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conversation. And I also will say it is my philosophy that you shouldn't be selling to anybody that hasn't given you permission to sell to them. So, you know, all these emails that we get in our inbox and all these people that approach us at networking meetings or, you know, the people who jump out at you when you're trying to just go into the grocery store, you know, that are trying to sell something to you. Like they don't have our permission. And that's why it's so like, ugh, like it's like what what's going on? Why is this person coming at me so hard? They've they've missed the steps of selling. Julio Gonzalez: Yeah, yeah, I I'm much happier in a store where I am greeted and told if you need me, I'll be over here. Not how can I help you today? You know, even though it's it's you know, a pleasant, you know question, you know, the answer is, you know, ninety-eight percent of the time, I'm just looking. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Mm-hmm. Julio Gonzalez: Yeah, which If you're walking in somewhere, chances are you're looking for something, but you just don't want to be sold. So I I think just that slight change in in approach is something that that would be so helpful, but you know, not many people get that. You know, is that something that you, you know, coach your clients to? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah, and I think you just gave a really beautiful example of like walking into a store and your approach is that you're looking for something, but you want to look, right? Your body language will usually depict that, right? And so as a seller, paying attention to the buyer's body language, there's so much information that comes, right? Versus, you know, if you walk into a store and you you want help, what do you start doing? You start making eye contact. You start looking around of like who can answer my question? Right. And so as the seller, it's easy to recognize, like, here's somebody that I can walk over to and and say, you know, is there something you're looking for? Or did you have a question I could answer for you? And then like they're giving you clues. Whereas, you know, if you walk into the store, now I haven't seen this from you, but if you're like, I don't really want to be sold to and you're like, I'm just looking. You know, it's like, okay, well, respect that. You know, trying to pretend like, well, let me try to initiate a conversation with you so that I can try to sell you something that you didn't even come into the store for. Like again, it comes off gross and aggressive. And and I just think in our current state of kind of our society is that we don't want people forcing their agenda on us. Like we get it all day long in, you know. social media and, you know, the news and, you know, it's just this constant being bombarded with other people's agenda. And that's that usually can turn people off from the selling environment. Julio Gonzalez: Do you see in your, I'll call it, graduated clients, clients that have been through, you

know, your coaching, your program, that they have higher dollar amount sales with an LLP type NLP type of approach versus whatever they were doing in the past? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I just had a a coaching call with a client last week and we were talking about how she was going to lay out a proposal to a prospective client. So laying out the proposal, the language that she's going to use. We went through that and she ended up securing this this project at five thousand dollars more than what she had when she showed up in the call with me, what she was initially proposing. So through the conversation, we reworked, you know, some of the numbers a little bit. And she went back out and you know, and instead of you know, the client paying her fifteen thousand dollars, the client paid her twenty thousand dollars and is happy to do so. And that was just the start of the project, right? So those types of results come and you know, and her I had actually a call with her yesterday, and her thing was like, I just felt so much more confident laying out my proposal and my pricing and really standing in this place of inviting this person to do business. So that we don't get in this like, well, they're gonna think about it and now I never hear from them again and you know, those kind of situations. I I work with my clients to solve those. Julio Gonzalez: So can you give us an example of a non NLP conversation and an and a same conversation, you know, using NLP so that our listeners can can get that clear picture of the before and after. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah, absolutely. Well, okay, so I kind of mentioned this a little bit about the car salesman of like, are you performing and are you you, you know, talking? So imagine a sales consult call where the prospect gets on and the first thing I say is, Well, let me tell you a little bit about my business. So, you know, my company is salesmaven. I've been around for, you know, I've been in sales for over 25 years and and I start like listing my my accomplishments, you know, like my by pedigree basically, right? That's one example, Julio Gonzalez: Right. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: right, of of the selling environment. Now, if you bring NLP into it, instead of showing up from this place and starting the conversation of like, well, let me tell you a little bit about me and who I am. I'm never going to do that, Nicole. What I'm going to say is, you know, is is it okay if I start by asking you a few quick questions about what's important and what you're looking for? So I'm going to start with questions. And I'm going to use questions to plant seeds instead of performing and going through my list of accomplishments, I will use questions. So instead of saying, you know, I've been in sales for 25 years, I've had my own business now for 13, all those kind of things. I would ask a question that would say, now when you think about the coach that you want to work with, how important is

it to you that that person has had has achieved their own level of success in selling in their own career? It's very different qu like approach, right? Versus like, here's all I've done. But if I just ask the question of like, well, how important is that? Now, if somebody says to me, couldn't care less, if the coach that I work with has ever sold a a day in her life, okay, that's probably not something I'm gonna focus on when I'm delivering back a proposal as to why I would be the coach for them. But I'm gonna ask these questions that plant seeds. So instead of me performing and acting like, I'm just here to convince you of how great I am. And so you need to hire me. I'm going to ask you questions. And then with your permission, based on the answers to your question, I will make a recommendation of a way that we can work together. Julio Gonzalez: And how does that change in approach show up in social media as opposed to an actual in-person conversation? Because so much selling is taking place now. and and even if it's not, you know, closing the sale, but you know, your first you know, interaction with me is my social media presence, right? So how do I make that more valuable? to you the, you know, prospect. you know, which I think is gonna get to kind of the same conversation, but Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah. Julio Gonzalez: you know, putting it specifically in in social media terms, what does that look like? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah. You're I think you're gonna start to see a theme here that my answer is gonna be very similar in that one of the things about social media is we we do a few things. We we talk at the like we talk at people on social media, right? So we write things, here's what happened, here's my offer, here's what's going on in the business, here's why, you know, I am teaching the way that I teach those types of things, right? And we're like talking at the reader. the thing about that though is that doesn't engage a brain. And NLP, you know, this this really is about engaging the brain. And one of the ways that you engage a brain is you ask a question. And there's a term it's called instinctive deli dis what is it? man, I always mess this up. instinctive. I want to say the term has just completely left my brain. I'm so sorry. I'll have to get it for you. Extinctive elaboration. That's what it is. Okay, Nikki, I'm caught up now. And what that is, is that our brains are wired for questions. We actually have to, even if we don't take the the time to actually answer the question to the other person who's posing it, our brain is like Google. Like if you go to Google right now and you type in anything. Google tries to give you an answer. Might not give you a great answer, might not be what you wanted, but it's trying to, it gives you s suggestions, right? Your brain is the exact same. If you ask the brain a question, it has to like distract itself to not want to answer it. So even if they don't type the answer, they're much

more inclined to come up with the answer. And now they're thinking about it. So on social media, instead of saying like, Here's this new offer. I want to tell you guys all about it. Or, you know, here's what's so great about going on, like what's going on in my business, all these things that we see on social media constantly. Instead, start with a question. Now, a lot of times, and here's how it's different: a lot of people will end their posts with a question. Most people don't read all the way to the bottom of that post, so they don't see the question. So the question needs to be first. So you might say something like an example of a question would be, what is the most exciting thing? going on for you this week? That's that's the question. Then you can then answer the question in your post. Here's what's exciting going on for me right now. We just launched this new offer, blah, blah, blah, whatever you want it to be, right? But you've got to start with the question. Because if you put it at the bottom, if you bury it, people are not going to see it. They're probably not going to answer it because they don't read through your diatribe like, you know, we're I call it the word vomit, right? Like the word vomit Of your post that's not interesting to them. So start with a question. And then the other thing that I'll say, if I can jump in one more time about this around social media in particular, is that I think it's so hilarious that when you read people's posts and the things they're posting out on social media, they say like, hey everyone, hey, all my followers, you know, how are you guys today? Or like, I want to tell you guys all about the blah, blah, blah. Now, so here's my question for you, Julio. Have you ever sat around with a group of your male friends and scrolled social media as a group? No. Like Julio Gonzalez: Yeah. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: we don't we don't go on social media in it's not a group activity. So you're when you're scrolling, you're you're essentially like by yourself, right? It's not like and maybe your partner, I don't know, is looking over your shoulder, but probably not, right? Like you're it's it's a kind of a solo activity. This is one of the reasons we have this like, you know, loneliness epidemic in our country right now, right? And in the world. So we're doing this as a solo. So why would you make your post as if you're talking to everybody? Because when you talk to everybody, it's so easy to ignore. So you should you should be acting and writing as if you are talking to one person because there's only one person on their phone looking at that post right there in that moment, in that experience. So stop talking to everybody. You gotta talk to the reader. Julio Gonzalez: So you're listening to the From Stuck to Scale podcast and we're speaking with Nikki Roche about using neurolinguistic programming in improving sales. and Nikki, that that nugget right there was huge for me because all of my posts are to the entire audience, not to the person in front of me. So that's something that I'm gonna be changing immediately. because it it makes all the sense in the world. You know, and maybe that's a a disconnect between the way that you know marketing used to be and you know wouldn't and you know thinking radio or you know reaching the entire audience. but it it makes so much more sense to communicate to that one person that that is listening. talk to me about NLP and and the now and you kind of touched on it earlier, but the copywriting aspect of social media. Cause one of the things that I started doing a while back is and like so many others, I'm sure, I run a lot of my, you know, content through Chat GPT and Claude and so forth. because I am not that creative in my writing. so, you know, I I started telling, you know, whatever AI I was using to use the concept of what's in it for me. Right, to to change that message so that it's it's written for the listener. and that helped a lot. you know, d is that part of what you would consider NLP? How would you layer NLP over that? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: So a couple couple things come to mind. So I love that you are thinking about it from the reader's perspective. So what's in it for them, right? The reader, what's in it for me as the reader. And making sure that your copy reads that way. one one thing, and this will kind of go back to where we were a little bit around the the social posts, but it it works in your copy as well, is we have thoughts and so then we write them from our perspective. Right. So of course that makes sense. But if you really want to make it focused on the reader, it you cannot write from your perspective. You need to be thinking about writing from the reader's perspective. So I'm going give you one that most people when they hear it, they go, Yeah, yeah. But then when they actually start looking at their copy and paying attention to the the thing that I'm going to say here, they're often surprised and not in a great way, but this isn't about like beating yourself up. It's about, okay, can I improve this? Can I make this better? I spend a ton of time editing my clients' messaging. Even though they have learned this from me, this is not an easy one that I'm going to give, but it is a huge difference maker. And it comes down to writing I statements in your messaging. So I want to share with you about blah blah blah. I want you to know about I hope you're having a great day. This is all really common language, right? Because you're having those thoughts. And so you put them down in your copy. That is not interesting to a reader. That is all about you, what you want, what you hope for them, what and and it's really like it's like the person who walks around doing the like me, me, me, me. It's all about me. I can't sing at all, but that was my version of it, right? And you're always like, hmm. I don't think I want to spend time with that person. That doesn't feel very good. So same for

your reader and same in your copy. So in it, one of the the strategies that I give clients is I say, okay, I want you to, I want you to count the number of sentences in your piece of copy. And after you count the number of sentences, I want you to count the number of I the n how many times you've written the word I like I in your sentences. Okay. And if you're talking about your company and you're using we. That also counts as an I statement. So you're gonna count these. So number of sentences, how many I statements? And I just did this. I just did a training for a an organization where we were looking at their their messaging and I was doing some edits for them. And so they sent me some of their copy beforehand. And you know, some of them it was like eight sentences in this piece of copy, 10 I statements. Like, who is that message for? Who is that message about? The writer. The company, not the reader. So the you want to apply the 80-20 rule here. So if you're gonna have 10 sentences and a piece of copy, you really shouldn't have more than two I statements. Now this isn't a hard and fast rule, like okay, well, Nikki, I only have four, you know, sentences. So how many I statements did I? One, no more than one, right? Like anything else, and you're making it the like. The me show. And that's not interesting to a reader, especially if they don't have a lot of rapport, a lot of, you know, interaction with you. People who know you well and adore you, go ahead and fill your messaging with I statements. But the people who you want to earn their business and they don't have that connection to you yet, you got to get these out of your messaging. So that's the first one is your I statements. I want to pause here before I go into the next one and see if you had any comments or questions. Julio Gonzalez: Yeah, I I as you're saying that I I went through my my show notes and it's like what does my show closing say? I was looking for for I and we statements and now I'm scared. so how do you reframe that? I mean, Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Mm-hmm. Julio Gonzalez: because you you I I think you definitely want to talk about you somewhere along the lines of what I Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah. Julio Gonzalez: can do, but how do you reframe that you know, for them? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Well, and instead of saying like, I want to tell you about, you could say, here's something you might want to know. Now, who is that statement about? That is about the reader. Julio Gonzalez: About them. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: It's different than saying, I want to tell you. Here's the most simple one that we all write in our emails. I hope you're having a great week. That's about my hope. So what if I just said, How's your week going? and asked it as a question. That now makes it about the reader. And it's a question. So you've in you've triggered that instinctive elaboration that I keep struggling with that term, but I don't know why it won't stick in my head. So you have now engaged the reader's brain just by asking. People are often surprised. My my clients when they first start working with me, they're like, I don't like saying, you know, how was your day going? And I was like, okay, well, you don't you don't have to. But I just did the, like I said, I just did this training for this this sales organization. And and the call and it was all all men in the training. And they came back and they were like, people are answering that question. Yeah, I know. Because you're asking a question that somebody can respond to. So now I also want to say that I'm talking about written communication. And so you had talked about in your show notes, right? When when you have more communication to work with, so they they say that you can break communication kind of into three slices of pie. Right. There's three different ways that we can communicate. And they become kind of like you know, it's like repetitive or there's they overlap, right? When you start adding different mediums. So, and and when you think about a pie, I don't know if you're a pie lover, I love pie, but and you've Julio Gonzalez: I I love pie. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: got three slices of pie, but they're not evenly distributed. So you get to decide which slice of pie you want. Okay. So when you think about the first slice. And it's words. So if it's written communication, that's the only thing you have to work with. And they say that, you know, there's different studies out there, but I'm gonna quote the Mahabrain study, which is old, but that's the way I learned it. They say that seven percent is words of all communication. So if all you have is seven percent to work with because you're you're putting out copy, you're putting out an email, you're writing a sales page, those words, they matter big time. Okay, because that's all you have to work with. But now when you add the audio component, like voice quality, so now that's another thirty-eight percent of communication right there. So if you add the words and the audio component, now you've got forty five percent. Okay, we're doing better. So then the words that you choose are not necessarily as critical. So if you use some I statements at the end of your show notes, you know, fine. Or you know, the closing, fine. Now you add video to it, right? Or in person. Now we've got facial expressions and we've got body language. That's fifty-five percent. So now we've got the whole slice of the pie here, the whole hundred percent. We've got something to work with. So you just want to think about when when you're just writing something, when you're sending a proposal to somebody, those words, they matter big time. You know, just like I gave this example of my client of like we laid out the proposal differently. We chose the words that she was gonna use of how she was gonna lay it out. And it resulted in, you know, five thousand dollars more than she had ever earned on this particular thing that she sold. And

it was an easy sell. It was an easy yes for the client to say yes to. Great. Like those kind of things matter. Julio Gonzalez: Do you coach your clients also on maybe attending like Toastmasters or or some other public speaking? because for for me, I'm Hispanic, so we love to use our hands, but our Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Mm-hmm. Julio Gonzalez: hands, our hand gestures are very This, you know, very standard and it's you know always Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Mm-hmm. Julio Gonzalez: the same gestures. So when I when I went through Toastmasters many, many years ago, I had to learn there are different gestures. So going up and you know growing and things like that, not just the waving of the hands. because if 55% is that that visual and interactive, you need to to vary that as well. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yes. So to answer your question, do I coach my clients to go to Toastmasters? If that is an important part of their business, I would encourage them to invest in learning the skill and however that comes about. I teach some of these skills, right, around body language, things that you can do. I'm a super high kinesthetic, so kinesthetic is the like it's about how does it feel? There's a lot of hand gestures, it's very physical. and as a speaker, and even even now, like I just caught myself doing a lot of hand gestures as I was teaching something, like giving you this this strategy, right? And now I'm like, okay, put your hands down, Nikki, because it can be extremely distracting. So there are hand gestures that are impactful and ways that you want to use them when you're depicting something, but there are also if if you're just a hand talker, which I am, I have had to learn how to minimize that, especially when I'm on stage in the front of the room, because it can be really distracting to a high visual learner. You know, if you're waving your hands around and somebody is a high visual learner, it's kind of like you're messing up their picture. It's like, get your hands out of my picture. Right. So I have to think about that. And I do things when I'm on stage to to help remind myself to be more strategic with my hand gestures versus just be Nikki talking. Julio Gonzalez: And and to that point, you know, as much as I said earlier that I'm not good at sales, we are selling at all times, right? If we are a leader, if we're, you know, department head, whatever, you're in essence selling to your staff as well. so it's important for for everyone to understand, you know, what what the mechanics and you know the tools around communication are because it does come into play in in every aspect of of what we do. how much of that comes into your coaching? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Well, it's everywhere because for me it's always about the communication piece, right? So whether you're a leader, whether you want to have more influence in your in your family dynamic, the selling piece is something that, you know, oftentimes my clients will report to me that, you know, they just attended a family function and they applied some of the techniques that they learned from me and they had the best experience they've ever had, or they had a deeper conversation with a you know, an important person that they've just never gotten into that kind of a conversation before. So these skills are universal. And the the thing that I think is really important is sell selling. It's it's learned skills, right? And I think sometimes there's a misconception that like you either have it, you're either born a natural salesperson or you're not. And that is baloney because it they are skills that can be learned. It's communication, right? Like Just like you didn't come out of the womb knowing knowing how to use a fork, right? Like you learned how to use a fork. And you and sometimes you start with a spoon and then you move to a fork, right? And then chopsticks. Wow. Right? Like now you've really progressed. So these are learned skills. And so don't beat yourself up if you're like, well, nobody ever taught me that. I don't, I don't know. You you can learn them now. I I have clients of all variety of ages and clients in all different phases of their businesses. I I, you know, some of the salespeople I'm working with right now have been in sales for 20 years. And I'm teaching them things that they're like, I've never heard anybody talk about that before. Like what? I never thought about, you know, I statements in my emails. I never paid attention to, you know, asking a question versus making a statement. Like these are things, it's a learned skill. I learned it and I will happily teach it to anybody who wants to learn it. Julio Gonzalez: And you know, you've got a lot of experience, you know, like as I mentioned in the intro, you've worked with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with NASA. So, you know, who are your not massive customers, right? That that people can feel confident that, you know, you are, you know, my sized and not just you know enterprise sized. Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: I mean, the majority of clients that I work with are small, small business entrepreneurs, right? These are people that are having to sell for the first time because they're passionate about whatever it is that they do, whether it's, you know, coaching, whether it's teaching, whether it's, you know, writing code for somebody, like there's still a sales component to their business. So I work with like solopreneurs all the way up to, you know, again, fairly large sales teams. Because if you're selling to a person, right? Then the skills that I teach will will support you and and help you strengthen your communication skills, build your resilience in conversation so that, you know, I always say, like, I don't teach anybody how to sell like me. I don't believe in that. I believe in using your own strengths and the things that make you you, like the genuine you that you are. And how to just then add a little bit more strategy to it so that

there's more of an impact. Because ultimately, it is about relationships. It is about leaving somebody feeling really good about their interaction with you, whether it's in written communication or it's a live conversation. So to answer your question, like I work with kind of every level. If you know, if you're just putting up a website and people can just go to your website and buy your, your widget. Like I'm not the sales coach for you by any stretch of the imagination, but if you're having any type of interaction with your potential clients, there's skills there that can be learned and applied, and you'll see a tremendous impact in the relationship and how easy you make it for people to make that decision to hire you. Julio Gonzalez: So we're at about 34, 35 minutes. is there anything that you still want to cover? Anything that we missed? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: If you wanna do more like the the NLP stuff, you know, in the copy, so I do have another tip around that. Or if you wanna talk about, you know, like the other thing that often is a struggle for people is they have these good conversations, these good interactions, and then they don't really go anywhere. And why is that? So I'm happy to share some strategy around that. Yeah. What what would be helpful for you, Ulio? Julio Gonzalez: I I l I like that last one because and Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Okay. Julio Gonzalez: and is part of that gonna be follow up or just you know, making a better conversation? Nikki Rausch - Sales Maven: Yeah, I can go as far as you want, but I will say the the the freebie that I have for your audience is my follow-up made easy guide where I actually give follow-up scripts and timing and like it it's a pretty comprehensive guide. So that will be a part of something that if somebody's like, I never know when to follow up, this guide kind of walks you through. Here's where here's here's the type of message you send and here's when you send it. And here's the next message. If you don't hear back that you send instead, and here's the third message, right? Like that's what it goes through. Julio Gonzalez: Well, from Stuck to Scale, we roll with the punches. And thanks to Nikki for sending us her recording there, closing out the podcast. Unfortunately, we we lost her midway. so that is our episode of From Stuck to Scale today. Thanks to Nikki for coming on and talking to us about how neurolinguistic programming or simply using questions to drive sales. Is a much greater approach than what was done in the past. Nikki highlighted that sales is a collaborative effort, emphasizing the importance of engaging with clients rather than merely delivering a pitch. She provided clear strategies for using language effectively to foster genuine connections and enhancing conversations. If you're looking to deepen your understanding of these concepts, consider checking out Nikki's books and podcast, Sales Maven, which can be found on your preferred platform. We appreciate your time today, and remember, implementing what you've learned can pave the way for growth. Join us next time as we continue to share strategies for scaling your business. Thank you, Nikki.