldn't care less.
- [02:05]
A
Oh, okay. I feel that in my soul, especially when it comes to marketing, because that's like the industry that I'm in. The brain in front of you. I love this concept because often and again not to. It's nobody's fault this is happening. This is just how the brain is wired. But we think inwardly all the time, right about like, what can I tell other people about what I do that will help them understand that I am cool? And it's difficult to turn that center of the brain off. So yeah, I want to hear more about this. You're the founder of Happy Brains and you specifically work with like CEOs, people at the top of the companies to help kind of distill down this information so that they can teach their teams how to focus on the brain in front of them and not so much on the brain that they own. So talk to me about this experience. What is it like working with people at that level? What do you see as like the biggest thing that comes out from working with people?
- [03:01]
B
It's the aha moment when I show them which part of the brain makes the decisions and how, how stupid that part of the brain is. Because now we now know scientifically, there is no doubt about it, that in fact we make primal decisions inside our primal brain that we rationalize afterwards. Yes. Well, in fact people are convinced because we have that super superior species on earth, you know, that we make rational decisions that we act upon, which is not the case. So you have to talk, you have to reach that primal brain. And the problem is that that primal brain is a survival tool. And it cares about only one and only one person itself. So it says when you, when you want to persuade someone, it can be a client, it can be an employee, it can be your partner, it can be your kids. That's a good challenge by the way.
- [04:02]
A
I need that.
- [04:04]
B
Anyone. You have to reach the primal brain. In fact, that brain makes decisions. It lives in a seven second window. Right. And it makes decisions like a two to three year old child. So I would suggest to everyone listening to take your selling proposition, your unique selling proposition, your marketing message and try to shoot it at the two year old child in seven seconds.
- [04:32]
A
Oh, I love this idea.
- [04:34]
B
Okay. Yeah. Without getting caught by the parents and throwing to jail because you still have that child.
- [04:40]
A
You know, be careful when we're talking to kids. Yes. Or if you have your own kids, test it on your own kids.
- [04:45]
B
That's right. I mean I'm using my kids as scientific experiments now. They are, they are grown up.
- [04:50]
A
But I never heard that great concept. Because it, it really does hone in on the fact that the brain is constantly looking for ways to survive or gain resources or to get specific things. And if that's all it's doing, especially like I said for DTC professionals at the top of businesses, all we're trying to do is grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. This is something that's very prevalent in the DTC industry is growth in particular. And I find it interesting because growth for somebody in the C suite level often comes down to how much can we sell? How much more can we sell? And sometimes how much can we cut costs? Very, very few people I've noticed will think about how can we reach a primal brain. Right. How could my primal brain reach their primal brain? So, all right, do you have any tactics for us on, like, how to do this?
- [05:39]
B
It would save so much money. You know, as I always say, as I always say, sending rationally equals killing.
- [05:47]
A
Margin because, oh, I agree 100%.
- [05:49]
B
The brain, we default. The brain of the decision maker in front of you needs to make it to get a game where it makes a decision. Because that brain hates to make decisions because it requires to stop other processes that are running to make that decision that you want.
- [06:08]
A
It's an energy drain. Yes.
- [06:10]
B
And it's running so many things. You asking me to make a decision? Why? Why would I make that decision? You have to persuade me just to listen to you. You have to learn that. And then you have to show to that brain that it will make. That will get a gain. Yes, immediately. If you don't show it, find the gain itself. In the 21st century, it will ask you for rebate, it will ask you for a discount, it will ask you for a longer test period if we ask you for free sample, etc. I mean, everyone listening knows what I mean here, because you're all facing that. But if you do it the right way when you talk to the primal brain, and if you prove that there is a gain, not only will you make the decision to be with you, listen to you, work with you, whatever, but it will also come back for more. Well, there is more behind that, but you switch the chance to sell from 5, 20% to 70%. So I don't know you, but I'm a super lazy guy. I prefer 70.
- [07:12]
A
I feel that in my soul. I especially because I. As soon as I get to a specific part of the day or the week, I typically start to get tired to the point where I'm like, I just don't want to work. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. Consumers are doing the same thing, and it's happening to everybody on the planet. And I find it to be. What's the word? I find it to be like a little lazy for or for marketers to just assume that if we just keep running discounts or we keep running offers, that this will work eventually. Right? Because everybody wants a good deal. That's like one of millions of ways that we can get the brain to stop long enough and like you said, to feel that this is going to be a worthwhile investment of my energy stores to be able to.
- [07:57]
B
But in fact, instead of giving a good deal, you remove what triggers every decision in our brain. And that's called a subconscious frustration.
- [08:07]
A
Yes, emotional pressure, that's what. Yeah.
- [08:11]
B
And it has nothing to do with your products, with your services, with their own business and so on as it's inside their brain. It's a human type thing. So I don't know if you give you an example, if you are selling some software. So let's say a CRM. You are selling a CRM to a chief information officer.
- [08:33]
A
Okay.
- [08:33]
B
The usual way to do that would be to go there and say, okay, you can handle 10,000 clients with my CRM and then you can send 50 emails per person per day and you can have five of your team members who log every day at the same blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, feature, feature, feature, as you say. But in fact, maybe that person subconsciously is currently losing the contact with his or her family. So what you say is, what if you could get home every day by five, what if every weekend you would be with your family and no more at work and things like that. It has nothing to do with your products and services, everything to do with the human being you are talking to. And I know it's scary. I mean I'm just back from Denmark where I just gave a workshop training a team of 20 and so marketing salespeople of a company and it's very difficult for anyone to move away from the feature of the products and the services. Because the problem is that your own decision maker, who's trying to make the decision to persuade that other one, tries to persuade itself that I'm right to work for that company, I'm right to use that product and to sell that product. So you are going to self persuade yourself by blah blah, blah, all those features which the brain in front of you couldn't care less about.
- [09:57]
A
Yes.
- [09:58]
B
To be human. And you have to understand what that human being in front of you is experiencing as subconscious frustrations. And the fact that they are subconscious means they cannot express them and they won't share them with you. That's what becomes fun and why you need me.
- [10:13]
A
Exactly. Yes. This is the reason why you need people like doctor Drama. So my. Oh, I have so many questions now my next question would be how do you discover those subconscious motivators? Because in D2C I have a process where I'm going through and discovering large scale, like, market subconscious motivators through a process of pictorial surveys and like, a bunch of different, like, NLP processes. I use a lot of AI to pull out sentiments. And a lot of it comes down to the fact that, like, Sarah's just been doing this long enough that I could tell, I can see the lights going crazy right now. So my question to you, I guess this is the question I get all the time. Sarah, how do you know, like, how do you identify what these people are subconsciously frustrated by? Or, you know, how I term it, what, what the, like, emotional pressure they're feeling is if, if they don't even know what it is? How do you find that out?
- [11:04]
B
You have to think deep into who your client is. So when I do workshops with my clients, based on my experience, I can help them try to dig those out. But I ask them then to keep digging because that's what the value is. And when you go see a client, listen to what they are saying, how they are saying it, it may last a second or even less. And then you may catch something because something comes out, some signal comes out. Or then if, if you have a big budget, then we can come with some neuroscientific tools and modalities and dive into their brains to do that without hurting them. You get your client back. Very, very clean and efficient. Still running.
- [11:46]
A
No clients were harmed.
- [11:49]
B
We don't open the brain buckets.
- [11:52]
A
Okay, well, and this is very, very important, I think, for a lot of people in D2C, or just people in general, if you're trying to find out something about someone, the best thing you could do is just ask more questions, get deeper. And we, we have a little bit of frameworks in D2C around this where we just keep asking why? Right? Well, I want to lose weight. Well, why? Because of xyz. Well, why do you want that? And then you answer again, and then, why do you want that? And you keep just asking why, why, why, why, why? Until you get to the core of what they're actually needing. But that's difficult to do on a broad scale. Large, large scale. Like for E commerce, when you ask.
- [12:27]
B
Questions, you have to make sure that your questions are not driving the answer you want. Because marketing people do that a lot, all the time. Like, would you prefer a blue or red? I use that example very often in my training is do you prefer a blue or red pencil? And that's not the question because maybe because times are hard. I want to be creative. I want a paintbrush.
- [12:51]
A
Yes.
- [12:51]
B
But you asking me, do you want blue? Red? I will tell you blue because I like blue. You can see my glasses. I like blue. So you will say, okay, he wants a blue pencil. We're going now to produce blue pencils. And they don't sell. And you don't understand because your. Your marketing research told you they want a blue pencil. In fact, they don't want the blue pencil. They want a paintbrush.
- [13:11]
A
They want a paintbrush. Yes. Okay, so digging deeper into this concept of, like, finding out what people want, are there core things that you have seen that are just blanketed? Like, every human wants this or is it just. It depends on situation.
- [13:28]
B
It really depends on the person, the role, the life of the person and so on. Of course, a guy who has kids wants to spend time with. With her or his kids.
- [13:36]
A
Yeah.
- [13:37]
B
If that person doesn't have kids, you're not going to tell them, oh, you're going to be home early tonight, because that's depressing for someone who is single, you know, but you can have more parties or whatever. So. No, that's why I tell people, you know, people in marketing, when they do it really good, really well, they define the Persona or the avatar, as I call it. You know, so it's. It's a male, it's a female. It's that it does. He or she does this in his life. So that's. That's super great. When you do it nicely, it's super well done. But then you still need to go one step deeper, which is inside the brain.
- [14:12]
A
Yep. I would agree 100%. So one step deeper inside the brain. What. What have you found in there? Some people are very terrified. They're like, I don't want to go deeper than just surface level. Like, I get this comment all the time, which is like, sarah, this is too much like, in marketing, we just need to go after problem solution. People just want to solve their problems. My rebel to that is almost always okay, but there's a reason they want to solve that.
- [14:40]
B
And very often, very often, when people talk about problems, they think about business problems.
- [14:46]
A
Yes.
- [14:47]
B
Yeah. So, oh, yes, he wants to grow his business. No, he may want to prove his dad that he's best. Better than his dad ever said, you know, that you, you, you, you are useless. No, I am gonna prove to you that I can run a business. You know, or maybe I, I need to. Yeah, I need to. To be seen as the smartest guy in the room. Another example at a more personal level, that's a good example for me with no, hair, you know, is where, when you, when you sell some hair shampoo, it's not about saying, oh, you will have some soft hair, you know, you will look great. No, you will become the one person that everyone looks at at the next party.
- [15:28]
A
Yes.
- [15:28]
B
It's completely different. It has nothing to do with the shampoo. It's all about me as a person. So that's the whole thing, you know, you have to go at, as you say, you have to dive to the human level. You have to pay attention to the human person in front of you and not about the business. Again this week, someone told me, But Thomas, we're not saying to people, we're saying to businesses. No, a business is a sheet of paper on which there is a name and it's a legal thing. It doesn't make. A sheet of paper doesn't make decisions. The people inside that organization are decision makers and those are the ones you need to reach and talk to them. So if you don't help them to make them great, they don't care about you 100%.
- [16:15]
A
So, okay, so we've talked a little bit about like going deeper, identifying some of these, like more subconscious things that people need in order for the brain to move forward. How do people train themselves to see this? Because this is an issue that I currently have, which is like Sarah can see it. I can go and, and look at customers and say she doesn't want to just lose weight with this supplement. She actually just wants to feel like she did in her 20s, which is valuable, appealing, like, you know, a good self love for herself. Like she has a lot of feelings that she's trying to solve. She wants the feeling, she doesn't want the supplement. I can see it. I've struggled to get other people. That lamp is amazing. I struggled to get like a good sense of how to teach people this. So are you teaching like teams how to do that or like what's your, I guess, methodology behind that?
- [17:01]
B
Yeah, well, first I explain to people how the whole thing works and I show them with their own brain how it works. So once they get it, they see it. Then we can dive deeper. Then we do the whole exercise about defining who the optimal client is, the one who needs you now. And that's only 2% of your market, by the way. So stop running after the 60% who will never buy from you. Focus on the two persons who need you. That's already a lot of people. And then the whole thing is to get people to understand that they are talking to human beings. And that they need to make that 100, 180 degrees switch. Yeah. Stop thinking about themselves, about their products and so on. It's really about that. It's. Try to be the person in front of you, you know, try to be that person. And it's very difficult because every business owner, every cxo, every salesperson, marketing person is convinced, I know what they want. Yeah, I know. It's about. It's all about. That's why our product has so many features. Again, they don't give a. Sorry for my French about. About your, your product, you know, Stop.
- [18:12]
A
Yeah.
- [18:13]
B
I mean, you can see it in some companies, you know, they may be buying from one specific person and when you switch that person, you move them from maybe account manager to a major, big account manager, suddenly they are no more buying. It's the same product, it's the same company, it's the same features.
- [18:33]
A
It's just a different person.
- [18:34]
B
The person, the human being in front of them changed. And that sound build or kill a business. So when you, when you start to understand that, you see that again, your features have nothing to do with it.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I, I have so many, like, my brain is just exploding. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think this is 100% true. I also think the easiest way to train yourself to do this is to continuously ask opposite questions. Instead of, how do we get them to buy, we need to ask the question of, like, what will get them to come over here? Right. Just, just to come closer to us in general. Instead of, like, how do I get them to see that we're the best? We flip it to, like, what will resonate deeply with them. With them. With them. Like, we get. We have to keep pushing it out instead of pulling it inward because it'll flip it upside down in your head and it'll be a lot easier to sell that way. I think some of the best salespeople on earth have figured this out, that they tailor their sales stuff depending on who they're talking to. They switch their language again and again and again. Whereas big giant corporations, brands, anybody that's trying to sell product or service tends to have one message that they just send out to everybody.
- [19:47]
B
Yeah.
- [19:47]
A
And they don't.
- [19:47]
B
Yeah.
- [19:48]
A
Very well. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:50]
B
So I said to people, you know, science didn't reinvent the way to sell and so on, because as I said, there are some fantastic people who know how to, who are amazing when they're selling. The advantage is now we know scientifically why they are so good.
- [20:05]
A
Yes.
- [20:06]
B
So we can give them additional tools so they get even better.
- [20:11]
A
Even better.
- [20:11]
B
And thanks to those tools, you can take a com. A total idiot to an average level, you know?
- [20:17]
A
Yeah.
- [20:18]
B
Someone who, who has never sold, who is scared of selling. You can get them to, to. To be.
- [20:23]
A
Yeah.
- [20:24]
B
To start to persuade, you know, and you can use it in your private life. You can use it everywhere. I mean, I was at the airport a few days back, you know, and I have a natural tendency to like people. I like to engage with people. And there was a guy who is the whole day, you know, driving you through the queue so that you get through the safety check and so on. And there was a sign, and I asked him, what's that sign about? What does that sign say? What's that acronym? So I don't know. So that is a good question. So I don't know. And then he comes to me and say, come here. There is a fast track lane. You can.
- [20:59]
A
One tiny connection. Right. Like it didn't take much.
- [21:02]
B
And then there was the lady from, from the safety check. And so I asked him what it means and he was there. So he learned something, I learned something. And she was happy too. So she was super nice with me just because I paid attention as at the human level. Yeah.
- [21:16]
A
Yeah.
- [21:17]
B
I'm a super guy.
- [21:19]
A
So it's interesting how much of this comes back to like our childhood need to be seen. That's like a hundred percent of what we do all day, every day is just. We're trying so hard to just be seen and valued. Because tribalism is a thing in the brain. Like, we really, really need to be accepted by the tribe. Otherwise we're left out by ourselves in the cold. And then you die. Like it makes sense.
- [21:40]
B
Yeah. We are tribal species. We cannot leave alone, you know, and that's why social networks are working so well. And that's why, I mean, I. When I teach my, my system to people, there is the ethical persuasion formula, which has four parameters that you need to maximize, and one of them is a tribe. If you don't have a tribe, you will stay to your 5 to 20% chance of selling with the tribe, you move up to the 70% chance of selling. And that's why you need an email list. That's why you need followers, because those people belong to your tribe. But when you are the leader of a tribe and it comes back to that primal brain which stopped evolving 100,000, 50,000 years ago. So we're still in the cave age up there.
- [22:27]
A
Yeah.
- [22:27]
B
Right. So the boss of the tribe the leader was protecting, was nurturing, was there to listen to, etc. That's what you have to do nowadays. The brains in front of you who want to be part of your tribe still wants that.
- [22:42]
A
Yes. Yeah. Oh, oh, I can't, I can't get enough of this stuff. Okay, do you have like one simple tip that's like, if I was going to teach somebody this knowledge, whether it's a CEO, a team, your marketing, like your creative, whoever it is, what's like the one thing that's like, let's, we're gonna just focus on this as something.
- [23:01]
B
There's the one thing. It's the most complex one ever. It's the one that works best.
- [23:06]
A
Take it.
- [23:07]
B
Use what I call the you language.
- [23:10]
A
Okay, interesting.
- [23:12]
B
Instead of saying, I'm going to tell you no, you are going to learn about. Oh, try to do that. Try to do that with your emails. Try to write when the next emails you are writing. Use the U language. You are normal to rush to talk about yourself, your products, your services, whatever. Using the U language. And you will see.
- [23:31]
A
I don't even do this. Okay.
- [23:35]
B
Now at once in a workshop, I asked people to, as an exercise, they had to rewrite one of the emails using the U language. And there is that gentleman. He takes his pencil, his sheet of paper, and he writes it. We correct it a bit because there was some I in the middle, you know, so he corrects it and then he stands in front of the group, holds his sheet of paper in front of his eyes and starts by, I am going to.
- [24:00]
A
No. Were you like, sir, we just did this.
- [24:04]
B
Just, just read you what you wrote for sake, you know, please, for the.
- [24:10]
A
Love of God, just read what you wrote yet. Oh, man, I did this.
- [24:14]
B
It's terrible. It's extremely difficult. And on the phone it's worse because you have not. The same writing implies that your rational brain is, is running. So it slows down the process because rational brain is way slower than the primal brain. So you have time to, oh, no, I'm missing a U here, you know? But when you're talking at one stage, I, I, I, I, I is going to come out.
- [24:36]
A
Whoa.
- [24:37]
B
So use the universe. Try it.
- [24:40]
A
I feel super bad now. I'm like, almost all of my content is like, I found this. I was doing this. Here's what happened to me. Which again, very normal. It's just like, yeah.
- [24:49]
B
And the brain in front of you goes, I'm happy for you, but I don't care.
- [24:53]
A
Yeah, okay, now I'm gonna, I'M gonna test it all next week. I'm gonna post all my content's gonna be you content and I'm gonna see.
- [25:03]
B
Do some testing. I mean, that's why, that's why my model is called make me great. That's what your clients are shouting to you subconsciously that they are shouting, make me great. Make me feel great. You know?
- [25:16]
A
Yes, yes, yes. Okay, we're at 25 minutes. Where can people find you? Because you, you work with large scale teams and small scale teams. Anybody understand more about the subconscious needs of their customers and put those tactics in place to make it easier for our team to actually focus out and not focus in. So where can people find you if they want to follow, if they want to work with you?
- [25:37]
B
Well, they can get me through my website, which is happy-brains.com and they can find me on LinkedIn. So there were a few Thomas Troutman, but I'm the only one called the brain guy. Perfect.
- [25:50]
A
That's perfect. I could talk about this stuff all day long. We will definitely have you back because now I need to know more of these, like little tactics. Like the tactics. Because I'm just like, oh, that's so obvious and I didn't notice it. So thank you. I appreciate you having keep at least coming on the show today and chatting with us. Next time I'm going to need. Yeah, we're going to need to dive more in this because now I've got all these questions, but I appreciate you coming on.
- [26:17]
B
Brain Driven Brands is part of the Learn and Laugh series on the Quickfire podcast network and is presented by Tether Insights. For more information go to tetherinsights IO.