Business Growth Using Your Caveman Brain with Dr. Jean Oursler

The Virtual CPA Success Show: Episode 73

In this episode, our host, Jamie Nau, Summit CPA's Director of Virtual CFO, and Jody Grunden, Partner at Anders CPAs + Advisors, discuss Caveman Brain® with Dr. Jean Oursler, The Results Queen®. Dr Jean is the creator of Caveman Brain Business Growth System, which helps business owners with new business development.

[00:00:20] Jamie Nau: Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's podcast. I am very excited for today's guest. We've had some really good conversations prior to this, and I can just tell this is gonna be a fun conversation that'll go a lot of different directions. But before we get to our new guest, I want to introduce Jody again. So Jody, welcome to the show.

[00:00:36] Jody Grunden: Yep. Thanks, Jamie. Excited to have this conversation.

Jamie Nau: So today's guest is from Caveman Brain, and she told me to call her Dr. Jean, so that's what I'm gonna call her. So welcome to the show, Dr. Jean, and just give us a little bit of your background and kind of what you've been working on over the last several years.

[00:00:50] Jean Oursler: Excellent. Well,I'm Dr. Jean because I have a PhD in business psychology. And we have been working on something called caveman Brain. And what we do, how that's based, is I came to a point in my business where I wasn't increasing my sales and I wasn't getting any better, and I was very sad. So I hired four coaches to help me and one of them happened to be a Harvard nuroscientist, and I realized working with the Harvard neuroscientist that my cave membrane, well it's called amygdala, was preventing me from being more.

[00:01:23] So I started learning about the amygdala. I actually went to PhD school and got a PhD in business psychology, so I can understand that. And we've created this fabulous program called Caveman Brain Business Growth System to help people use their caveman brain to make them more successful in new business development.

[00:01:41] So that's what we've been doing for the last couple years with a lot of great success. And it's very fun and exciting to help people to be more successful tomorrow than they are today.

[00:01:50] Jamie Nau: Great. Speaking of caveman, I'm gonna throw the first question over to Jody. So Jody, you wanna ask the first question about the caveman brain program since I know you're somewhat of a caveman yourself?

[00:02:02] Jody Grunden: It sounds great. So can you kind of tell us how you originated with the program itself and kind of give us a little more background on what it's about?

[00:02:12] Jean Oursler: Sure. So I told you how I created caveman brain becauseI can't say amygdala a lot unfortunately. So that's why it's called caveman brain.

[00:02:21] It was much easier and no offense to those who wanna be cave people or cave women, it's just called caveman. So that's why we call it caveman brain. And what happened was, the way it came about, believe it or not, my daughter got a concussion when she was a freshman in high school.

[00:02:39] And she asked to go to an online private school, which before the pandemic no one had ever heard of. But now everyone hears about online school and I ended up having to change my whole business model as an entrepreneur so that I could support her. I truly believe in family first. I created my business with my children in mind.

[00:02:57] I have a mission statement, which is to leave you better than I found you. And my vision is to create two happy, healthy, well adjusted model adult citizens who are financially independent. That's what I'm working on. And so from that concussion, we changed the business model, and we found out that there were really a lot of people who needed help in new business development and had caveman brain around it.

[00:03:20] Everything that I started doing for myself, I started teaching my clients. My clients really liked it, so we decided to develop a program and then we rolled it out to corporations and regional firms and individuals because everyone has caveman brain, and once you know how to harness it and focus it, you can be super successful.

[00:03:45] Jody Grunden: So now you said several times “caveman brain.” What is caveman brain?

[00:03:49] Jean Oursler: So it's your amygdala. It's about the size and shape of an almond, and it sits in the back of your head. Think fight, flight, or freeze. So it's your internal protection system.You can't get rid of it. And the whole idea behind it is that it doesn't want you to die.

[00:04:05] So it's there to protect you from dying. Which was great in caveman days because the caveman brain only knows what it hears and what it sees. So if it hears the rustles in the bushes and it sees the bushes moving, caveman brain goes, Look, saber tooth tiger. Run, fight, or freeze.

[00:04:27] And then your brain is actually flooded with chemicals to do one of those things. But the problem is that there's not many saber tooth tigers today that we need to hunt down and kill or protect ourselves from. So, my brain likes to make up stories and the way I talk about it is this, if you're watching a scary movie, and the victim is about to do something not smart.

[00:04:49] Your hands get sweaty. Your heart starts to beat a little faster because your brain is reacting to what it's seeing and what it's hearing, but it's not real. And that's what happens; caveman brain makes up all of these stories about things that are not real because it's trying to protect. And once you learn that those stories are not real, you can harness it to get you to understand how to do things more successfully.

[00:05:17] Then, your caveman brain goes, ‘Oh, okay.’ So, for example, when you buy a new car, and you see that car all over the place or the color of the car, that's your caveman brain telling you you did something smart. And once you tell your caveman brain something new, because it only knows what it sees and what it hears, it goes, ‘Oh, okay, let's go get that.’

[00:05:37] So if you say like, I'm really terrible at this, then caveman brain says, ‘Well I guess we're terrible at this so we should be terrible at this.’ But if you say, ‘I'm really good at this, the caveman brain goes, ‘Okay, guess we're really good at this. Let's go be good at this.’ And that's how it works. It's really quite simple.

[00:05:52] And once you realize that, and a lot of our clients will be like, Dr. Gene, I'm caveman braining. Now it's a verb, right? I had talked to you about my caveman brain. Now it's a noun. Or,oh my gosh, today I had a caveman brain moment. Now it's a moment.

[00:06:13] Jamie Nau: It's funny you mentioned the car thing, that phenomenon you talked about. My daughter just turned 15 and so she's a student driving now. And so I have the student driver bumper sticker on the back of my car, which I've never noticed until now how many other cars have that student driver bumper sticker on my car.

[00:06:29] I feel like every other car has that bumper sticker; that's because I'm actually paying attention to it. So now I can tell myself that's just my caveman brain thinking.

[00:06:37] Jean Oursler: Right. It's just reinforcing that that's what it's doing.

[00:06:42] Jamie Nau: I guess the goal here is to get your prospective clients, so the people that you're trying to sell to use their caveman brain. Is that ultimately the goal in this process?

[00:06:52] Jean Oursler: So actually you have to deal with your own caveman brain first so that you understand your caveman brain. And a lot of people in new business development don't like to be pushy, salesy, and aggressive. They don't wanna be a used car person. That's the biggest thing.

[00:07:07] And the thing that people really shy away from the most, Dan Pink wrote a book called Everyone Sells. And it started from the idea of, what do people really do all day at work? That was the research project. And what he found out is that people influence other people all day long to do things that they didn't think they originally wanted to do.

[00:07:26] At least that's what we do at work. Well, that's what new business development is, is that you're influencing people to do things that it's not that you don't want them to do. That's where the salesy part comes in. Mm-hmm. . But things that are going to be helpful for them and help them get whatever problem they have.

[00:07:42] So what we talk about is that you have to understand your cave membrane first. I suspect when I say to my clients, they're like, I don't wanna be pushy, sales and aggressive. “What does that look like? What is that? And, once you start to describe it, does that sound pushy, salesy, and aggressive?

[00:07:54] Are you really gonna be hardcore like ‘you have to buy my stuff now,’ kind of thing? And the reason ‘why buy our stuff now?’ is because, psychology wise, people buy on scarcity. They don't buy on abundance or benefits. And most of us love to sell on benefits, so most people won't buy unless it's a scarcity.

[00:08:14] So how do you do that so it's not really yucky? You have to think about how people feel about it. So you're doubtful that you're gonna come across sales, aggressive, aggressive, andpushy. And you gotta think about what the person across the table wants from you. So that's where you start to manage their caveman brain.

[00:08:31] Some people are’ hair on fire. I gotta get to solve this problem today. I'm buying today.’ Awesome. But most people are like, ‘I have this problem and I don't know what I'm gonna do to solve it.’ And so then that's up to you to say, Well, for example, you have this problem. Do you still wanna have this problem six months from now?

[00:08:47] Or do you wanna solve it today? That's not pushy. That's asking a question and helping the person understand where they're coming from. And I always honor if you're not interested, great. Opportunities are like buses. There's another one coming along.

[00:09:02] Jamie Nau: Are there some people that don't mind being pushy? I know there must be because the amount of emails I get, even when I say ‘not interested’ or that has nothing to do with my business, I still get another 10 emails from them.

[00:09:15] So if that is where their natural brain is, you steer those people a little bit differently or how do you work with people that don't mind being pushy or salesy?

[00:09:23] Jean Oursler: So, I might say that that's a challenge because they might be doing an email campaign, and they may not have the technology that cuts you off where it says no.

[00:09:32] So it might be a technology issue. There are people who will not take no for an answer, but that's not what happens in our program. We are very clear about who your target audience is. You need to know them, like your science project. We tell people, you should be able to know who your target is, literally by just going, ‘Oh look, they're over there.’

[00:09:50] Like you can just grab them at a party. You can see them in the airport. You know who that person is, and if you come from a place of, ‘I'm here to help you, I'm not here to sell you.’ So those people who are sending you a gajillion emails, they're not there to help you. They're just trying to make a number or a quota, right?

[00:10:05] And that doesn't really work as far as we're concerned. So a lot of times when pushy sales aggressive come across, it's like you're not the right target audience. So when you're not talking to your right target audience you can't never gonna get the sale. And people are gonna think you're pushy, sales and aggressive because it's not for me.

[00:10:24] So that's why it's important to know your target audience and obviously where this case is, where they send you 10 emails and all you really wanna say in big capital letters is ‘STOP.’

Now if it were me, I'd write something like, Do you know who your target is? Because it's not me who'll find them.

[00:10:45] Jamie Nau: I was talking to one of my sales friends the other day and I told him that I use an assistant just to respond to those people that I'm not interested. And he's like, Oh, I never respond to them because the second you respond to them, they know you exist and the emails are gonna pick up and you're just gonna get more and more of them.

[00:10:59] Jean Oursler: So it's like, don't respond true. Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

[00:11:03] Jamie Nau: Delete those emails.

[00:11:04] Jean Oursler: There's a lot of statistics around people who are deleting emails. You're not sending them out to the right people.

[00:11:12] Jody Grunden: Do you recommend not doing email campaigns? Is that what I'm hearing? Or is that part of what you'd recommend?

[00:11:18] Jean Oursler: Oh, no, we love email campaigns. Email campaigns are awesome, but you have to do it to the right people. So, if you're not in the right venue, then it's never gonna work. When the pandemic came up, we spent a lot of time on LinkedIn because LinkedIn was really a great place to find new business today.

[00:11:34] If you're on LinkedIn, can I connect with you? No, I don't wanna, ugh, I don't wanna connect with you. So, no, I love digital marketing.

[00:11:48] I love social media. I love traditional marketing. I think there's ways of being super successful in all those venues. It all starts with ‘who are you talking to’ and ‘what's the message you're sending.’ Which most people don't do a really good job at.

[00:12:01] Jody Grunden: So really identifying that target audience is really the key. Versus just blanketly throwing a bunch of stuff out there and hoping something lands.

[00:12:09] Jean Oursler: Yeah. I don't, I'm not into the spaghetti method of let's throw it on the table and see what you, or throw it at the wall and see what sticks. Right. I'm really of let's be focused and figure out what's going on.

[00:12:19] Because what happens is, if you use the spaghetti method, eventually your caveman brain's like, ‘This doesn't work and I'm really bad at it and I don't wanna do this.’ And then you stop doing your business development and that's really the life load of your business. So if you're not bringing in new stuff, how are you?

[00:12:34] Jody Grunden: You mentioned the pandemic. A lot of folks, you know, had to sell from home. We've been doing it for 15 years, something like that. So a long time. It's never been an issue with us, but a lot of people find it difficult. Why do you think that is? Why do people find it difficult when somebody like Jamie and I think it's kind of easy?

[00:12:57] Jean Oursler: So I have to ask this to the two of you. Did you feel like when the pandemic started and people started working from home, you were like, Hallelujah, you understand my environment? Like, welcome to my house. This is my natural habitat. Did you start feeling like that?

[00:13:10] Jody Grunden: Yeah, we didn't even miss a beat on it. We'd been remote for about 10 years, so it was pretty normal.

[00:13:18] Jean Oursler: It's how you do sales all day long.

[00:13:24] Jamie Nau: I can't remember who we were talking to, but someone was asking, Oh, it's another group of CFOs, they were talking about, how do you have your criteria for who your target client is?

[00:13:35] And one of our target clients used to be, people were comfortable online, right? We wanted to make sure that any client we were gonna work with was comfortable showing up on video and comfortable being in this environment. And I'd say four years ago, we had to filter out a lot of clients because they couldn't get their camera working.

[00:13:51] And then even when they're on camera, you could tell they're on the phone and they're at their beauty parlor and they could hardly hear the words you were saying. We'd just kick those clients out. Like those are the clients we wouldn't wanna work on. And I would say, now that very rarely happens. So that's almost not even a sales criteria anymore because everybody is comfortable in this situation.

[00:14:10] Jean Oursler: After two years or two and a half years when you do this situation, I've come up with something that I call the big three. This is based on the trends I'm watching. There's people who really wanna be in person.

[00:14:20] We have clients who the only way I can do this is in person, which is not true. That's caveman brain talking. So I can only do this in person and I'm only successful when I'm in person. And then we have people who are like, I am never going in person.

[00:14:36] I am all virtual all the time. I don't do well in person. Again, caveman brain loves that. Right? So, okay, caveman brain, what are you telling yourself? And then hybrid. So a little bit of in-person and a little bit of online, and I happen to do a speech at a partner's. And I did an exercise where I said to them, Okay, here I've just described the big three to you.

[00:14:58] Now those who really wanna be in person, go to this corner, and those who wanna be online, go to the front, and those who want hybrid, go to the back of the room. Okay. So, where do you think most people went? In person? Yeah. You'd think that right? There were four people standing in-person.

[00:15:16] There were two, there were two people standing in the online area and the rest of the room was in the back and hybrid. And I had gone back into the back of the room and I was like, ‘Okay, well, do you guys wanna separate out? Because there's a lot of your time and they’re like, ‘Oh, no, we're all good.’

[00:15:30] So a lot of people really wanna be in hybrid mode. They wanna be able to do both. And so for those that really wanted to be in person, then great. It's no, the world is opening up. There are other people who wanna be in person. The only challenge in-person is that nowadays, people are in three different places.

[00:15:50] Whereas pre-pandemic, everyone went to one place. So, you went in-person, and you got all the great people. Now, not all the great people are showing up in-person.

[00:16:03] Jody Grunden: We've been doing it remotely for a long time. And, we do our sales close within an hour. You know, the idea is listening intently, and then diagnosing from there and giving them a firm quote.

[00:16:17] By the time they leave, they’re satisfied whether they want to go with this or not. That's up to them; they leave happy with the process, you know? We found that if you do it in-person, there's so much distraction going on. You know, someone might not show up.

[00:16:34] You might be late, you might be waiting on things. There might be things going on that you don't even know about behind the scenes, and slowing things down. Whereas, when you have somebody captive for an hour on a video chat where the cameras are on, you can see their facial expressions; you've got them for that one hour and you're heavily listening. It just works so well. It's really magical when it comes to it, I think.

[00:17:00] Jean Oursler: So I'm gonna say Zoom to me. So email is one dimension, phone is two dimensional, in-person is three dimensions. So Zoom to me is two points. Right? It's kinda in between. But I will tell you that, if I put one of my clients who only believes in being in-person, he would tell you that people who are online are highly distracted.

[00:17:21] They're looking at their phone, they're looking at their email, they're not paying attention. I don't find that when you're doing the sales process. It sounds like you guys don't find that either.

[00:17:28] Jamie Nau: I think if they are distracted, then you're not gonna close the sale anyways, right?

[00:17:32] If you're going into a sales call that you're really interested in buying, you're gonna be listening because you're gonna wanna know if this is a purchase you're gonna make. So if they're distracted, they're gonna be distracted in person as well.

[00:17:42] Jean Oursler: Exactly right. I totally agree with that, Jamie. I think they'd be distracted in both places.

[00:17:48] Jamie Nau: I guess I would ask the question on this hybrid. Jody said we do our sales in person or on video, but I guess would we be hybrid? Because we do a lot of thought leadership. So we were just in Greece a week ago and we were out there educating people in the industry on what we do and what we know.

[00:18:07] And then eventually some of those people might end up on a sales call. We've met them in person. I'm curious, Jody, I feel like we close more deals for people that we've met in person prior to closing than the people that we're just meeting online for the first time. So, I would almost consider that a hybrid model. Would you agree?

[00:18:24] Jody Grunden: I would think so, too, but that's not true. The metrics show that it's not true that you close most people that you've met in person. We close a third.

[00:18:36] It's been pretty much that way for the last 10 years, where a third of the people that we close, they've seen us speak at a conference, you know, metrics conference, how-to-be-profitable type of thing. A third of them come from referrals, maybe clients, maybe prospects.

[00:18:56] And then a third comes through marketing, through a video or listening to a podcast, white papers or books that we've written, that sort of thing. And so two-thirds of our clients have never seen or met us before. So, Jamie, I would've thought the same thing. You would've thought going into it a hundred percent.

[00:19:14] I would've bet a lot of money on that, and I would've been completely wrong. Two thirds of our clients come from other means.

[00:19:22] Jean Oursler: So I'm gonna say two things to both of you, and kudos, congratulations to you. First of all, you know your metrics, and metrics are so important in new business development because people don't know the new metrics and then they're not as successful.

[00:19:34] So kudos to you about your metrics. The other thing I would say to you is what we call marketing traction vehicles. So you're using three interesting marketing traction vehicles to bring people to you. We call it marketing gravity as opposed to going out and finding people, which is not the way to do it nowadays.

[00:19:54] Jody Grunden: No . Hundred percent agree.

[00:19:55] Jean Oursler: It's interesting because people really are resistant around metrics or they get their metrics wrong and again, kudos to you guys.

[00:20:08] Jamie Nau: The fun part is, is, we are financial consultants, but you know, I was in the CFO role for a long time and now I'm more in the director role, so I don't deal as directly with clients and those client relationships.

[00:20:19] But I remember being in client calls and surprised with how much time I'm spending with marketing. Again, we work with agencies, we work with marketing companies, but I spend so much time with them understanding their marketing metrics and their sales metrics, and saying, what is your close time? What is your close ratio?

[00:20:35] What is your you know, all those things. And really coming up with those numbers and then putting some math behind those numbers to help them understand that, if you're closing 30% of your deals and it takes you 90 days to close them, here's what your pipeline needs to look like. And you're just kinda giving them those metrics. It is surprising to me how few companies came in knowing answers to those various basic questions.

[00:20:57] Jean Oursler: Well, you would think it's basic to you, but it's not basic to lots of companies. It's almost like it's rocket science to them that they're like, What? We try to make metrics really simple and however you need to look at them. It's interesting, we have a client that we've been working with for five years, who's been doing the caveman brain business process for five years. It took us the first three years - they refused to do it. Refused.

[00:21:31] Jamie Nau: Was it abad math experience in high school?

[00:21:33] Jean Oursler: And then, by year four, we convinced them to do metrics, and they've accelerated their growth just because now they have metrics. The growth has been accelerated. And I find it so fascinating because the first year we exceeded their goals like by 10% and then by 20% now we're exceeding goals like by 40 or 50% because they have the metrics and they're looking at them every week and they're like, okay, we have to change this or we keep doing that. And so many people are anti-metrics and I think to myself, Why?

[00:22:08] Jody Grunden: That's, that blows my mind. There’s power in the numbers, I mean the powers in understanding the numbers. And if you don't understand the numbers, I'm not sure how you would be successful. For the longest time, our closing ratio was close to 80%.

[00:22:22] And you think, Oh, that's great. You know, you're doing a wonderful job. In reality, that's a bad thing because it means you're not pricing your product correctly. It’s too cheap.

[00:22:29] That was one of the big metrics we had to learn from pretty quickly: how do we get our price to where the market says,’ Hey, that's a fair price,’ and not go too far and say ‘it's not a fair price,’ because you can raise it 2000% if you wanted to. And then you get very few people that have interest in buying, maybe five or 10%. And I found that that magic number for us is that 30% threshold.

[00:22:57] If we're closing 30% of the time-ish, then I think then our product is priced properly; we're closing a percentage and our retention stays in the 90 percent-ish. I'm throwing all these stats out, right? The 96% or 94% is where we typically are at. That tells me we're bringing clients in at the right price.

[00:23:15] They love the service and they're not gonna leave quickly because they made a bad decision or had buyer's remorse syndrome. So those are the metrics that we use. And it's kind of funny as an accounting firm that that's our key metrics.

[00:23:28] Jean Oursler: I love it. I have to tell you, I always think you should lop off the bottom 10% every year, and replace it with a better 10%.

[00:23:34] So you're all doing a great job on that, right? And I think that the whole 80% raising prices is a good thing until the market can't bear it anymore. I think that's also important. And the other thing that I find is client retention is super important in new business development.

[00:23:50] I had a whole conversation with a client on this yesterday; the client's like, ‘Well, I don't understand why upselling doesn't count.’ I tell people upselling flows, whatever you wanna call it, they don't count. That's gravy, right? New business development is what counts. And they're like, ‘I don't understand. We closed all this.’

[00:24:07] And I said, Yeah, we have a new client that just came in that's been upselling for, I don't know, 10 years, and their growth is now going down. And that's what happens, right? You go on the slippery slope and you get scared and you can't focus on retention. You gotta go out and find new.

[00:24:22] And I realized, this is the other thing, because someone was like, Well the statistics says that it's easier to upsell someone who's an acquired client than to find a new client. Yeah, yeah. That's truth. But guess what? It also doesn't talk about the fact that if you want your business to grow, you need to find new people.

[00:24:40] Jody Grunden: So is a sign that you didn't sell properly in the beginning.

[00:24:44] Jean Oursler: I love that. Oh, I'm using that one, Jody. I'm totally taking that. Thanks so much. I appreciate that. I learned something new today–writing that down. That was awesome. Yeah, that's it's truth, right? Because you should be able two or three times where you get the next project, and I don't consider that an upsell.

[00:25:04] I just consider that next. Right, right. What's next? And then people sing me the Ariana Grande song after that. When I say that, What's next? And then they go, Oh yeah. Let's not go down that path.

[00:25:17] Jamie Nau: I'd only be singing in client calls.

[00:25:21] Jean Oursler: Okay. That's a good place to be singing as opposed to new development calls.

[00:25:25] Much better. Yeah, it's better. They may not wanna hire you,but then they hear your voice .

[00:25:32] Jamie Nau: Maybe Jody. I've heard Jody do karaoke. Yeah, it's not good.

[00:25:37] Jean Oursler: And, well, speaking of karaoke, there’s another thing that we teach people; it’s what we call the red bouncing ball method.

[00:25:44] So you know in karaoke when the ball goes on the words and you follow the words? We tell people that new business development is just like that. We call it the red bouncing ball. When we meet, you introduce me to somebody else and they introduce me to somebody else and introduce you to somebody else.

[00:25:58] And all of a sudden I've got a client meeting and you just sometimes have to follow the red bouncing ball until you get to a potential client. We don't call them prospects because we think that that's a yucky word for caveman brain. So potential clients, that’s what you call them because that's what you want them to be.

[00:26:15] You want them to be a client and they're potentially going to be that. So potential clients, and that's how and if, as long as you keep looking at the bouncing ball and keep moving the ball along like you do in karaoke, you're gonna be successful.

[00:26:28] Jody Grunden: So what stops people from doing that? Because when I was prior to college, I actually sold knives for a living.

[00:26:34] Jean Oursler: The cutlery knives?

[00:26:39] Jody Grunden: Yeah. And the biggest thing we found was that it wasn't really selling. That was easy because the product sold itself–high quality, you know, very nice. But, the problem was that we had people that couldn't make that phone call. It was very heavy. It was unreal.

[00:26:59] Make the phone call. Because if you make the phone call, the stats show, you're gonna have so many appointments and so forth. What prevents people from making that phone call, or dropping an email where they should have made a phone call? Or popped on a zoom call or something like that?

[00:27:18] What’s the caveman brain part that causes that? And then, more importantly, how can somebody overcome that?

[00:27:24] Jean Oursler: So, caveman brain is the first part, right? So we've already identified the reason why you can't pick up the phone as caveman brain because you've made up stories.

[00:27:32] Like, for example, I'm interrupting this person, or they're going to reject me, or I'm going to be a failure. So failure of success, failure of rejection, failure of failure is making a mistake. A lot of times, people won't pick up the phone to make the phone call or write an email, because they don't know exactly what to say.

[00:27:49] So we actually do a lot of writing messages for our clients. We'll say, write this in the email or write this as the headline. So we find that because people really get all tied up and don’t know what to say. I have people who are like, Okay, how do I answer this? And they literally write down word by word.

[00:28:04] And I say, you don't have to write my words down, you use your words. And they say, your words are better Dr. Jean.

[00:28:14] They don't know what to say and they're scared to say it, and they're scared to interrupt people. And what's really interesting is the follow-up process is the place where people lose. There's statistics around that. It takes nowadays seven touches for you to actually get someone to be interested in talking to you.

[00:28:39] Most sales people stop, I shouldn't say sales people, but most people who have to do new business development stop after one touch. And like 80% of the people who are still in the game, they stop at five. And yet it shows that you have to do seven touches to get to the person to get them an appointment is probably why.

[00:29:01] Jamie's like, Oh, the guys are doing that to me seven times. That's why they keep hitting me all the time; they’re waiting for their seventh email.

[00:29:12] Jamie Nau: The other part of it, too, and I'm curious with you on the caveman brain part of this is, this is something I've noticed in my career, part of being able to pick up that phone or being able to have those conversations is, do you believe in what you're selling and that your client needs it?

[00:29:25] Right? At Summit, I feel like what we do is so beneficial to companies that just getting in that conversation, like if they need it, they need it. But I think a lot of people do need financial consulting at that small-business level. So I'm very passionate about what we do now.

[00:29:39] When I was in audit and I was responsible for sales, they needed it because the SEC requires it, but they really don't want it, and they don't really need it. So I was never a good salesperson when I was with Grant Thornton as an auditor because I just didn't really feel passionate about what we were providing.

[00:29:53] So I think that's a big part of it, at least for my career. Do you find that pretty common?

[00:29:58] Jean Oursler: Oh, very common. I tell this story all the time. I was in advertising and I launched a lot of products, and I turned down a job because I was going to launch Reese's Peanut Butter cereal for children, and I thought, I cannot promote a candy-oriented sugary cereal to children; that's just not happening for me.

[00:30:18] So you have to believe that this is the best thing since sliced bread. And what I tell people is like, you have a gold brick. And you're gonna go out to people and say, I have a gold brick. Do you want my gold brick? And some people are gonna say, I hate gold bricks.

[00:30:30] I want purple. Well, you're not my person. There's people who need gold bricks. And you gotta go find those people who need gold bricks. So go find them. And, you had to believe that your gold brick is the best gold brick on the face of the planet.

[00:30:46] Jamie Nau: You need a gold brick, Jody?

[00:30:47] Jody Grunden: Yeah. No.

[00:30:51] Jean Oursler: No, he's sold knives. Come on. He came from a place where it's the best stuff that ever happened before. Right?

[00:30:57] Jody Grunden: So, you got the person through the sales, you know the prospect. You got him on the phone, you're talking to him, you got him a video call, whatever the means are. And then they're like, Yep, great.

[00:31:05] Sounds good. And then the follow up happens after that. How and how frequently should that follow up happen

[00:31:12] Jean Oursler: No, that follow up doesn't happen then because what we teach people is something what we call DAT: date and time. Sometimes they're not willing to make a decision on the phone call.

[00:31:27] You all talk about doing it in one time, which kudos to you that you know your process so well. You can do it in one time, and that's fabulous. For many of our clients, it's two and no more than three. Okay. I mean, if you're past three, it's, it's, you're in big trouble. If you're in three.

[00:31:43] Although for Fortune 500 companies, sometimes it can take a long time. So it depends on who the client is, but for most part, it's just a normal company. It should take around three times. So what we say to people is that when you're in the call, the most important time right now is us together. So you're the star of your movie. I'm a supporting cast member. When you leave us, when you leave this show and move on to the next place, I'm no longer gonna be in your show, right? I, The scene is over. You've moved on as the movie star in the next place.

[00:32:16] So I have to capture your attention while we're together, which means I need to ask you to put a date and time on my calendar now. Because we're both very busy people, and I know how hard it was for us to get this meeting together. So would it be okay, we teach people a lot about asking questions.

[00:32:32] Would it be okay to put a date and time on the calendar now? If you can't make it, we certainly can change it, but at least we have a date, and we have a time that we can follow up with each other. Would that be okay? And most people say, Yes, that'd be fine. And now you put the date and time on the calendar, and you don't have to do any more follow up because now you have a date and time.

[00:32:51] Jody Grunden: How far out would you put it? a week?

[00:32:54] Jean Oursler: Well, that depends. We teach people something called our six killer questions, and part of the six killer questions is, when would you like to get started? Which is, most people think is, they're very resistant.

[00:33:07] It's like, no, it's a timing question. So they're gonna say right when you wanna get started, like, is it this week? Two months from now, is it six months from now? So by asking that question, you're directing what we call a facilitator buyer's. You're facilitating the sale. You are considering the buyer to do something for you.

[00:33:26] So we don't like people to have lots of follow up. We want them to do that. But then what happens is, our clients don't do it because of caveman brain Now. So then you're in the chase, and we have a whole system around being in the chase, which after a while they go, This sucks.

[00:33:45] And we're like, Yes. And if you just ask for DAT in the meeting, you wouldn't be in the chase. They'll go, Oh, okay. That would make sense, right? Now I'm the chase cause I don't wanna, I don't wanna have to hound you and follow up and get you on the calendar. The idea is that, if we're together then let's close the business or tell me no, and I'm okay with that. Either way is fine.

[00:34:09] Jody Grunden: Hundred percent. I always like to say, Hey, what's the quickest way to get to no? And I don't wanna chase you like you had mentioned for a month to get to that. No. I'd rather find out now.

[00:34:18] Jean Oursler: I'm good with you telling me no. Now we have a whole system; we call them love notes and how you reach out to people so that if you end up being in the chase, which most people do that; you stop it and get the appointment on the calendar so that you can close the person.

[00:34:35] Cause we are really there just to help and to solve a problem. We really try not to do follow up. Follow up sucks.

[00:34:45] Jamie Nau: I think this has been a great appetizer on caveman brain. So a lot of our listeners, I'm guessing, are very curious about finding out more and really to get the details that we've been talking about.

[00:34:56] So for that, how would they go about finding you?

[00:34:59] Jean Oursler: All they have to do is go to cavemanbrain.com. Super easy. And when they're there, they can download some of our tools that we actually use with our clients to help them. We really do believe in our mission of wanting to leave you better than we found you.

[00:35:12] They can attend our virtual training so they can learn things like we've talked about today, or if they want, they can sign up for our Caveman Brain Business Growth System, and we will get them on board and get them started. We see results in as little as 30 days or less. And most people say they get three times the investment.

[00:35:28] Jody Grunden: So for somebody just wanting to get into business development, is that somebody that's been doing it for a while? Does it make any difference?

[00:35:34] Jean Oursler: It doesn't really make any difference. Our system is geared to people who are brand new, as well as people who are seasoned professionals. The system has been developed so it's customized to you, so you feel comfortable in doing new business development.

[00:35:48] Because if you're uncomfortable, the person across the table will be uncomfortable and they're gonna smell it. We talk a lot about the subconscious. So the fact is, for seasoned professionals, there's probably some small tweaks that will have to make big changes.

[00:36:05] And for new people, or kind of mid-experienced people, it gives them that foundation and the system that they can follow religiously forever. We call it a repeatable system, so that when you leave, because you will and we're all good with that. We want you to graduate and move on. The system is, you'll know exactly where you are in the system.

[00:36:24] You know exactly what happens when you fall off the rails and you know what to do when you're being really super successful.

[00:36:30] Jody Grunden: Great. That sounds awesome. Because, for instance, with us, we sell such a high dollar amount of thin air. Our average client, it's about $80,000 a year and it's really in thin air. You're not getting a product. You're getting a service.

[00:36:44] Jean Oursler: New service, right? Yeah.

[00:36:45] Jody Grunden: And for some people, maybe right out of college, that would be super great at it. That's a very intimidating dollar amount. And again, I think that's where the caveman brain gets kind of in their way on like, Oh my gosh.And especially after they've been rejected for three or four times, it's like, Oh, no one can do this. Or you're the only one that can do this.

[00:37:05] Jean Oursler: I had a colleague who looked at rejections and when people said no to him, he wrote them a thank you note and said thank you. Because he knew that he needed nine nos to get to a yes. So every, no, he celebrated; he was like, Thanks so much for telling me. You got me closer to my goal; that's what he wrote. I thought that was hilarious. But it worked for him.

[00:37:29] Jamie Nau: So we are at time here. So I'm gonna, I'm going to give both you guys a final thought. I know a marketing or a sales conversation is always one of Jody's favorite.s and I'll let him go first, then I'll throw it over to you, Dr. Jean.

[00:37:39] Jody Grunden: It's been very enlightening. A lot of what you've talked about kinda comes inherent to what we do here at Summit.

[00:37:47] So we're bringing clients into us. Like you had mentioned, we're not going after clients, and it's just the way that the marketing works. But more importantly, being on that conversation, having that confidence that you're talking about and, and trying to get to that no pretty quickly as you can, and not being upset when you do get to it.

[00:38:05] A thank you note is kind of a funny way of doing it, but I look at it the same way. I'd rather it be off my, my thought process, completely without having to bring it back every month with the potential that it could lead to something successful. It’s just kind of baiting me for the future.

[00:38:22] Being in that program sounds like it'd be really exciting for somebody, especially coming right out that's new or somebody that just needs a refresher. You know, because maybe they've been doing it for a long time and everybody can always learn. So it sounds like you've got something going there and definitely looking forward to hearing from you in the future.

[00:38:42] Jean Oursler: Thank you so much, Jody. Appreciate that. That was very kind. Thank you.

[00:38:46] Jamie Nau: All right. Now your final thoughts here, Dr. Jean.

[00:38:48] Jean Oursler: My final thoughts, so what I find is that your caveman brain is going to fool you in terms of new business development and often you'll get stuck because you can't move; your caveman brain is keeping you there.

[00:38:59] You're frozen in place. So if you're frozen in place, then take one step forward, whatever the easiest thing for you to do; call a client and ask them, Hey, I love you so much. I'd love to work with people that are like you. Who do you know that I should talk to?

[00:39:19] Just one step to move forward. That's all it is. And every single day, if you just do one step forward, we tell people five hours a week is all you need. So one hour a day, you can do it in 20 minute blocks, five minute blocks, just take one step and caveman brain will help you get there. That's all it is.

[00:39:38] Jamie Nau: I know Jody mentioned a couple potential clients for you, too. The one I think of is kind of the accidental salesperson, accidental business development person. A lot of the people we work with, first they're technicians and they're really good at their job. So they start their own business and then when they start their own business, they're the one who knows the best that they're having to do the sales.

[00:39:55] And they get, they're successful at first, but then when it comes time to start growing your business, it's like, Oh wait, I need to become a true business development person now. And I think those are the people that a lot of our clients are that could definitely benefit from what you offer. So I appreciate you coming on today.

[00:40:08] Appreciate both of you guys coming on today. I think this is a great episode and hopefully it'll benefit a lot of our listeners.

Achieve Business Growth Using Your Caveman Brain with Dr. Jean Oursler