The Shark Side

In every deal, there's power, persuasion, and performance. This is the shark side, where ambition meets discipline.

Welcome to the shark side. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the shark side, where quiet discipline meets real results. I'm MJ Cordova, the real shark of sales, and I am here talking about all things sales and business. One of the things that we underestimate a lot of times is communication.

We spend a lot of time going to classes, researching, learning, reading books, watching podcasts about business, about sales. And we almost forget how important just the communication portion of all of this is. Leadership is foundationally dependent on great communication. Great leaders are great communicators in most cases. We talk so much about sales processes, and we talk about scripts.

We talk about objections and rebuttals and and all of these things within the sales process and really forget to spend time on just fundamental communication. One of my favorite courses that I teach is a communication course, and it's it's based on the DISC assessment. So anybody who's ever worked for a big corporation has probably taken that stupid test. You know, it's a ton of questions, and then they tell you whether you're a d or a I or a c or an s. And it makes sense, but it never really resonates.

It doesn't really sink in what all of this means. And it's just kind of weird to have a conversation and try and then figure out whether somebody is an I or whether they're a D. And all of these things are critical in understanding who you're talking to and how they receive information, how they're going to make decisions based on that information. So years ago, I ran across a course and just loved it and have been replicating that for all the people that I work with. And it's it's one of the best things that I think we can do.

And this is not just for business. This is very successful in any relationships that you have, whether it's a parent child, a spouse, coworkers, subordinates, bosses. If we understand how people communicate and we understand how to deliver information, it's much more likely that they're gonna understand us. It's much more likely they're gonna be receptive to the information that we're trying to give to them. So I spend a lot of time on this, and it's it's pretty basic.

And it's almost crazy how it resonates with you and how you see communication so differently after you go through this course. And really what it does, and the same thing that the DISC test does, is it breaks down, is this person an introvert or an extrovert? Are they naturally introverted or naturally extroverted? And I think most of us can tell pretty easily whether the person that we're talking to is an introvert or an extrovert. From there, if we look at, are they a task oriented person or are they a people oriented person?

And again, there's clues into all of that as you're having conversations with people. When we're talking about personal relationships with our children, with our spouse, or maybe a coworker, again, if we go back to a subordinate or or a supervisor, we generally know these things just from being around them. Are they an introvert? Are they an extrovert? Is this person task oriented?

Are they people oriented? Once we figure this out, if you picture in your mind a quadrant with left right being introvert extrovert and top bottom being task oriented people oriented, once you figure out this person is a introvert who is task oriented, you understand how to talk to them. And this ninety minute class that I do really gives you the identifiers of how to determine whether they're an introvert or an extrovert, and also are they task oriented or people oriented. Once you figure out this quadrant that they're in, it's mind blowing how effectively you can start to communicate with people that you may have struggled with before. And sometimes we think people are being difficult or, you know, we use these terms like, oh, they're so direct.

They're so blunt. And what we have to remember is somebody that's in that communication style isn't necessarily being rude. That is how their brain processes communication and decision making. So when I'm talking to the person in that quadrant, I just understand that I need to be very direct back if I want to communicate effectively. I need to speak in bullet points.

I don't need a lot of context. I don't need a lot of story behind it. If I'm speaking to someone in the quadrant that is introverted and task oriented, I understand that that person needs data. They need a lot of information. They need relation to graphs and formulas and a lot of context on how those facts and figures you're bringing to them are oriented.

So when you're talking to people in that quadrant, it really is more about the visuals and the data and the formulas. You've you go down to the quadrant that would be introverted and people oriented, you're talking about these people who are very relationship oriented. You're talking about people who need to understand that you care for them. And the conversation around the communication and the decision you may be asking them to make is really reflective of your interest in that relationship, that you care about them. You care about the situation.

You care about the thing that you're working toward with them. So whether you're in sales and you're trying to influence the buying decision, whether you're a parent who's trying to influence child behavior or an employee who's trying to influence a project you want to move forward with your boss, or even a boss who's trying to get your employees to move forward with something that may not be fun or may not be pleasant for them. If we start to look into these different communication styles, and you understand that if somebody's in that quadrant where they're introverted and people oriented, conversation has to be around how this benefits them, how it benefits their family, how it benefits the company and their coworkers. There has to be a relationship aspect to it. And then the final quadrant would be extroverted and people oriented.

And these are just your fun loving people, the life of the party people. So you could imagine if you were trying to communicate with that life of the party and you start hitting them with boring facts and figures and graphs, how they're not gonna receive that information well. And the really, the context of all of this is that you can see very quickly in a few minutes how I've talked about four different communication styles and how they make decisions. Yet we put very little effort into that. And this is why when we get into sales trends, when we get into sales coaching, sales training, you see so much effort put into the magic wand, the quick fix of when they have this objection, you just give them this answer, which works some of the time with some people, which is better than none of the time with no people, but certainly not as good as really taking the time to ask some questions to get a feel for how people communicate, how they make decisions.

And then from there, moving more toward that communication style, giving them information in the manner that they receive it the best. Because when we do that, you're going to find how much easier these influence conversations go, how much more successful you are at closing, you know, which is a topic for another day. Because I think organically, if you go into a situation where you're trying to influence with good intentions, you do a great discovery and you find out a need or a want, and you present a solution to that person that's a win win, there's not a lot of closing left to do. There might be some choices. There might be some time frames involved.

Generally, that closing is gonna go pretty smoothly. So the more we pay attention to this communication, the more likely that we're gonna be able to influence that decision. And so my challenge to you is start looking into these types of things. Start asking questions that will help you determine, is this an introvert, an extrovert? Are they task oriented?

Are they people oriented? And and once you figure those things out and you slide into that communication style and you are more like the person that can communicate like them, the more successful you're gonna be with relationships. You know, one of our core principles at my company is relationships matter most. So we don't start out with any client without an understanding of what that relationship is going to look like. And that goes from the very core needs that they have to how we deliver on helping them with whatever solution they may need to actually making an effort to understand how they communicate and deliver our information in that manner.

And I think that's one of the reasons why we have a long list of very satisfied customers who regularly refer us, who bring us back for additional products, is because they understand that we go through a lot of effort to make sure that that relationship is a priority. And a big part of that relationship being a priority is for us to communicate with them in a manner that they're comfortable. You know, it's this is like anything else. It's not a magic wand, and it's not absolute. There are different stages of our life that we are communicating in a different style than in another stage.

We may communicate differently at work than we do at home. We may communicate differently with our friends than we do with our coworkers. So it's not an end all be all, but it's another tool. But if you want to get great at what you do and you want to move your business forward, you want to gain new clients, you want to strengthen relationships with current clients, with your family, and with your spouse, and with your children, and with your boss, or your subordinates, we can spend some time understanding their preferred method of communication. So this is just one little tip about communication.

Obviously, there's there's a lot more in-depth we can go, and we can probably talk about each one of those on a different podcast and take up the whole podcast just talking about that one style. But the more time we spend on this, the more successful we're gonna be in moving that needle forward for us and for our clients. So hope you enjoyed this. Quiet discipline creates real results. This is the Shark's Eye.

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