Phone Conversations Power Sales Effectiveness: Fascinating New Neuroscience

Neuroscience and behaviourial psychology explain why "the silent sales floor" is crippling your sales effectiveness: conversations truly matter.

At an individual level:?

We think just 7 minutes a day. That’s a huge sales problem.

As a profession we need to speak to prospects and induce thinking.

Conversations synchronize the brain patterns of participants - fascinating new research, available as a preprint, from Dartmouth neuroscientist Thalia Wheatley and Beau Sievers, who is currently working as both a research associate at Harvard and a postdoc at Stanford University: Synchronized Minds in Scientific American 329, 1, 50-57 (July 2023)

By talking together and coming to consensus as a group… participants aligned their brains - Beau Sievers

This is important because brain synchronicity clearly correlates to collective intelligence and group effectiveness BBC Reel revealed recently.

When we're talking to each other, we kind of create a single überbrain that isn't reducible to the sum of its parts… like oxygen and hydrogen combine to make water, it creates something special that isn't reducible to oxygen and hydrogen independently - something special - Wheatley

Now neuroscientist Weizhe Hong of the University of California has identified separate populations of cells in the prefrontal cortex that they call “self cells” and “other cells.”?

• Self cells encode your own behaviour
• Other cells encode the behaviour of another individual

The sum of activity of both self and other cells correlates with the sum of activity in another person's brain!

This is corroborated by a seperate new study that identified a brain circuit that is active while we plan our spoken replies during conversation published online January 5 in the journal Nature, the study focused on brain computations that enable such replies, which are planned before the end of a conversation partner’s turn and uttered within a fraction of a second.??

Synchrony predicts the outcomes of future interactions - Hong

The Dance of Two Brains: Co-Regulation / Paired communication...

Joint storytelling of a live 2 way conversation activates and synchronises the parietal cortex of participants: the area is active for memory and narrative construction.

The closer your selling is aligned with how the brain is wired to create a buying decision, the more successful you will be. The less aligned, the less effective - David Hoffeld, author of The Science of Selling

The Interactive Brain Hypothesis, as explained by Joy Hirsch, a professor of neuroscience at Yale’s School of Medicine, is that 2 brains in action are different than one.

When individuals are interacting in a shared behavior they act as a single entity. This concept is important for any group of organisms cooperating to produce a shared behavior that is more than the sum of its parts - Scientific American

Neural coupling, or synchrony between speakers and listeners, predicts the success of a conversation.

A study from Princeton University, using fMRI to record brain activity from both speakers and listeners during natural verbal communication, shows how a speaker’s brain activity is coupled with the listener’s during successful communication (Stephens 2010).

This coupling of brains, or synchrony, disappears when we fail to communicate.

As an example, when speakers communicate with a listener who does not understand the language of the speaker, they fail to sync (Stephens 2010).

When we connect at a deeper level with others, our brain patterns mimic each other’s—we actually start to see the world through their eyes (Hirsch, WE-IQ TV Interview with Judith E. Glaser, May 1, 2018).

It is a lot easier to persuade someone when you are PRE-SUADING them. Robert Cialdini cleverly refers to this process as "pre-suasion".

To maximize the odds that people will say 'yes' to us, we must first convince them that they are in the right frame of mind to do so - Dr. Robert Cialdini ?

Shane O'Mara, Professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College in Dublin and author of Talking Heads, the New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds is well worth a read...

For your sales prospect to see it, you first have to say it.

When we're in live conversation, we’re blending language, memory and imagination together.

One of the core functions of the human memory system is something called mental time travel.

While we’re centered here in the present talking to each other, we can envisage the future in new ways because we have a memory system that we can draw on that blends seamlessly with our language system.

We humans are social animals.

We’re concerned with what the other person is thinking and we think about things collaboratively.

We think about things together and we spend an awful lot of our time in the present moment, but anticipating the future.

Our brains are wired for conversation, that our brains are built to look for this blending and sinking up with other people... possibly one of the core functions of our brains

At an organisational level:

Organisational psychology and the science of decision making say that sales is ultimately about creating a desired new future state by orchestrating organisational change.

Dr Fernando Flores, former Minister of Economics and Finance of Chile, laid the foundation for much of the current understanding about action workflow and commitment management theory.

Conversations determine the organization’s strategic capacity to create the future it wants… an organization’s results are determined through webs of human commitments, born in webs of human conversations - Fernando Flores

When we come together in live conversation, plans of action for a common future are co-created.

Talking catalyses, initiates and secures commitments & collective momentum

?? Start talking to do proper work

The most important work in the knowledge economy is conversation - Alan Webber, in his pioneering Harvard Business Review article

When you were at school I bet your teacher told you to stop talking and get to work… well it turns out that modern human work in our complex modern world of big data and AI is essentially about talking.

Sales is just a conversation. It’s about humanizing the buying experience - Will Yarbrough, VP of Sales at?Fleetio?in discussion with Jeb Blount

We consistently undervalue the overall benefit of more intimate voice-based interactions - Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2021). "It’s surprisingly nice to hear you: Misunderstanding the impact of communication media can lead to suboptimal choices of how to connect with others" Journal of Experimental Psychology

There is a huge evidence base for the psychological benefits of talking, including reduced stress, elevated mood, reduced anxiety and more effective problem solving - Dr Tara Quinn-Cirillo?

Stop omnichannel addiction / presumption of effectiveness in B2B sales

Sales leadership: short-circuit this madness, prioritise phone time: the short and direct path

The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place -? George Bernard Shaw

Start with the desired destination of all that unnecessary busy-ness: a 1-2-1 conversation with decision makers at your target prospect

22% businesses lost sales as a result of poor communication in 2022 - “State of Business Communication” - Grammarly / Harris Poll

So enough email sequence spam cannoning … the message is lost and no trust, let alone synchronicity of mind is generated.

It is telling that Fernando Flores is a true thought leader on organisational change and has also written a book Building Trust, co-authored with Robert Solomon.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other so that we can have some conversation - Mark Twain

Most of our mistakes originate from not having an honest conversation sooner - Steven Bartlett

A reliable and productive conversation leads to improved customer satisfaction, faster response times, increased loyalty to brands, and reduced effort from the customer - Ritu Jyoti, Group VP, Worldwide Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation Research - IDC

Our brain is hard-wired for Voice

Voice-only communication elicits greater empathy, emotional connection and trust than a video call - Yale University?

It doesn't really matter whether the message is strong or weak what matters is whether the source is credible or not - Chaiken & Maheswaran 1994, Kumkale & Albarracin, 2004

What!!!

You’re telling me the way people decide whether to take action or make a judgement call has very little to do with the actual message but rather whether they believe the messenger is credibile and this is all about the channel they choose to use!!!!

Never, ever forget that the buying experience is emotional.

A study by Harvard Business Review found that 95% of all purchase decision making takes place due to an emotional connection.

Your buyer’s emotional experience with YOU is, more often than not, the deciding factor that closes the sale - Jeb Blount

I'd add that the impact of the solution on the buyer's personal reality also has emotional weight.

Conversations are not just a way of sharing information; they actually trigger physical and emotional changes in the brain - Psychology Today

Moneyball your 2023 sales strategy to do more with less… The smart GTM money is all about Channel-Market-Fit

Voice remains a dominant channel... In a digital age, live voice contacts matter even more in providing a high-quality customer experience - McKinsey 2022

Forrester’s “Call Commerce” Research is pretty convincing:

• Outbound calls provide a more immediate return on your investment converting 30% faster than other channels... time-to-value
• 84% higher conversion rates compared to other forms of engagement
• 41% of organisations report having increased phone conversion rates by 25% or more in the past 12 months
• Phone calls are often the most valuable conversions with larger order value (AOV) compared to other forms of engagement
• Get smarter insights into customers and make more informed decisions to drive efficiency
• When you tailor experiences based on the content of their phone conversations, you better meet their needs and earn their loyalty
• Call-sourced clients are retained at 28% higher rate than inbound web leads
• 85% of marketers believe phone conversations are now a key component of their organisation’s digital-first strategy

I see a lot of talk about cold calling being dead, but even this much maligned channel is recognised by Hubspot, who are email-biased naturally, as the most effective B2B sales channel

Top sales performers make 82% more cold calls and send 24% less email - McKinsey Survey of 43000 sales reps 2021

Organisations that don’t cold call experienced 42% less growth than those who used the tactic - Crunchbase

FYI Buyers do actually want to speak on the phone!

76% of B2B new buyers appreciate speaking to someone on the phone and even 15% of repeat buyers - McKinsey

87% of respondents said talking to a person on the phone to answer questions made them feel more confident in making high-consideration purchases - Invoca Research

>60% of CXOs prefer to be prospected by the telephone - Crunchbase

If your B2B business development communication does not prioritise live voice conversations, you are making a huge mistake if you are doing anything complex or original and buying is not transactional b2b ecom.

Want to weaponise GTM conversations: let’s talk? https://lnkd.in/efp6zCiy?

This is a snapshot of what my team did last week.

You'll note all of my insides sales / SDR team and Sales / AEs & Sales Directors have voice conversations.

Sure they send email, attend live events, do linkedinery...

BUT on average from phone conversations ALONE, my team averaged ??

?? Live conversation with a named CXO within 4 mins 24 seconds on-demand effortlessly, despite only having 11% direct dial / mobile numbers for these so-called hard to reach targets.

?? 0.65 meetings booked / rep / hour?

?? Smarter with every call: refining targeting & messaging - learning from one another without micromanagement

?? Oh and the trust building of a live human voice enables >75% email open rates as well: omnichannel activation

ROCS - Return on Conversation Spend?

Attribution of meetings booked from calling time is easy, but what most fail to realise is that outbound calling is ALSO the most targeted ad unit in B2B marketing: very pure form of marketing with a sales side effect: meetings.

- You take a targeted list: persona at ICP (a marketing activity)

- Talk to people on that list (brand awareness & demand creation)

- Gather information (market intelligence - including segmentation based on reachability)

Want to Test Out The Conversation Weapon My Team Use?

You now know why telephone calls are the most effective B2B sales channel, be it for new business, retention, upsell/cross-sell on an expansion play.

If you want to replicate how each of my sales reps does the outbound calling of 10 people everyday, effortlessly, happy to set your team up with a test drive... completely for free.

We'll help you build your list and I guarantee you'll have more of the conversations that actually matter with named decision makers on your target list in a day than you've had in weeks by any other channel.

Look forward to hearing how it transforms your sales effectiveness and enables you to dominate your market.