Hamid Ghanadan: How Technical Buyers Really Make Decisions

In this episode of The Luxury of Choice, Steve Vaughan and Christian Walter are joined by Hamid Ghanadan, founder of The Linus Group and author of Not Buying It- The art of selling to scientists, doctors, and other professional skeptics. 

Drawing on his background as a biochemist and commercial strategist, Hamid explains why scientists and technical buyers are often described as the world's most sceptical audience—and why data alone rarely drives purchasing decisions.

The conversation explores the psychology behind technical buying decisions, the balance between curiosity and scepticism, and the common mistakes salespeople make when trying to persuade highly intelligent buyers.

Hamid also shares practical techniques for opening sales conversations, handling objections, responding to ghosting, and using behavioural heuristics to create more productive customer interactions.

Whether you're selling into laboratories, biotech, diagnostics, engineering or other technical markets, this episode offers a fascinating perspective on how technical buyers really think—and how salespeople can adapt accordingly. 

Key Takeaways

•  Scientists are sceptical, but they're also naturally curious. 
•  Data matters, but emotion and personal relevance still influence decisions. 
•  Salespeople lose control most often when opening conversations, delivering value propositions, handling objections and responding to ghosting. 
•  Creating curiosity is often more effective than delivering information. 
•  Storytelling can be more powerful than statistics. 
•  Asking more questions consistently leads to better sales outcomes. 
•  Technical sales and marketing teams should operate from a single commercial strategy. 

Hamid Ghanadan on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/hghanadan/

Not Buying it book : https://thelinusgroup.com/book/not-buying-it-by-hamid-ghanadan/

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche,  Jayne Green  and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd.  You can email the show at:  Podcast@georgejames-training.com

 The trainers on LinkedIn:

 Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve (00:00)
Hello again and welcome to the Look, Choice, a B2B technical sales and business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan, I'm a member of the training team and I'm also the host and producer of this podcast. Today I've got my colleague Christian Valter with me, but we've also got a very important special guest. More on that to follow very quickly, but Christian, first of all, how are you, sir?

christian (00:23)
Yes, thank you very good. busy, busy week, busy training, good training, so happy to be happy to be here.

Steve (00:29)
You just literally just hot-footed

out of the training going to join the pod, which I do appreciate you doing. so look, I'm to get straight into today. Today's show is a bit different to our normal sort of panel discussion. We do have a guest and today's going to much more of a discussion and almost of an interview really of somebody that we've been wanting to talk to on the podcast for quite a while now. So I'm just going to briefly introduce him. Our guest today is Hamid Ghanadan and he's the founder of the Linus Group.

and also of a book called Not Buying It. Hamid started his career as a biochemist before moving into the world of marketing and commercial strategy. Now for years he studied a question that I know is at the heart of all of our listeners worlds. How do scientists, engineers and technical experts make buying decisions? Now if you're all you are selling into labs, pharma, biotech, diagnostics or any other technical environment I'm sure this podcast is going to be for you. Hamid thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How are you?

Hamid (01:26)
It it is my pleasure. I'm doing well. How are you?

Steve (01:29)
Yeah, good, good. So we should point out you're in North America. So I think your six hours time difference to us. So the miracle. Thank you.

Hamid (01:35)
That's right. It's nine twenty AM for me right now. And ⁓

it is it is a lovely day in Boulder, Colorado.

Steve (01:43)
I would love to say it's a lovely day in Oxfordshire, but I would not be telling the truth. It's raining and cloudy as always. We had a brief spell of sunny weather, but that's long since gone there. But let's get straight into it today. So I'm very keen for you to tell us a lot more about yourself and your journey. So first of all, just tell us a bit about yourself. So you started as a biochemist, is that right?

Hamid (02:02)
I did. So it was the it was the early mid nineties when I when I graduated college as ⁓ as a chemist and I was working as a researcher at a lab in ⁓ in a university. And it was when the internet was starting to become a thing, and I also noticed around me that people weren't making decisions the way that they said they were making decisions. So in science, as you all know.

Steve (02:24)
interesting.

Hamid (02:26)
You know, everyone says the data rule. You have to, you know, show ample evidence. And I was looking around me and I was like, okay, well, this is this is you you're saying this, but you're not really making decisions based on the data alone. So what ill what else is going on? And little did I know I was actually sort of peering into the world of consumer psychology at that at that time. But that's essentially the the question that really drove me to want to pursue a different career than than being a lab scientist.

Steve (02:53)
So what was the final thing that made you make that change and then what led you to becoming an author? You've got a number of books published now, but what was the thing that really made that first step out of, can see how there's a story to be told here, there's something different going on here. When was the first step, you realized that really?

Hamid (03:11)
So I was very interested in the at the time the new technologies, the communication technologies that were really coming online with ⁓ with the internet, obviously, but also with how easy how much easier it was to use software for animation. And I was actually developing animations for myself to illustrate biochemical processes. And I had a friend at the department who was teaching a general biochemistry course, and when I showed these animations to him,

He was govsmacked. He was like, can I use these for my for my course? And so I, of course, I I gave it the gave them to him and he won an award for you know being an innovative teacher for that year. He put me in touch with a with a publisher of textbooks. And and I was very excited to have this meeting because I thought, okay, I can create a compendium to these biochemistry textbooks.

Steve (03:50)
Wow.

Hamid (04:02)
That would bring things to life in in far more than just two dimensions. And so I flew down. I I wore my like best suit. I was like 23 at the time, right? I wore my best suit and I flew down to the San Francisco Bay Area and I went to this publishing house and I met with the person who was in charge of the biochemistry textbooks, and I walked out of there with a threat of a lawsuit. it it yeah, I thought I was gonna get I thought I was gonna get a job or something interesting, and they were like, Yeah.

christian (04:13)
Yeah.

Steve (04:23)
wow.

Hamid (04:29)
We are very afraid of electronic communication because we're afraid of piracy and it would hurt textbook sales. And just to warn you, if you continue to do this on your own, we may actually pursue legal action against you. And I was so angry. I was like, who are these people? And so ⁓ I realized quickly that the publishing world wasn't really a place where I where where it was going to be welcoming to s some novel ideas.

Steve (04:45)
Well, that's different.

Hamid (04:57)
But I found a home in the companies that were selling to scientists. So, you know, the ⁓ the the instrument manufacturers and the and the sort of research tools providers were quite hungry actually for better tools to communicate their their ⁓

christian (05:15)
Mm.

Steve (05:15)
So what time,

what kind of period was this? What kind of year was this?

Hamid (05:19)
Like nineteen ninety-four, nineteen ninety-five. I mean, this was times when I when I was calling on companies, some companies that you would have heard of today said to me, ⁓ having a website is beyond our scope. Like we're never gonna have a website. I mean, it's preposterous to think about, but these are companies that that would say that to me at the time. So that's that's sort of how yeah, yeah. So but that's what did it. That's what did it that trip down to the

Steve (05:21)
Yeah, I'm sure Christian you can all remember that as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah.

I can remember the conversations. Yeah, mean, right.

Hamid (05:48)
to

the Bay Area and and having, you know, that unpleasant conversation with a publishing firm.

Steve (05:54)
Yeah, I mean both Christian and I were working for instrument companies at that time and and and you know We were I'm sure Christian you can and we were working for the same company I can remember you and I probably having those conversations right there and there about the the marketing ward and this strange thing called the internet coming into the into the the world here, so So how do then that so you kind of bumped up against the publishing world the traditional print media? They kind of say get out of our space. Otherwise, we're going to sue you

christian (06:10)
Absolutely, yes.

Steve (06:22)
How did that then come to you then becoming a published author in your own right? What was the step to there?

Hamid (06:27)
Yeah, so the author ⁓

so I f first I I left the lab and I started the consulting firm Linus, which is still I'm I'm still, you know, ⁓ the CEO of. And it wasn't until about the publishing of of the book of the first book, which was Persuading Sciences, didn't happen until twenty eleven. But what happened in the inter intervening time from two thousand and one to two thousand and twelve, we started to publish these critical briefings papers.

Steve (06:33)
Okay.

Hamid (06:52)
⁓ and the this was all of our critical thinking on ⁓ the you know, basically the the the psychology of the scientific customer as well as the ev evolution of all the tools and techniques that were coming online, all you know, for in in marketing and sales. So I remember publishing a a paper about how Google AdWords were going to overtake all marketing.

And I remember sending this to people and a VP of marketing from a really large company called me and said, How much can we pay you to not publish this paper? You know, and because they wanted to they wanted to maintain they they they found it so powerful that they wanted to keep it as a secret. And so so we started so I I became really used to publishing and and really developing sort of

Steve (07:28)
No way.

Wow.

Hamid (07:42)
a a framework around this. And then in by 2011, we had a framework that we were using. And that's when we started to publish, you know, I I published the first book, First Waiting Scientists. And so that that was the, that was, there was the about a decade of writing these, you know, sort of pithy papers that that led to that.

Steve (08:01)
Fascinating, fascinating. So what is it about the psychology of scientific and technical buyers? You've alluded to this already. But what is it that when we're selling as we do, as most people on this podcast listening to us, what is it about the psychology of scientists and technical buyers that makes it different to other B2B sales and business people? What is different about them? What makes it different? Because it is, I'm sure.

Hamid (08:27)
Sure. So ⁓ you know, there's there's two axes at play. One is just the human axis, which is the fact that they they evaluate things both from an objective lens and a subjective lens. And so you can't really ignore emotion in a highly technical sale. But the the moniker that we have given to the scientists at as a buyer is that they're the world's most skeptical audience. And

They are in fact very skeptical because they they have been taught through their scientific training to keep information in contempt until they prove it to themselves that it's that it's real and useful and true. However, skepticism isn't the only skepticism is on a is on a on a spectrum. And the other side of that is curiosity. So if every scientist was always skeptical all the time, we would still, as a species, be on like Discovery 1.0.

You know, because we were shot everything down. And so there's there's another aspect to it. This is openness, this curiosity. And if you map these two things together, is what makes scientists and other technical audiences different as a buyer. Is that is that, you know, so you can actually drive them to become curious when you want them to become curious, and then you can satisfy their skepticism. You need to, you know, ⁓ appeal to their emotion or their subjective lens as well as their objective lens.

Steve (09:35)
Fascinating.

Hamid (09:49)
Or else you're just sort of giving rote information to them and they're not emotionally invested in in the outcome.

Steve (09:57)
Sure, Question, by the way, feel free to interrupt me or chip in with the question. Yeah, yeah.

christian (10:00)
Yeah, I just I I just wanna maybe

challenge you a little bit on that, ⁓ homie, you know. ⁓ I I I am a scientist and I agree that continuum between curio curiosity and validation or curiosity and scepticism and and data driven. do you really think that ⁓ non scientists are all that different in their in their decision making?

Steve (10:05)
Mmm.

Hamid (10:05)
Go for

it.

⁓ they they're different in two ways. So so first of all, it's not that non-scientists are different. It's people who are not in a technical setting. So so a physician, for example, in work at at work displays the exact same situation. But it's it's different than lay consumerism. It's different than because there's two things that are not at play. so number one, ⁓ the the the difference becomes that these people are.

trained in evaluating information. Whereas a a lay person may not be trained in evaluating, you know, i information. And so, you know, that's why you see bottles of shampoo that says like it has DNA and people are like, ooh, that sounds great. You know, like whatever, like just nonsensical things that that to somebody who's studied science, you're like, that DNA is even spinning the wrong way. Like get out of my way. You know, so, so you know, the

Steve (11:08)
Hahaha.

Hamid (11:20)
That there is this a level of scrutiny that a scientist or an engineer or a doctor has that's above and beyond. But the the problem is that when we go into sales and marketing, we think that's the enemy. And so we're ready to sort of like we're ready with ample evidence. We're just ready for that skepticism. That we forget to actually orient the customer, we forget to appeal to their sense of self.

Right? The what's in it for me. We forget to answer that question and we just go right into trying to validate their skepticism. And all we're doing is keeping them in that skeptical mode. You see what I mean? Like that's that's where the the misnomer comes in. But I appreciate the challenge. So

christian (12:03)
So so

Steve (12:03)
It's

christian (12:04)
homie,

Steve (12:04)
a great challenge,

christian (12:04)
my wife my wife tells about says about me that the more people try to convince me, the less convincible I am. I guess that's a little bit what you're what you're saying, isn't it?

Hamid (12:15)
Yeah, absolutely. Look, I mean look

We are in a if we are in a moment in history where we have more information at our fingertips than ever before. Would you would you say that that's true? Okay. Look at how we're acting. So information is not really a a a driver of change. And then we see people shouting at each other. And I I would be willing to bet not a single mind has been changed. Right?

Steve (12:26)
Absolutely. completely. Completely.

christian (12:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hamid (12:44)
Because

the the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that takes information and digests it, is a path of high resistance. But there's the rest of the body. And the rest of the body is all ready for new experiences. And I think that's that's kind of the difference. You know, it's just we just try to convince too much. Go ahead, Steve.

Steve (13:01)
So true. So I'm just sitting here thinking

now. So I've just bought a new car the last two days, not new new, but new to me. Decided I wanted it to be bit smaller and a bit more frugal. And I've got all the data out and I've got ChatGPT, other AI apps are available, course, analyzing fuel consumption and the cost and all that stuff. And I've got all this data at my fingertips and I made all this evaluation decision.

the end of day I just bought it because I like the colour and it looked cool and I quite like it because it's a bit different and it's not like everybody else is driving. So it's so true, I'm a scientist as well and I made lots of technical input but ultimately it was my feelings and my emotions that led to why I made that decision. So what you're saying is it's the same when people are in work, they make the same processes, the same conclusions.

Hamid (13:30)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

christian (13:52)
I I love the neurological

the neurological element you're bringing into this, you know, the the the fact that actually it is maybe also because we're wired that way and there's a a resistance to change and and shouting evidence at each other doesn't help. You know, I mean you can see that ⁓ between our our politicians from the different camps, you know, they shout evidences at each other and nothing ever happens. So

Steve (14:13)
Yeah.

that it changes

now.

christian (14:17)
you you're

talking about curiosity, sparking the curiosity, so how do we do that?

Hamid (14:22)
Yeah. So you have to welcome people in. And that's that's where you need an insight. That's I I call it a secret. You need a secret about your customer. And that secret has to be an insight about a need or an opportunity that they have, but maybe they don't see or they don't see it in the way that you do. And so in in there's many different sales models, the challenger sales model is similar to this, but it's a little ⁓ in in my opinion, it's a little like formulaic.

christian (14:39)
Uh-huh.

Hamid (14:49)
But the idea here is that you you spark their curiosity by giving them something novel and new to think about, but that but that's but that it has emotional charge to it. So what do I mean by that? You can go there and give them novel information, but they have to resonate with it personally. Like there has to be something that is like, wait a minute, what I just heard or experienced, it could affect me either in a positive or a negative way.

That's how you drive their curiosity. You know, you're just basically it's something provocative that is also personally tailored to them. In sales, you can personally tailor that to them. that so you basically you want to start the sales process by orienting the customer and then and then ⁓ bringing them clearly into that curiosity zone, getting them out of their skepticism. So the the one of the issues that

and this is actually their psychol the their psychology behind this. So when a sales rep starts a call, they're playing the role of a sales rep. And so the customer assumes the role of the customer with all of the stereotypes and all the trappings that go with that. That's basically priming effect. It's you are primed to act a certain way. And the most successful thing that a salesperson can do in those in those first few minutes.

is to break themselves out of that primed role of I'm a salesperson and then the customer will mirror that and then they will break their their role out of being their ⁓ you know acting a certain way.

christian (16:27)
So so you me you

you mentioned Challenger and and and I mean I quite like the challenge, you know, ⁓ d take the customer out of their comfort zone. Don't always be humble and polite, but maybe maybe say, Hey, you could do that actually much better. I had one of my best sales reps was like that and he he clearly shook people up and and and said, Hey, this is not the best way you're doing this. I've seen it done much better.

Is is this what you what you're talking about?

Steve (16:55)
Hmm.

Hamid (16:58)
Yeah, that that could that's a very good example. That's a typical example of what we're looking for. In sales, that sales rep, if they if they're observant, right? And if they're going in and and they're observant and they're listening, they can be very effective at picking that up and then delivering the challenge or the or the provocation, you know, on the spot, tailored personally to to their customer. With marketing, it becomes harder because you have to do

You have to have an insight. So you have to do research. You have to understand, okay, this is the need. We need to reorient the market to think this way. And then here's all the information on the back end to help them make it personal and believable. So that when our sales rep goes in to persuade, they're already conditioned the way that we want to be conditioned.

Steve (17:47)
Absolutely.

So without making this a comparison of different training methodologies, because it would be a long podcast if we do that. But in terms of somebody listening to this now who's thinking, you know, this is making sense to me. I want to be much more of a consultant, whatever word we want to use really. What's one or two practical things that they could do as a result of, you know, your suggestions, obviously reading a book or books as well. What practical things could they do in their next call? Hamid.

Hamid (18:08)
Yeah.

So I'll I'll I'll share a couple of things. So one of the things that we've analyzed is that a salesperson is most vulnerable in four stages during the four moments in the sales cycle. The first one is how they open. In fact, how they open this the conversation, they're vulnerable in that moment. The second one is how they deliver the value proposition. The third one is how they handle objections, and the fourth one is how they deal with a customer that ghosts them.

Right. That's those are the most vulnerable moments for a salesperson. That's when you lose control. And as a salesperson, you don't want to lose control, right? You want to be in control of the conversation. So let me actually tell your listeners. Let's talk about two of those. ⁓ one of them is how you open. So again, you you go into the sales call, whether it's on Zoom or or whether it's in in real life, and you there's pleasantries, right? How is the weather? How are your kids?

And then there's a moment where you have to pivot. And you want instead of just diving in and saying, you know, the I I've heard when I when I talk to sales reps, the two top questions that come up is tell me more about your work or what are you working on? Or tell me what your problems are. Nobody's going to confess their problems to a sales rep they've just met. They're on to us, right? They already know. And so there's a better way.

Steve (19:31)
Absolutely,

Hamid (19:35)
To actually open that conversation. And the way that we like to suggest that you open is saying, you know, in talking to other people just like you, you know how X and Y typically happens, and that X and Y is the is the unmet need. Well, we at this company have been thinking a lot about that problem. And then you pause. You don't, you don't say that you've solved it.

Then that's how you gain, you you sort of get, you create a confessional for your customer to feel much more confident and comfortable to open that door. So that's one very practical way. So just you know how X and Y happens, you know, or it in other or in other clients that we visited, you know how X and Y typically happens when you're running this and that. Well.

Steve (20:12)
Love it.

Hamid (20:30)
We've been thinking a lot about that in our company. And now you're waiting for the customer to say, go on, you know, or tell me more. Exactly. Exactly. You have to stop and ask for permission to keep going. Because the customer could say, We don't have that problem here. And you just know that you're going to be wasting your time. You just know, you know, and you could still go through the motions if you want to, but it's that's not going to be a sale, you know.

Steve (20:37)
Because their curiosity is going to kill them, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So cool. Yeah.

Hamid (20:59)
⁓ and so so it's risky because you have to you're making a bet. You're making a bet that you know the unmet need. But you know what's a much more expensive bet? The 10 years and tens of millions of dollars that you've spent building that product without actually doing customer research to find out what you're solving, right? That's a that's a much more risky bet ⁓ than than than actually going out on a limb and guessing what the problem is for for the customer.

Steve (21:18)
Yeah, isn't that the truth? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hamid (21:27)
Because the customer could be like, you know, we don't have that problem, but we have this other problem. That could also happen. Totally work. Totally work. You know, and if the customer is not in the mood for a sales, they're gonna use that as an out. They're gonna be like, we don't have that problem. Thanks for stopping by. They're not in a buying mood. You hit them on the wrong day. You know what? All good. I'll call you later. You know, but that's those are that's one technique.

christian (21:34)
Which would also work.

Steve (21:36)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Hamid (21:58)
⁓ if you want we can talk about the ghosting. So

Steve (22:01)
no,

please, it's a favourite topic of our listeners.

Hamid (22:04)
Well, b

because none of your listeners have ever experienced that, I'm I'm sure, but nobody experienced ghosting.

christian (22:08)
No nobody experienced ghosting.

Steve (22:09)
No, nor us for that matter,

we never get it either, no. In I've never even heard of it until recently.

Hamid (22:14)
So, you know, you're like exactly.

You know, you're like five, six meetings in, you've d delivered the quote, you know, everything is going swimmingly, and then the customer disappears on you. so here's what not to do. Don't remind them that they've been ghosting you, because there is a that there's a there's a heuristic in the in the human brain to stay consistent with their last decision. So

christian (22:40)
Mm-hmm.

Hamid (22:41)
If you go to this, if you go to your favorite restaurant, 80% of the time you order the same thing because you want to stay consistent with your decision. You you notice this, I I bet you notice this in your training. If you do multi-day trainings, people come in the second day, they sit exactly in the same seat that they did before. You didn't assign it to them, you didn't ask, but they just sit the same place, right? Because p the people don't don't the the human brain doesn't want to be inconsistent. It it's really painful to be inconsistent. So

Steve (22:57)
Exactly right.

Exactly right.

Hamid (23:10)
What you don't do is you say, Hey, you've been ghosting me. Like just checking to see if you got my last email, or I haven't heard from you are like the wrong ways to open that email or to ⁓ to open that outreach. Because the human brain says, I've been ghosting this person, I'm gonna continue ghosting this person. The way to do it is to remind them of the last time they actually talked to you. So you can quite literally say,

When we spoke on this date at this time, you asked for this. I am just making sure that you have what you need. Or where do we go from here? You know, you ask a question, but you remind them that they've been speaking with you. And that has a far better chance of soliciting a response than saying, just bumping this up on your email list, or you know, just those anything that sort of is is.

christian (23:47)
Mm-hmm.

Hamid (24:02)
a a signal that they've been ghosting you is not the right way to go. It the signal is like remind them that they spoke to you last time. ⁓ you know, we see a lot of tri

Steve (24:06)
Not so good.

Yeah, I love it.

christian (24:11)
So much more positive

connotation, yes. Yes. Yeah.

Steve (24:14)
Yeah, yeah, completely.

Hamid (24:14)
Absolutely. We see a

huge drop-off from lead generation to to them actually responding to the sales rep. And that's why there's more reasons to this, but that's one of the reasons why sales are like, Yeah, marketing leads are all garbage. You know, and marketing is like, What are you talking about? We totally and completely, you know, verified every lead. But they're like, Well, why aren't they responding to me then? Well

christian (24:36)
So

as a sales rep responding to a lead, you would remind the customer how they reacted in the first place, wouldn't you?

Hamid (24:43)
Yes, absolutely. We actually

trained salespeople to instead of saying, Hi, I'm I'm Hamid, I'm from Linus, I do we Linus does this and that. I would love to get us, you know, you know, fifteen minutes of your time. Instead I say, last Thursday you were requested to talk to someone from Linus. My name is Hamid and I'm fulfilling your request. You see, like stay consistent with your prior actions. So that's that's the whole idea.

Steve (25:09)
Super. So this is to use the word heuristics in terms of the programming. Are there any other examples or any other scenarios where you would use, if I'm saying the right way, heuristics? Any other examples?

Hamid (25:22)
Heuristics are incredibly powerful because here's the thing: people act in patterns, right? Then we make decisions in patterns. So I just shared you know a few of them with you. One was priming, which is like I'm primed to act a certain way, and therefore I'm just gonna, you know, I'm gonna act that way because that's what's expected of me. The other one was consistency as a heuristic. Another heuristic that's really powerful is ⁓ called availability. And

It's essentially if someone can recount a story of something happening, they are reliving the moment that it happened, and they tend to overestimate how often it happens. So again, another another sort of typical sales situation. How often do you have X and Y problem? Is a typical question that a sales rep would want to ask. Well

What you're what you're doing in that situation is you're asking your customer to become a statistician. How often? Let me see, 17%, 15%. I I don't know. Like, how am I going to answer this question? The answer they're going to get is not very often, or that never happens. The better question to ask is tell me a story of when you lost your sample when X and Y happened. And that person could be like, that's never happened to me before.

Or they may be like, that's never happened to me, but it happened to a c colleague of mine. Or they're going to start telling you about when it happened. And what happens in that situation is that all of that cortisol and all the endorphins and all that's coursing through their veins once more. So it's almost now as a sales rep, you're talking to them the moment that it happened. And you don't even have to ask how often it happens because they're going to overestimate it anyway.

Steve (27:05)
Yeah.

Hamid (27:09)
There's studies on this. When there's a shark attack in in Southern California and they go and ask people how often do sharks attack surfers, people overestimate it by ten times because they remember the last time that it happened. Availability of a story. It's an available example. Can can yeah.

christian (27:24)
Super interesting.

Steve (27:26)
It's fascinating. And I think,

you know, in the, know, we're doing a podcast now in the podcast world, the podcasts that I love listening to the ones tell stories. And, know, I was doing presentation skills training for a company last week. And we were talking about the importance of storytelling because when you tell a story, the person listening to the story almost gets a feeling of having lived that experience themselves by, by, listening to the story, you know, and so many salespeople don't understand the importance of, of, of, you know,

Hamid (27:46)
Ex Exactly.

Steve (27:53)
be able to tell and also listen to stories because as a kid, that's how we learn, isn't it? You know, we're programmed to tell stories and listen to stories. So if there was one thing that somebody listening to this could take away to do differently, you know, one killer thing that they could do right now as a result of listening to this and we'll come on to your second book in a second, but having read your first book, what would that be?

Hamid (28:15)
Yeah. I you know the the it so I I gave you a few hacks or ⁓ a few tricks that you can do, you know, just just to kind of you know be in touch with with with your customer a little bit more and orient your customer a little bit more. The the biggest thing that I would that I would advocate for is

Go and ask questions and be curious. You need to be in curiosity mode. And what what's interesting about questions is that they have been studied very carefully in ⁓ and they correlate incredibly highly to success, successful outcomes in a conversation. So whether that's a sale or whether that's a you know, you're trying to get a date, whatever it is, the more questions you ask.

christian (28:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steve (28:39)
Absolutely.

Hamid (29:01)
The more successful you will be. And there is a tipping point, but it's ridiculously high number of questions. So you have no, you are in no danger of asking too many questions. It's most sales reps ask fewer than three questions in the first 10 minutes. The most successful ones.

Steve (29:20)
well.

christian (29:22)
Do they need to be genuine,

the curiosity? Does it need to be genuine?

Steve (29:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Hamid (29:27)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. So you need to prepare. What am I what am I curious about? What am I going to ask about? And you know, like tell me about your work or or you know, what do you do for work? Is that that's a little bit like if you spend three minutes and research the person that you're about to talk to or research the company literally three minutes, you'll be able to craft a a a you know finer version of that question. That's that that's that's all I ask.

Literally take three minutes and come up with one question that's good. And then just go from there. Let your curiosity handle it. That's that's the number one thing. And like I said, you're in no danger of asking too many questions because the tipping point is like 25 questions in 10 minutes. Right.

Steve (30:04)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

christian (30:15)
So ask

more, pitch less.

Steve (30:17)
Absolutely, yeah. I was doing some training last week for one of my customers in a slightly different area. They're working in the chemicals industry and we were in a meeting room for the training and I noticed the lab was at the end of the corridor. So I said, any chance I can have a look in the lab because I don't go in labs anymore these days. And I couldn't wait to walk in the lab and start asking, you got one of those, what do you use that for? And how do you do this? And you know, it's just being nosy, isn't it really? Being professionally nosy and curious about the world of our customers, which I don't think enough salespeople are.

⁓ Hamid, know you've got a dead stop for time and I'm very conscious you need to wrap up soon. Thank you so much for your time today. I do want to ask you about your second book. So your first book, I think you said was in 2011 and you've now produced another book called Not Buying It. So why write another book and what's different about this book?

Hamid (30:45)
No.

Yeah, well thank you. Yeah. So the first book was called Persuading Scientists. It came out in twenty twelve. I wrote it in twenty eleven. And I honestly thought that that book had no like life left in it. And because it's so old and it's it's really out it's out of print. So ⁓ it's not available anymore. And I just thought, okay, that was done, you know, it's it's over. But every single week I got an email from somebody that said,

You know, I read your book when I was starting out as a product manager or as a as a marketing manager or a salesperson, and now I'm leading a team. And boy, would I love to give this to my team. Where can I find it? Because it's not available on Amazon. And so I thought at first, okay, you know what? Let's just let's just dust it off and reprint it. And then I made the mistake of reading it again after so many years. And I was so like mortified.

By how out of date and how sophomoric some of this, some of the ⁓ information was in there, that I started to to write it again. and then it turned into a whole other book. So, what a couple of differences and what this, why this book is, I'm excited about this book. Number one, I really advocate for single commercial strategy rather than sales and marketing, irrespective of what size the company is. You need a single commercial strategy.

Steve (31:57)
You

Absolutely.

Hamid (32:23)
And so

I talk a lot about this in in the book. I also, you know, some of the techniques and tools that we talked about during this podcast are also written in that book, but in a more formal way of introducing the idea that there's a psychology that your customers are undergoing. How do you understand that psychology? And then how do you how do you use it to your advantage naturally? So that's the whole idea. And as the book progresses.

I talk about how to develop those insights that then lead to those provocations or those challenges or whatever it is that, you know, how however you want to implement them. And then how do you back them up? And then how do you persuade what heuristics could be at play? And I even end the book by talking about how change is difficult inside a company. Like you will have just read this book. You're excited about this. You work in a large company and change seems impossible.

Even if you're the CEO, change seems impossible, right? And so I talk about how to basically what are the tools that you can use to get your own team to to be ready for that. So very excited about the book and and it's so far I've gotten really I'm humbled by how much positive feedback I've gotten from it. So really excited that it's hopefully

Steve (33:18)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, I'll certainly be getting a copy of

it and we will of course link to it in the show notes as well.

Hamid (33:41)
Thank you.

Steve (33:42)
So thank you so much Hamid for coming on the pod today. It's been fascinating listening to you. I literally could have listened to you for the next hour, but I know you do have a dead stop. Thank you so much for your time. We do appreciate it. I'll definitely be getting a copy of the book and as I say, we'll link to it in the show notes and also to your LinkedIn profile as well. If you have enjoyed today's episode, dear listener, don't forget to give us a review on Spotify or Apple. It does help us in lots of weird and wonderful ways.

Hamid (33:50)
That's right. Absolutely.

Steve (34:08)
And if you've got suggestions for any topic for the podcast, or would even like to become a yourself on the podcast, then don't forget to reach out to me through LinkedIn. Or you can email us at podcast at georgejames-.com. That's podcast at georgejames-.com. Actually, georgejamestraining-.com, that's really right. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks with another episode of The Luxury Choice. Until then, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.

christian (34:31)
Wonderful.