Latest / How To Talk To Humans / Active Listening to Enhance Gift Giving (Personal & Business) Holiday Special Part 1

Transcript

Active Listening to Enhance Gift Giving (Personal & Business) Holiday Special Part 1 · How To Talk To Humans

0:00
Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson and this is How to Talk to Humans.
0:04
Larry Wilson: This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills.
0:10
Larry Wilson: Are you looking to get a better job?
0:12
Larry Wilson: Are you looking to find a relationship?
0:15
Larry Wilson: Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far?
0:21
Larry Wilson: I can show you so easily how to change that.
0:25
Larry Wilson: Now, I can only do it with humans.
0:27
Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you.
0:32
Larry Wilson: But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable.
0:50
Larry Wilson: What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success.
1:05
Larry Wilson: One of the problems with living so long is I can't remember of all the comedians I've worked with and all these guys I was friends with, and some of them who are no longer with us, I can't always remember whose jokes were whose.
1:22
Larry Wilson: And today's Zoom training, which I think might be the most important training of the year, I'm reminded of this joke.
1:33
Larry Wilson: I think my old friend, Gary Schandling, I think it was a Gary Schandling joke, where he talked about visiting a couple, friends of his who just had a new baby, and they were talking, and suddenly he smelled a terrible smell in the room.
1:49
Larry Wilson: And everyone looked at the baby, and the mother went over and sort of peeled back the baby's diaper for a second, and with great ex seriously excited, not pretend, not being sarcastic, she was really delighted.
2:04
Larry Wilson: She said to the new father, she said, Oh, look what your baby made for you.
2:10
Larry Wilson: And Shanling's joke was, he said, I thought, wow, this guy must be easy to shop for.
2:17
Larry Wilson: Maybe it doesn't strike other people the way it strikes from me, but I always thought that was hilarious.
2:22
Larry Wilson: That, of course, is the real theme for tonight's training.
2:30
Larry Wilson: It's about something that at first blush may seem like I'm being very light-hearted or I'm being silly, but I'm I take it very seriously.
2:42
Larry Wilson: It's how to buy the perfect gift.
2:46
Larry Wilson: Now, I know that some of you are thinking, oh, I don't care about this.
2:51
Larry Wilson: Well, maybe not, but you might be surprised how much your business can benefit from this knowledge.
3:00
Larry Wilson: Let's begin at the most obvious entry-level place of this discussion, which is the holidays are upon us now.
3:10
Larry Wilson: Uh, I guess uh Thanksgiving is two weeks away, and then Christmas and the Hanukkah and on and on.
3:20
Larry Wilson: It never ends.
3:22
Larry Wilson: And for some of you, it's enough to induce a nervous breakdown, just buying for your family and friends.
3:34
Larry Wilson: That's tough enough.
3:36
Larry Wilson: I'm gonna show you tonight how to make it so easy and how to make yourself into a hero where people are so impressed with you, never forget you.
3:49
Larry Wilson: Isn't that what we want?
3:51
Larry Wilson: If we're talking about business, I know it's what we want.
3:57
Larry Wilson: I know that those of you who some of you may be uh entrepreneurs, you may be a one-man band, one-woman band, others of you have small businesses.
4:12
Larry Wilson: Some of you are looking to expand your one-person operation into larger.
4:18
Larry Wilson: What we're gonna cover tonight is mission critical to your success.
4:26
Larry Wilson: Because uh, as I've often pointed out to people in various different places where I've been uh paid as a consultant, sometimes they think, oh, I'm just gonna spend a bunch of money on advertising.
4:44
Larry Wilson: And it's not a bad thing, especially if you have a clever campaign and you know your market and you have a good market-to-message match, so that what you're saying is going to strike a chord with the people who are really your tribe.
5:02
Larry Wilson: Because of course that's what we're looking for.
5:05
Larry Wilson: It's not a bad thing, but I'm always quick to point out that hate advertisements.
5:14
Larry Wilson: As you know, I am the world's biggest fan of unspoken, sometimes almost subconscious communication, what we call semiotic communication.
5:29
Larry Wilson: And hate advertising carries with it some semiotic information that may not always be to your advantage, without telling people, without putting too fine a point on it.
5:46
Larry Wilson: When people see something in print, I don't know where things are in print, in a magazine or a newspaper or online, and it says, oh, so-and-so is great and does a great job, and you'll love us, somewhere in their consciousness, they realize you paid for this.
6:10
Larry Wilson: So of course you're going to say complimentary things about your goods or services that you provide.
6:18
Larry Wilson: And who knows, you may even be pushed to exaggerate a little sometimes.
6:26
Larry Wilson: Somewhere they're thinking that sometimes your end consumer is very conscious of it.
6:33
Larry Wilson: And if you ask them to believe too much, that kind of breaks through the wall of consciousness where they just sort of go, Well, that's not true.
6:47
Larry Wilson: These guys are just saying it because they're paying for the ad.
6:51
Larry Wilson: An alternative to this, of course, and it still might involve paid placements, still might involve, it could be used online on any of the million platforms that are popping up now.
7:09
Larry Wilson: It could be on YouTube, on Instagram, on the dreaded TikTok, it could be on Facebook, it could be on anything.
7:19
Larry Wilson: But testimonials, I think, carry much more weight.
7:26
Larry Wilson: And I think they have a much more persuasive effect on your consumer who's your end user.
7:36
Larry Wilson: It's you know, it's not a simple either-or situation.
7:41
Larry Wilson: Your testimonial has to be very believable.
7:45
Larry Wilson: It has to, there has to be no question it's authentic.
7:49
Larry Wilson: It is not fabricated or falsified or sweetened up somehow.
7:57
Larry Wilson: And it has to, my in my opinion, the more the merrier.
8:05
Larry Wilson: If you could present six testimonials in rapid succession, maybe each one was just five or six seconds, so it's a half minute or 36 seconds of testimonials, boy, they better land right on target.
8:24
Larry Wilson: And I'm going to make one up now.
8:28
Larry Wilson: I don't know why, I guess because I heard something like this before.
8:32
Larry Wilson: If you were offering a health program that was a weight loss program, if you had five, four, five, six people in rapid succession, now maybe they're audio, maybe they're speaking, maybe it's video, you see them, maybe it's in print.
8:50
Larry Wilson: But if what they're saying addresses the main concerns of your target audience, of your target market, and it targets them really unequivocally.
9:05
Larry Wilson: It doesn't say, yeah, I kind of like this, and I thought, no, it has to be things like I didn't think this was going to work, I was wrong.
9:16
Larry Wilson: I lost 20 pounds in six weeks, and it was easy.
9:21
Larry Wilson: I couldn't believe how easy.
9:23
Larry Wilson: Just something simple like that.
9:24
Larry Wilson: If somebody else says, I'm terrified of shots, I don't want any of those GLP1 drugs, this exercise program was so much healthier and safer.
9:36
Larry Wilson: Fast, fast, fast, really faster.
9:40
Larry Wilson: I think if you have half a dozen of those, it carries so much more weight with your target market.
9:50
Larry Wilson: Because in their minds, I I think it creates a feeling of, well, all these people couldn't be lying.
9:59
Larry Wilson: You know, if you have just one person saying, oh, Joe Bob's chicken restaurant is really good.
10:08
Larry Wilson: Well, you may think, ah, I don't know.
10:12
Larry Wilson: When you have a bunch of people, people saying, I've never tasted chicken this great, cuts the next person.
10:18
Larry Wilson: We've been everywhere.
10:20
Larry Wilson: Texas, New York, Boston, Chicago, LA.
10:23
Larry Wilson: This is the best chicken.
10:25
Larry Wilson: Right.
10:26
Larry Wilson: If you have a series of those, you know, it carries a great deal of weight.
10:32
Larry Wilson: Now, what has this got to do with picking the perfect gift?
10:38
Larry Wilson: Well, it is the same semiotic experience that we get when we hear testimonial as when we receive a gift from someone that connects on the points we're going to connect on tonight.
10:58
Larry Wilson: And that is, it's simple.
11:01
Larry Wilson: I I hope someone will raise their hand and attack me if I ever try to teach you something that isn't simple.
11:10
Larry Wilson: I have no time for that, and I don't think anyone else does either.
11:14
Larry Wilson: It's so simple.
11:16
Larry Wilson: The key to picking the perfect gift is that it should carry a semiotic message.
11:26
Larry Wilson: That is, a message that is not spoken is not written.
11:32
Larry Wilson: Now, this doesn't mean you can't have something, it doesn't mean you can't write a card with feelings that you're expressing or ideas or gratitude, whatever it is.
11:44
Larry Wilson: But the semiotic message, again, is very simple, but so powerful.
11:52
Larry Wilson: And that message is from you, the gift giver, to the recipient of the gift, I see you.
12:03
Larry Wilson: I really see you as you are.
12:07
Larry Wilson: That's the most basic semiotic part of the message.
12:12
Larry Wilson: Radations and more layers of it are, and I feel so good about you.
12:22
Larry Wilson: I feel good about knowing you.
12:25
Larry Wilson: I feel good that you're my friend or my customer, or someone I've gotten to know, that I wanted to do something special for you.
12:41
Larry Wilson: Now, you know, I should go back because I get carried away here.
12:47
Larry Wilson: But in many ways, the genesis of tonight's training comes from a television commercial that now must be 40 years old.
12:57
Larry Wilson: I wonder if anyone else remembers this commercial.
13:01
Larry Wilson: I should try to find it, I'm sure it's somewhere online.
13:05
Larry Wilson: Oh my god, did this commercial drive me insane?
13:13
Larry Wilson: It always came out about this time of year, about mid-November.
13:19
Larry Wilson: It came out.
13:20
Larry Wilson: And it was a man and woman, presumably husband and wife, and I I feel like they were, they might have been in their dressing gowns or pajamas, but it was at night, dimly lit room, but there's a suggestion of great, I don't know, like great wealth, but they certainly, my memory is that we could see out the window, and they were like in a penthouse luxury apartment or something.
13:54
Larry Wilson: We could see the skyline, the difference.
13:56
Larry Wilson: There was a roaring fire, but most of the other lights were subdued in the room.
14:02
Larry Wilson: And they were opening Christmas gifts.
14:06
Larry Wilson: And the man, with great anticipation, has handed his wife this little gift wrap box, and she's opened it, and she looks at it, and her face falls.
14:19
Larry Wilson: She's excited, and then uh.
14:22
Larry Wilson: And the man says, What is it?
14:27
Larry Wilson: And the woman trying to recover says, Oh, it it's lovely.
14:33
Larry Wilson: I was just hoping for a longine.
14:37
Larry Wilson: Now, longine was this uh brand of watch, some kind of expensive watch.
14:46
Larry Wilson: It made me crazy seeing this commercial because I thought, oh my god, this man went to the trouble of buying his wife a gift, and she has the bad manners to say, oh, I was hoping for a long Jean.
15:05
Larry Wilson: Now you know it's funny, because it reminds me of another comedian friend of mine, Jay Leno, because he used to he used to do a joke about that television commercial, and he used to say he expected the guy to go, yeah, well, I was hoping for a blonde with big boobs, and I got you, you know.
15:27
Larry Wilson: So that was kind of Jay's reaction to it.
15:30
Larry Wilson: But my reaction was much more visceral.
15:32
Larry Wilson: I I really took offense to I thought it was a horribly emasculating, hostile, really mean-spirited commercial.
15:50
Larry Wilson: Because the semiotic message was very clear.
15:56
Larry Wilson: If you don't buy your wife a long jean watch, you're garbage.
16:02
Larry Wilson: You're you're less than garbage.
16:05
Larry Wilson: I don't know what that would be, but you're you're a horrible, horrible excuse for a husband.
16:11
Larry Wilson: Don't you know that's what every one wife wants is a long jean?
16:15
Larry Wilson: And for those of you who are not sure, I hasten to point out, I don't believe it's true.
16:20
Larry Wilson: I don't believe uh most women want a long gene watch.
16:23
Larry Wilson: I can't remember ever seeing a woman ever wearing one.
16:25
Larry Wilson: But I bring up this commercial because it is playing on the very popular and untrue idea that I think a lot of people have at this time of year.
16:43
Larry Wilson: I have to pick something expensive, and I have to pick something that really shows how much money I was ready to splash out.
16:53
Larry Wilson: Incorrect.
16:55
Larry Wilson: You don't need to do this.
16:56
Larry Wilson: I mean, if you have no other resources, if you don't know Larry Wilson, if you don't know any Wilson method training, then yeah, go ahead, do whatever you want.
17:05
Larry Wilson: I'm sure a gold bar uh with a nice ribbon around it will always be gratefully accepted as a gift.
17:12
Larry Wilson: But it won't have the same effect.
17:14
Larry Wilson: In fact, it could really backfire on you.
17:17
Larry Wilson: Uh, you know, I spent most of my adult life in Hollywood living there, and I saw some horrible things.
17:26
Larry Wilson: Um when I say horrible, they're not the way you think of horrible, I think.
17:33
Larry Wilson: They're just the worst elements of humanity.
17:38
Larry Wilson: I remember a guy who I really liked, who was a really nice guy, and he had gotten a very special job as an assistant to some big Hollywood producer.
17:51
Larry Wilson: And the Hollywood producer uh he'd only had the job like a week or so.
17:57
Larry Wilson: And the Hollywood producer said, Yeah, yeah, uh, we were having a party.
18:01
Larry Wilson: We want the most amazing Christmas tree in town, anywhere.
18:07
Larry Wilson: I don't care where you have to go, I don't care what you have to spend, don't come back without it.
18:13
Larry Wilson: And this guy I knew, he went and looked everywhere.
18:15
Larry Wilson: He finally found it, except it had already been sold to a family.
18:21
Larry Wilson: And on the spot, because of course almost everyone in Hollywood, regardless of their day job, is an actor or has that actor training.
18:30
Larry Wilson: He had a great deal of background in improv.
18:33
Larry Wilson: And he started this whole rap about his special needs child.
18:41
Larry Wilson: Now, totally made up.
18:43
Larry Wilson: He wasn't married, he didn't have kids.
18:45
Larry Wilson: But this is what Hollywood does to you.
18:48
Larry Wilson: And he started this whole rap because he told me about a litter and he was ashamed but that his special needs child had some also, besides being special needs, also had some fatal illness or something.
19:03
Larry Wilson: He wasn't expected to live to see another Christmas, and all he wanted was the most beautiful tree that he'd ever seen, and they were driving by and had seen it, and he said, Daddy, can you get me that?
19:16
Larry Wilson: And he he plucked the heartstrings of these people so they wound up giving him the tree that they had previously promised to somebody else, and I think had actually already accepted money from someone else.
19:30
Larry Wilson: They gave it to this guy for free because they felt so horrible.
19:33
Larry Wilson: And he took it and gave it to his boss, who probably didn't think twice about it.
19:38
Larry Wilson: And uh, you know, they have their party, and you know.
19:41
Larry Wilson: Please don't let me go too far astray here.
19:46
Larry Wilson: You know, sometimes I get so involved that time just slips away.
19:51
Larry Wilson: There's so much here I want to share with you, but I don't want to take up more of your life.
19:57
Larry Wilson: So we're gonna continue the second.
19:59
Larry Wilson: Part of this next week.
20:02
Larry Wilson: And it only gets better.
20:05
Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson.
20:07
Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful.
20:13
Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com.
20:18
Larry Wilson: There's a ton of stuff there.
20:20
Larry Wilson: In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
20:26
Larry Wilson: Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one.
20:35
Larry Wilson: I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey.
20:41
Larry Wilson: And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.