Bob Burg
speaker
120 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Bob Burg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They're not going to buy from you because you need the money or even because you're a really nice person. They're going to buy from you because they believe they'll be better off by doing so than by not doing so, which is the only reason we could ever expect or should ever expect anyone to buy from us. So the genuine influencer asks questions of themselves to make sure they're outwardly focused.
For example, how does what I'm asking this person to do, how does it align with their goals? with their needs, with their wants, with their desires? How does what I want this other person to do, how does it align with their values? What problems am I helping them to solve? How am I helping them to get to a direction or get to a place where they wanna be?
Now, when we ask ourselves these questions thoughtfully, intelligently, genuinely, authentically, not as a way to manipulate another human being into doing our will, but as a way of building everyone in the process. Now we've come a lot closer to earning that person's commitment, right? As opposed to trying to depend on some type of compliance or push.
Sure, so if influence is a matter of being able to move a person to a desired action, okay, there are two ways to influence. You could do it through persuading another human being, or you could do it through manipulating another human being. One's positive, one's negative, right? Now, the interesting thing is both persuaders and manipulators understand human nature.
They understand what motivates people. They understand how to move people to action. In a sense, you could say persuasion and manipulation are cousins. Now, one's the good cousin, persuasion, and one's the evil cousin, manipulation.
If we want to describe manipulation, I think the person who described it best was a guy by the name of Paul W. Sweats, who wrote a book published in 1987 called The Art of Talking So That People Will Listen, which was really more about listening than it was about talking, but that was the title. It was a wonderful book. And in it, he said, manipulation aims at control, not cooperation.
It does not consider the good of the other party, and it results in a win-lose situation. Now, in direct contrast to the manipulator, the persuader always seeks to enhance the self-esteem, or I would say the position, of the other party. People respond better because they're treated as responsible, responsable, self-directing individual.
So it begins really with intent, though that's not where it ends. But here's the thing. See, a manipulator may not be trying to necessarily hurt the other person, But if that's what it takes to get their way, they'll do so because it's all about them and their needs.
With a persuader, that can never happen because for a persuader to be happy with the situation and with themselves, they have to know that not only has the other person benefited, but that the other person feels good about the situation.
Well, thank you. Yes. Autonomy is a key aspect of human nature. People wanna feel they're in control of their own lives, okay? An out or a backdoor is an emotional escape hatch you give someone so that they never feel as though they're back into a corner, okay?
So, Berg's Law of the Out or Back Door simply says the bigger the out or back door you give someone to take, the less they'll feel the need to take it. So, you don't necessarily give them that out so that they'll take it, although if they think they should, they will, which that would make sense. But no, you do it so that they feel comfortable enough with you and the situation that
that they don't feel pressured and they don't feel the need to take that out or backdoor. So even saying something, let's say you have a prospect, a sales prospect, and you're in front of that person and they kind of come to the table, kind of defensive and it's, well, don't Don't think I'm going to buy anything necessarily from you. I'm not some easy sell. Why did they fit?
But who knows what their experience has been? We never know what someone's experience is. Maybe somebody took advantage of them, or maybe they really are someone who doesn't trust themselves to make decisions. I don't know. But what we can do is reframe this using the out or back door. So it might be something like,
Susan, while we've been fortunate to be able to help a lot of people with this product, whether or not it's the right fit for you, we simply can't know without exploring deeper and both of us discovering that. So please know that this conversation is for both of us to determine whether this would be right for you. And if it is, great. If not, that's okay, too.
Very, very much.
Most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. And... In this law, Deborah, who was the mentor in this part of the story, explained that all the skills in the world, the sales skills, technical skills, people skills, as important as they are, and they are all very important, they're also all for naught if you don't come at it from your true authentic core.
But when you do, when you show up as yourself day after day, week after week, month after month, people feel good about you. People feel comfortable with you. They feel safe with you. And why not? They know who it is they're getting. So authenticity is a very powerful part of building trust.
Now, I think, you know, today, authenticity, just like influence, it's a word that gets bandied about so much. I think people kind of... confuse aspects of it. I think a lot of people, I believe, think authenticity means you have no boundaries. Say whatever you want, do whatever you want, this is how I am, take it or leave it.
Which, by the way, good philosophy if you want no happy relationships and you don't feel like being successful in business. Then it's a good philosophy. But otherwise, no, it's really not. Authenticity does not mean you have no boundaries. Authenticity simply means you act congruently with your values, okay? It should never be used as an excuse for staying where you are.
It's like the person who says, well, I have anger issues, and I yell at a lot, and I yell at people a lot, and if I were to act any differently, that wouldn't be authentic of me. That's baloney, that's hogwash. It simply means that person has an authentic problem. that that person needs to authentically work on in order to become a better, more effective, higher version of their authentic selves.
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