Are you listening? | Bob London | Ep. 110

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:40)

I am the leader of the affiliate marketing club because I just tell everybody about you. I get no kickbacks, so it's not official. Well, that's okay, because I don't believe I've gotten any business from it.

You don't know? They might just not mention me. I think he's pissed already, looking at me, he's irritated.

What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, JP, with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:40 - 0:41)

What's up, everybody?

[Dillon] (0:42 - 0:45)

And we've got Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:46 - 0:47)

What's up, what's up?

[Dillon] (0:48 - 0:51)

And we've got Bob with us. Bob, can you say hi?

[Bob] (0:52 - 0:53)

Nice to be here.

[Dillon] (0:53 - 1:04)

Yes, hello, hello. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Bob, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to have you in the virtual studio. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Bob] (1:05 - 1:31)

Yeah, first of all, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me as a top first-round draft pick. It's good to be back.

So I teach people, particularly in customer success, but also sales and account management, how to do better discovery and deeper listening, with just being much more curious about the other person and their world, builds trust, et cetera, and generates revenue, actually.

[Dillon] (1:32 - 1:45)

I love it. I love it. I am the leader of the Bob London Affiliate Marketing Club, because I just tell everybody about you.

I get no kickbacks, so it's not official.

[Bob] (1:45 - 1:47)

That's okay, because I don't believe I've gotten any business from it.

[Dillon] (1:49 - 1:52)

You don't know? They might just not mention me.

[Bob] (1:52 - 2:07)

No, I see why he likes you. I see why he likes you. No, I'm teasing.

I don't know where stuff comes from. I'm sure you're responsible for half of my... Half of my mortgage payment probably is covered by your leads.

Thank you. Totally.

[Dillon] (2:08 - 2:19)

Bob, you know what we do here? We ask one simple question of every one of our guests, and that is, what is on your mind? Usually customer success-related, but you can expand it out if you'd like.

So why don't you tell us what that is?

[Bob] (2:21 - 5:58)

I'm going to go bigger than CS and maybe come back to it. I will say how disturbing it is that half the world doesn't know how to listen to the other half of the world. Maybe it's just election season.

Maybe it's just politics. Maybe it's because I'm here on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. But I think that listening has become ephemeral, meaning that as soon as someone else says something, it just evaporates, and we go on to our point. So that's the broader platform that I'm on, screaming from.

And of course, we joked before about my... I have two sons that are adults and a wife, and they all think it's hilarious that I'm chief listening officer because at home, it's a bit of a shit show as far as my listening skills. And now it's gotten better, but my nickname for a long time was Dr. No, because every time the kids would open, before I even heard the end of the sentence from my kids, I'd say, no. The other thing I would say is you could probably buy that cheaper online. So how does this relate to CS? I think there are two levels.

The day-to-day level is that by engaging customers more about them instead of shoving information at them that's more about us, what happens is these magical doors open where the customer starts opening up, and they start sharing in things that turn into insights for us and people in the CS world that you can then, A, you're disarming them by asking about them. We all like to be asked about ourselves, and in this case, our companies. And then there's a trust-building thing that happens, which CS is already good at, so it accelerates trust.

This applies to sales, too. And then they reveal things, and they become the teacher so that the CS person can just not have to have all the answers all the time and keep talking the whole time and just be the student for a little bit and learn and listen. What you've learned and listened to becomes insights that you can turn into, A, you can find hidden risk of churn.

You can find new revenue opportunities. I call it just being more opportunity aware. You're not a salesperson in CS, but you can really help out if you're seeing opportunities with a potential.

But the bigger listening thing for CS is listening to the business at cuts and cutbacks and pressure, whatever you want to call it, reckoning or bloodbath in CS doesn't happen because people don't like CS people. It happens because there are business issues, especially in SaaS. I think my wish for the CS community that I love, that has embraced me for the last five years, that they be a little less tribal and a little more open to feedback and criticism about why are these things happening, how can we align ourselves more with the business instead of—and then I'll stop—instead of defending the tribe and saying, I can't believe that leaders don't get the value of CS.

Guess what? They don't sometimes. And it's not your fault in CS, but you have to hear.

You have to listen and hear without being defensive. So that's a pretty—look, that's my truth. I believe that's what I've seen.

[Dillon] (5:59 - 6:53)

Bob, I love how you brought it full circle, right? So you started with the divisiveness that we're seeing, whether it's in a political landscape or otherwise. I think we're just becoming a lot more hard-headed.

I have—and I'm going to say one thing before I hand it over to JP, because JP was nodding vigorously at what you were saying to begin with. But basically, I've started thinking about customer success as this sort of like classic sports analogy of the difference between forcing your game or your skill set upon the game and instead allowing the game to come to you, right? It's a football analogy, a basketball analogy.

But this thing of just trying to ram home your QBR or your value or this thing you're trying to sell. And instead, a lot of what you were saying, taking a little bit more time listening and identifying the path with the least friction that still gets you to your destination. So anyway, that's what it made me think of.

JP, I want to give you a chance to jump in.

[JP] (6:54 - 8:20)

Yeah, yeah. Bob loves what you shared. And actually piggybacking off of what Dillon said, there's this analogy I think of with the way that I cook, with the way that I think is how I should really do my meetings with customers.

If I'm cooking for myself, then I can just do whatever I want. I can be experimental. I can do whatever, right?

But if I'm cooking for someone else, typically I am going to try to do something maybe that's tried and true, but I'm going to maybe hold back a little bit. The reason I do that is because when people taste my food, they'll be like, man, what is in this? It's their imagination.

I left a little space for their imagination. This is the way that I think about when I'm doing, and I say this as someone who actively works on this, I know that our leadership, everyone's going to say, hey, make sure you go on with an agenda, things that you want to accomplish. Obviously those things are important, but you got to leave space for that customer to share.

Got to leave space so that I'm not going in and I'm so linear that I shut off to those clues to what people say. Because being curious also is going to require that I can adjust as I hear something. And when I make that adjustment, that action lets the customer know that I am in fact centered on what they have to say, as opposed to simply progressing my agenda, which is, you can also expand that into everything as well, but I'll give it over to- Well said.

[Bob] (8:21 - 8:23)

I love that. Love that.

[Dillon] (8:24 - 8:25)

Rob, go ahead.

[Rob] (8:26 - 8:28)

No, I'm busy listening. Sorry.

[JP] (8:30 - 8:32)

Oh, good one. Perfect.

[Rob] (8:33 - 8:57)

I bet Bob's never heard that before. Yeah, no, actually, you know what I'm thinking about? I'm thinking about, I'm going to do the thing again, guys.

Sorry, but I'm thinking about this psych experiment. I'll give you the quick study on it. What's this one?

Newton's law? No, no, no. So basically there was an experiment done in the days when paper copiers were very busy things on university settings.

This study. Oh, okay. Oh, I know paper copiers.

[Bob] (8:58 - 8:58)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rob] (8:58 - 9:49)

Just machine, Dillon. So they did an experiment. The control side of the experiment was, let's have people go up to this busy line waiting for the paper copier and say, can I cut you in line?

Success rate, 30%. Then they had in the experimental group, people go to the line and say, can I cut you in line because I have to make a copy? 90% success rate.

So you're like, why is there this massively different success rate when people are adding no value? All they're saying is because I'm here to make a copy. There's no added value to that.

Everybody there was there to make a copy. So there's no added value to that clause. But the thing is, we just fall into these scripts in our head of, I hear something, I repeat back, or I say my point.

And we just play table tennis all the time, conversationally. I learned this even as a waiter when I was 19, 18 years old.

[JP] (9:49 - 9:53)

Of course, the waiter, you gotta get that off. Go ahead, let him cook.

[Rob] (9:53 - 10:07)

I noticed, for example, if I repeat back the order, even just little things, repeat back the order and then just pause. That's another skill that I had to learn when it came to listening. If I could just pause, it would make me so much more impactful.

That's why I got a waiter now.

[Dillon] (10:08 - 10:21)

Bob, with the time we have left, why don't you tell us what you thought of how we interpreted your theory, what's on your mind, maybe your philosophy? Oh, I get more time? I thought this was like a kill.

[Bob] (10:22 - 12:08)

And that's our time, folks, Bob. Kill Tony. Like you get 60 seconds and then they take over and start asking questions.

Similar. The reactions are fantastic. And I wouldn't say fantastic if they weren't.

So the pause, the leaving room for the customer, I talk about it in terms of creating room, but a little different because it has to be intentional. You have to telegraph your intention. Hey, for the first few minutes, I'm just going to listen to you.

I want to ask you some questions. And I was like, OK, but the pause is hard, but important. So I love that.

I'll just riff off of that pause. The best tool for keeping yourself from interjecting unnecessarily is right on your keyboard. And it's free.

It's the mute button. Ask a question, an open ended question. Hit the mute, your mute button, not theirs.

And let them talk. What it does is it serves as a self-editing tool. So instead of just jumping in or even those little noises we make when we're listening, sometimes that can be distracting.

Instead, if when you have something to say, you go, oh, I'm on mute. Then you have to consciously unmute. And then you have a chance to say, was it really important?

Because the customer was going somewhere that might be helpful to me. So the mute button helps with embracing the silence and pausing. I call it the customers have these verbal ellipses.

They're hearing themselves talk. And because you're asking such good questions, at least in my world, that they've never said these things out loud before. So they're saying it and they hear themselves say it.

And the verbal ellipses is dot, dot, dot. Then they pick it up again to clarify something. Since we're talking sports, playing through the echo of the whistle.

I've heard that play until the end of the whistle sound or something in football.

[Dillon] (12:09 - 12:30)

So I love that you wrap this up by giving us that tactical piece of advice. I think we live in the theory so often. So it's awesome to hear that little kind of period on the end of this thought of here's a way you can enact this today.

But Bob, that is our time. I'm disappointed, but thank you so much for being here. We'd love to have you come back.

What are you disappointed about?

[JP] (12:30 - 12:32)

Yeah, that's the end of our time.

[Dillon] (12:32 - 12:35)

That's the end of our time. That uplifting note.

[JP] (12:35 - 12:36)

Thanks for coming.

[Dillon] (12:36 - 12:41)

But I also, I was leaving a little question mark in my recipe right there so that the audience would be like, oh, does he hate Bob?

[Bob] (12:42 - 12:50)

Does he hate Bob? It is what it is, people. It is.

I'm grudgingly accepted this invitation and I'm grudgingly leaving. Just to get dragged. No.

[Dillon] (12:50 - 12:55)

Love you, Bob. Love that you came. Thanks so much for coming, Bob.

A lot of fun. We'll talk to you soon.

[Bob] (12:55 - 12:56)

Keep up the good work.

[Voiceover] (13:00 - 13:31)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at lifetime value media dot com.

Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at lifetime value media. Until next time.