EP 114 : Sticky Marketing Brain Glue with James I. Bond
Introduction:
“Brain Glue: The Glue that Sticks” – Discover how James I. Bond introduces Brain Glue as a powerful tool to differentiate your brand and attract customers. Through their extensive experience in advertising, they advocate for leveraging familiar phrases and names to make a lasting impression on your audience.
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Steve Burnett: [00:00:00] Welcome to the DYB podcast, where each week we share strategies and stories to inspire you to double your business so that you can have financial freedom time for your family and make an impact in your community. Don’t waste your time on leads that you don’t want to do business with. Drive only to high value leads. Make sure you use the pre qualifying process to do so check it out at dybcoach. com backslash dyb hyphen Pre qualifying hyphen process and now this week’s episode. Hello and welcome to the dyb podcast I’m your host Steve Burnett today’s guest has uncovered something about persuasion. That’s so profound.
It’s Changing how thousands of people are now selling their ideas, products, and services. He’s one of America’s leading behavioral management specialists and author of the award winning book, brain glue, how to sell easier by making your ideas sticky. And this book is awesome. [00:01:00] And so I’m honored to have him on the show to talk about it as I’m enjoying it.
James I. Bond, welcome to the show.
James I. Bond: Hi, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Steve Burnett: My pleasure. Talk about a sticky name. Uh, James Bond. I, Bond. I see why you had to put the I in there, huh?
James I. Bond: I think, yeah, people hang up on me all the time. James Bond. Yeah, right click. But no, I think my parents had a sense of humor, an evil sense of humor, but that’s…
James I. Bond: I was born after the, uh, after the book, but before the movie, so… Okay, okay. Apparently it’s a coincidence, but I don’t know.
Steve Burnett: That’s great. That’s a good name. So, uh, who was it? Somebody saw this on my calendar. They’re like, really? I’m like, yeah. Well, your book is about making ideas sticky. Let’s get straight to it, James.
Steve Burnett: How do you make ideas…
James I. Bond: sticky? It’s interesting. I didn’t invent brain glue. I invented the term brain glue, but the process has existed like almost since the beginning of man who started speaking. Okay. So if you think, so. Uh, I’m old enough to remember Jack and Jill went up the hill, okay, and when was the last time you heard that?
James I. Bond: A gazillion years ago, okay? I mean, we don’t have to get into the age, and for me it’s the same. Over 60 years ago, like, is the last time I heard that, and yet I remember it like it was yesterday. There are certain things that stick to the brain like glue. What we want to do is… Whenever we’re talking to somebody, we want to stand out from the crowd.
James I. Bond: We want to stand out from competitors. And so Brain Glue is all about standing out in a way that people actually want to buy from you. And I, I discovered early on, originally I live in Southern California. I’ve lived here for about 35 years. I’m originally from Montreal and I had an advertising agency and I worked my way up.
James I. Bond: So I had, uh, eventually major clients, Kraft Foods, Timex watches, Avon, Abbott Laboratories, Seagrams, their world headquarters is there. Mm-hmm. Wow. And I had the opportunity to win the anti-drug campaign in America with powerful, logical reasons why [00:03:00] you should not do drugs. And then I saw. The ad that won, and it terrified me.
James I. Bond: It was a guy holding an egg saying, this is your brain, cracks the shell, drops the egg into a sizzling frying pan. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions? And it was profound, but it wasn’t logical. And yet it has tremendous, uh, power. Uh, it literally, they said, it’s amazing how many people had got off drugs or the kids to stop.
James I. Bond: It’s not considered doing drugs because of the power of emotional selling. And I was like, how do you do emotional selling? You know, I mean, I’m a logical guy. And as I started studying it, eventually when we lived in something, when we moved to Southern California, Um, I met john gray and john gray was telling me about this incredible book.
James I. Bond: He wrote men, women, and relationships, and it’s sold like a few thousand copies, which isn’t a lot. If you make a buck a book, you know, you can’t live off a few thousand copies. And he got this crazy idea. What if I changed the title to men are from Mars, women [00:04:00] are from Venus, and then tweak the contents a little so that it’s just, he refers to it throughout the book, guess what happened?
James I. Bond: He sold. Half a million copies almost overnight and a million and 2 million and 5 million eventually 50 million copies Okay, I mean if you make a buck a book, that’s I want one of those, okay And I was like what just cuz he changed the title. He had a great book It’s the same basic book and yet he changed the title and suddenly sales Exploded I mean Wow, and then I started you know, I started realizing I had this thing I call a passion box where when I saw, um, this is your brain on drugs, I wrote down your brain on drugs on a three by five card and I put it in this box.
James I. Bond: And I’ve been doing this for over 35 years now, but every time I saw an ad or heard something, it was powerful. But emotional selling, not logical. I remember President John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And I was like, whoa. And I wrote that and put it in my box.
James I. Bond: I said, there’s a [00:05:00] pattern there. And I don’t understand the pattern. If I can understand the pattern, then I can, you know, Then maybe I can start using that. Well, when I got home from, after John Gray was telling me about his book, I dumped the passion box on my bed and quickly discovered 14 brain triggers.
James I. Bond: And I started first applying them with clients, but people started, I started sharing this, I do a volunteer work with the U S small business administration. I’m like a top, a workshop chairman and pot and a podcast or stuff like that. And it’s blowing literally thousands of people’s minds because they’re realizing if you have a product or a service, if you can.
James I. Bond: Add a tweak or change what you’re, how you’re describing it just slightly often, sales explode like crazy. In fact, let me give you an example because I think you have loads. Yeah. We’re on edge really guys out there. Yeah. Um, so one of the first clients I worked with on this to actually apply this, uh, was a construction company.
James I. Bond: There were three partners who after 10 years had 2 [00:06:00] million in sales. It’s not bad. 2 million in sales, you know, three partners, but it took them 10 years to do that. In one year, I took them to. Uh, uh, 10 million in sales, okay, two from two to 10 and two years later, we reached 32 million of sales and I’ll tell you exactly how I did it, by the way, I took him from two to 10 million in sales.
James I. Bond: It took him 10 years to get to took him, took me one year to get 10 and they used to razz me and said, Hey bond, it was supposed to be 12 million. You said, you know, I was like, shut up. They bought each other the bread as a gift. The biggest BMW. So each had like, you know, BMWs. They’re really into boomers.
James I. Bond: But I mean, it, here’s what I did. So I said, um, so let’s, um, you know, I love whiteboard. So I said, let’s on a whiteboard, let’s write down every kind of client that you work with. Okay. Uh, and that you’ve worked with over the past 10 years. And they said, okay, fine. It’s a while, you know, you know, anything else?
James I. Bond: Oh yeah, wait, there was this guy or with these guys or whatever else. So we’ve got a shopping list of all the different types of clients they work with. [00:07:00] And I said, let’s play a game. Let’s pick one and pretend that you’re not going to say yes to anybody except this one type of client. Let’s focus you down on one.
James I. Bond: They said, well, we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to turn away business. You know, in construction, you could do anything, basically build homes and factories and stuff, or build a shed in the back or fix if there’s a fire or something like that. And there are a lot of things you can do. I said, I care, but we’re playing a game.
James I. Bond: Okay, let’s get you to pick one. So we went through, it took a while and they finally said, you know what? There were two clients that we work with that were in the insurance industry and we had like, you know, one had two and one had one fire and they asked us to come in. They call it fire restoration for insurance companies.
James I. Bond: I said, what’s that? He said, well, it’s an insurance company that has a client that has a fire. And so when they have a fire, there are two, two things we have to do. The first one is we go in there and check the frame. If the frame is damaged, you got to tear down the whole house. But if it’s not damaged and you got to put it up and, you know, do construction in such a way that it’s not going to catch fire again, whatever.
James I. Bond: Okay, that makes [00:08:00] sense. So fire restoration for insurance companies. So when you’re sitting and talking to the client The first thing that’s on their mind is the word fire, right? So let’s come up with a hook that uses the word fire We’re not gonna change the name of your company, but we’re gonna you know, describe you guys this way And so I said you’re like the fire extinguisher for insurance companies.
James I. Bond: And so why don’t we get the website fire X? And we’ll call you guys the fire extinguisher when you’re talking to your clients and they started laughing and then I would go with them for the first two clients, uh, prospects, actually, and then one of them was a client that they work with. The other one was a prospect and, uh, we said, um, yeah, we just think of us as your fire extinguisher.
James I. Bond: You know, we’re the fire extinguisher for you guys. We won’t put out the fire, but we’ll fix it after there’s a fire and the clients would laugh. As they were buying, you know, and suddenly every time there’s a fire that they had a client with, they would call and say, Hey guys, we need the fire extinguisher.
James I. Bond: Okay. Here’s the address and sales went from [00:09:00] two to 10 million in sales in one year. And that’s a 32 million, two years later. And they only added like a few people. In fact, it’s funny. When I started with them, I said, well, we need, I need a whiteboard. Cause you know, I like working off a whiteboard. And so the guy said, uh, one of the partners said, yeah, but when you’re finished, make sure you take the whiteboard because we don’t use a whiteboard.
James I. Bond: Okay. Yeah. Right. The second week I was there, I showed up and it was It’s packed with text all over it. And I said, uh, so I like to scare the hell out of my clients. So I pull out an eraser, like I’m going to erase it. You know, back then it was before the camera phones, cameras on the phone. And he goes, no, no, no, don’t erase it.
James I. Bond: Wait, wait, I got to write it all down. And I said, well, what is it? He said, well, I’m sitting down with my subcontractors. And he said, it’s amazing. He said, uh, they make promises, you know, like the subcontractors make promises all the time, right? That they don’t keep. So he said, so every time somebody would make a promise, I said, so, hey, Joe, I need you to do this.
James I. Bond: He said, okay, I’ll do this. Yeah, for sure. [00:10:00] I turned around, I’d read it on a whiteboard. Something amazing happened. He said, I never saw this before. He started searching for a pen and a piece of paper so he could write it down. So these guys would always promise off the top of their head without Writing any of this stuff down, but once they saw me writing it on a whiteboard, they would write down the promises they made because they knew that they were going to be held accountable to that.
James I. Bond: It’s like, wow. I said, so you, so I guess I’m not taking a whiteboard, right? He said, definitely not. It was really good. But, but the issue is their sales went from two to 10 million in sales almost overnight because of how they described the business they were in. And so it’s just, to me, it’s so powerful.
James I. Bond: There’s a, a mom and her son In Utah, and she comes up with this idea, product idea, they’ve had no business experience, but she says, you know, when I’m sitting on a toilet, it helps if you can raise your feet like, you know, but a half a foot or something, because it changes the shape of your body when you go to the bathroom.
James I. Bond: Okay. Yeah, I don’t want to [00:11:00] get too much into that. But she said, Okay, I think it would be fantastic if we sold this product. And so they got the idea, they got a supplier, all that stuff. But they needed a good name for the product. Okay. And so they’re thinking we want a hooky name, you know, a name that like will really captivate everybody when they hear it.
James I. Bond: And so let’s see, we’re sitting on a toilet. What’s another word for a toilet? I guess the potty. Okay. And, uh, we’re kind of, we’re squatting, squatting, but, Oh, let’s call it the squatting potty. They went from zero people with no business experience. How many of you guys out there can say this? They went from zero.
James I. Bond: To a hundred million dollars of sales in less than two years. It went from zero to a hundred million dollars because of the squatty party. People would laugh as they’re going, you know, they had some money as they made some money, they bought some, they had some commercials made and stuff like that. But I mean.
James I. Bond: Squatty Potty. Yeah. I mean,
Steve Burnett: it’s just, I think, I think I read a report where they were selling for what, 18 or $20 a piece, and it’s like a 50 cent piece of plastic, you know? It’s, it’s a piece
James I. Bond: of pla it’s a simple piece of plastic. It wraps it on your toilet, [00:12:00] you pull it out, you put your feet on it, you know?
James I. Bond: Yeah. Yeah. And yet, and my wife had that, you know, she, she had that idea before they did. Okay. Mm-hmm. , uh, but, uh, never went forward with it. Once they decided, Hey, let’s see if we can make a living doing this. I mean, if they call it the toilet stool, you think it would be as successful as squatty potty? No, no, squatty potty sticks to the brain.
James I. Bond: You know, it’s like, Oh, that’s funny. And it’s just, it’s, it’s amazing how, you know, when you come up with a cool name, suddenly people want to buy your product and it goes with, I remember John gray, where he was telling me. You know, when he changed the name of his book to, uh, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, I bought it in, uh, you know, a bookstore.
James I. Bond: I’m looking at books. I’m going, uh, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. What the heck’s that? And then I picked it up, which is the first step to getting people to buy from you is to pick it up, right? So I’m looking at it. I went, Oh yeah, this is pretty cool. And I would buy it. You know, what you want to do is you want to get their attention.
James I. Bond: We have to remember is that we’re competing against so many things, including, you know, people live [00:13:00] on their phones. I see people walking the street. I used to be kids. Now I see adults, you know, guys, 40, 50, 60 years old are walking across the street and they’re, they’re texting on the phone. We’re being, we’re, we’re being communicated to on a regular basis.
James I. Bond: And so you need to stand out from the crowd. And if you stand out from the crowd, then, you know, you have a better chance of selling your product or service. I mean, so this
Steve Burnett: reminds me, oh, pardon me, James. This reminds me of Seth Godin’s quote. He says, um, if the marketplace isn’t talking about you, there’s a reason.
Steve Burnett: The reason is you’re boring and you’re boring on purpose because it’s safe,
James I. Bond: and you can’t bore people into buying from you. That’s the thing. You know, this guy, I was reading about, this guy, Paul Tran , he changed the name of his company to Manscape, you know, like landscaping, A man, manscape. . Okay. And his sales exploded.
James I. Bond: In fact, one of the big companies, I think it was Braun, wanted to buy him up for a massive amount of money. He said, nah, not too, I want to, I can make more money than that, you know, on my own. And he’s making like a fortune, [00:14:00] whoever calls an electric razor a lawnmower. But you know what happens is, so first you see the lawnmower and you hear what it is and you start laughing.
James I. Bond: And if you buy it, what do you do? You tell your buddies. I mean, you can’t use this. Okay. I use it, but guess what? I just bought the lawnmower. It’s like, what? You know, I mean, it’s just, they’re hilarious. I mean, it’s laughers are buyers. That’s one of the things that happens is, you know, when we said, uh, Uh, you know, the fire, we’re in a fire extinguisher for you guys, you know, they would laugh, but they were buying.
James I. Bond: You don’t always have to make them laugh, but laughing helps. I know these two guys who are attorneys, they’re top, they’re of the top hundred attorneys in the country. One of them is a top 10 attorneys in the country. And he’s telling me that, um, he makes audio, he makes his, uh, juries and his judges laugh.
James I. Bond: By telling them jokes, you know, and he said, by telling them jokes, it’s amazing that you tell somebody a joke and suddenly they like you more and they want to, they, they sort of lean towards you. And so this friend of [00:15:00] mine was telling me that it’s amazing. I, a lot of lawyers. Will pass a client on to me that they know that they don’t think there’s any way they can win But I have a better chance of winning I won’t win 100 of them, but I win and part of why I win is, you know I do a good job on my work, but you can do a good job and still lose but he says I do a good job, but I also get my The jury’s laughing.
James I. Bond: If I can make the jury laugh, they suddenly look at me more than they look at the other, the other attorney. And so, yeah, it’s just laughing is a pretty good tool.
Steve Burnett: So that’s why, uh, emotion is so important in selling.
James I. Bond: Well, and that’s the key is we buy for emotional reasons, not logical. You know, they always say in marketing.
James I. Bond: You know, you want your client to know, like, and trust you, right? And then part of why is because that’s emotional. Okay. I mean, so they, you might have the best product in the world, but you know, if they don’t know, like, and trust you, they’re not going to buy it from you. So that’s the first thing. So one way you can get them to know, like, and trust you is tell them jokes.
James I. Bond: I tell jokes all the time. I’m terrible at it. I was working with this [00:16:00] company that does boxing gear and all this stuff for martial arts and all that stuff. And they’re in trouble. They’re in a turnaround. And in a turnaround, it’s scary because everybody’s afraid we’re going to lose the job. The owner is afraid he’s going to go bankrupt and all that stuff.
James I. Bond: And so when you’re stressed, you’re not laughing. You’re like, you know, and when you’re stressed, it’s hard to be creative. And so I started with this joke and they tortured me with this joke. Okay. And they really tortured me with it. And it’s, uh, So the maintenance guy is hiding in a maintenance closet.
James I. Bond: Whenever people would come near the closet, he’d open the door and scream supplies. So for over a year I was working with these guys and what they would say was I look inside the, uh, their office, you know, you can see it in a window or something and I could see the stress on their face. I don’t know.
James I. Bond: There were supplies that they couldn’t, you know, there’s inventory they couldn’t get or they have a customer that’s not happy or whatever else and they’re all stressed. You can see the faces all folded and I’d open the door and say, [00:17:00] Hey, how’s it going? And I suddenly they smile and they go supplies every time they saw me, Hey, supplies, you know, but what happened was it changed their attitude.
James I. Bond: You could see, you know, people become more creative when they’re happy, when they’re laughing and it’s just when you can reduce stress. And so I, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s so powerful, but guess what? Laughers are buyers laughing. That helps too.
Steve Burnett: We’ll continue with the rest of this week’s show in just a moment.
Steve Burnett: Do you have your copy of Steve’s book? How to double your business without making a sale? It’s for sale on Amazon for 30, but we want to give you your free copy instead. Just cover 695 for shipping and handling. Get your free copy of the D Y B book here at dybcoach. com backslash free hyphen D Y B hyphen book.
James I. Bond: I remember, um, uh, blue emu, um, the, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, arthritis cream. [00:18:00] And they had, uh, Johnny Bench, uh, the ex baseball player, talking about it. And I was, you know, doing something else while the TV was on, and so then I said, Blue Emu, it works fast and you won’t stink. And I’m like, what did he just say? And it works fast and you won’t stink?
James I. Bond: But stink is a trigger word, and sometimes you can use trigger words, and it just wakes up the brain. Because we have to remember that. Most of the people we’re talking to are half asleep. We don’t realize it. You know, their, their brain is somewhere else. They’re worried about a client they just got or a client they lost, or maybe their spouse is like thinking of a divorce, or maybe they don’t have enough supplies or what it is.
James I. Bond: And because of that, they’re so focused on that. That you talk about your product and they’re, they’re shocking. They’re nodding their head like, yeah, yeah. They’re listening, listening, but they’re not listening. We don’t realize that. But I, my wife is like that all the time. I’ll talk to her and she’ll say, okay, oh yeah, I said, come on.
James I. Bond: You weren’t even listening. He said, yeah, I was. Okay. Tell me what I was saying. She goes. Okay. What were you saying? You know, it’s like, thanks, Pam. [00:19:00] But it’s just, we’re all like that. You know, we’re so bombarded with information and somebody makes a pitch to us or tells us about their product or service.
James I. Bond: You know, it looks like we think they’re listening, but they’re not really listening. I have this great story. I’m going to ruin it for people in the beginning of my book. How often do we say stuff to people and it just goes in one or out the other. We think that they understand exactly what we’re offering or what we’re saying or what we’re explaining.
James I. Bond: And they’re nodding their head so it looks like it, but they’re not. They don’t understand the same way we understand. And I love. When I was young, uh, Zig Ziglar, the motivation speaker was fabulous. He changed my life. My wife and I went to live, a live, uh, um, uh, workshop that he had and it was just fabulous.
James I. Bond: And he had this thing that really stuck in my mind. And he said, take this phrase, and this is valuable because we live in an age of texting now, texting and email. Okay. And how, how often do you send a text or an email that you think It was clear, but the person took it the totally wrong [00:20:00] way. And so think about this.
James I. Bond: I did not say he beat his wife. Okay? How’s that for one? So listen to how many different ways this can be interpreted. I didn’t say he beat his wife. Somebody might have said it, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t say he beat his wife. I might have implied it, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t say he beat his wife.
James I. Bond: And am I talking about tennis? You think we’re talking about him beating his wife up, right? But I was talking about tennis and yet we could take this simple phrase and have all these totally different ways that it’s interpreted. And I have this thing. I mean, a lot of people can relate to this with me because they relate to it also is that you send an email and somebody gets pissed off at you and you’re like.
James I. Bond: How can you, why are you mad at me? What do you, what was it? I don’t care. I’m not going to talk to you anymore. It’s like, well, what, what did I say? I didn’t look, I’m just not even going to talk to you anymore. And it’s like, I was at one of the workshops I was doing and this woman says, you know, I love your workshops.
James I. Bond: You’re just awesome. But you scream all the time. And I’m like, well, I started defending it. You know, I [00:21:00] came from a big family. We had four oldest of four. And so you have to talk loud and she said, no, no, no, no. It’s like when you send an email, it’s all in capital letters. And I’m like, Oh, I do not send emails at all caps anymore.
James I. Bond: Maybe the headline sometimes, but it’s like, she’s saying I scream all the time. And I’m like, assuming she means the way I talk, although my wife would say I scream all the time. That’s a whole other story. We say stuff all the time that we assume the other person understands and they don’t understand.
James I. Bond: That’s why you want to hook somehow. And if you can have a hook, it makes it easier. First it wakes them up. It wakes up their brain. I have these guys. Who made, uh, the, um, beverage company, the, the juice company, Naked Juice. And they were competing with Odwalla. Odwalla was owned by Coca Cola. So Coca Cola could throw a gazillion dollars at their marketing.
James I. Bond: And yet Naked Juice passed Odwalla. It passed Coca Cola’s brand. You know, even though it was just like a couple of partners. But it passed it because [00:22:00] naked juice is like, what the heck’s that? Wow. That’s pretty cool. You know, and of course you’ll try it and et cetera. And the rest, they say is
Steve Burnett: history.
Steve Burnett: Before I forget, why do you say that technical and logical people, um, have a marketing disadvantage when it comes to persuasion?
James I. Bond: Because people, this is, I’m a logical person, okay? And when you throw logic at people, it triggers the left side of, the right side of the brain. Uh, right, right is, uh, L is left, logic, okay?
James I. Bond: Left side of the brain, but the… The logical side of the brain, but we don’t buy for logical reasons. Think of, you know, you can drive a car. I bet you didn’t buy a car because it’s the cheapest car. No, you know, you bought the, Hey, this is cool. And I love the color and I want to buy a Beamer. I want to buy a Mercedes or whatever else, you know, I want, you know.
James I. Bond: I mean, we choose things for emotional reasons. It’s our mates, you know, you know, if you’re a spouse or whatever else, you’re made, you didn’t choose it for logic. Well, this person can cook meals and I, I want to definitely know. Hey, look at the look on this. Oh, she’s gorgeous. You know, I mean, I [00:23:00] mean, we live our life based on emotion.
James I. Bond: And yet we try to sell based on logic and it doesn’t work. In fact, if you throw too many numbers at a person, it turns off the emotion side of the brain. You could throw numbers. I work with these guys who are finance guys, and they were talking to this guy who is a famous musician. I don’t want to say who it was.
James I. Bond: He’s trying to sell the guy who was a client, um, this new, uh, finance tool. He said, and you’ll make like up to 7 percent and it’s like really good. It’s a stable and you’ll never, you’ll never go below 7 percent on this thing. And, uh, and I can see the look of. You know, like the guy’s, his eyes were glossed over and he’s looking at him and shaking his head, but you can just see in his eyes and his body language, he doesn’t really get it because he is a musician.
James I. Bond: Okay. Musicians are emotional. They work off emotion. And so I went over and I said, so just so you know this, John Lennon used this, and after he died, it was one of the things that helped maintain his, his, uh, net worth, so he didn’t lose all the [00:24:00] taxes and everything, even after he died. And the guy went, John Lennon did it?
James I. Bond: Okay, sign me up! You know? And so the guy went from… You know, from logic, you know, to emotion. And so people buy for emotional reasons. And that was for me, the hardest thing. My book had a different title. I got Jack Canfield who wrote chicken soup for the soul and a whole series of books. He sold 500 million books.
James I. Bond: Okay. If, if he saw, if he made 50 cents a book, that’s not bad. Okay. 500 million. I’ll take that. He loved my book, which is really great. He gave me, he was mad at me. He said, I have so many books to read. I just started looking at your book. I couldn’t put the damn thing down. I said, I’m sorry. Can I use that as testimonial?
James I. Bond: You know, on one condition, you’re going to change the title of the book. The whole book is about brain glue. So I had, um, so it should be called brain glue, but the title was sell more with the right brain marketing strategy. That’s a logical title. He says, you’re trying to teach us emotional selling and you got a logical title.
James I. Bond: [00:25:00] Change it. I’ll give you, I’ll give you all the testimonies you want. If you change the title, that’s really hard, but it’s just, we think logically most of us, but when we sell, you’ve got to include emotion. You’ve got to include emotion because people don’t buy, you can’t bore people into buying from you.
James I. Bond: You know, but if you can trigger the emotion size of the brain, suddenly people go like, Oh, first it wakes them up and then it makes them more hooked on you, which is really what you want.
Steve Burnett: How does the logical left brain, which I’m mostly think
James I. Bond: emotionally. So here’s what you do. Okay. The first thing you want to do, I have 14 tools, so I don’t want to go through all 14, but I’ll talk about some of them.
James I. Bond: We want to understand, the first thing you want to do is you want to answer it logically, okay? The fire restoration for insurance companies, we fired, you know, we, we came up logically, it’s fire restoration for insurance companies, okay? I didn’t know what that was and I had to explain it to me. But they, you, you have to come up with a logical explanation first of what it is, because that’s how our brain works, okay?
James I. Bond: Then you [00:26:00] want to explain the emotion side. And there are a few things, the first thing you want to think of is a metaphor. or analogy. Okay. Like my product or ideas just like blank. I had a, um, a behavioral management firm. We actually had one of Southern California’s leading behavioral management firms, but when we describe it, people’s, you know, their brain, you can see their eyes gloss over, you know, Oh, we do this and we’ll do this.
James I. Bond: And we’ll change behavior. We mix work with play. We confuse the mind with works in play. And they kind of look at us going, and they can’t relate to it. You know, I mean, They’ll take us because maybe they got a referral or something, but we would always talk logically and they would not get it. But they would hire us because we had good experience, you know, good results from clients or friends or whatever.
James I. Bond: But I realized part of the problem is that people don’t understand what we do. So I came up with an analogy that we started using and people related to it. And I said, just think of us as like a personal trainer. You know, a personal trainer shows up and maybe you can do five or ten push ups, or we can get you to do 20 push ups.
James I. Bond: We can get you to do a few more push ups, a few more sit ups, and [00:27:00] everything else, because we’re there egging you on, come on, come on, two more, two more, you can do it, okay, yes. We’re like that with, uh, getting people to tackle stuff outside your comfort zone. So, You know, we’re not going to take you from here to Mount Everest, but we can get you halfway up there a quarter way up there by just tackling a little more than what you would tackle on your own out of your comfort zone.
James I. Bond: Because think of us as a personal trainer and with a company, we’ll say, we’ll work with your senior people and get them all tackling something a little bigger than they would normally tackle. When we use the, the, uh, you know, the personal trainer example, suddenly went, Oh, that makes sense. That’s interesting.
James I. Bond: I said, think of it. You can get your people to do this much because we use psychological tools. We can get them to do this much more. And because of that, so you want to move your company from two to 10 million in sales or 20 to 50, or you want to go to zero to a hundred to a 10 million in sales or 2 million in sales, we’ll get you tackling stuff a little out of your comfort zone.
James I. Bond: And suddenly they go, Oh, that makes sense. Huh? And it resonated with them. And so that’s why, you know, when we’re talking to somebody, [00:28:00] We want to explain it with an analogy or metaphor if we can so they can relate and we people use metaphors all the time And we don’t even realize, you know, like he’s dumb as a doornail, you know He’s dead as a doornail or you know, he’s you know, I mean we use things like that.
James I. Bond: It’s raining cats and dogs Really? Cats are falling in the sky. Yeah, that’s not happening. But we use stuff like that. I think of a rocky road ice cream You know, you open it up. It doesn’t have rocks inside it. It’s really crunchy. It’s rocks. No, it’s chocolate ice cream with nuts. And marshmallows, but it’s bumpy like a rocky road.
James I. Bond: Rocky road also uses alliteration. Another brain glue tool, rocky road. It’s a repetition of sounds. And when I started realizing that I realized like how many blockbuster products use alliteration, Coca Cola. PayPal, Tik Tok, you know, Tik Tok. Okay. What if they called it? They called it the Chinese social media company.
James I. Bond: You think they would be as accessible as Tik Tok? No. You know? And so why do they come? Why do they [00:29:00] use alliteration? Because it works. It sticks to the brain. Hulu, you know, I mean, it’s just, it’s just amazing how. If you can pick something that’s already stuck to the brain, it becomes easier to take your product or service and stick it to the brain too.
James I. Bond: You know, I mean, it’s one of the things I talk about in a book is when we’re kids, a lot of us know the phrase head and shoulders, knees and toes, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. So if you’re going to come up with a dandruff shampoo, You know, let’s, what would be a good name? Well, how about head and shoulders? Uh, you think Procter and Gamble became a blockbuster by, by accident?
James I. Bond: No, they understand head and head and shoulders already inside the brain. So let’s call it head and shoulders. Everybody’s got the phrase, you know, and it’s just, it’s when you use things like that, it makes it easier to sell. I mean, I want to tell you, that’s one of the things I understood. When I started my business, uh, we had an advertising agency.
James I. Bond: My brother could outsell me like crazy because I’m a technical guy and he was emotional. He knew how to do emotional [00:30:00] selling. Nobody had to train him. It was just wired into him. And it pissed me off that he could sell me better than I could sell me. You know, I would do, we would do advertising and photography work and stuff like that.
James I. Bond: And he can go in, I could go in and try to win a client. Maybe they’ll buy, maybe they won’t buy. He goes in and talks, blah, blah, blah, blah. They go, ah, we got to hire you. And it’s like, okay. And it’s like, it pissed me off after a while because, you know, I love my brother tremendously, although family and business doesn’t always mix, you know, but he would start almost bullying me because he’s like, well, me, we wouldn’t have all these clients.
James I. Bond: And he was right. You know, and it bothered me. And so once I started learning these tools, I started realizing, well, anybody can learn this. It’s actually not that complicated to learn where you can boost your business. I mean, somebody reads my book. I have a lot of people that do this. They got come up with one idea.
James I. Bond: Now it shows you how to go through this because it gives you examples of people go, Oh, wow. I know that. Oh, that’s why this works. Oh, interesting. You know, Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. Oh, what a relief it is. Alka Seltzer. Oh, that’s what they’re doing. Interesting. You know, a little bit of [00:31:00] sensory elevation, I call it, you know, and once people start seeing the examples, then they go back and then they apply it.
James I. Bond: Now almost everybody will apply one thing and suddenly their sales will explode. Just one thing, because when you start understanding how, how persuasion works, you start to recognize how persuasion is such a huge part of our life. You know, you’re trying to get your kids to go to bed. That’s persuasion. I mean, sometimes it might be go to bed or else, you know, but still it’s emotions.
James I. Bond: Like the kids are scared. Okay. Okay. I don’t do that. Okay. But I mean, but it’s just, you know, you’re trying to go on a date. That’s persuasion. You know, this guy was telling me about how, man, I can, you know, I went on a date with this girl, the love of my life. I can’t believe it because I use this little, I told her a joke and she suddenly was hooked to me, you know, It’s just so, persuasion works on so many levels.
James I. Bond: You work with your boss or your client, you’re trying to persuade them of something. How often, and it’s frustrating, how often do we talk to a client and we’re trying to [00:32:00] sell them something we know will be good for them and they go, no, I don’t want to, but come on, look at this. It’ll, you know, for, for 10 percent more, you can suddenly have a whole edition on your home.
James I. Bond: Yeah, I don’t want to, I’m not interested. Thanks. You know. And, and it’s because we’re selling logically instead of saying, you know, your wife is going to love this. You’re going to surprise her. Huh? What was the last time you gave her a present? Okay. You know, suddenly it opens a different part of the
Steve Burnett: brain.
Steve Burnett: I thoroughly enjoyed it, and so I want to encourage everybody else to, uh, to grab ahold of it, too. James, I really appreciate your, your time here today. How can people learn more about Brain Glue? Well,
James I. Bond: the easiest way is, if you go to braingluebook. com, it’ll take you to the page on Amazon, and you can read.
James I. Bond: And Amazon lets you read some of the free stuff. We have an audiobook, too, so you can listen to some of the audiobooks. But yeah, braingluebook. com is the easiest way to do it, and just check it out. Hopefully you’ll buy it, but even if you don’t buy it, it shows you all the different Brain Glue tools, and it gives [00:33:00] you some, uh, you know, some of the examples, so you can understand how to use it.
James I. Bond: It’s just, it’s changed people’s lives, I have to say. It’s amazing. I mean, it changed my life, but it’s amazing how many people say like, wow, this is so much fun. You know, I also tell jokes. You’d want to be, I’m a terrible joke teller, but it just, it’s once you start understanding how brain glue works, you start to realize in your whole life, how much it affects, you know, so many elements of your life.
James I. Bond: It’s really fun. So yeah, braingluebook. com is the easiest way to get it.
Steve Burnett: Braingluebook. com. And just one idea has made significant impact in many businesses. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you so much, James.
James I. Bond: Oh, thank you, Steve, so much.
Steve Burnett: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If this was helpful, please share it with a friend to help inspire them to double their business.
Steve Burnett: Again, this is Steve Burnett. Steve and I are the founders of Burnett Painting and DYB Coach. We want to take a moment and thank you for making us the most rated podcast dedicated. Specifically to painting contractors [00:34:00] to celebrate. We want to help you break through to higher success. So Steve is now giving away free strategy calls.
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