Roger Martin: The Power of Empathy and Influence in Sales

About Roger Martin: Roger Martin is a Co-Founder and Managing Member of the industry-leading health and wellness franchises, RockBox Fitness and beem Light Sauna. Prior to RockBox Fitness and beem Light Sauna, operated as the Chief Operating Officer of a solid oral dosage pharmaceutical development and manufacturing organization. Previously served as President of a large topical semi-solid and liquid CDMO, as a National Sales Director and Sr. Vice President leading sales and marketing teams of up to 500 sales representatives in the specialty and big pharma market. Extensive expertise in pharmaceutical sales management, leadership, sales force deployment, business development, strategic selling, contract negotiation, business-to-business service contracting, licensing, and pharmaceutical and contracted service marketing. Knowledge of myriad dosage forms and therapeutic classes, as well as regulatory environments and payer systems. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Roger.

In this episode, Nancy and Roger discuss the following:

• The definition of high-impact communication
• The difference between persuasion, influence, and manipulation in sales
• The importance of storytelling in sales, positioning the customer as the hero
• The value of continual learning and personal investment versus traditional financial investments
• Keypoints from Roger’s book, An Insider’s Guide to Business

Key Takeaways: 

• The best way for a salesperson to make an impact in their industry, in the world, and on others is to start with genuinely understanding what their prospect needs.
• Buying behavior is this: you're telling a story, and the customer is the hero.
• People will buy from people they like, but more people will buy from people whom they trust to solve their issue.

"High-impact communication, by my definition, is when two individuals have a complete, thorough, and empathetic understanding of each other's wants and needs. And what do I mean by that? Whether it's a personal relationship, a family relationship, a business relationship, or even a vendor-customer relationship, it's about both sides understanding what each other needs to thrive in that relationship. Too often, especially in today's digital world, communication becomes overly transactional. I love how you started by saying that every business and everything else starts with a human interaction.” – ROGER

"I appreciate the question because it will allow me to delineate the difference between persuasion, influence, and manipulation. And they are too often conflated. The consumer conflates them; even salespeople conflate the two when really persuasion and influence are about empathetically trying to understand what your pain point, your issue, your area of opportunity is—something that, you know, you're at point A and you're trying to get to point C, let's say. And then I help through persuasion, and I'm going to persuade you to understand that this problem needs to be acted upon. If you think about it for a long time, if you just keep wondering about it, if you stress about it, you're not going to solve your issue. So I'm going to persuade you that you need to take action. And I'm going to do that through very ethical means and just skillful means, but to help build that bridge—just think of, you know, in your mind, literally building a bridge over a small river from A to C, and my product or solution and support and services will help get you from A to C. Now, manipulation is, "Hey, I want to get you to C because I make a big commission off of it, but you really don't need C, and your A is just fine for you, or another vendor would get you to C a lot easier and cheaper than me. But I'm going to use, you know, tricks and slick lines and all that, you know, to get you there." […] People will always exchange money for a solution to a problem that is causing them pain or a solution to a problem that will help them grow to be even more successful. And too many times—and you know this—too many times a salesperson will boast about their company, they'll boast about their track record, about their service record, about their customer satisfaction record. You know what? Those are great. The customer couldn't care less. The customer wants to know, "Can you solve my problem?" You know, "Can you solve my problem?" – ROGER

"I would challenge them to continue learning, listen to Nancy's podcast, you know, buy those $997 courses from genuine, great people that you can trust and who will deliver value. Go to that weekend seminar, invest the two grand to do that because you should be investing in yourself as much as you're investing in your business and investing in the stock market. I mean, the stock market is going to make 8 to 10% over the long run. You put that same two grand into yourself, you can quintuple that money in a year. You know, to me, it’s a no-brainer about continual learning." – ROGER

Connect with Roger Martin:

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/realrogermartin/
• Thrive More Brands:  https://thrivemorebrands.com/

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