Networking for Introverts with Matthew Pollard

Welcome to Brainfluence, where author and international keynote speaker Roger Dooley has weekly conversations with thought leaders and world class experts. Every episode shows you how to improve your business with advice based on science or data.

Roger’s new book, Friction, is published by McGraw Hill and is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. Dr Robert Cialdini described the book as, “Blinding insight,” and Nobel winner Dr. Richard Claimer said, “Reading Friction will arm any manager with a mental can of WD40.”

To learn more, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction, or just visit the book seller of your choice.

Now, here’s Roger.

Roger Dooley:     Welcome to Brainfluence, I’m Roger Dooley. Today’s guest is going to help us be better networkers, whether it’s in-person or virtual. Matthew Pollard is a sales expert and founder of Rapid Growth Coach. He’s a speaker, blogger, and podcaster, and he is the author of The Introvert’s Edge and his forthcoming title, The Introvert’s Edge to Networking. Welcome to the show, Matthew.

Matthew Pollard: I’m ecstatic to be here, thanks so much for having me on.

Roger Dooley:     So Matthew, do you think that most people are introverts to some degree? Is there a spectrum that most people fall on, and even people who think they aren’t introverts are really… are to some degree?

Matthew Pollard: Yeah. It’s interesting you say that. So, obviously, introverts…

Generally, it kills their energy to have lots of external stimuli. And yes, to some degree it affects some people more than others. One thing I try to do, though, is simplify it for people. Because I think that while there are… if you’re really into studying it, it’s really important that you can understand all those eccentricities. The problem is, for the average Joe, it gets too confusing and you start hearing, “Oh, I used to be introverted, now I’m more extroverted.” Or, “I used to be extroverted but since COVID, I’m behaving much more introvert-edly.” And the thing is, the way I see it is introversion really is about what you draw your energy from.

In the simple terms, and to really explain it in an easy way is…

Jim Cathcart, the number one most award-winning speaker in the world, he and I are great friends. And when I founded Small Business Festival, which, excitedly to say, it’s grown to the number three conference in America for small business. But what was interesting is when he first spoke at our inaugural year, he was the closing keynote. But for three days, he and I were involved in that group, over and over, with different interactions. By the end of day three, he was so charged up as an extrovert, he wanted to go down Rainey Street in Austin and just experience the live music capital of the world. Me, on the other hand, I wanted to curl up into a ball, put on a hoodie and watch my favorite Netflix show in the dark and speak to no one. Now, of course, he was my guest, so I took him out to Rainey Street. But I’ve never in my life had to ask a 70-year-old whether or not I could go home at midnight because I was just… I was wiped.

And I think that’s the important thing for people to really understand. You know, I think that introverts, they can still network, they can still sell, they can still speak from stage. You think of people like Ivan Meisner, the founder of BNI, the world’s largest networking organization, he’s an introvert. I had him on my show, The Introvert’s Edge, and we talked about how he discovered that he was an introvert and how he created BNI to create system and process around networking. Zig Ziglar was an introvert. Tom Ziglar talked about how his dad had all these introverted tendencies and was… and spoke about being introverted quite outwardly.

The thing is that most people assume that because they aren’t good at those things, they’re introverted. And extroverts and introverts can both suck at networking and selling. The truth is that introverts, when you go out networking or speaking from stage and things like that, even if you’re great at it, like a kid at Disneyland having a ball, at the end you go home and you’re absolutely exhausted. Where an extrovert will go and do those things and they’re looking for an excuse to go out to the bar afterwards and have more social interaction.

Roger Dooley:     Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, it’s interesting because sort of what you’re saying, Matthew, is that introversion is, in part, using up cognitive resources to interact with other people, whether it’s from the stage or whether it’s in a networking event or something else. And some people use fewer resources, maybe they even don’t use any, maybe it adds energy to them, where it’s a major consumer of cognitive effort for introverts. That’s pretty interesting. One thing that I think is true, I can’t… like your opinion. And that is that introversion is at least partly situational. Personally, I am probably somewhere… I certainly have probably some introvert characteristics but I find if I do a speech and then I’m in a networking event in a big, hotel ballroom afterwards, then I have a lot of energy still.

Networking is easy, I don’t feel at all introverted, I feel extroverted. But if I went to that same exact room, if it was full of strangers who didn’t know me, I didn’t know any of them, didn’t know what they did and so on, then I would probably be, my behavior at least, would be quite introverted. I would probably be standing around more, not really seeking out ways to barge into a group of three people and introduce myself.

Matthew Pollard: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that a lot of people will… this is why people think they used to be extroverted and they become more introverted and things like that. Is because…

I know a lot of extroverted people that have started to sell themselves for the first time, whether they’ve moved into their own consulting role or their own marketing business. And because of that, for the first time, they go into networking events and instead of selling an external product or service, they’re selling themselves. So, because of that they feel that rejection for the first time. See, for introverts, a lot of times we live in our heads and we’ll walk away and we’ll self-criticize, self-critique. “Why did I just say this?” Or, “I should have just said that.” Where an extrovert, it’s water off the duck’s back. It’s like, “Next conversation. I don’t care, whatever.”

But when, for the first time… and this is why I say, for introverts and extrovert-

… sorry. For introverts, whether they’re networking or selling, they need to have an external process that they treat more like a science experiment, where it’s a structured process. And just like Henry Ford, when he invented motorcars, when the first car came off the line, when it had a few drinks and scratches in it he didn’t go, “Oh my gosh, I was never supposed to build motorcars.” You know, as an introvert, when you build out your first sales process, it’s really, “Did I get through all the steps?” And then, you start to change one thing at a time. One thing. Because otherwise, you don’t know what’s blowing up in your face if you change multiple things.

For an extrovert though, when they’re selling themselves for the first time, all of a sudden they go, “Oh, maybe I’m feeling more introverted.” And the reason for that is because now they’re selling themselves, so when they get that rejection, it’s less, “Water off a duck’s back, let’s go to the next conversation.” Because how do you not take that personally when the person’s saying no to you, not the product or service that you’re representing? Now, what I’ve actually seen happen a lot within the world of technology sales and finance is, because you have highly complex IP that requires more of a complex sale, what actually happens is even the most extroverted of people, especially when they’re getting inducted into the organization, they’re scared to pick up the phone, they want to sell via email.

And what it is is, because they’re overwhelmed by the jargon they’re afraid of making a mistake. So, because of that, they’re getting stuck in their head like an introvert would. That doesn’t mean that they’re introverted, it just means that they’re uncomfortable and uneasy. That’s why I always talk about storytelling and why stories will allow you to control the information without opening the fire hose, but also ensure that you provide the right information, which allows for inductees to become much more effective, much, much quicker. Now, the one thing…

I mean, of course there are going to be situations where you will behave slightly more extroverted versus introverted. I know for me, if you take me to a club where I get to talk about introversion or where I get to talk about small business and the importance of helping small business, I’m going to be a lot more engaged than, maybe, having a conversation about whether or not insurance people need more rights. Right? I’m probably not going to be the most outspoken on that.

But the thing is that we are going to have…

When passion is in play, introverts are more likely to be outspoken, and so are extroverts for that matter. The problem is that most people bring all of that together and clutter it. So for me, again, I bring it back to simplifying it. If, over a course of all the conversations that you would have, if even when you’re talking about your favorite subject and even though you’re feeling so charged up in the moment…

Like when I speak from stage and I get down off stage and everyone’s asking me questions, for me, it’s like a supercharger of electricity for me. But that doesn’t mean when I go home it’s like, all of a sudden, I’m at 1% battery and everything switches off. Right? So for me, that is one layer. Now also, shyness and introversion do not necessarily mean the same thing. You can be extroverted and be shy. You can be highly sensitive and be an… and that’s a whole separate topic… matter. And then, yes, there is complex sales and all this other complexity that you can add on top.

So, I think the simplest terms is to say if I go out and do my favorite thing in the world, or my least favorite, so-called, extroverted arena activity for an entire day, is it… am I going to want to come home and just completely relax to recharge or am I going to come home really excited and stimulated and too buzzing to sit down and relax? And I think that’s the real difference because even extroverts, they need…

If you put an extrovert to talk to people for three days, eventually they’re going to need to discharge because they’re over a hundred percent and they need to switch off. Same as if you put an introvert by themselves for a month and say, “Just write a book.” Eventually they’re going to want to talk to someone. Right? So, there are lots of other factors but all things being equal, on the average day, if you do an activity like this, like a podcast interview and at the end of it, you’re charged up until you realize that you’re now exhausted, you’re an introvert. If you’re charged up and then want to keep going after that, you’re probably an extrovert.

Roger Dooley:     Right. Well, I admire some of these authors, Matthew, who talk about their podcast schedule. I think Tim Ferris talked about one book intro that he did where he had 30-minute interviews lined up for eight hours or something like that. And that would really take some serious energy. I want to get-

Matthew Pollard: I do that. I do that myself. So, for The Introvert’s Edge podcast, I do back-to-back interviews because I know anything else I do for the rest of the day, there’s going to be nothing creative happening. So, I can do back-to-back interviews for the whole day and then after that I’ll collapse.

Roger Dooley:     So, just keep the energy going. You know, I want to get back to your process for not simply staying in your shell in a large room full of people. But since we are in the middle of the pandemic, still, at least in the United States we are, some of our listeners are in better places. But it seems like this whole thing is an introvert’s dream, where it’s the easiest excuse you can have to not go out, to not meet people, to not introduce yourself. “Oh, look. I can stay home and I’ve got a perfect excuse.” You know? First of all, are you finding that to be the case? And how do we be outgoing and how do we network in these strange conditions that we have where we’re typically doing things virtually?

Matthew Pollard: Absolutely. So, you know what’s interesting? So, the premise of my next book is The Introvert’s Edge To Networking. But it’s all around how to become amazing in the room so you never have to go back into one unless you want to. Because the thing that I find is, the same problems that happen in real-world networking happen in digital networking, you just get less time. And what I mean by that is if you can’t clearly articulate the value of what you provide, separate yourself from everyone and excite and inspire them to want to know more and eventually work with you, when somebody is politely listening to you for three minutes, face-to-face, how are you going to cope when they give you less than a second in digital before they switch your tab off or delete your message or unfriend you on Facebook? It’s just impossible. Right?

So, the thing that was interesting is…

And for people that don’t know my backstory, and we can talk about it in a little bit more detail if you like, but I was an introverted kid with a reading speed of a sixth grader, I had horrible acne and I got diagnosed with this thing called Irlin Syndrome. Which basically means I put on this pair of colored lenses and, miraculously, I can learn to ready. And I hustled through high school and I got to the top 20% of my state. But the thing about being the slow kid, always, had beaten me down. And plus, I was always naturally more in my head. But I didn’t want to be in sales, I just fell into it because I lost my job before Christmas. It was the only job I could get, was commission-only sales. It was 93 doors before my first sale. But I taught myself how to sell, watching YouTube videos. But what happened is, fast forward just shy of a decade, I’d been responsible for five multimillion dollar success stories.

But when I moved to the US, even though I’d started all these successful businesses, they were bricks-and-mortar telemarketing direct sales. I wouldn’t even force my team to get email addresses for our clients because in my world, the phone number was the most important thing. And for me, because I was such a proud introvert that I was able to get on the phone and make sales and do face-to-face sales, I even told myself that online was a little bit of a scam or a little bit of a joke or for the people that were too scared to just physically pick up the phone.

And I know now, looking back, it was what I told myself because it scared me and because of my pride around succeeding in all of those things. But when I first came to the US, I realized that…

I started to synthesize everything I knew with online and offline because I was like, “If my family ever gets sick, I have to go back to Australia. I need something that’s portable.” So, I needed to learn online. And what I realized is that the reason why everyone does all of the… blogs every day and sends out a hundred social messages every day and all of these things is, if you can’t be the clearest, you have to be the loudest. And most people have got such a vanilla message that inspires nobody, they have to send it out to, eventually, where somebody goes, “Oh, that sounds nice, let’s do that.” And then, of course, they likely have to be the cheapest too. So, none of this is positive.

So, what I realized is that the key to face-to-face networking is also the key to online networking, and it’s that you have to have something that separates you from everybody else. You have to…

If you go into an event, or digitally network with somebody, and say, “Oh, I’m a copywriter,” or “I’m a business coach.” You’re going to get one of a couple of responses. One of them is going to be, “Oh, I had a coach before, it didn’t really work out for me.” Now what? I’ve got to convince and cajole them that I’m different, like I’ve got magic Ruby slippers and it’s going to be a different experience? It’s not going to work. Right? It’s always going to be a hard conversation .

Or they’ll say, “Oh, I need a coach. How much do you charge?” Now, anyone that knows anything about sales, you start answering that question, down we go into the price conversation of discounting. Right? So, that’s the last thing you should do. The problem is most people have no idea how to structure it the right way. I’ll give you an example. I worked with a client, Whitney, and she was a copywriter. And when she came to me, she had four clients paying her two-and-a-half-thousand dollars a month, on a recurring subscription, for a long, long time. And literally, she lost two clients in the space of a couple of weeks. One got bought out and one, I think, went broke. And because of that, she ended up with just two clients. And then…

So, we agreed to work together and by the time she came to me, she’d lost another client. So, she’s down to just two… she’s down to two-and-a-half-thousand dollars a month. Right? It’s less than what her childcare was costing her. And she’s like, “Matt, I need to figure out a way to compete in this marketplace.” And I’m like, “All right, help me understand exactly what you do.” And anyway, she sent all this documentation to me and I started to review it. And I started to notice that this girl had a lot of an affinity with the health technology space. And I didn’t really understand it, so I got… when we got on our call, I was like, “Help me understand why you care so much about health tech.” And she’s like, “I don’t understand how you got that from what I submitted to you. But if you have to know, I had a heart condition growing up and if it wasn’t for technology that was coming out at the time, I wouldn’t be here today.”

I said, “Okay. So, what if we could get that passion for a second? And what if we structure what you do differently? What if, instead of calling yourself a copywriter, let’s call you The Mission Maven, instead? Instead of focusing on copywriting for everyone, let’s niche you down to just working in the health tech space, which is hugely competitive, so we need to be smarter. And instead of offering them standard monthly copywriting, because nobody wants to commit to a monthly copywriting thing now…” And that’s what she was finding in this globally connected world. Right? People know that they can get a deal every time, so they just price hunt. So ,that lift Whitney hustling for every deal and then invoicing and discounting, it was horrible for her.

I said, “What we should do is go in and focus on structuring a different product that engages them, a short term deliverable.” I said, “So, if you could pick just three things that the average health tech company really struggles with, what would they be?” And eventually, it came out. She’s like, “Well, the biggest issue they have is they don’t know who their client is. So, they ended up writing all this content to their golf buddies or the VC firm and they don’t really know who their client is, they don’t write to them. So then, they create all of this content that’s the wrong content. And then, they have no idea how to get it out in front of their ideal audience. So, they end up giving up on content and end up paying for Facebook ads. And then, as soon as they start paying for Facebook ads, no acquisition happens and they’re like, ‘Oh, all of this is too hard.’ And that’s when they go broke.”

I said, “Okay. So, what if we did this? What if we created this really short-term deliverable, where you help them work out what their avatar is, then you audited their content to help them realize they weren’t speaking to that avatar. And then, you created a content tree for all the content they should be creating and then a distribution plan for how they get it out to their audience?” So, she’s like… she loved that idea. I said, “Here’s what I believe. You’ll be able to sell that for three-and-a-half-thousand dollars and then upsell them to a $10,000 subscription.”

So, what she did, she started reaching out to people through LinkedIn as The Mission Maven and with a niche in health tech. She started sharing content on social media around the same topic. Well, within the space of just 60 days, she got her first three-and-a-half-thousand dollar client. And at the end of doing that, the goal was that she would give them a scope of work and a request-for-pricing document. And then, hand it back to them and say, “You can now get your team to do it, hire someone to do it internally or externally.” But of course, our secret plan was that they would then… we would then offer to work with them. Well she…

Before she even got explaining to them what the scope of work was, the client’s like, “Well, can’t you just do it for us?” And she said, which we had scripted out, “Well, normally we plan to be completely unbiased and just give you a complete report for you to do it yourself. But we do have a boutique team that we use in-house to make sure that we stay the best at everything so we can provide great advice. So, we would be happy to extend… We do have one place, actually, open at the moment, a VIP slot for you, but the price for doing that would be $10,000 a month.” And the guy’s like, “Yeah, sure, no problem. Let’s move forward.”

So, now she’s got $10,000 a month from this one client. Well, the second time that this happened, they didn’t interrupt but she said, “Now, we don’t normally do this but we had such a great time working with you,” and went into the same script. She got another client. Within the space, it was about six months, she was earning about $35,000 a month from her recurring clients, less than a year-and-a-half later, she was acquired.

Why did that work? Because instead of going to a networking event and saying, “Oh, I’m a copywriter,” and somebody goes, “Oh, I know what that is. I don’t need it.” Or, “Oh, I need that. How much do you cost?” She said, “I’m The Mission Maven.” And people were intrigued. “What exactly is that?” Now, if you think about the psychology that goes behind creating a hook statement, people want to put you in a bucket and completely disqualify you or go shopping. By creating something that’s more vague, that doesn’t fit in one of those boxes, it gets people to lean forward to better understand before they can put you in a box.

And as a consequence, she then had the opportunity to discuss on her invitation. Now, the key is that you have to have your version of The Mission Maven, you have to know your niche, and then you need to have a structured way of explaining your passion and your mission, and then getting into a story, not jargon. And then, having a way to separate out the contacts into what I call “three categories of prospects.” Momentum partners. People that share your work because they believe in it and you do for them. And champions. And then, knowing how to leverage those relationships. But the key starts by being different. And that works just as well in the digital world as it does…

Actually Whitney, there were no health tech companies where she lived, she lived in a really country town in the United States, she could only use social media. But it works just as well face-to-face as it does online.

Roger Dooley:     Matthew, I want to follow up on one piece there. You talked about her doing her outreach on LinkedIn. And I know that I get, and I’m sure you get, many, many outreach contacts on LinkedIn from people selling lead generation, people selling insurance and various other services. They are just about all generic, often don’t even reflect any understanding of the business that I’m in because they somehow think that I’ve got a team of salespeople at McGraw-Hill. Which of course, I’m an author like you are and I do not have a team of salespeople at McGraw-Hill that report to me that I need to feed leads to. It’s obviously totally automated. But I’m curious, how would you suggest somebody who wants to use a tool like LinkedIn to network and to reach out to people if they don’t know? What are some tips for them?

Matthew Pollard: Well, the first thing is that people send out a non-customized message, out to bland connections and they’re…

A lot of these people, as they’re… if you were to look at their job title, what would it say? “Sales Rep for,” or “Sales Development Manager for.” So, you know it’s a sales pitch before you even come. I call myself The Rapid Growth Guy. I don’t call myself Sales Trainer or Marketing Specialist. Well, if you look at it, I’m a branding specialist, a social media strategist and master in neuro-linguistic programming myself. I’m too many things. Nobody cares. They don’t care how hard it was for me to learn these things or how long I spent learning these things. But when I say, “I’m the rapid growth guy, I work exclusively with introverted service providers to obtain rapid growth,” the clarity in that message gets me heard in a crowded marketplace.

It means, again, I don’t have to be the loudest because I’m the clearest. But it starts with your profile. If you have “Sales Rep” in your profile, you don’t need to. Why is it that we think that we have to call ourselves a sales rep. Right? The second thing is that your description needs to be about the value that you provide to people. And the second thing is you need…

The third thing, sorry, you need to remember is it’s never about you. One of the things…

And by the way, if you’re sending a message… if you’ve not realized that there’s voice memo now, where you can actually connect with people. We live, currently, in the most disconnected world possible. Right? You don’t…

People crave, especially extroverts, crave contact yet we still want to write standard messages. Well, the reason why it worked differently is a voice memo, firstly, creates that level of connection. The second thing is it can’t be done in an automated way. The third thing is you don’t know what it is until you listen to it, which means that it’s going to have a better ratio. So, what I do… I’ll give you an example. I was trying to get on a couple of extra podcasts for the launch of my book. Now again, if I had reached out to people via message going… standard message, just trying to get on a podcast, good luck. Instead…

These days… it used to be easy to get on podcasts. It’s actually incredibly hard even to get on a small podcast these days because there’s all these PR companies blasting. Now, luckily enough, I get invited to be on a ton because I’ve been on about 150, so people hear me and they’re, “Oh, I’d want him to.” And I get recommended by a lot of the hosts that I speak to. So, you should always be asking, by the way… if you want to get on podcasts at the end, make sure you offer them introductions to guests because that’s what they’re looking for. They get pitched all the time but what they’re looking for are qualified introductions to people they know are not going to sell or suck. Right? So, you could still offer them value but then they’ll also introduce you to hosts that they think you could add value, as long as you didn’t sell or suck. But when you get on a… if you try to do some cold outreach, make it about them.

I remember, I picked up LinkedIn and I typed in the word podcast and I was only looking for really big podcasts. And what I did is I did some voice memos and I looked at their profile and I went, “Okay, I’ve not heard of that.” Checked out some of the titles and then I do a voice memo saying… again, I really … it’s like…

So, first thing, I would have connected and just said something like, “Really enjoying your podcast.” And then, I did a voice memo saying something like, “You know, mate, I just wanted to say hi, wanted to let you know I’ve been checking out your podcast. It looks like you’re producing some really great content. Did notice, however that you don’t seem to have anything there for introverts, which is going to be what, close to 50% of your entire audience? So, totally fine if you’ve got something planned but if I can add value to your audience and provide some strategies to help those introverts become successful or help them realize that once they have a great system, all of the other tactics and strategies that you’re sharing within your podcast, all of a sudden become accessible to them as opposed to them thinking ‘I don’t have the gift of the gab, I just can’t do it,’ I’d be honored to share that during an interview with you. And don’t worry, I’ve been on about a hundred, or so, podcasts. So, don’t worry, I’m not going to suck,” as a joke at the end.

Well, my response rate to that was huge. But again, it wasn’t about me and who I am and how amazing I am. I see people do it with the podcast pitch…

I’m sure, Roger, you’ve seen a thousand of them where it starts with I and it finishes with I, in the middle there’s a request to be on a podcast. So, for people that are trying to do things online, the first thing that I would suggest is if you’re just starting and you need to do a lot of connections, the connection request, customize them slightly. If you can do 50 connections and get five people to respond, or you can do 10 connections to get five people to respond, it’s all to do with the customization.

The second thing is don’t send a straight pitch. A voice memo makes such a big difference because it creates a real connection at a time when there isn’t a lot of it. And the third thing is, if you produce content, if you know your niche and you’re always producing content for that niche, you don’t have to do much more than introduce yourself and say, “Hello.” And again, all of the content…

Like Whitney, for instance, all she did was connect with people that are in top decision-

These are impossible people to contact, by the way. If you asked anyone and said, “What’s one of the hardest industries to get to a decision maker with?” It would be health technology. Well, she would connect with people using a similar strategy on LinkedIn. She would connect with people, introduce herself as The Mission Maven so people would look at her profile going, “What the hell is a mission maven?”

… to try and figure out what she did. And then, they would look at their profile and go, “That’s kind of interesting,” and they’d probably get back to being busy.

But then, she produced all this content. So, every time they came to LinkedIn they would see this Mission Maven person talking about health tech. And they went, “Oh, she seems to be really passionate about health tech, maybe I should do a little bit more diving to see… Oh, we need that. Okay, let’s reach out.” And of course, then occasionally she would send messages saying, “I know you’re in the health tech space, this is something that I think would add value to you.” And all the time, just creating relationships.

The fact that somebody has reached out to you on LinkedIn and sent you this bland message about your sales team means that they’ve not even looked at your profile. If they had have looked at your profile, they would have realized first that the benefit in somebody like you is not treating you like a sales manager for McGraw-Hill. By the way, reaching out to a sales team from McGraw-Hill, which is a very, very structured organ-

… publishing moves very, very slowly… would probably be not where I would focus as a niche anyway, if I was launching a new business. But I would have realized and I would have not put you in the prospect box but put you in the momentum box, momentum partner box or the champion box. I.e., “This is a person that I can foster a relationship with that will… if I open my Rolodex to them, will likely open their Rolodex to me. So, if I believe in what they do, we can become a great partnership that share each other’s amazing work.” Or, “This person, wow, they’ve got an amazing profile. You know, I really feel that if I foster a relationship and get them aligned with my passion, this person is going to endorse my work and therefore give me credibility that will allow me to sell to more sales managers in the future.”

Roger Dooley:     Yeah. And I can echo what you say about customization. And I know that in the run-up to my Friction book coming out last year, I did the podcast outreach thing. I had a great success rate like you did because I actually checked out the people individually, I listened to at least part of a podcast or two. So, when I contacted them, I knew what they were interested in, I knew what guests they had and what they were looking for and how I might add value to that. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get on a podcast or trying to sell somebody insurance or anything else, it’s “What real value can I add to you?” People are interested in… they want to know “What’s in it for me?” And a very bland thing, “I can save money on your insurance,” or something, that it’s too generic.

Even, “I love what you’re doing with your podcast,” is too generic because it’s probably an auto-fill thing that’s part of your standard text. But once you demonstrate real understanding, that begins that connection process that, “Okay, this is not a generic outreach.” Not that it’s going to succeed every time but at least they know that it wasn’t just auto-populating their first name and their company name or something.

Matthew Pollard: Absolutely. And you can totally differentiate yourself. I know we’ve given the insurance industry a bad rap in this podcast so far. So, if you’re in insurance and you’re listening to this, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m selling the thing that nobody wants to talk about.” It’s actually not true. I worked with a guy, Nick actually, who… he was an insurance salesperson. And he said when he went to networking events and said he was in insurance, he could tell that people’s eyes changed. It was like they were screaming from the inside, “Oh gosh, I’m now going to listen to this guy politely for the next three minutes before I can get away, or tell him what I do and then find a way to get away to the bathroom, to the bar, wherever I can go.”

And what I asked him is… I said, “All right. So, we’re going to create this thing called the unified message, your version of The Mission Maven. Let me ask you a question. Who are you most passionate about working with? Somebody that’s making $50,000 a year or 250 a year?” And he said, “Well, the 250 person.” I’m like, “Why?” He says, “Well, obviously I could sell them.” I’m like, “Nick, I’m trying to get to your passion here. Right? I’m not trying to work out where you’re going to make more money. So, let me ask you a different question. What if I had two people earning 250,000 a year. One that studied and hustled to get into Harvard, got into Harvard then graduated with honors, got into a C-level executive job and now they earn 250,000 a year. Versus the business owner that hustled to start their own business, employed other people, and now they earn 250,000. Which one of those would you prefer to work with?”

He said, “Well, obviously the business owner.” I’m like, “Why ‘obviously’? They both hustle, they both worked really hard. Maybe they both came from nothing. Why that group?” He said, “Well, I just feel like they deserve it more.” And I’m like, “Why? Explain that to me.” Well, it turns out that this guy had a grandfather that owned a farm and that farm was doing really well for years, employed a whole bunch of staff. And then, his grandfather got sick and he had to sell the farm because of the medical treatments that he ended up having to do. And he ended up living the last 10 years of his life in this really small apartment. He goes, “I just watched my grandfather sit in front of the couch, look at the TV and basically die on the inside. And for me, I just… that’s why I feel like they deserve it more.”

I said, “Well, you sell life insurance. He didn’t die, so how could you have helped?” He said, “Well, there’s these great policies you can buy that you can put money in that you get this amazing interest rate that you can then rotate into property and invest and it just allows you to use the high cashflow that you have in your business.” I was blown away with how much he knew. I said, “Okay. Nick, what.. instead of calling yourself an insurance salesperson, why don’t you call yourself The Hustle Life Guy? And when you speak to people at a networking event, instead of talking about your insurance stuff, talk about your passion for helping the hustlers of this world not live a life… get stuck in these terrible retirements like your grandfather did? Or share some of these other stories of people that didn’t prioritize their retirement. So again, introduce with Hustle Life Guy, talk about your passion and mission and then lead into a story that better articulates and explains your mission that you’re on.”

And I said…

As soon as he started doing that, everything changed. Now, he’s so great at articulating that in a networking room, he no longer works for an insurance agency, he has one of his own. And now, on top of that he now doesn’t really go to many networking events. Every lead is produced through digital with that same stuff. He’s got his own podcast, he’s got other things that he’s doing himself because his message is now clear. He doesn’t have to be the loudest, he doesn’t have to work the hardest, he spends more time with his family than he ever did before. But it’s because all of what he does is crystal clear and it…

And it’s also more congruent with him. I spoke to him not long ago, it was actually a feature in my new book. And he said to me, he said, “Matt, now I get more leads but every one of them is a small business owner that believes in what I do. And the occasional one that’s not, they still love my passion for helping that demographic. And instead of saying, ‘You’re not the person to work with.’ They’re like, ‘How do I convince you to extend that passion to me as well? Because I want to be part of that club.'”

Roger Dooley:     Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, that’s great. I think a huge takeaway from this, for all of our listeners… and I can visualize at least some of them right now, bringing up their LinkedIn page and editing it to re-look at their little one line descriptor there and taking their job title out of that and putting in some other kind of role. But hopefully, they’ll devote a little bit of thought to it because I really think that coming up with the right thing for that box is critical. Probably 95%, Matthew, are what you say, it’s a job title in there. Or if not an exact job title, then a category of job that is generic. Sales Executive or something of that nature. Anyway, that’s great. We could go on forever but let me remind our audience that we are talking to Matthew Pollard, author of The Introvert’s Edge. Matthew, how can people find you and your ideas?

Matthew Pollard: Yeah, absolutely. So, most people… I would just suggest, you can actually…

I know publishers expect you to say at the end of something like this, “Oh, you should go buy my book on Amazon.” And my publisher hates me when I say this but you don’t need to buy my books. You can go to the introvertedge.com, where you’ll be able to download the first chapter of my first book, which is called The Introvert’s Edge. And it teaches salespeople, introverted salespeople and introverted small business owners… because if you don’t think you’re in sales, you’re fooling yourself… how to be amazing at sales. And in the first chapter, it’ll help you overcome your adversities and negative thoughts around becoming successful at selling as an introvert. As a matter of fact, I’ll go as far as saying that you can be an extrovert, hands down, at that activity.

And then, I’ll break down a seven-step structure and I’ll say, “If you do any… if you just look at the seven step process, put what you currently say into that, you’ll realize some things are out of order, some things don’t fit. Throw that out, you shouldn’t be saying that to clients.” And then, you’ll realize there’s some gaping holes, fill in those gaps, which will likely be around asking great questions and telling a story. And I go into all the science behind why story works so well. And I say, “If you do that, you’ll double your sales easily in the next 60 days.” And then, this is happening… my new book comes out on January 19th of 2021.

Roger Dooley:     I’ll interrupt you. And I’m… for our video audience, I’m holding up a copy of it here. And this is a strange thing, this is the first time this has ever happened to me. I have a physical copy of the book before Matthew got his physical copy. So, that’s a pretty cool.

Matthew Pollard: It’s hilarious.

Roger Dooley:     …like a great book. And—

Matthew Pollard: Hilarious. I’ve…

Before this, for the video audience, I had to ask him to hold it up so I could see what it looks like. I don’t think any author ever has ever had to do that. Mine, for some reason, has got lost in the mail and I’m waiting for them to come out. But that you can…

But at the moment, because it’s not available right now, that’s a review copy, you can actually download the first chapter of that as well at theintrovertsedge.com/networking.

Roger Dooley:     Right. Well, we will link there, and to any other resources we spoke about, on the show notes page at rogerdooley.com/podcast. And we will have text, audio and video versions of this conversation there. So Matthew, thanks so much for being on the show.

Matthew Pollard: My absolute pleasure, Roger, thank you for having me on.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Brainfluence. To find more episodes like this one, and to access all of Roger’s online writing and resources, the best starting point is RogerDooley.com.

And remember, Roger’s new book, Friction, is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and book sellers everywhere. Bestselling author Dan Pink calls it, “An important read,” and Wharton Professor Dr. Joana Berger said, “You’ll understand Friction’s power and how to harness it.”

For more information or for links to Amazon and other sellers, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction.