Lesson 2 | Dangers to Avoid & Attributes of a Successful Bridge Talk™ (6:02 minutes)
Dangers to avoid and Attributes of a successful Bridge Talk™
Okay, so let's talk about the Bridge Talk and some of the dangers that are there, and they are five dangers that are things that we need to avoid, they're like potholes in the road of relationship. So, let's look at them quickly here, they're simple, but they're critical.
So, the first is permission. If you get into a conversation where you're trying to sell, or provide all kinds of information and you haven't received permission yet, it's not gonna be well received. People aren't looking for it, and as we said earlier, they were probably just being polite when they asked, so they really weren't asking for this. However, when they do give you that permission it all changes.
The second thing is stereotypes. We wanna avoid stereotypes. If you think about the way the brain works, the brain is almost like - or our memory is like - a series of coat hooks that have a little label under each one. So, I receive a coat and I'm about to put it on the coat hook, my brain is, and it needs to put a label there and it can only have one label. And so, you have to decide what is that label gonna be? And if you say, "I'm a financial advisor," they go, "Oh, I know what that is, I've got a stock broker." Well, that's not the same as a financial advisor. Or say I sell insurance so they're, "Oh, I know about insurance people," and they go to whatever historical reference point they have. So, we wanna avoid stereotypes because they're gonna put you in a bucket you don't belong in.
The third is, we don't wanna be gimmicky, we don't wanna trap them, we don't want to force them into, okay, I'll bite. I'll answer your question. I'll engage in your trick dialogue, or anything like that. We're not trying to trick them, we're not trying to sound gimmicky, you're a professional, you're an expert, and we want them to see you that way.
The fourth one may sound a little obvious when I say it, but it's really important. It is being irrelevant to them is a problem. So, for example, if you go into...somebody says, "What do you do?" and you go into a deep technical explanation, in that moment you may become immediately irrelevant. One, because they may not know what you're talking about, they may not have the dialogue, they may not have the vocabulary, and they may not have the interest, you're irrelevant. And so, we wanna ... we talked about extraordinary invisibility before and you go into the invisible pile. We wanna pull you up into the extraordinary pile, so you're seen as extraordinary.
And the fifth danger is if you start selling. This is not the time to sell. This is opening the relationship, not closing a deal, you don't even know anything about them, how can you sell them something? It's like we wanna slow it down a little bit, and instead of the attention being on us, and talking about what we want to, and who we are, and our clever language, and why we're important to you, and here's what you should get. What we wanna do, is we wanna make the conversation about them, but not in any sort of evasive way, we wanna do it in a way that's thoughtful.
So, there are five key attributes of a successful Bridge Talk, so let's talk about what they are. The first ones called effective ambiguity and I was a little confused when I first heard this phrase, it was from my partner Todd. And he talks about effective ambiguity, it's like ambiguity is not effective you wanna be clear. Actually, it makes a lot of sense. If things are a little bit ambiguous, so effectively ambiguous, it can really work for you. And this helps us avoid stereotypes and putting ourselves into a bucket right away. We wanna create a category of discussion, but without exactly narrowing down exactly where you are because you're trying to create some dialogues of interactions. So, effective ambiguity. Ineffective ambiguity is, I help people. Oh, that's great, thank you. It doesn't tell them anything. But some effective ambiguity, well I think you'll see what that looks like in just a moment.
The second is, we're gonna avoid stereotypes. Do not give your title, you're not gonna talk about you're a financial services advisor, we're not gonna say I'm an insurance person or investment person. We're gonna stay away from stereotypes because the reference point that they have is probably flawed, not always, but probably.
The third is, it should be conversational, so whatever it is you're gonna be saying next, it needs to sound conversational. And there's a test for it, and you wanna test whether or not, can I say it in these three environments? Could I say this in a restaurant or a pub? Somebody looks over to you and says, "So, what do you do?" And you say, "Oh, I do this." Right? So, can you do it there?
The second is, could you answer it in some sort of house of worship. You're sitting there and somebody says, "By the way, what do you do?" You say, "I do this." And they go, "Oh, okay, good." So, could you do it there?
And then third is, could you do it from a stage? Could you step up onto a stage with 1,000 people in front of you, and use the exact same words, with that group as well? If you can handle all three of those, you know you've got it. If you're using words like, develop proprietary solutions to enhance peoples opportunities for greater, whatever, is like, that ain't conversational, it's marketing. And frankly, if people talk to us, like a lot of advertisers and marketers talk to us, we'd wanna punch them in the nose. It's like, you wanna have it in real language, words that you would use day in and day out. You don't have to sound clever here, you have to sound clear.
The fourth thing it should do is create permission. And if they haven't said, "Tell me more," or "What do you mean by that?" at the end, you don't have permission, but structured well, it does.
And the fifth one is, it's about creating interest not education. You're not trying to teach them the industry, teach them your work, teach them a specific domain of discipline that you have, you simply wanna create some interest. Because our goal is to answer Decision 1, and that's agree to meet. Our goal at the end of this, is that they do have some interest, and they say, "Well, tell me more," and we talk a little bit more. And if they're still interested, it's like, "Why don't you come back to the office?" or "Why don't we line up a time to sit down?" And now we have agreed to meet, we get to Decision 1.
So, where we are gonna go to next is the actual structure of the Bridge Talk, what it looks like. But remember the five key attributes of a successful Bridge Talk: effective ambiguity, no stereotypes, conversational, create permission, and it's interest, not education.