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The Communication Mistake Costing Business Owners Money · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: The biggest mistake that many of us make, I include myself in this, is we forget that the job of communicating is not to educate the other person, it's not to make ourselves look credible, it's not to explain everything. It's the responsibility of the person creating the message to make sure that it's as easy as possible to understand it in the first place. And you can get someone to agree to your idea just by explaining it in terms of the impact. The effort and the outcomes that they care about. speaker-1: What does a good first minute of communication need to do? speaker-0: It starts with the impact. How does it impact you? speaker-1: At some point, every expert has to explain what they do to people who do not understand their work. It might be on a sales call, in a proposal, during a client conversation, or in the first few lines of their website. And a lot of experts think that explaining an idea well means being thorough, myself included. So they give more detail, use the right technical words, and try to prove the depth of their thinking. But that often gives the other person more information than they know what to do with. They might get pieces, but not enough to truly understand. And when people don't understand what you do, they make decisions using the information they can understand, the price, the timeline, and the risk. And that means the value of your actual expertise can get left out of the decision. So what does it take to explain complex work in a way people can understand without stripping out the substance? To help answer that question, I'm excited to be joined today by Chris Fenning. Chris helps subject matter experts communicate clearly so their ideas are understood. Trusted and acted on by the people they're trying to reach. In our conversation, we discuss why experts overexplained, how jargon creates hidden confusion, and how his frameworks like GPS, goal, problem, solution, can make a message easier to follow. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. Now here is my conversation with Chris Venning. Chris, thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: thank you, Ian, for having me. I'm looking forward to this. When you sent me the questions, some like some of the topics you wanted to cover, not the exact questions, but some of those topics, I got excited about answering them because there is so much good stuff that we're gonna cover today. speaker-1: Absolutely. I'm excited to dive in. So starting things off, Chris, you work with subject matter experts who really know their stuff, right? Who have d spent a lot of time building up their expertise, building something amazing, but they still struggle to get people to understand it, like what they're working on, understanding the concepts that they're explaining. Why does that happen? speaker-0: well, it happens for a whole bunch of reasons. But the ones that are most common are people go into too much detail. They forget just how little other people know. And the biggest mistake that many of us make, I include myself in this, is we forget that the job of communicating is not to educate the other person, it's not to make ourselves look credible, it's not to explain everything. It's to bridge the gap between what the other person understands and the thing that we're trying to tell them. speaker-1: So what does bridging that gap look like? So like the thing that we're trying to tell them? Like what's the difference between what that person understands and the thing we're trying to tell them? Like what is the what is the gap that usually exists there? speaker-0: Yeah, and the gap the gap can be seemingly tiny, but be an enormous gulf. And and I'll give an example of this. You you mentioned subject matter specialists. Well, some people make listening to this might think, well, that's a a scientist or a rocket scientist or somebody deep in the financial world. But I'm going to share an example from a pest control company. And this is this happened to me a few weeks ago. And I have old rat stuff in my attic. Bought an old house, doing it up, discovered there were rats. And so the pest control company came around and I was walking around the outside of the house. And the guy said, well, we need to put some drip edge up here. And so I I s I nodded, d trying to work out what drip edge was. We wandered around a bit more. He goes, yeah, some more drip edge over here. And on the third time he said, Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely have to put a runner drip edge over there. I said, I'm I'm really sorry. What is drippage? I thought he was saying drippage. It turned out he was saying drip edge. And even that didn't clear it up for me because It's a word that doesn't mean anything to me. It's not a normal part of my life. But to him, it's an everyday part of his job. And so after a bit of back and forth, he said, there's a gap between your roof line and and the wall, and that's where rats and squirrels are getting in. So what we're going to do is we're going to put a bit of metal around that, and it's called drip edge. I went, brilliant. That that whole gap in my understanding was from one word. And here's the real impact of that. As he was pointing out these places and talking about drip edge and saying, well, it'll go up under the roof here, I was thinking, that is expensive. That's a big bit of work. Can I put it off another year? Do I have to do it right now with all the other stuff going on with the house? So that guy's expertise, the the expert language or jargon that he has to make his job easier almost cost him the sale. Because I was thinking I can't afford it. He goes, no, it's about fifteen minutes, it's a couple of hundred bucks, including the materials. And then no more squirrels and rats in your attic. Brilliant. But that is the gap between expertise and the audience. And it conjures up all kinds of problems. speaker-1: And I would imagine that in most instances, if you as the expert, as a subject matter expert in whatever domain that is, you can't rely on your customer, like in this instance where you ask the question, right? You can't really rely like typically most people don't want to ask those kinds of questions because they don't want to look dumb or for whatever reasons, right? So a lot of times they'll just kind of like nod their head and go along and be like, Okay, yeah, sounds great. We'll get back to you, knowing full well that like I have no idea. I don't understand what this guy just told me. That sounds super expensive. I'm not gonna ask any questions for clarification. So is that typically the case that you can't really rely on your audience or your customer to ask those questions? speaker-0: You can't. You can't at all This is the most common starting place in the conversations I have with people who work in the finance industry. Anyone who sells financial planning, financial advisors, financial products, insurance, things like that. I spoke to ten financial advisors and asked them to give me a list of terms that they were certain their clients understood. And there you know, there was there there wasn't a complete overlap between them all, but there were about six words, six or seven words that All ten gave me. I then went and asked 30 business owners to tell me which of these words they understood. And the advisor said everyone would understand them. Of the 30 people, and this blows my mind, eight didn't know a single one of the words. And none of the words had more than 50% of the group, the 50% of the remainder understanding. So a third of the group knew one of the words. And most of the others were known by two or three. The gulf between what the financial advisors thought their clients understood and what the clients actually understand is huge. And you mentioned the well, you know, do they just nod their heads? They absolutely do. When I spoke to to these these business owners who all all got successful companies and said, Why so would you say you didn't understand? I just got a flat no from all of them. No, we we I don't want to look stupid, they say the word. I think I get it, so I just not. And here's the consequence. Those people, when they're presented with the option, financial advisor laid out lays out here are three things you should do. Most of the time, the clients would say, Yeah, I just I need to think about it. Need a bit more time. I'll get back to you. Because that is safer than saying, I don't understand, therefore I don't have confidence in it, and it's too risky, so I'm not going to buy it. And it's not just buying financial products. This happens when a software developer is proposing a solution. This happens when a chemist is asking for grant funding. If we can't bridge that gap, the person we're talking to is rarely going to say, Yeah, sorry, I I don't get it. speaker-1: Yeah. I could see that. Because one, you don't want to, you know, look silly or stupid or like ask a bad question, right? That comes from I can remember feeling that way going all the way back to, you know, second grade, right? It's just this kind of inherent thing in us. And then it's also like tough if you don't understand what they're saying to even ask the right question. Right. Like I I've been in that situation more times than I can count with this podcast. Or like I'm talking with somebody who has an expertise. And I'm not like fully getting what they're saying, so it's hard for me to even think of the right question to ask. So there's a lot of reasons why you can't rely on the consumer to ask for clarification. It's on you. speaker-0: Absolutely. What do you in that situation? So you've got a guest on, they've explained something, clearly very excited about it, and you're and you're thinking, I don't get it, maybe my listeners won't get it. How do you how do you address that during the conversation? speaker-1: Man, I typically will, you know, use a lot of filler words and kind of pause for a few seconds until something comes to mind on like another follow-up question that I can ask to take it a different direction. So usually yeah, I just try and I I fail to be able to dig deeper because again, I'm not fully getting what they're saying. So then it forces me to almost like pivot into talking about something else, which is unfortunate because it's the digging deeper where like where the golden conversation lies. And then it's also in the understanding where Like being able to take the next step is possible. Right. So I can see how this idea of making sure that what you're explaining and and what you're teaching makes sense, enables the next step happening, whether that's in the situation of a podcast, you're a podcast guest, making the podcast host making it easier for them to be to ask the right follow up question to dig deeper, or in a transactional relationship like the pest control company, making it easier for you to understand what they're going to do, which makes it easier for you to take the next step. Right. What are we gonna buy? speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Acknowledging that. Like that's a that's a really powerful recognition. And y what you're doing is actually one of the techniques that helps. You said filler words, pauses. You're giving yourself time to think. And because we think at around eight hundred words a minute, which is four times faster, seven, eight hundred words a minute is how we think, but we speak at around a hundred and fifty. So you get about five times as much thinking time as you would speaking wise. So those pauses can can actually give you a decent amount of processing to do the follow-up. Yeah. Can I can I give you a little phrase that may help in the future? Yeah. So if someone's explained something and you haven't quite got it, the follow up can be, this is like we've gone into some detail there. This is some great stuff. If you were going to summarize that in just two or three bullets at a super high level, like I want to explain it to my gran, what's what would be that top line summary? Just give me those those headlights. speaker-1: Absolutely. speaker-0: And then you're getting them to put the effort into creating the summary and you're not having to to make an assumption or pivot away from what could be a really great conversation. speaker-1: Yeah. I like it. I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna use that in the future. I don't think I'll have that issue with you because everything that you're saying so far makes a hundred percent sense. So when we go back to that, your experience with the pest control company and you asking that clarifying question and then you pivoted to another example with the financial institution, and it sounds like that process that you went through with the financial organization is you had them kind of list out these terms. That they think that their audience or their customers understand and then you found that they absolutely don't. So is that typically where you're starting with your customers, with your clients when you're helping them to make more sense in explaining what they do? Are you starting with like the individual terms that they're likely using in their like explanation? Is that where the hiccups typically happen? Is like individual words like drip edge? speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. So you've actually hit on the the very first step that I often do with companies. I have a working with with another company tomorrow morning after we record this. And there are three core exercises that we'll do. The first is based on the words that we use. What are the words that are expert language in their organization versus common everyday equivalent? The second is about focus. And are we focusing on the what it is and the how it works, or are we focusing on what it does and the impact it has on the recipient? So we look for all the descriptions of of what things are versus what they do and how they impact. And then the third are the stories. So you've repeated back to me the two stories, pest control and finance, because they help give clarity on what a problem is and what you might do about it. So those are the three big things. And as you correctly guessed, the first one is Just what are the words we use? And I've gone through their websites, I've gone through their product listing, and I've written down all the stuff that I don't know, or putting on my I don't I'm not an expert in their industry. Here are the words that I suspect they use and that clients don't immediately understand. And then I get them to work through it. And we do this activity of this is what you say, but what does it really mean? And what's a really simple way to to describe it? speaker-1: Yeah. So if if a listener is hearing this, have you, I'm sure you have, done some thinking about how you can identify those words? If a listener was just doing this on their own, obviously if you're listening to this, get in touch with Chris, him and his team and work through this process with them. But if somebody wanted to do kind of the DIY version of this, if they were like how could they identify those words that might be the the hiccups? Like what if what is the criteria that you have broken down or how would you explain? those words that you would want to identify and then find new ways of saying. speaker-0: Yeah. So well, the the easiest place to start is with the products and services and things that you do. And the reason that's the easiest place to start is that's usually listed on a site. It's part of our job description. It's the the things that we tell people, sell people, or describe. And and so to take it out of out of pest control for a moment, let's go into software engineering. That could be the system names on the back end. It could be the coding language. It could be Whatever you happen to be working on in the architecture of that system. Even the word architecture is terminology for anyone outside of that. They think buildings, but in software it's something very different. So start with the words and phrases for the things that you do and offer. And the reason that's a good place to start is we don't know when we're using expert language. It's very hard to see from the outside. So start with the stuff that's written down. And usually there are there are pretty obvious things. So I'll go back to finance. Do you know what an annuity is? Could you explain an annuity to a friend well enough that they could feel confident to invest in it or not? speaker-1: No. I the only part of annuity that I think I know is like it's an annual, like a yearly thing, but I have no idea anything else besides that. speaker-0: All right, so based based on that, are you familiar with the word annuity? If I say annuity you're like I know that word. speaker-1: Yeah, I've seen that word before. Heard that word. speaker-0: But I can't describe it. And that's the feeling that our clients have. They recognize the word in pest control. And I'll find some other examples at the moment, but these are two very current real things to people. There are bait stations. Well, I know the word bait and I know the word station, but do I really understand what a bait station is and what it does and what it means for me? Or should the pest control company write down bait station and say, what's a different way to describe that? It's a box with poison in it. Definitely understand the second one, harder, like there's a little bit of uncertainty and ambiguity on the first one. So even when it comes to to podcasting, you you reach out to guests, you do a great job of communicating with us before we come on. But if no one has used Riverside as the app for for doing this interview and recording it, if you start talking about we'll meet in Riverside, well, to me, that's that's actually the community center down the road called Riverside, that's where that's where we go swimming. We're we're meeting there because the terminology isn't familiar to me as it is to you in your industry. So the listener, write down the things that you do and sell, the products, the services, the packages, and then say, what is a way I could describe this that is absolutely clear to anybody using common words? speaker-1: Yeah. And it sounds like in the example of turning bait station into a box with poison in it, is the evolution of like the the next variation that you would encourage your clients to get to, is it typically a more literal version, or are you also then focusing on maybe like outcome oriented language or how do you typically advise the the alteration that you make to the language that they use? speaker-0: Yeah. So the first the first step is put it into common words. Put it into words that have no ambiguity. They don't have those double meanings. And it usually means you need more words. Because expert language is shorthand. It's slang. Jargon is the one word that replaces two sentences. And it's great when I'm talking to other experts. So everyday common words where there's no ambiguity, that's the first step. Then when you've got those words. You're going to the hard bit is trying to remember to use them. So we'll do a bu a bunch of activities to get them to use them. But where it comes to what is the impact, what is the the outcome, that's actually a different process. So you've got to get the common words so that people actually understand the things that you're saying. The second piece is why should they care? So in this case, a client has has got a problem in their house. And I'll use myself. I've I've evidence of of rats and squirrels and things in my attic. Someone comes around and says, here's what we can do to solve the problem. And they list three or four options. I can't assess which of those options is better or worse. They say, well, we can do a barrier here, we can do a chemical thing there, we can do some traps here, we can do something else. So I've got four options. And now me as the audience, the non expert audience, I'm required to work out which one of those is better. But I can't because I don't know what they do, what is the effort involved, and what outcome will they deliver, which one is more expensive or less expensive, which one works faster, which one produces less smell, which one ends up with me having to remove a stinky dead body of something, versus the one that's nice and neat and goes All of those things are how we compare options, and they all come down to how does the option impact us? speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: If there are two options, we've got poison versus traps. How do I choose between those? Well, if they say, well, this is how poison works and this is how traps work, that's more detail on how the thing works, but it doesn't help me make a choice. Instead, they need to focus on what are the outcomes. One of them means you may end up with a an animal dying in the wall of your house, which is going to have bad smell. But it lasts a much, much longer time and you're more likely to get rid of of the problem in the long term. The other means you're going to have something that you have to remove, but it's you're going to be able to access it. So you've got that trade-off. And whenever all of our work, doesn't matter what industry you're in, there are a finite number of outcomes that people care about. And those outcomes fall into a set of categories. If you were trying to propose an idea. So you were talking to your boss, you wanted to propose an idea, you wanted them to agree to your idea and and do it. The way you make it relevant to them, the way you make you the detail of your idea actually mean something to them, is focus on what does it mean for them? What is the impact to the effort they have to put in? Time, money, resources, physical or mental energy. Everything we do takes effort. So your idea is going to benefit them by either increasing or decreasing the effort in one of those categories. And then your idea is going to make a difference to the outcomes that they care about. Now there are nine outcomes. This is going to be quite a it's quite a list, so we can share something afterwards if people want it. But all of our work falls into nine possible outcomes. We've got financial outcomes, speed and efficiency outcomes, quality, safety and compliance outcomes, and then reputation satisfaction and engagement. Everything we do, whether you are an office administrator, whether you're an investment banker, an astronaut, everything we do produces an outcome in one of those categories. And you can get someone to agree to your idea just by explaining it in terms of the impact to the effort and the outcomes that they care about. speaker-1: Yeah. Wow. And it just one point that is kind of stuck in my head too that I want to throw in there before we start digging into those buckets of outcomes is when you were explaining when you were talking about, okay, imagining the situation of your customer being faced with these four options and not really understanding the difference between any four of these options. I would believe, okay, if I find myself in that situation, and I'm sure you've done some thinking on this. I would make that decision as the customer using the information that I do understand. Right. And if I don't understand what's actually included, what's going to happen, the real difference between these four options, I'm going to make the decision based on what I understand, which is the price. Right. So I'm just going to go for the one that's the lowest cost. Right. So I would imagine that that is a real value of being able to clearly explain your idea and what you do is that people are going to be able to understand and make decisions. more effectively or using information that they understand and move beyond just making decisions based on what they do understand, which is typically just going to be price if you've explained things in a confusing way. speaker-0: Exactly right. And they'll think about price right now, not price over the long term. think about construction. You're getting getting something done on your house. You've got an option to f like the crawl space, that gap underneath the house where all your all your ducts are, the the pylons that hold up the floor. If you've got a problem in your crawl space, there's usually a quick, cheaper, fix the problem now solution. Let's say you had a a rotting piece of wood down there. Get given three options and I have to choose between them. Well, if I don't really understand what these options are, because they're talk they're talking about pillars and they're talking about bracing over here and they're talking about exclusion f foam and all sorts of stuff, you might go, well I just want my floor to not collapse. So I'm gonna pick the fix it now option. That's great, because your floor's not collapsing now, but in three to five years' time, your floor's gonna be collapsing again when because you haven't solved the root cause of the problem. Because you didn't understand the options. We weren't willing to ask. And they didn't do a good job of explaining. All right, option one is fix it now. It's cheaper today, but you'll pay every three years. Option two, you pay half as much again now, but we don't have to come back for twenty years. Over six years this is cheaper. Over twenty years it's much cheaper. Great for us as a company, we'll come back every year and keep fixing your problem, but you're gonna be an unhappy customer because you think, well, they didn't fix it properly last time. Whereas actually it was a communication issue where you couldn't clearly differentiate between the options. speaker-1: So do you almost see building the skill and the ability to explain what you do effectively in a way that resonates or makes sense to your customer almost as like a duty of sorts of the person, of the creator, because it's gonna help them, their customers, like enable their customers to make the like the right decision. Like, do you almost see it like a responsibility, a duty in a sense? speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's our responsibility as the person delivering a message in any situation, in sales, in business, and outside of of work. So I'm not the relationship communication guy. That's you talk to a different person for that. But even in those situations, it's the responsibility of the person creating the message to make sure that it's as easy as possible to understand it in the first place, and then to pay attention to the person receiving it and look for those signs of Have they got that blank stare and they're just nodding? Or are they actually saying yes or asking a follow up question or making a comment that shows they understand? So it is on us. And if someone's in sales and they're not doing this, their numbers are going to be lower. speaker-1: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's just there's so many different elements in which being able to explain your idea simply in a way that makes sense helps. Obviously, it's you, if you're a salesperson, it's gonna help you sell more. But it's also like again, if you care about your customers, it's like your duty, your responsibility to be able to give them the information that's gonna help them to make the best decision for them in the long term. Right. So like that's almost like the responsibility. It's your duty. Like if you care about your customers. You need to make sure that they are educated and able to make the right decision for them. And you can only do that by being able to explain the thing that you do in a way that makes sense to them without using jargon or expert language as you've described. speaker-0: Yes. Yes, yes, and yes. Hundred percent agree with you. speaker-1: Love it. So going back to the idea where and I love this insight, anything that anyone does can be tied to impacting one of those nine buckets of outcomes. Can you explain how you can identify how you can attach what you do to one of those nine buckets of outcomes? speaker-0: Yeah. Well let's so pick pick an industry that we are rather than me come up with something that might be pre prepared, pick an industry or a job we'll we'll go through we'll speaker-1: Let's say let's say a real estate agent. speaker-0: Okay, so a real estate agent. For themselves, they're in it for the higher goal of helping satisfy clients, but also the financial outcome of earning their commission. But when they're talking to a client when helping them choose between two homes, so you've got a realtor, real estate agent, or an estate agent for anyone in the UK, you've got two homes that you're looking at, and the client is struggling to decide between them. There's an emotional component, which is difficult to quantify, but it does fall under satisfaction. And then what you could do as a real estate agent is you can say, okay, between these two homes, we can compare them using each of these nine buckets. So there's a financial cost to them. And there's a financial cost up front, there's maintenance and tax costs, there's ongoing maintenance. Let's say you're looking at buying a an an old, very old home, a historic home versus a new built. Different price points, different ongoing maintenance costs. So let's talk about what the financial outcome is of buying these two. Once you've got those, okay. So what is the quality of life outcome of these two? What are the things in our lives that we're interested in in terms of quality? Do you want that Sunday morning brunch on deck experience? Or do you want that being situated in the center of town in the historic district so you can walk to places? What is the quality of life so you can start exploring that as a topic? Then you can look at if somebody's particularly safety conscious, so the realtor is listening to the the family go around and one of the parents is really, really nervous about fire risk in an old house. We can say, okay, let's talk about the safety comparison of here, and this one actually has a metal fire escape built onto the back, and et cetera. You can identify the outcomes that are triggering for that client and do the comparison like for like. That way you're not talking about, well, this one's got a deck, but that one's in town. What you're talking about is what's the quality of that day to day life experience? Saturday morning, quality of life at home with the deck, quality of life being able to walk to brunch. So you're helping define decision criteria for the person that's making that choice. speaker-1: Yeah. By describing how it's gonna impact one of these buckets of outcomes. speaker-0: It makes it it makes it like for like. And this happens a lot in in a business choosing between which project to fund. Well, do we do project A or project B? And people say, they're so different, we couldn't possibly compare them. Well, actually you can. What are the financial outcomes? Cost, revenue, ongoing maintenance, and when do those hit? What are the speed and efficiency outcomes for the processes? What are this customer satisfaction outcome? What is the staff engagement outcome? And then which of those buckets do we care about the most? And then you're doing a side by side comparison which you weren't before. speaker-1: Yeah. So the nine buckets remain consistent across any instance, correct? Yeah. speaker-0: They absolutely do. And if anyone listening says, I've got a tenth bucket, contact me and let me know. There used to be seven, but now it's nine and there's been nine for about forty or fifty different events training this and working through it. So I did add some more. If there's a tenth one, I'm happy to add it. So do get in touch. The nine buckets are, and these are roughly in order of what companies care about. It will always vary. Safety being an obvious one, some companies have to care a lot more about safety than others. But the nine categories are financial outcomes, speed outcomes, efficiency outcomes. The next three are compliance, safety, and quality. And the last three are satisfaction, reputation and engagement. speaker-1: Okay. And it sounds like you did that in order of what companies typically care about, those first three of financial speed and what was the third one again? speaker-0: Financial speed and efficiency, because speed and efficiency often most obviously roll up into the financials. Everything can be equated to money in the end, but they come in these three. So financial speed and efficiency are are very, very focused on on outcomes that tend to tie to money. And then safety, quality, and compliance are all connected. And then satisfaction, reputation, and engagement are how people feel about the stuff that you do. speaker-1: Got it. So then once you have clarity on which of these outcomes is going to resonate most with your client or whoever you're communicating with, whoever you're explaining what you do to, then you can emphasize that outcome in your explanation more and kind of how you're comparing and contrasting or explaining what you do. speaker-0: Exactly. Exactly right. So let's let's go into the corporate world for a moment. Let's say there's a small boutique company that is bidding for a piece of work and they've they're responding to a big company that's saying, Hey, we want to hire people to do to do this work. The big company would put out a list of these are the requirements. The small company would respond and then they usually get interviewed. If they go into the interview and it's the chief compliance officer, the chief safety officer, and the CEO. One of those is going to care about the money, the CEO. The other two are going to care about what? speaker-1: Yeah, safety and and compliance. Right. So we speaker-0: And compliment you go in and your pitch is your customer satisfaction is going to be so high, they're going to love it, it's amazing. You're not speaking to what two of the three people in the room care about. So if you're talking to the compliance officer, don't pitch efficiency, pitch compliance, tailor the message to that. And if you've got a mixed audience, so let's say you're you're talking to someone who is the budget holder, they're going to sign off on them on the money. And then you've got somebody who's the accountant. Who's going to make sure that it all works out? If you're talking about customer satisfaction, while that's important, you need to be able to link it to the money. So you might say, hey, our product or service is going to improve the customer satisfaction of all your customers by X amount. What that means is they're less likely to leave. You're going to get more recurring revenue over time. You don't have to acquire new customers. So there's a financial outcome attached to this as well. Join your speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: your key selling point to the thing they care about the most, what is most relevant to them, and you'll be far more likely to be understood and far more likely that they will be on board and agree with what you're selling. speaker-1: Yeah. Because when they understand, they're able to use what you used in your explanation as the information and the the decision criteria for whether or not they decide to to move forward. Makes total sense. Not surprised that it makes sense coming from Chris Fenning. Yeah. I love it. So speaker-0: The bar. Hi. If I get this wrong, then it's speaker-1: Yeah, right, right, right. speaker-0: But I it takes effort. So me doing this is not I wasn't born with this skill. This isn't something that is i is innate. And it's not something that some people are naturally better at or not. It's something that that we learn and we have to practice. And the practice doesn't stop. Even in my answers, I'm sometimes modeling frameworks to help me structure the answer so that it's not just words like excited words coming out of my mouth. So I'm applying frameworks as I build the answer in my head. And anyone can learn to do this with the right frameworks and if they want to put the practice in. speaker-1: Yeah. So where could people who are listening get access to some of these frameworks or get access to help from you or your team? speaker-0: My website's ChrisFenning.com. There's a ton of free info and resources and frameworks on there. I've written a bunch of books on different specific communication topics. So go and find the situation you're struggling with. There's going to be some frameworks to help you out there. And conversations like this. Of course, you can always get in touch with me. I'm I'm happy to chat with people and come and help them and their teams. speaker-1: Yeah, love it. We'll have the links to everything in the description and your contact information there as well. So let's make this more tangible to the audience. So I think a lot of the examples that we've been using have been conversations. You will explain what you do in conversations that you're having, a lot of sales instances, right? A lot of sales conversations. But they're this concept of being able to explain what you do simply shows up in a lot more than just the conversations that you're having or the sales conversations that you're having. Where do you see This skill, you know, being leveraged of being able to explain what you do simply, right? Where else do you see that ability showing up outside of just sales conversations? speaker-0: Anywhere, it's anywhere that you talk about stuff. It's at the table at Thanksgiving when your great aunt says, what are you doing for work now? You can't go into the insane detail of all w the things you do step by step every day. You need to be able to summarize what you do in a way that's meaningful and you have to be able to make it relatable so that they understand it. So there's got to be relevance and it's got to be relatable. If you're in an interview. Interview you're selling yourself, but you're still answering questions where someone says, give me an example of a time when you dealt with a difficult situation or you dealt with a difficult person. Well, you need to be able to describe the situation briefly, summarize it, explain why it's relevant to the question, what happened, what you did about it. And you could do that by giving excruciating amounts of detail, or you can use a few simple frameworks to summarize it in a way that's relevant, relatable. And Joel Comfree. speaker-1: Yeah. A hundred percent. It's like storytelling, right? It's like storytelling. It's one of those skills. And I guess what would be the label that you would put on this skill, this ability to explain what you do simply? Like I don't know, is there a an expert term for this skill? speaker-0: I wish I had a term and and when I get it, it's going to be the title of the book for this, because this is a situation where it takes more words to succinctly explain what it is. So no, I don't have a single I don't have a single word, but it is subject matter specialists being able to talk to anybody else without dumbing it down. speaker-1: Yeah. So to finish that point that I was making, it's like one of these skills, like story to like being a great storyteller, being able to explain what you you do in a simple way without dumbing it down is just one of those universal skill sets that can be applied pretty much anywhere, right? It your simple explanation for what you do tied to the outcome that's going to resonate with the audience that you're speaking to is going to show up on your landing pages, right? It's going to show up in your in your email communication. It's going to show up in all the sales, marketing, business application, but then also everything in your personal life, right? The Thanksgiving table. Everything that talked about is just one of those skills that's so important to be able to develop if you want to resonate with the people you're communicating with. And that resonance is what's required to create any action, right? like because every action requires other people involved. and you need other people to kind of understand and resonate with what you're doing in order for that it to happen. But speaker-0: And you mentioned marketing. You mentioned marketing there, and that's that's a great example. Quite often you go to s go to a company's website and it's about them and it's in language that says, we do this and we do that, and this is what happens, and we've won these awards. And their perspective is theirs. When we land on a landing page, we want it to say, want it to speak to us as the client, as the customer, as the individual. And it would be the difference between coming to my website and it saying, I've I've come up with lots of different frameworks that make communication easier. I've spent decades learning this stuff and got these awards for doing it and written in these things. Versus are you struggling with this problem? Are you trying to make complicated things explain those to people who are who don't know the detail? If you're having problems with that, here's some ways that can help. So it's literally speaking to and I did a terrible job of my own website tackling that, but it's literally speaking to the person who's reading it from their perspective and making it relevant to them. And that's that's the core of marketing. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. It is the core of marketing. Like one of the unit like the timeless principles of marketing is that the and this is marketing and sales, but the person who can most clearly or more accurately articulate the pain the prospect is experiencing using the language, the same language that they use to describe that pain is gonna be the one that's more likely to win the deal. Right. And that's like all sales is is being able to clearly understand the pain that they're experiencing, be able to rearticulate that back to them, get it to kind of get that that's right moment. and it's the same thing in marketing, right? If you can use the same language that your customers use to describe the problem that they're experiencing in your marketing, and yeah, they have to understand it, it has to resonate, they have to get what you're talking about if they're ever gonna take whatever that next step is. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And we're we're trying to grab their attention. I had this a a couple of years ago. I got an example that I s I still have the letter. So imagine you got a letter in the mail from the water company. And it said, Hey, great news. We are investing in the in the water infrastructure in your area. We've got ten teams out, we're spending half a billion dollars. We're working over the next three months. We're replacing pipes, we're replacing pump stations, all this stuff is happening. How much do you care about that letter and and how far through it are you going to read? speaker-1: Yeah, I don't it doesn't mean anything to me. speaker-0: Okay, so it goes in the trash or the recycling. Yeah. Unfortunately you missed the really important thing at the bottom paragraph. So instead of that, imagine you've got a letter that says, Hey, we're working on the water pipes in your area. Your water will be off from one until four PM on Monday, and we're digging up your road for three days next week. How much do you care about the letter now? speaker-1: Yeah, a lot. speaker-0: How much more of it are you gotta read? speaker-1: I'll probably finish it 'cause I need to know like why this is happening. Like yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. The American military call this bottom line up front. I call it something slightly different, so what is the difference between those two letters? speaker-1: You're putting like what it means for me at the top instead of at like burying it under all the irrelevant information to me. Yeah. speaker-0: It starts with the impact. How does it impact you? Not what am I doing, not what is my team doing, not how much are we spending, not what all the great things we're doing. It's how does it impact you, the reader? And this is what happens at work, whether you're in a one-person company or a hundred and fifty thousand-person company. If you're talking to somebody else and you're trying to get an idea across, propose a solution, make a suggestion, sell something, you have to start with the impact to them. Because until that point, They're thinking, I don't know what to do with this, and I'm just going to chuck the letter in the trash. Whereas if you start with the impact, how does this impact you? How does this impact something that you care about? Lead with that, and you're going to get people's attention. Here's how it ties back to what we talked about earlier. Impact has those categories. What is the impact on the effort and what is the impact on those nine outcomes? Lead with that, you'll get people's attention. They might not you might not keep it, they still might not might not buy your thing, they might not agree with your idea, but at least you've got their attention and you're expressing it in a way they understand. speaker-1: Yeah. And getting their attention is the first step, right? That is the first critical thing that you need to have before you can do anything else. Love that. Well said. And then is there still a place for when you talked about you used the website example, is there still a place for, you know, you talking about you? Like where does that come into the mix or where do you recommend using that, if at all? speaker-0: That's part of the credibility and people buy from people, people accept advice from people, not just from generic nameless things. Except Google and ChatGPT will provide advice and people will happily accept that now. We'll just take it, take it as red. If you're unknown, take it in a big big company, if you are talking to to someone in another team trying to collaborate on something and you're making a suggestion, if they don't know you, there's no inherent trust. If they don't know of you. So if someone introduces you as, this is the guy in this whole company who's the expert on all of this, okay, they're giving you credibility. But if you just turn up and start making suggestions, then there's a credibility challenge. And the problem a lot of people have in that situation is they'll try and lead with credibility and give their resume and give all their credentials. Whereas actually the validity of their idea. Is what gives them credibility first. They've said something that other people understand. They've said something that impacts other people so they understand why they should pay attention. And it's focused on that person's perspective and the outcomes they care about. All of that gives you credibility so that you can then follow it with, here's an example where we've done this somewhere else, or for the last seven years I've been using this process. You can start adding in those credibility pieces. So when it comes to a website, that's why the Meet Ian is scrolled down the page where they've gone through here's the pain point, here's the goal they're trying to achieve, the problems they're trying to overcome, a bit of the solution, and then here's the credibility piece. Here's Ian and who he is and why he's well positioned to help. And that's where it comes with probably a few little teasers on my own site, right at the top it says, I've worked with these big name companies. That gives a bit of credibility that other people trust me, people that you know. Trust me. But it's not all about me followed by the problem that you have. speaker-1: Yeah, right. You need it to what what did you call it the the military term? Bottom line. speaker-0: Up to bottom line up front. Blah. speaker-1: Bottom line up front. Yeah, I love it. Sweet. Final couple of questions for you here, Chris. Thank you again so much for taking the time. But I think if we could summarize everything that you shared today, taking your advice from earlier. If we could summarize everything that we s we said today down into like one short summary, right? I think you've done so in the title of one of your books, right? The first minute. Right. So I think a lot of what we've taught can be summarized into what needs to be accomplished in the first minute of communication. So in your work, if you were advising to somebody, what does a good first minute of communication need to do? speaker-0: Yeah. So the good first minute sets up everything that comes afterwards. The first minute, the first thirty seconds of a conversation needs to prepare the other person for the conversation you're about to have. It should answer some key questions. What are you talking about? Why are you telling me this? What is the headline? What is the point that you want to make? And then if you're if you're sharing something that's big and complex, you summarize it so that they have an overview. And I I'll summarize our entire conversation and then I'll give an analogy that will hopefully really cement this in. So in the last forty five minutes or so, we've been talking with the goal, people have the goal of being clear and concise when they communicate with non experts, with people who don't share their specialty. The problems they might face is we get trapped in our own language. We assume other people know more than they do, and we don't use great structures to simplify our messages. Well, the solution is to use some simple frameworks, like the one I just did, which is goal problem solution, to be able to summarize a forty five minute conversation into just a few lights. And then if you want the actual solutions, go back and listen to to what we've just talked about. speaker-1: Yeah. Absolutely. speaker-0: You're good. speaker-1: I was gonna say, just like when people hear this and then you they have the framework, where have you found people? So if somebody's listening to this, they hear everything that we talked about, they listen to forty s the last forty six minutes, and now they wanna take this and apply it to their own situation, right? They wanna prepare for, you know, their next conversation that they're having. They're gonna be making this big pitch, this big proposal, maybe they're updating their, you know, discovery call trend script or whatever it is, however they want to apply this into their own business. Where have you found people most often get stuck? Or, you know, struggle to actually implement and execute on this. speaker-0: Yeah. The getting stuck is by trying to do too much all in one go and to take everything that we've just talked about and do all of it all at once, all the time. And that's that's not gonna happen. It's just too much to do. What the best way to improve your communication in the areas we've talked about is to pick one specific part of this conversation and think about where you want to apply it in their own work, where do you want to use this? And then practice that one thing. Until you can do it without the effort of thinking about it. And then you pick something else and work on it. So let's use GPS. It's the last thing we've just talked about: goal problem solution. It's how you summarize things. Because of recency bias, that's what people are most likely most likely to remember. So if they want to use goal problem solution, whatever their situation, if you're preparing for a big pitch, if you're going to go and ask your boss for something, or they're they're updating a client proposal, think. How will I use goal problem solution from the client's perspective? What are they trying to achieve? What are the problems standing in their way? How does my solution help? And just practice using goal problem solution. Maybe they write it on the top of their notepad. Maybe they build it into their template as they're preparing their scripts. Just do that until you get comfortable with it. And here's the analogy. Here's the story as to why goal problem solution is very helpful. And if you wanted to go on a journey that was more than just down the road. You'd get out your phone, you'd get your navigation app open and you put in the destination. What is the first thing that it shows you? speaker-1: it'll show me how long it'll take. speaker-0: Yeah. Gives you an overview of the whole journey. It doesn't give you the turn by turn. It says, you are here, you're trying to get here. Here's a rough wiggly line that shows you where we're going to go. And you get a sense of the journey. And then you start driving and it gives you the detail turn by turn. That is goal problem solution as a summary at the beginning of a conversation. That is the first minute of a conversation. You're giving somebody that zoomed out view on the map to say, Here's roughly what the journey is going to look like and where we're going. Now let's get into the detail. And if you do that, people are more confident accepting the detail because they can see how it fits into the bigger picture. speaker-1: That's so good. GPS. I love it. That's so good. Amazing. So for anybody who skipped, you know, just to the they're skipping around chapters, right? They might have missed how they can get in touch with you when we talked about it earlier. So before I get to my final question, it's just a current recurring question I ask every guest. How can people get in touch with you and find your work? speaker-0: Yeah. So my website is my name, it's ChrisFenning dot com and LinkedIn is my social hangout. So come and find me there and I I respond to every question that comes along. speaker-1: Amazing. Yep. And we'll have the links to those in the description. Chris, thank you again so much for the time. My final question for you is a recurring question that I ask every guest. But if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why? speaker-0: Consider the other person's point of view. You will learn something new. speaker-1: Why do you feel like that's an important thing for people to hear? speaker-0: It's important because we live our lives from our own perspective, our own needs, our own wants, our own goals. However much we think about others, we can't help but view everything from our own point of view. Other people have different priorities, different goals, different things going on. There's the the the the famous quote Everyone's fighting a battle that we know nothing about. If we consider the other person's point of view, we will learn something different, and it might just change how we think. speaker-1: Consider the other person's point of view. I love that. Chris, thank you so much for the time. speaker-0: Ian, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you. speaker-1: Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from my conversation with Chris is that expertise only becomes useful when people act on it, and people only act on information when they understand it. And they can only understand it when it is translated into their words. That is the gap that most experts miss. They think they have explained the value because they've given all the information, used all the fancy words, and showed how much they know. But if the other person does not understand what matters or why it matters, they are left to make the decision with whatever information they can understand, like the price. So the responsibility of the expert is to translate the value of their work into the listener's world clearly enough that the person can understand it, trust it, and act on it. If you want to get connected with Chris and get help from him, you can find his website and LinkedIn links in the description of this episode. And if you run a coaching program, course, or have a book and you want to make it easier for your clients and readers to get results, download the free program execution system toolkit in the description. It shows you how to install what I call execution infrastructure so clients actually follow through and get results. Thank you for listening and I'll see you in the next one.