Bill Stierle is a communication specialist that has been working with individuals, couples, and families for over 25 years.
He has coached thousands of people and has taught numerous workshops locally and nationally on topics that address concerns about personal and professional effectiveness, relationships, and parenting.
Rubber-Meets-The-Road Tip
- Bill Stierle uses the Herman Brain Dominance Instrument—HBDI—a brain-based model with better business vocabulary than Myers Briggs or DISC personality assessments.
- The four colors are Blue. Red. Yellow. Green.
- Logical, rational people. - Blue - CFO / Engineer
- VP of HR is more Red - interpersonal / feelings-based.
- These are two opposites, so they should hand them off to each other.
- VP of Marketing - more creative/entrepreneurial/innovative. Yellow like an artist. Very different from an engineer or social worker.
- COO - move things into implementation. Get the product out to the marketplace. Organized. Handle returns. Put the right label on a shipment. Green.
Look for the four types of questions a prospect could ask:
- What - request for facts and information. Facts.
- How - request for a set of steps. Steps and easy to use.
- Who - who else has used your product or service. Sell them on testimonials.
- Why - selling on future impact.
- Answer the questions in the manner asked. Answer the engineers with short sentences - under seven words. Get them the facts first.
- “Am I meeting the need for information / clarity / efficiency / understanding” Blue? Close through information and data.
- Yellow - looking for strategizing, hop around the sales process, think that there is something better in the marketplace. Close through the process of anticipation.
Related Podcasts:
It’s smart to hand off a tough client to a salesperson that is more in alignment with the prospect.
- When handing off a prospect to an engineer or another salesperson (or relationships) in order to increase connection, you need to increase vulnerability. One to five ratio. Give away one part vulnerability and get 5 parts back in connection and 13 units of trust.
- Give a disclaimer.
- Authentically point out a flaw ahead of time and let them still realize it’s still better than what they have.
- Salespeople try too much to sell from the Red perspective.
- They put their need to be heard ahead of the customer’s needs.
- Don’t let our own belief structures control the narrative. Meet their ancillary needs - comfort, ease, familiarity - and they’ll buy. Price is usually last.
- Trust is top of the list. Like is fine, but trust is key.
- Doubt and skepticism are feeling words.
- Emotional Intelligence - our behavior is very simple—“nobody says or does anything unless they are meeting a need.”
- Contribution. Awareness. It’s why Bill did this interview.
- Emotions spring from needs being met or not being met.
- Need for trust is met? I’m confident. Not? I’m skeptical.
- Feelings are a toggle switch to needs. Trust is the oil. Skeptical is the “oil light.” Watch it on people’s faces.
- Doubt - rooted in the need for truth. Find the buyer’s truth and talk to that truth.
- We have head trash going back to childhood.
- The front of the brain has 400,000 connections per micron. It’s the “neo-cortext”.
- The limbic system is in the lower left, and the emotional on the lower right. 4.3 million connections per micron vs. 400,000 in the front.
- Emotion and long-term memory always win over logic and future thinking.
- You have a great solution but are wondering why you’re running into so much resistance from a prospect. The prospect has their own hangups and is looking for something that is more familiar…they’re buying an illusion. It’s familiar to them.
- “My dad drove Chevy’s so I buy Chevys.” It’s validated.
- First, be the same before you can be different.
- A safe-keeping mindset needs some trust and predictability to be present first.
- Emotion is attached to a validated experience. Validated experiences are personal.
- The purchaser is going through facts then details, then visionary, then connection.
- Get out of your selling style and get into their buying style.
Links Mentioned