 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, I'm Roger Jelenek, your host of Think Tech's book world's program. And my guest today is Scott Hobel, who's Vice President, Senior Vice President of Marketing at iHeart Media, the largest radio network here in Hawaii and across the nation. He's the author of a new book called Persuade, the Seven Empowering Laws of the Sales Maker, which is an unusual title. Welcome, Scott. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. Scott, you've been in Hawaii 20 years, you said? 20 years as of next month, that's right. And always with iHeart Media. Used not to be called iHeart Media, it used to be called... Yes, we were clear-channel before and then became iHeart Media. And you had a pretty critical crisis recently, well, not recently, but the trigger of this book. Tell us about that. Yeah. Well, it's kind of an interesting story. I guess the story starts back in about 2011. I was actually at iHeart Media and I had an interesting meeting there with a guy named Mark Cole. He's the CEO of the John Maxwell Company. I've been what I would call a Maxwellian student for years. I followed John Maxwell in his writings and for those tuning in who weren't familiar with John, he sold more leadership books. He's written almost 100 leadership books at this point than probably anyone else on the planet before. And so I've been a student following his for many years. So we had an opportunity with John Maxwell's seminar. So I found myself meet with Mark Cole. So I had an audience with him for about an hour. Mark and I had hit it off. And I always had this idea that why doesn't John write some laws for the sales profession? Because if you figure the leadership lane is this big and leadership is such a big category in the book business, so many people need it. But how many more people are in sales and services, even a bigger audience? So why doesn't John write something for that? So I had shared with Mark Cole that night what potential sales laws could look like. He liked the idea and he said, I'm going to take it to John so I was flattered. I was over the moon. And he came back the next day and here's what he said. I shared these with John. He liked them, but he can't write a sales book. He's got to stay in his lane, but we think you should do it. So that kind of hit me like a thud on the heart. That was the same year I actually became a certified John Maxwell speaker, trainer, and coach. This is where the answer to your question comes from. That was March of that year. A few months later, I was diagnosed to have a plasma cytoma in my left scapula. So that would be my first run in with cancer. We hope the last one. Yeah. Well, I've had a few since then. But that's suddenly focused you. It did. The first thing it did was derail me. Having gone through a number of radiation treatments in the last seven years, I can say the first part of the journey was very difficult spiritually and emotionally. I've had other bouts where it's been more taxing physically. But when you see the end of your days, it definitely focuses you more in your present day. Well, you would never know looking at you today that you had any such crisis. Tell me about how you went about, well, first of all, you committed to writing the book. And then how did you go about it? Because it's not a conventional approach to writing a book. Yeah, well, I think my first step was obviously making the decision. There was this a few years ago. There was this thought that permeated my heart at the time. The thought was if you only had one lap left to live, what's left undone that needs to be done? Of course, a book was towards the top of that list. So one of my main motivations was after spending almost three days in sales and marketing and media, I wanted to leave something behind for my sons who were this year, 14 and 17. So if I only had five or 10 years left to live, Roger, I wanted them to know how their father thought, how their father behaved, what his beliefs were about a profession he'd spent almost three decades in, how he thought about people and relationships. And once that decision was made, I started asking questions about, well, gosh, I don't know anything about the book business. What would I talk to? And that's when I met Brian Heathman from Made for Success Publishing. But what I was alluding to is that in the book itself it's full of stories, full of stories of people that you admire and that you've met. And they're absolutely key to the book. Did they happen enough? Did you organize it in some kind of programmatic way or were they happenstance? Are you drawing on stories from way back when or all since you committed to writing the book? The short answer is yes and yes. So the most common question the new author gets is how long did it take you to write the book? Well, my first answer is 47 years. So I did draw from a lifetime of experience. But just in the last year, two years, three years, people who have come on my path, I filled the book with stories from that too because, frankly, I find a lot of business books to be generally boring. So I wanted to fill persuade with stories of life and love and family and friends to kind of pull the reader through the book, not just with business analogies and principles, but things that people can relate to in their everyday life whether they're in business or not. So that's why the focus is on relationship selling. And you say in the book that all of life is a form of selling. It is. It's one of your mantras. Yes. Do you want to elaborate on that a bit? Sure. Well, we're all in the persuasion business. I would say even from cradle to grave, we're all in pursuit of something. It's in bread within us. It's human nature to want to pursue something. The question is, are you any good at it? Let me give you an example. Sell or sell, yes, so customers will buy. Leaders persuade and lead in a way as to cause followers to want to follow. In my business, the music business, singers sing in a way so fans will buy their albums. But I would also submit this to you that whether you're a teacher in a classroom trying to win a student's heart or mind over so you can mentor them and make deposits in them that will help them, or you're just a child, some of the most important conversations we'll ever have, Roger, are not financial in nature. They're not business conversations. They're heart to heart. They're one to one. They're between a daughter and a mother, a son and a father. And employing a boss, wanting someone's appreciation or affirmation. And how we go about doing that, how we go about persuading to get what we need or want in life is a very important skill. And how did you apply that to the book here? That's a good question, yeah. It's a big question, too. The short answer is throughout seven chapters I had to decide early on what to title the chapter is. There's so many aspects, sales and persuasion and leadership and life and relationships. There's all these micro skills. There's so many components to the subject. I had to figure out what would be the key ingredients I would put in this book. And I intentionally front-loaded the first three chapters, the law of connection, the law of listening, the law of relationship. I call those the relationship chapters because those needed to be first because if we don't get that piece right, the rest really doesn't matter. There's also the environment that you're selling in. You've had 20 years, probably 47 years, I think you said, of selling experience. What has changed radically that really affects your message in selling? Great, that's a great question. You know, people are people. You've heard the old expression, probably people change, but only a little bit. I think the biggest impact in the sales profession has been the fact that technology has changed how we communicate with each other. In fact, in some cases, technology that promises to bring us closer together keeps us apart. In fact, one of the stories I tell in the law of connection is my son was home one weekend and his girlfriend was taking SATs. And he all of a sudden noticed because he was home for an extended period of time. Oh my gosh, everyone's in their own room and we're feeling disconnected. So technology, I mean, we've all had the experience before. We're all in the house, but we're in different rooms and we're talking on our phones. So that's one of the ways. So technology can separate us, but it can also bring us together. That's one of the big things that's impacted not just the sales profession, but relationships in general. Another thing is the fact that a salesmaker today, knowing that we're all in the persuasion business, they're not just working in a sales department. Salesmakers today, Roger, are media and marketing executives. They work at social media companies and search engine companies. And yes, inside and outside sales organizations. So to that degree, we've all become frontline persuaders. We've all become frontline salesmakers because if you're in a company that needs to make a profit to stay in business, you're selling something to somebody. The question is, are you when you go to it? And is the customer king? You know, one of those, it reminds me of the old, what you just said of the old adage, the customer's always right. Well, anyone who's been in the business for any amount of time knows that that's not always true. But if we're going to win friends and influence people, we've got to handle the customer with care. So when we're dealing with a customer problem, and that's what the law of relationship is really focused on, it's how to service a customer, how to handle a customer with care. We've got to remember that we're not just handling a problem or handling a person. So the customer may be king, they may be always right. Whether you believe that or not, what's most important is what will they remember, think and feel about you after they've left you? Will they be better off because of their interchange with you? And if the answer is yes, you created an opportunity for one, a good reputation and two to create referral and reoccurring business with them. Can you elaborate more on how a professional sales person communicates, establishes a relationship? Good question. The law of connection is the first chapter in the book. And one of the things I was very intentional to do after filling the chapters with stories of life and love and family and friends and practical examples was every chapter ends in a similar way. And this is what it is, Roger. There's seven to 10 very practical ways to apply what the readers learned in the chapter. So for example, to answer your question in the law of connection, there's, I talk about 10 different ways people can connect with one another. One of them is connecting on common ground. And in other words, if I start asking you questions to determine what it is you and I might have in common, that starts to form a connection. In fact, Persuade is what I call a very intelligent book. The reason it's an intelligent book is because it's book ended with stories of my wife. So the first few words of chapter one, start off with my wife, Kate, in the first paragraph, in the last chapter, tells a story about falling in love with my wife, Kate. But here's what happened, Roger. How do we build connection? How do we build relationships? When I was writing that chapter, I asked my wife, who was also in the advertising business, I said, honey, you're such a good connector. How do you establish rapport? How do you find common ground? And it was very interesting what she said because she didn't say anything that's what she did. She turned the tables on me, Roger. And instead of answering my question, she demonstrated how to connect with somebody. And here's what she did. She started asking me questions about me instead of talking to me about her. And here's what it is. A professional salesperson, when they want to establish rapport, common ground connection, and birth a new relationship, if they want to impress you, they'll talk about themselves, their company, their product, but they're really good ones. When they want to impact you, they'll ask about you. See, because when I start asking you questions, it has the emotional effect between us of pulling you towards me. But when I start telling you about me, it can create the emotional effect of pulling you away. So- Yeah, there's always resistance. There's always resistance. Everyone's resistance. Absolutely, absolutely. Why do you think everyone resists sales? I think it's a stereotype. Nobody likes to be sold anything, but I'll tell you, you know what people love? They love to be asked about them, about what they like, about what their problem and their pain point is. And remember, when we were talking earlier about everyone's in the persuasion business, a great salesmaker to get to the heart of how to sell someone, they identify what the customer's in pursuit of. What is the customer's pain point or problem? What is their pleasure? And then how do they give that to them? See, people don't want to be sold, but they love to be asked about what they like. Well, we return to the seven laws in the second part. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll just pause for a moment. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest, you can be the best. You can be the king, come playin' on your chest. You can be the coutts of glad, go bangin' on his door. All right, we're back again with Scott Hogle and his book, Persuade, The Seven Empowering Laws of the Sales Maker. What are the seven laws? Just spell them out. You don't have to explain them yet. Sure, sure. Well, there's the law of connection, the law of listening and the law of relationship. Those are what I call the relationship chapters. And I get those in the book because if you don't get the people skills part right, the rest really doesn't matter. The next three laws, Roger, are what I call the competency chapters because you gotta be good at what you do. If we really like each other and we have a business relationship, if I don't deliver for you, if I can't meet your needs, that will eventually impact the relationship in a negative way. So the second three chapters are what I call the law of discovery. That's entirely about asking and leading with questions. In other words, in the law of discovery, there's a sales makers roadmap with 21 different areas of probing as well as different types of questioning skills. There's a very interesting chapter which is the fifth chapter. It's called the law of the sixth sense. So in the sixth sense, there's three things that I mentioned. Timing, intuition and emotion. And then the sixth chapter, which is one of the competency chapters, is called the law of the close. And the law of the close simply says this, that everybody sells, but it takes a sales maker to close the sale. Back to we're all in the persuasion business. But I have to confess, I think my favorite chapter is the last one. It's very different than the first six and it's called the law of the prospector. Well, let's go backwards. Okay. Let's start with the law of the prospector. Okay. This is your favorite chapter. So what is that law? So the law of the prospector says this, the sales maker develops the potential within them. They discover the opportunities around them. So this is a natural talent or is it something you can learn? Well, it starts with, as we develop the potential within the side of us, we're able to discover more opportunities around us. And I start that chapter talking about discovering your vocational calling in life. In fact, at one point, I even say, gosh, if you've been in sales for more than a few years and you're not having fun or you don't like it, you should leave because it's too hard of a job. Tom Hopkins, who wrote my forward, he was considered number one sales trainer in America for many years. He says this, that sales is the lowest paid easy work and the highest paid hard work. So if you don't love what you do, there's probably easier professions to be in out there. But the thing is that the more you develop yourself on the inside, it's kind of like climbing a ladder in life. The higher you go, the more you can see, the more you can see, the more you can seize. So as you become better, everything else around you becomes better as well. And when, give me an example of how you prepare for a sale. Good question. With using that particular law. Okay. So the law of the prospector has a dual meaning. It's, there's 10 many lessons in it. So there's 10 letters in the word prospector and each one stands for one of the lessons. So for example, the first P in prospector stands for a salesmaker develops a purpose driven mindset, in other words, how to self motivate. You know, the skills are the skills. You know, we could talk about hard selling skills for a very long time, but the truth is you've got to learn how to motivate yourself. If you can't learn some of those soft skills, you'll fail in life. No matter how good of a closer or relationship builder or relationship builder or question asker that you are. But to get to your question, whether I'm given a speech or I'm going to meet with somebody one-on-one, I start with asking myself a few questions. Even though I may not have met with them yet, I'll start to find out, what is it that I think they might need? What might they need to hear? How can I best serve them? So it's first approaching that process with the right heart to serve, because especially in today's environment, you have to add value before you ask for value. So it really starts with serving the person in front of you. And as I just to repeat one part of my question, is this a natural born talent or something you, can you learn it? Can you, are you trained for it? So the skill sets anybody can learn, but the skill sets alone will make you successful. There are inbred talents, and I'll define talent as a reoccurring pattern of thought or behavior that can be productively applied. So I can teach a fifth grader the skill sets of sales, but I can't teach him perseverance. I can't teach him attitude. He's got to grab ahold of those things himself. No, that's a good point. Okay, let's go back to the right order this time, okay? So the first law is? The law of connection. Connection, okay, we've discussed that some. The second law? It's the law of listening. No, listening. I'd like to listen to that one bit more. Sure, I'd like that. We can buy the audio book to be able to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. So the law of the listening, very important law. And I'm gonna give you one reason why it's so important. A lot of people think that relationships are negatively impacted when we stop talking. But the truth is relationships are negatively impacted when we stop listening. There's more of the listening than what the eyes see in the ears hear. There's an energy, there's an exchange between people. And that's why the law of the listener says that value is exchanged on both sides of the conversation when focus listening occurs. So there's an emotional transaction that's taken place. One of the things I talk about in the law of listening is the C suite of listening. In business today, many big companies, believe it or not, they have somebody called the CLO, the chief listening officer, they get paid to listen. And I guess it's because we've forgotten how to listen. But I- I can relate to this because I'm by nature a listener. Yes, you are. At a party, I tend to interview people. I don't have conversations because I'm just interested in who they are and so on. And I listen and often I don't say very much. And I'm astonished that when they come afterwards and say, what a great conversation we just had, or they tell somebody else they had a great conversation. I don't remember saying anything much. But you're a great listener. You ask good questions. But you see, let's unpack this for a minute. As we're talking, I feel you listening with your eyes, not just yours. I can tell you're listening by your questions. One of the things in the last section of the book I have, Roger, is helping people to identify what their natural listening talents are. And to do that, I give them 10 different pictures or portraits of people in my life who are great listeners. And by being able to look at that picture, what I want to do is trigger something inside of them so they can develop within them the listening skills that are going to help them become more effective, not just as a good interviewer like you are, but just in their everyday relationships. So I would challenge you and anyone watching this, if there's a relationship that you're struggling in your life, whether you're in business or not, whether it's a customer, a spouse, a child, I promise you that if you go back to the heart of where that trouble began, it started with a failure to listen. Yes, yes, I can see that. So after listening, what was the next law? I don't remember. The law of memory, no. You wrote the book. It was the law of relationship. I always have it in front of you. Okay, we've done it. You're so good with the questions. I had to trip you up some. So it was the law of relationship that is really focused on customer service. Because the environment in business has changed so much, you asked how sales has changed. Today, if you don't take care of your customers, they'll out you on social media. I was talking to my wife the other day who's in marketing and she was telling me how tough it is to get reviews in the book business like on Amazon. She says, you know, Scott, it's hard to get people to give good reviews, but gosh, if they have a negative experience, they're very quick to go online. So customer service today is more important than ever before because you're creating a reputation with every service experience a customer has with you. Well, in my experience, whenever I want to go buy something online, the first thing that I Google is reviews. Yeah. And then you have the problem of which reviews do you actually believe which are planted? So that's a skill we're all learning. It's scary, my friend. You're right. We're all learning, you know. So that we have another one. The law of discovery. Lower discovery. What do you mean by the law of discovery? Let me tell you what the law of discovery is and it will answer your question. The law of discovery says this, anyone can ask a question, but it takes a salesmaker to convert a question into a close. So everybody asks questions, but when you learn how to frame the questions in the way to a salesmaker does, see great communicators. We all have access to the same words, but how we frame them, how we say them, how we put those together determines whether we become on a scale one to 10, a 10 level of success or five. Whether you're in sales or you're in the medical profession, in fact, I'm reminded of a statistic I once read that doctors, the ones who get sued the least for malpractice, they're the people who have the best people skills and the best bedside manner. Yeah, because you wouldn't dream of suing someone you like. Hence you just made my point. So success has a lot about how we communicate and make people feel when we're together. That's great, I know. So after that, we have the law of the close. The law of the close, which we touched on already. So I like that chapter because it really gets into the nitty gritty about how to move people to decision and how to communicate strategically, how to convert emotionally in the moment. You've got to be able to read if you're going to be able to lead, be able to handle people's objections. But when it comes time to get a decision, you've got to close conversationally because if people feel like they're being sold, they're going to pull back and retreat from you. But if they feel like you care for them and you're just having a conversation like we are here now, they're going to keep following you to the end. And the best salespeople in the world, think about the great sales experience you've ever had, Roger. It probably, you're probably being effortlessly carried along in the process and you never felt like you were being sold. Only guided, right? Yeah. You've had some phenomenal endorsements. Yes. And talking about closing, I mean, you actually did some great beginnings with those endorsements. Tell us about some of the great people that you've endorsed. I'll tell you one of the ones that you're really most proud of. So Tom Hopkins, who wrote my forward, that was really important because when I was 20 years old, Tom, through his audiobooks, became a mentor of mine. And I studied him greatly for the first few years. And I attribute a lot of my success to a lot of the skills he helped me with, the very thing I want to do for people today. And here's how the endorsement came about. I was in Las Vegas one day and I had called his office. Tom lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I said, will Tom have lunch with me? I have known him a little on and off over the years. So he said, yes, so I drive down to Las Vegas. And so I prepared for the meeting and my goal in the meeting was to ask Tom, not for an endorsement, but I was about to tell my Tom, I just made my first decision to write a book. And I wanted to ask him what advice he would give me. Now, before I tell you what he said, here's what I did. Remember, I said, you have to add value before you ask for value. Because I knew Tom had recently received award, best sales trainer in America. I went to the store and I know Tom likes red wine. So I bought him a bottle of the golden eye with a gold label. You have to bring this to a close. But thank you very much. Persuade, the seven empowering laws of the sales makers available at Bonson Noble and other bookstores. And I'm pretty sure you're gonna see Scott on the airwaves all over the place for quite a while to come. Thank you very much. Great, thank you very much, Roger. Appreciate it. Thank you.