--:-- Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today, we have another completely gangster episode, and it is with Josh Braun.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now, I first came in contact with Josh Braun's work on LinkedIn. I don't know how I ran into him on LinkedIn, but I did, and I was completely taken by his approach to sales. Now, Josh is a sales coach. He has a lot of videos. He puts stuff on LinkedIn all the time, and you're going to hear me say this during the episode. He's an absolute must follow on LinkedIn. It's J-O-S-H-B-R-A-U-N. Just search for Josh Braun. Look for a guy who talks about sales. You're going to find him.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This episode is tremendous. We get hyper tactical on cold email. Now he does talk about cold calling and some of the other ways that you can prospect, but we didn't get into that so much until the very, very end. I really wanted to focus on cold emailing because one, it's something I do a lot of and I get mixed results. Sometimes I feel dialed in, sometimes I'm not. Josh takes us there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: He has a guide that I bought. It's like 150 bucks. It is worth every penny. It's the badass B2B growth guide, and it gives you scripts for cold calling, scripts for cold outreach, examples, case studies, so much stuff. It's amazing. I mean, this isn't like an affiliate deal or anything. I just think you guys would benefit from getting it, and you can get out all his stuff at joshbraun.com. J-O-S-H-B-R-A-U-N.com. You're going to love this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, huge shout out to today's sponsor, AgencyVA. AgencyVA.com. If you need a VA, if you're looking for horsepower in your business, if you're looking to take your business up a level, if you want to take what you're doing, the processes and procedures that you have in your agency, and put someone into those who can just rocket ship you forward, who can provide that back-end horsepower for your agency that you're looking for, there is no better solution for it than agency VA.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And it's not just because Wes and Ben are great guys. It's not just because I use them and will give you just firsthand advice. You know, I pay them money every month and I'm very happy with their service. If anything, I'm dialing down or doubling down more into the service. But what I want to get out here, guys, is agency VA is the solution for you. If you're looking for a virtual assistant and here's the kicker, They lead the industry in the security technology that VAs work through so that they can work on your systems through a secure platform. That's next level stuff. It should give you the peace of mind that you don't have your information, your data just slung all over the internet. And plus they vet all of their VAs. These are top-notch people who want to do good work and you just can't go wrong with agency VA. So agencyva.com, agencyva.com. Go get yourself some horsepower. Kick it up a notch. That's a chef thing, I think.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. This has been too long. Let's get on to Josh. You're going to love this episode. Here we go. What's going on, man?
--:-- Josh Braun: Hey, Ryan. How's it going?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm good. I'm good. I appreciate you taking some time and coming on the show.
--:-- Josh Braun: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I don't know how closely you follow. I know you get a couple hundred likes on your posts, but I cyber stalked the shit out of you on LinkedIn. So I don't know how creepy that is to hear, but I do. And I mean that in the most positive and non-creepy way, obviously.
--:-- Josh Braun: Was that you outside my house last night? Were you like looking?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, I wish. That wasn't you. All right. It's seven degrees and snowy out there. So I wish I was down south. Right? You live in Florida or something? You live someplace down south.
--:-- Josh Braun: Yeah. Where are you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Albany, New York, upstate New York.
--:-- Josh Braun: How's it going, man, there?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's getting better slowly, very, very slowly. But you go down to the city. So I'm about two and a half hours north of the city. The city is a wasteland. Unfortunately, it is as bad as a lot of the articles you've read. I know there's articles that are like, "Oh, you know, we're gritty and all this." And I get that. I get why people want to feel that way. But versus New York a year and a half ago, it's not even close to the same. I mean, you can walk through Times Square. You're one of five people.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I mean, it's brutal. Because our governor changes the rules constantly. So you can't really leave the state. If you leave the state, you're taking a chance. And when you come back, you can't do anything for 14 days, 10, 14 days. So my wife and I took our kids down there about three months ago, just to get out of here, just to see someplace else. And we love the city. We used to live there and man, it was weird. It just was weird, dude.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You know how you've obviously been in New York City before?
--:-- Josh Braun: Sure. Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So you know how, whether it's getting out of the taxi from the airport or coming up from the subway or however you get there, that moment where you hit the sidewalk, I don't care how many times you've been there, something happens. This little bit of electricity just zaps through your body. You just, I didn't get it. First time in my entire life. And I've lived two hours away from the city my entire life, basically. First time I ever, ever didn't feel that zap. And it was weird. And the thing is, you've got people living there that are paying New York City money, but they're not able to experience the New York City.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have a good real estate agent friend that's in Florida. There's a lot of people just getting out of there. Which I guess if you have money and you have time, I would imagine it'll work itself out eventually.
--:-- Josh Braun: I would think. Like four or five years from now I would think. Or maybe it's never the same. I don't know. It's hard. This was supposed to be like, now I'm hearing like maybe it won't be this year, maybe it'll be next year. It keeps getting extended.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: New York City needs a new mayor. That's the problem. As long as de Blasio is their mayor, they're in trouble because he has a very specific view on what should be done. And it is to the absolute detriment of all the humans who are living there.
--:-- Josh Braun: Do you think it's because he's not really in it? Like it's easy to sit from an ivory tower and do stuff when it really doesn't affect you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's the thing. I always had a problem with people again, not to be political, but I can't believe they're not going to keep their businesses open. And I'm like, yeah, because you don't have to feed your family because you don't have a business, man. You got a corporate job sitting behind Zoom. You can't relate.
--:-- Josh Braun: Do you think it's because he can't relate?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A hundred percent. I think he is a true liberal elite in the purest sense. I think he does sit on the 42nd floor in his mind. And technically the mayor's office isn't that high, but I think he sits above the clouds and he looks down and he goes, "You're this, this, and this, because you want to keep your business open." And the guy's going, "Wait a minute, I have two kids and a mortgage. What am I supposed to do?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The big issue we're facing now up here, and it's just really interesting stuff. Obviously, it's probably obvious which way my political views have been being a small business owner, but landlords are getting decimated because no one has to pay rent. Every political figure in New York state... The problem with our state is New York drives the state. So where I sit couldn't be more different than the city. The city is a completely different thing. If you're in Westchester County, South out through the Island, your mindset, your goals, your life, it's 180 degrees. We could be Iowa for as much as we're New York, really.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For that reason, all the rules that apply down there, yeah, I get it. Your rent is $5,000 a month and you just got canned and you have nowhere to go. I get that some mortgage or some rent relief probably makes sense. But you're paying $700 to a guy who zoned a two family in Waterville, New York. And basically the only way he pays the mortgage is if you pay your rent. What's he supposed to do? So it's such a tough situation.
--:-- Josh Braun: Yeah. So there's a lot of hard stuff going on, but I think we'll be fine. I think we're going to be all right. I think everything has a purpose and a time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. The other side of it is, man, you get a lot of amazing stories of people finding ways to pivot, to push through, to reimagine, to be creative. I do this local podcast because I own an insurance agency. Everyone who's listening is somewhere in the insurance value chain, 99%. But I have a local podcast that I do called the Capital Region Business Podcast, because Albany calls itself the Capital Region.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This guy is a pizza guy, owns five pizza shops. From 1996 until 2010, he and his family had one pizza shop and he and his entire family, including his father and mother and two brothers, all lived above the pizza shop in what would be a flat apartment. Then they opened a second location and a third location. By 2020, they have five locations and they're one of the best pizza shops here. They really are. It's called Paisan's Pizza. He's from Brooklyn. It's this great story.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Then the pandemic hits and he's losing $50,000 a week. You know what he does? He starts hawking Dave Portnoy. He sends him frozen pizzas. "Taste my pizzas." He starts this entire marketing campaign. Dave Portnoy, the guy from Barstool Sports who does the pizza tasting.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So he changes his entire business because he'll go take, he does a one bite challenge. He takes one bite of your pie. If he likes it, he gives it a score. So this guy, his name's Frank Scavio, he's dying, right? He's watching his business die because no one... March here was literally the zombie apocalypse. You didn't even get your car. You were triple masked in the car or someone was pulling you over.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So he sends Dave Portnoy these frozen pizzas and his campaign on social. This eventually gets to what you do for a living, but this is just amazing stuff. He sends Dave Portnoy this frozen pizza and his entire campaign wasn't, "Hey man, will you try my pizzas?" It was, "I can't wait till you try my pizzas." He just assumed the sale from the get-go. His entire campaign was, "Get ready for Dave to try my pizza." It was as if it was a foregone conclusion and it was just when was he going to release it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sure as shit, Dave tries the pizzas, gives him a 7.8, which is a pretty good score for him, changes the course of his entire business. Now he does as much in frozen pizza sales nationwide as he did in his five pizza locations before.
--:-- Josh Braun: Maybe I should try this pizza. What's the name of it?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Paisan's Pizza. You can order it online. Paisan's Pizza from New York.
--:-- Josh Braun: All right. I'm going to try that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It's good. I've never had it frozen because I can get it hot. But that story to me is a pandemic story on the other side that you love to hear.
--:-- Josh Braun: Such a great story.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Because you have a lot of people that would not think that they kind of go into this downward spiral.
--:-- Josh Braun: No. Because how do you even know how to freeze a pizza and ship it? That's a whole different set of skills. I would imagine if you've never done that before, it's not like you just put a cook... There's a lot that goes into that probably.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And that was the thing. He had literally... I don't want to tell this entire story. Anyone who actually cares about this story can go listen to the other podcast. But it's just funny. It is very interesting and intriguing to me that, and this kind of takes us into why I want to talk to you, but it's intriguing to me that some people see things like the pandemic and they turtle up. "The world's out to get me. I lost my job. It's tough. I'm stuck home." All these things. And I think probably all of us dealt with those feelings to a certain extent. And then there are other people who are like, "Fuck it. I'm going to find a new way to do this. Let's try this. Maybe this'll work. Let's push the chips in here."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I had another guy on whose restaurant went under by April. Finished. 56 years that restaurant had existed in Albany. By the end of April, it does not exist anymore. He now has one of the top 10 hottest condiment brands in the entire country. Hot Crispy Oil. It is delicious. But this dude just, he's like, "I'm out of business. What am I going to do? I'm going to start a condiment business." Hot Crispy Oil, which actually is amazing. Check it out.
--:-- Josh Braun: Pizza and crispy oil. All right. I got two things out of this podcast already. If you put the crispy oil on the pizza, you will drastically increase your cholesterol, but it is also delicious. All right, I'll give it a try. What the hell?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Okay. So let's actually talk about you. I apologize for all that because I can obviously go on tangents. So to lay the foundation, what ultimately brought you to me and everyone that's listening... You've heard me mention some of Josh's stuff before. I found you because I went from being an insurance agent for eight years. I then was in a situation where there was a ceiling, so I took a job as a chief marketing officer for an insurance technology company for five years. Fortunately, I had a family member that got sick. I was forced to move, to not travel for that job anymore. I had to move back from Albany. I lived here the whole time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In that transition, I decided to take everything I had learned, both as a salesman and as a marketing slash technologist, and start my own insurance agency, which forced me back into a heavy retail sales role. So I was kind of relearning skills that I had just gone dormant from the last few years. And I struggle with call reluctance. I have to get myself pumped up. I'm getting better, absolutely getting better. But my natural way, I'm just not one of those guys who goes, "Oh, here's a prospect. Okay." I've had to work through it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm a member of your Badass B2B thing, which is freaking awesome. We're going to plug the shit out of that at the end. You guys, it's like ridiculous value. I use it all the time. You'd be silly not to get it. That's not just a heavy plug on the show. I actually am in there all the time looking at it. It's a tremendous course and the value is ridiculous. But I got into that, and then that got me more into your stuff. Just your way of repositioning how we speak to our clients is to me the way. And that's my intro. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
--:-- Josh Braun: I would like to play that every morning. If you could send that to me as a wave file, that would be great. I'll just send it as my alarm clock and it'd be a great positive affirmation for the morning. Makes me feel really good. Love getting a compliment every once in a while.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you deal with... I guess give everyone the broader background, just as much as you want to go. It can be two minutes, it can be 10 minutes, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just kind of set the stage. And then I have a bunch of places I'd like to go with you.
--:-- Josh Braun: Yeah. So salespeople typically will work with me when they're sending lots of cold emails, but they're getting little to no responses, or they feel like the phone is a cactus, or they are picking up the phone and they're hearing "I'm not interested" far too many times. What I help them do is to be a red X in a sea of white circle sales messages so that they can start more conversations with people they want to get in front of, but in a way that actually feels good on the soul and doesn't make prospects feel sold or manipulated.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that. That red X thing, when you started talking about that, I was like, that's freaking brilliant. It just makes so much sense. So you talk about Chris Voss a lot. You talk about your approach to cold email. And I use a lot of cold email. I would say very mixed results. Sometimes I feel like I'm dialed in. Other times, it feels like you're shouting into the Grand Canyon and wondering why no one's shouting back. Where do you think, just as a starting point, a salesman, salesperson, saleswoman, whatever comes to you, and they're struggling with cold email, struggling to make connections or struggling to connect. What is usually the first thing that you see them doing? What's one of the most glaring things like, man, nine times out of 10, they're doing this and it's a big obstacle right at the beginning?
--:-- Josh Braun: Yeah. So much like building a house, there's some foundation that has to be built before you actually start to build it and paint it. Because it's so easy to step on the gas and send emails, and it's fun, people have a tendency to want to paint the house before there's a good foundation. The biggest mistake that I see people make, and it's no fault of their own, is that they've never done the job of the person that they're reaching out to. And so oftentimes they're speaking a completely different language.
--:-- Josh Braun: By way of example, if you're using words like streamline, optimize, 360-degree view, increase conversion rates, these are all language and phraseology that everyone uses. And because everyone uses it, you're a white circle. So step one in this process is to understand at a very deep and crispy level what I call the "before version" of the infomercial, which has nothing to do with your product.
--:-- Josh Braun: You can imagine there's somebody in the kitchen and they're trying to make french fries for a family of five with a knife. They've got all their rustic potatoes and they're slicing them into half-inch pieces. They blanch them, they put oil on them, they put them in the oven. They put them on the table, but because some are crispy and some are burnt, because they were slightly different shapes and sizes, half of them end up in a garbage can. Doesn't make you feel really good. On top of that, you have to spend two hours cleaning up the kitchen. And on occasion, you nick your finger with a knife.
--:-- Josh Braun: When I was telling you that story, you probably visually saw it in your head. You have to visually see that same exact thing when you are reaching out to prospects. If you can't see that movie clearly, meaning you can't observe it... I can't observe "streamline." I can't observe "optimize." I have to see it. It has to be specific. They're slicing the potatoes into half-inch pieces. And it has to be language that your customer would actually say over coffee.
--:-- Josh Braun: Usually when I give people this test and I tell them to give me the black and white infomercial, give me the before version, they start launching into "what we do is we help people optimize the supply chain." Your product doesn't have any value until you understand the problem. So the question becomes, how do I get closer to my customers to understand their specific black and white version? The best way to do that is to actually interview customers that recently bought within the last 35 to 40 days using an approach called "Jobs to Be Done." It's an interview technique, the only one that I know, that helps you understand the events and circumstances that led people to start to struggle and eventually start shopping.
--:-- Josh Braun: Nobody wakes up one day and just buys a product. They will try to get by the best way they know how to get by because of habit and anxiety. It's hard to glean that information a lot of times from marketing materials because there's a spin to it. When you're lifting the information from marketing materials and the marketing material says "streamline," that language makes it into your emails. And that's what contributes to you being a white circle.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But Josh, insurance is a non-visual, sophisticated product that is very highly technical. So how can I boil this down into words that my clients could actually use? You just don't understand. Our industry is different.
--:-- Josh Braun: This has nothing to do with your product. People don't buy a product. They buy what the product allows them to do better. Your product is no different than any other product. People buy any product because they want to move away from something they don't want, or they want to move towards something they do want. They want to make progress. So you have to call your customers that switched. They were not doing nothing before they called you. They were getting the job done the best way they knew how with their current solution. And then all of a sudden, something wasn't working anymore. Something changed in their environment. They were not able to solve the problem the same way. They were educated on something that was different or new. And it caused them to say, "Hmm, I can't make progress anymore. I better switch."
--:-- Josh Braun: I want to know how the customer describes that struggle because they'll give you the language that you can use in cold calls and in cold emails. It doesn't matter what product you sell because it has nothing to do with your product. We're not talking about the color version of the infomercial yet. We're talking about getting to know the problem at a very deep, crispy, specific level. A lot of people skip this step because it's not as much fun as sending out 10 emails.
--:-- Josh Braun: There's also an opportunity when you understand your audience really crispy, you can be a red X. When copywriters like myself get together in a group, we rarely talk about copywriting techniques. We mostly talk about how do we get to know the audience better? What techniques can we use? We go on sites like G2 Crowd, where they review software. How do customers describe the before state? Go on Amazon. How are they describing when they buy these books? How do they describe what they liked about the book? What was missing?
--:-- Josh Braun: Customer interviews are great. Testimonial videos are great. Getting closer to your customer, if there's listeners out there, I highly recommend interviewing five or six customers using Jobs to Be Done and getting that language because you've probably never been in their position before. You don't have to make up the language to explain it. Your customers will. They'll give you that language if you interview them. And then you will take that language and you'll convert it using some copywriting techniques into cold emails and cold call scripts and voicemails.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the largest tactical takeaways that I've gotten from your work and the training is brevity and how powerful mixing what you just described is. Using your prospect's or client's target market words, their language, problems that they actually experience, with brevity. Obviously using fewer words is not my specialty, if that's not really obvious by this interview already. So working on dialing back.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Instead of a seven-sentence cold email describing everything you do and how amazing you are... I've seen you share some stuff on LinkedIn and guys, Josh is an absolute must follow on LinkedIn. One sentence, one sentence and a simple question. Very counterintuitive to how a lot of people use an introductory email. What is the power of brevity? Why aren't they missing what I really do? Aren't I missing an opportunity to explain myself? Why go shorter? What's the power in that?
--:-- Josh Braun: Well, let's go back to a couple of things that you said because there were some big red flags. A lot of people make this mistake because you're so excited about what you do. "Let me tell people how awesome I am. Let me tell you how great my product is." Nobody cares about how great and awesome your product is. They want to be more awesome. Nobody cares about what your product does. They care about what your product can do for them. Those two things might sound very similar, but they are two completely different approaches.
--:-- Josh Braun: I don't buy braces. What do I buy? Better teeth. Why do I want better teeth? What do better teeth allow me to do that I can't do now? Look better on camera. I want straight teeth so I want the confidence that comes from having straight teeth. I don't buy a bike. I buy the wind in my face, to use an example that I do when I teach.
--:-- Josh Braun: I don't know if you remember The Legend of Zelda. It's a video game back in the 80s. There was a point in the game where the character Zelda... the purpose of the game was to rescue a princess. He walked into a cave and there was an old man in the cave that sold him a sword for five rupees. Luke did not buy the sword because it was made of steel and because it shot energy beams. He bought the sword so that he could rescue the princess faster. So people don't buy swords. They buy what the sword allows them to do better.
--:-- Josh Braun: In your copy, one of the first copywriting principles is: are you talking about swords or superpowers? That's principle number one. Make sure the language you're using is superpower language. What is it that this thing can do for me? The litmus test is: is this what I do, or what it allows someone to do?
--:-- Josh Braun: So it's not about your product and its features. With regards to brevity, we'll talk about that now. You've probably been in this situation where you've opened up your email and you saw a big email long. And you probably, if you're like I am, said, "I'll put that one aside for now." Because of the calories you have to burn to read it, even though it might be a great email, it's just the way it looks.
--:-- Josh Braun: We are used to TikTok, short form videos, 30 seconds, one minute. We are used to SMS messages. We are used to Facebook messages. We are used to texting. And yet when we go to work, we see things that are four or five, six paragraphs sometimes from a salesperson that we don't know that has commission breath. We're already starting at a deficit because salespeople are biased. They have a vested interest.
--:-- Josh Braun: So the approach that I teach is very much based on emails that look like tweets. They are, as you said, three or four sentences, five at the most, written in a very specific way that will give you the best chance of being able to start a conversation with a prospect. But you can't skip step one, which we talked about at the beginning on the podcast.
--:-- [Host interjects with a message to listeners]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment. If you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, etc. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you haven't subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- [Discussion resumes]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So as you're talking, I sent five cold emails this morning. As you're talking, I'm walking through my sentences and I'm saying to myself, I definitely... I feel like I have... well, I know I have work to do. I would have said that before we got on the phone, but just simply by my contact rate. But I definitely am still selling swords a little bit. Still selling swords.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that's interesting. So one of the things... let me ask you this. This might, and I apologize if we're weaving in and out of tactical and theoretical, and if there's any places you want to go or don't want to go, just let me know. So one thing that I started doing to try to be a red X was keeping the text very short, but then I embed a Loom video. A personalized Loom video, not a standardized one, but I'm speaking directly to them. I try to keep it under 90 seconds. If I can get it even under a minute, that's great. Really just as a way to introduce myself. And Loom embeds the image of me so they can kind of see the picture. And I have been surprised at how few people have watched the video. So now I will say I probably sent 20 of these and two have watched 10%.
--:-- Josh Braun: I'm not surprised at all.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You are?
--:-- Josh Braun: Okay. No, because nobody cares about introducing. Like, I don't want to know who you are. You say, "I want to introduce myself." Well, that's a very selfish reason to send someone a video. Your prospect doesn't want a relationship with you and they certainly don't want to be introduced to you.
--:-- Josh Braun: Your prospect only cares about two things. They don't care about you or your product. They don't want a relationship with you. They want to move away from something that they don't want, that can hurt them, that they may or may not know about. Or they want to move towards something they desire. Everybody that you reach out to is getting the job done today. But what they might not know is what they are doing that can hurt them or cost them a lot of money if they stay put. Those things get attention.
--:-- Josh Braun: And I'll give you an example, just to make this a little more specific.
--:-- Josh Braun: Okay, I'll give you a couple of real life examples. A few years ago, I was in the mall with my wife. I did not need anything. I was merely killing time and walked into a store called Fit to Run. If the store associate had said to me, "What brings you in today?" What do you think I would have said?
--:-- Josh Braun: No, I'm good. If she said, "Can I help you?" What do you think I would have said?
--:-- Josh Braun: If she wanted to introduce herself to me, do you think I would have been interested? You would have put your headphones back in. Probably. But she didn't do any of those things. She looked down at my sneakers. She said, "Are you a runner?" I said, "Yes." She said, "What distance?" I said, "Marathon." She said, "Have you ever had a running gait test?" I said, "What's that?" Moments later, I'm on a treadmill. I have video of this. She stops the frame and she says, "Notice how your feet are pronated. And did you know that if you run in sneakers that are not made for pronated feet, you can get injured on long distance runs? And if you'd like, we could take a look at your sneakers to see if they're made for pronated feet." And five minutes later, I'm spending $90 on insoles.
--:-- Josh Braun: What's the moral of that story? She sold saving the princess, not sneakers. There's another moral. Did I have a problem when I walked in there?
--:-- Josh Braun: What did she do? She showed it to you. Right. That's the superpower. The superpower is you need to shine a light on a problem that people don't know about because every one of your prospects is running in their own sneakers today. I call these illumination questions.
--:-- Josh Braun: Let me burn it in and I'll give you another example. I love to wash my car on the weekends. I buy my car wash supplies from this place called Adams Car Wash Supplies. I wash it with a bucket, sponge, soap, just like a normal person would. I get an email from Adams and there's a sentence in there that says this: "Josh, what are you doing to ensure your car wash mitt doesn't scratch your car?" I'm like, "What?"
--:-- Josh Braun: It turns out that if you're using a normal bucket with soap and water, if you dip your sponge into the water and there's dirt in the water and you have a dark colored car like I do, you can get swirl marks on the hood. And if you're a car nut like me, that sucks because I have to take it to the body shop and get that buffed out. It's $800. On top of that, if I ever get rid of the car, they're going to run a paint thickness meter on it. And I'm going to lose value on the car because they can see it was painted.
--:-- Josh Braun: And Adams sells a new kind of bucket. It's got a grate on the bottom of it. And you rub your sponge on the grate, the dirt settles to the bottom of the bucket and off your car. And I bought the bucket. Same exact moral of the story. They shined a light on a problem I didn't know I had. That can hurt me.
--:-- Josh Braun: Every one of your prospects is using a bucket to wash their car today. Your value proposition doesn't matter. If you're saying "we help you wash your car better," I'm already washing my car. I don't care. What is it that's meaningfully different about what you're selling that can help me be more awesome or can help me move away or get less hurt from something that's around the corner? You have to start with that, not a Loom video. Those are delivery mechanisms. You're already painting the house. You got to clarify the message first. If you're starting a Loom video by introducing yourself, you're already skipping a bunch of steps.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So, so here I'll tell you where the Loom video thing came from. Because I think this is an important point, which is what you just said is a delivery mechanism. So one of the ways in which... so let's say you called me for home and auto insurance. We're talking and I was going to deliver to you my proposal before we get off the phone. Before I deliver that proposal, I say to you, "Josh, the next step in this process is once I'm doing my job, I'm going to package everything up into what I recommend for you. There's three things you're going to get. One is an email. That email is going to allow you to log in and see my recommendations. Inside there, you're going to get the ability to download specifics. You're going to get the high level. And there's going to be a video explaining why I did that."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I did that so that you come from a position of power. When we get on the phone again, we're talking on the same level. I'm not just dropping something on you out of the blue. I set that expectation at that point. I have gotten 95 plus percent of people going, "Holy shit. This is amazing. I've never seen this before." People just text me back, "I'm sold. Just send me the thing. We don't even need to talk." It's crazy. It's increased my close ratio 20%.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So in my mind, I'm going, "Wow, Loom video seems to be... there seems like there's something there maybe." So I tried moving that to the front, to the cold email section. And as you described, and I think this highlights some of the things that you're saying, and I'm trying to prove a point here. I'm seeing now why moving that part of the process, the Loom video is a differentiator. In the beginning part of the process, it's an annoyance, or as you said, selfish. And I can see it now.
--:-- Josh Braun: Well, it's a completely different context.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Josh Braun: I mean, one of them, they don't know who you are. There's no trust. There's no credibility. In the first example, they've been talking to you for a while. So it's a completely different context. Things like Loom and email and cold calls or voicemails, those are all delivery mechanisms. Holograms, whatever the next thing is, delivery mechanisms are going to come and go.
--:-- Josh Braun: The reason I think you are successful with the first example isn't so much that it's a Loom video, it's that it's in line with helping the other person be more awesome. The thing that never changes is the person in the middle. The person in the middle always wants a better superpower to achieve what they want. That never changes. Delivery mechanisms come and go. It's never the delivery mechanisms.
--:-- Josh Braun: I've seen movies that are awesome. I've also seen movies that are terrible. Same thing with videos. If you're starting with the video and you don't know how to clarify the message, you're not going to have as high a response rate as you can. Again, it's not the delivery mechanism. People ask me all the time, "What do you think of Loom?" I'm like, "What do I think of books? They're great. Some are, some suck." It's the message, not the mechanism.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So at home, and I'm just going to clarify this one more time for everyone listening, because I think this is really, really important. Because in the insurance industry, and I'm sure this is every industry, but I've operated in insurance for 15 years, so it's all I know. Shiny object syndrome is an enormous problem in our industry because the barrier for tech is very low. Things in the copywriting industry that you would take for granted as a technology tool, just a function, don't operate well in our space. So as soon as something comes out, we all focus on it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I think what I hear you saying is it doesn't matter. What matters is can you define their superpower and portray it in a way, show them in a way that connects, that they even have a problem to begin with, and then allow them to make the connection that you're the answer? Is that... am I free?
--:-- Josh Braun: You have to understand, it has to start with the following. What sucks about how people are getting the job done today? And why does it suck? So let's go through just a simple example. What sucks about washing your car with a bucket and suds is that you can get dirt on the sponge. That's a problem. What's the implication of that? Because problems always have implications. The implication is I get swirl marks on my car, got to get it repainted, it's $800, and my car loses 10% when I sell it. I call that twisting the knife.
--:-- Josh Braun: What's meaningfully different about Adam's car wash bucket? It's got a grate on the bottom. Why does that matter? Well, it allows you to get the dirt on the bottom of the bucket and off your car so you don't scratch it. It's not meaningfully different because they sell a purple bucket and I have a white one. It's not meaningfully different because their bucket is made of polytex and mine is made of plastic. That doesn't help me be more awesome. What helps me be more awesome, why it's meaningfully different, is that the dirt settles to the bottom of the bucket and off the sponge and off your car.
--:-- Josh Braun: I'll give you another example. I was driving on the freeway several years ago with my wife and I saw a U-Haul. Back of the U-Haul, as it's driving, a line down the middle. And on the left-hand side, it said "R loading docks, easy loading docks." And it showed how low they were to the ground. And then on the right-hand side, it said "Competitive loading docks." They're about four feet higher. Now, why is that meaningfully different to me? Why is a loading dock that's lower meaningfully different than one that's higher? How does that make me more awesome?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A lower loading dock? Seems like less work.
--:-- Josh Braun: What happens if I have a high loading dock and I try to move my furniture? You got one of those ramp things. What happens if I try to load stuff and the ramp is higher off the ground? You got to lift it. And if I lift something, what could happen? Get hurt. Right. So it's not that their competitive trucks are yellow. It's that the loading ramp is lower, which means it's easier for me to move stuff. So I reduce the chances of me getting injured.
--:-- Josh Braun: Where most people go wrong is they're like, "Let's talk about my value proposition. I help you move stuff faster." I'm already moving stuff. What's meaningfully different relative to how I'm getting the job done today? So the first question you got to answer is what sucks? Because if nothing sucks, and I mean really sucks, there's no reason to switch.
--:-- Josh Braun: Give you another example. I have a TV in my back bedroom and it has a pixel out on it. One pixel, two pixels maybe. It's a problem. But I rarely watch that TV and I barely notice the pixel when I do. So I'm not switching TVs because I have limited resources. So do you, so do your prospects. So you have to have a sucky problem that you got to shine a light on. If you don't know what that is, you can't pick up the phone. You can't send out a video. You can't write an email because who cares?
--:-- Josh Braun: I have a product called Athletic Greens. It's a powder that you mix in water and you drink it, a health drink. Their tagline, which is amazing, is this: what sucks about eating 73 vegetables is what? It's hard to eat 73 vegetables. They don't taste good. If you're not into celery, it's hard to digest broccoli. It's not enjoyable. So Athletic Greens, their tagline is "Get your 73, get the nutrients from 73 vegetables without having to eat them." The "without" part is the interesting part because I'm getting my greens today but now I don't have to eat them.
--:-- Josh Braun: There was a guy, Alex Honnold. He was a rock climbing guy on Netflix. I don't know if you saw this guy climbing rocks, high rocks with no rope, like El Capitan.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, free climber, right?
--:-- Josh Braun: Yeah. So if you said "Watch this guy climb El Capitan," so what? But it didn't say that. It said "Watch this guy Alex Honnold climb El Capitan, the highest peak in this part of the world in Yosemite, without ropes." It's the "without ropes" that makes you want to tune into that. So what's your "without ropes," people listening? Because if you don't have that, it's really hard to reach out.
--:-- Josh Braun: I'll give you an example, something commoditized. This was two nights ago, a pillow. Imagine you sell pillows. One of the most commoditized things in the world. So this company called Pillow Cube, I see this amazing commercial. It said, "Hey, do you sleep on your side?" I happen to. "So stand up and take a look at the shape between your shoulder and your head. What shape is that?" It's like 90 degrees. I'm like, it's a square. "And so how do you know if you're sleeping on a rounded pillow that you're not messing up your back?" And it showed a picture of your head position when you're sleeping on a rounded pillow and your neck is bad for your back. It can throw your back out of alignment. So you can now get a good sleep because you're sleeping on a square pillow. But they pointed out a problem with the rounded pillow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I'm interested and I ordered it. I didn't have a problem with a pillow. I didn't have a pillow problem, but all of a sudden I did because they showed me what's meaningfully different.
--:-- Josh Braun: And P90X did this really well back in the day. If you don't know what that is, it's a popular workout program. Their infomercial failed 17 times. They couldn't sell it. They were talking about how great the workout was, probably like how you're talking about how great your insurance is. Until Tony Horton, who created the workout, had this great idea. He invented two words: muscle confusion. He said the problem with traditional workouts is you hit a plateau. Because you're doing the same workout over and over again. What you need is muscle confusion. You need to do different workouts to be able to get your muscles to grow. And notice he's not talking about his product. Eugene Schwartz calls this a unique mechanism. If you buy into muscle confusion, you're buying P90X.
--:-- Josh Braun: So again, this is about creating problems that people didn't know they had. And that's where it starts.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Because if you're the same, if you're selling better insurance, if you're saying "we" and you sound like everyone else, you're a white circle.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh shit, I am definitely a white circle right now. I don't mean to bum you out there.
--:-- Josh Braun: No, no.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is why you do podcasts, man. Free consulting.
--:-- Josh Braun: No kidding.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But the thing about what's driving me nuts about what you're describing is it feels so obvious when you talk about it. And then I think about what I actually do and what I actually say, and it's just not awesome.
--:-- Josh Braun: Well, we could also talk about there's lots of ways to differentiate. I'll tell you a great story. Guy, his name is Dale Dupree. This guy came on my radar because I saw that he was the number one copier salesman in the state of Florida for 10 years, stealing copier accounts. And I couldn't think of a more commoditized thing to sell than copy machines. So I called him up. "Dale, how are you the number one copier salesman?" And he said, "I'm not a copier salesman." I go, "What are you?" He goes, "I'm a copier warrior." I go, "What?" Show me his business card. He's got like a sword and he fights against jammed up copy machines.
--:-- Josh Braun: He sends his prospects a brick. It's actually a sponge that looks like a brick with a note on it. And it says, "If you've ever wanted to throw a brick at your copy machine, but didn't want to get in trouble or get fired, throw this brick instead. Here's instructions. Put it in your right arm, aim, fire, and call me. I'm Dale Dupree, the copier warrior." He's the only copier salesman that made his own commercial. If you go to copierwarrior.com, you'll see it.
--:-- Josh Braun: So he's differentiated himself just by nature of branding himself as someone that someone's going to see and just feel good. And when you make people feel good, there's a biological reaction that happens. Just like you laughed. People like, "That's really fun. That made me feel good. Who is that? I want more of that." And he won a tremendous amount of accounts by differentiating himself. He was the differentiator. He's selling the same copy machines, but he gets service.
--:-- Josh Braun: His commercial is phenomenal. If you go to copierwarrior.com, I wouldn't do it justice by trying to imitate it, but you'll see what he did. He talked about the problem, but did it in a very funny way. One of the shots in the video is "Have you ever had to wait on hold for a copy or support person?" He's got the skeleton in the cubicle like on the phone. And so you watch this stuff and you're like, "Who is this guy?" And when he cold calls, he doesn't say, "Hello, my name is Dale Dupree with Acme." He says, "Hey Bob, this is Dale. I'm the guy who thought it was a good idea to send you a brick in the mail." And the reaction that he gets is, "Dale, that was so creative." He's already starting at a huge advantage because he's making people feel good. And that's a red X. That's a red X moment.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It's funny. You bring up that example and one just hit my head. I was talking to an agent the other day from Indiana, Andrew Darlington. For the folks at home, he does bouncy balls. Big ones, like the ones that you give to your kids that are $2 when you're walking through Dick's and you're like, "God, I just have to give them something to keep them quiet." And you grab one of those balls. And he hand writes in marker on it: "We're having a ball over here helping contractors with their insurance." And he puts the ball in the mail, just the ball. So you literally get a bouncy ball in the mail. And he's like, half the time they're smudged. He goes, "It's not the best delivery mechanism." He goes, "But the ones that get through, they've never not taken my call."
--:-- Josh Braun: That's the right idea. The thing to me about stuff like bouncy balls and cushions and all that, for me, the red brick is more clever. Yes. Like it's just clever. I don't know how else to say it. It's just clever. A lot of people will send Rubik's cubes with hokey things. I've seen people send one shoe, "I'm just trying to get a foot in the door." Those things to me seem lowbrow. This seems like it requires a little more creativity. But it's the right idea.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah. So I want to be respectful of your time. I had a couple questions for you. Some amount of time ago in the last year, I saw you start testing and doing some stuff with visuals. Simplified visuals like Jack Butcher was the guy that you said you were learning from. Talk a little bit about how you've taken your methodology and mashed it in and worked and refined it around some of these visuals and what you think the impact is.
--:-- Josh Braun: Yeah. So this came from the infomercial example, right? The example that we did before, before and after. And so the question becomes, how can I visually show somebody in an email with a simple graphic how their life could be better relative to how it is today? And so these visuals that I teach people how to make use very simple graphics that you can mock up in PowerPoint or Keynote to be able to do that.
--:-- Josh Braun: So by way of example, one company is called Connect and Sell. Let's talk about the problem. The problem when salespeople often call businesses is they'll call for an hour and maybe they'll get to talk to one or two people. They bump into voicemail messages. They bump into gatekeepers or executive assistants, but they really rarely talk to their prospect. And that's a problem because the fewer people that I talk to, the less opportunity I can create. So Connect and Sell allows a salesperson to have a conversation with their prospect every six minutes.
--:-- Josh Braun: So the graphic that we did on the left-hand side was a bunch of circles saying "Attempts to call a prospect before Connect and Sell" and on the right-hand side said "After Connect and Sell" and there were green lights every five or six dots. So visually it's able to show people how many more conversations they were able to have relative to what they were doing before. And again, the reason that matters is because more conversations lead to more opportunity, more ultimately more revenue.
--:-- Josh Braun: So being able to articulate the before and after story and make that graphic under 100K so it slips through filters is another way to communicate with people. And the brain loves visual images, sometimes even more so than text. And so it's a way to just mix up the messaging a little bit and communicate how you can potentially help someone in a different way. Because you have to do five or six, seven touches as part of these campaigns. And so this is just another communication mechanism.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How does all this mash into cold calling?
--:-- Josh Braun: So cold calling is another delivery mechanism. So when you are tasked with reaching out to people you don't know to start conversations with, you have to send a series. You have to start with message clarification. You have to then be strategic in terms of who you're reaching out to. But then you have to send them a series of emails, six to be exact. You have to make some calls and you have to leave voicemail messages. Send LinkedIn if they're on LinkedIn. Images if you'd like. If you're into video, whatever. But cold call is one of those channels. If your prospect can be reached on a phone, to me, it's a really good channel because you're actually having a conversation with somebody. If you would in fact know how to make a good cold call, which I know is probably a topic for another podcast.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Which is, you know what?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're interested in Josh's feelings—or not feelings, just feelings is the wrong word—if you're interested in his thoughts and some of the things that he does, again, I'm going to put the hard sell on both. The LinkedIn follow, because that's where I first found Josh's work. You put a lot of stuff out there, you put some snippets of calls. And then I want you to tell, how do people get to... I'm looking, it's academy.joshbraun.com slash badass?
--:-- Josh Braun: Badass slash badass. Perfect.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll have it. So go there directly. Or if you forget that because you're driving in the car, just go to this episode on my site, ryanhanley.com, and I'll have it linked up as well. I highly—I'm not just a spokesman, I'm also a client—I highly recommend the Badass B2B, whatever. Both guys. Full name is because I'm in there all the time. And you wouldn't know it by some of the things that I've said so far, but I promise I am efforting to get better.
--:-- Josh Braun: Look, man, the knowledge and the doing—look, we're learning how to ski down the mountain for the first time. It's a process. Knowledge and doing aren't the same thing. It feels really good to listen to stuff like this. Satisfying, it scratches an itch, but it doesn't change outcomes. It's the doing and the experimenting and the tinkering and getting feedback that's going to change the outcome. So it's like, you know, I do over IQ. It's a process, Ryan. Don't be so hard on yourself.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Well, so what's interesting is you said six emails. I didn't know that. I actually thought it was seven, but it doesn't matter. That's me forgetting. But I will eventually. One, I am going to cut the video out because I wholly agree with your breakdown of why that's inappropriate at that stage. But I do have in the sequence, in my CRM or whatever, images. With some images that I've created. I use Canva, doesn't matter. It'll be interesting to see.
--:-- Josh Braun: I do want to clarify one thing that I said earlier, and I just want to make sure I drive it home. It's not images and it's not Loom video. It's how you're doing it.
--:-- Josh Braun: The delivery mechanism is not the thing. So it's not that Loom is bad. And I haven't seen your video, I have no idea. It's that perhaps it's the message in Loom. I mean, I've seen it. I think it's the message to get to the Loom. I've had people reach out to me via Loom and I booked meetings with them, got them on my podcast, given them access. Jason Bay, he's one recent example. Guy sent me a Loom video and within two minutes I responded because it was so well done. It was focused on how he could make my audience more awesome.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I think, if I'm being honest and breaking down my own performance, I think my issue is the text I have leading into the video does not say, "This is worth watching."
--:-- Josh Braun: You can't tell people, right? You can't tell people things are worth watching because they know you're biased. I can't tell you I'm the best salesperson because I'm biased. Prospects know salespeople are biased because they have a vested interest. So we're going to—we can't get into this on this podcast—but you have to know how to lower the defense mechanism. It's an anti-persuasion shield that prospects have because they don't want to be sold or manipulated. You have to know how to lower that shield so that they're more open to listening to how you might be able to help them. Telling people, "You need to watch this because it's the best," or "I'm the best," doesn't work because, of course you're going to say that. Of course you're going to say this car is awesome—you're a car salesman. You've got commission breath.
--:-- So the question is, how do you lower the anti-persuasion shield? And the answer is really simple. Stop persuading people and let people persuade themselves. You provide unbiased information. You highlight and illuminate things and let them decide their own reasons for change, rather than you giving them your reasons.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And we'll end there. Now you got me reading my damn cold email. God damn you, Josh. All right. Hey, man, this has been tremendous. Thank you. I'm going to give another shout out. JoshBraun.com. Go check it out. Get on the Badass B2B thing. I promise you guys, I do not push you to a lot of things, but this is going to be worth your time. I literally have it. It's one of my favorites in my menu bar. I'm always back in there. And you wouldn't know from my performance today, but I am working on it. Must follow on LinkedIn. Dude, appreciate you. Appreciate the time. All the best.
--:-- Josh Braun: Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate you having me on. Cheers.
--:-- [End of interview. Podcast advertisement begins.]
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