How to Sell Without Pressure by Understanding the Buyer’s Brain With Patrick Seaton | 044

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Welcome to the Grand Connection Podcast, where we explore how

meaningful connections, collaboration, and conscious

communication can help us create grand growth in our businesses

and lives. I'm Susan, and today we're looking at something that

is often missing from marketing, especially as AI makes it easier

to create and send more content, my guest is Patrick Seaton,

creator of Ask ALEX, that he calls a sales and communication

thought partner, and he's also co-author of A Crocodile Brain

Can Make or Break Your Sale: The Process and Science for guiding

organizations to buy from you. Patrick's work explores the

neuroscience behind marketing, sales, and organizational

buying. He helps businesses move beyond simply generating more

messages to creating communication that builds trust,

reduces resistance, and supports better decisions. Patrick,

welcome to the Grand Connection podcast.

Thanks, Susan.

So, what led you to combine neuroscience,

marketing technology, and the organizational buying process?

Well, to be honest, I didn't map it out. It

all happened by by luck and chance, and through just pulling

things together that I was working on. I was in a company

as a client with sales. It it worked. They saw a 25x increase

in sales. Then I studied neuroscience and started saying,

"Oh, now I know why it worked that process and that kind of

questioning, and then I brought it into the AI world with

agents. And once I got there, I realized this was not just a

sales tool. Well, this was also a communication tool. And in

reality, we all are communicating, and you could

even argue that we are selling products, services, or ideas.

So, communication is a really important thing, even if we

don't have an official role as salesperson. But the reality is,

a lot of humans don't communicate that well because

they think about themselves, and AI out of the box does not help

with that because it's designed to please us. So we sound so

brilliant in our heads; it tells us how brilliant we are. I

didn't. I never knew before AI that I was as smart as Thomas

Edison 15 times a day. I mean, it's crazy, but that's not the.

That's really not where. Well, let me say AI is really good for

productivity and efficiency, but the AI tools we have today are

focused on keeping humans out of the loop. How can we reduce

cognitive load? How can we we take care of the repetitive

tasks? That's great. However, everything that AI outputs goes

somewhere, whether it's in writing, whether it's in a

conversation, in a meeting, in a website, it all goes somewhere.

And written for us, of course, it sounds great. What we need is

something that is going to land for them. So that's what brought

me into it. Was doing the sales transformation, then I'm

writing, studying neuroscience, then writing a book on it, and

bringing in AI, and now saying this is a communication tool.

And so, my the company, the brand that I created is called

Decoded, the Decoded Mind, and I call it a neuroscience

communication company because it's really about communication

at the end of the day.

Well, it's so important, you know. We have our

neuroscience of communication and connection self mastery

program, and this is you've got a tool that can help us work

with this with our with our work we need to do day to day, and

we'll. We realize, is personally as a human being living in a

digital world, we need to work on ourselves too, and you need

to create new habits and understand how your brain works

and create those habits so that you can communicate in a way

that is more resonant with the people around you. I think it's

really cool what you what you've built now, nobody probably even

knows. I mean, from the intro, I mentioned it. You built a tool

called Ask ALEX that that people can use. Can you explain how it works?

Yeah. So Ask ALEX is very simple. It's a

plugin or connector into Claude or GPT. I use Claude because I

like the way it writes without Ask ALEX over GPT, but that's a

personal preference. But it plugs in, and in essence, it

hijacks Claude's brain, and it says, "Claude, you are not going

to think like a normal Claude because the agents that are in

Ask ALEX are the brain? They create the information, the

responses. What Claude does is it takes the information and

just massages it into sounding really good. But the agents are

designed to help with the sales process or the communication,

and also the neuroscience. So it has multiple neuroscience. It

looks at thinking styles. It looks at biases. It can look at

the crocodile brain and how to get the message so it's not a

threat. It looks at it can look at the perspective of the other

person that you're trying to write to or communicate with,

and it will write to their their persona. So the brains of it are

within the agents, and there are 20 agents that work

independently and get turned on and off depending on the

context, and then it feeds those answers to Claude, and Claude

just has to, based on that, based on your company profile,

based on the book content, just takes all that information,

massages it, so you get the answer that is better suited for

the receiver, not for you. And I will put things in. I say, I

think this is a really great idea. What do you think about

this? Well, Patrick, good try. It's not going to work.

Not amazing, Patrick. That's really great.

And and you know

what I I actually go okay thank you now

tell me why it says well these words these phrases this is

triggering this is not going to land you're trying to do too

much you're talking to yourself and so I'm a data and process

person so when I write that's how I write so it will say,

"You're missing the people side. Oh yeah. Well, that's why I have

you, ALEX. Now fill in the gap. So it's a, I call Ask ALEX a

thought partner, and that's how I'd like the listeners to to

internalize that. It's not just here's an AI tool that says do

this. No, the approach is I'm going to go into a meeting, into

a call. I'm doing a presentation. I'm doing a

webinar. I'm doing a something. Help me think through the best

way to present this information, not for me, but for the other

person or the people. How can I talk to all the audience? How

can I not push them and trigger them that they feel like I'm

selling them or I'm pushing them or I'm a threat to them? And so

that's really important.

way, or like because people are different?

So, how does it know if you're talking to an audience, it's

made up of 3040, 100,000 different people? How how do you

communicate in a way that will resonate with the majority of

the people in the audience?

Well, and that's a good question. That's another

agent, and it's called the balance checker. So the brain

actually has there are four different areas to it, and one

is focused more on data, one is on process, the other is on

people and relationships, and the last one is on the future.

So we all have we have. We are more. What was it? Different

parts of our brain are more agile and worked more over our

life. If you work with numbers a lot through school, through

college, through work, numbers are really easy. But if you

really don't work with people, having a people conversation and

writing or talking to them in a way that engages them is really

hard. That's my case. I love talking to people, but when

people get very emotional and I understand you had a crisis,

it's like okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, what are we going to

do about it? That's where my brain wants to go.

So the the

balance checker is balance check agent knows

those four different parts of the brain where we have

dominance, and when you give it text and you say, "Here's the

audience. It's going to be 30 people, which means you're going

to have all parts of the brain represented. It will say, you'll

come back and say, "Okay, well, what you wrote is 67% towards

the data people, and you have zero relational, and you have

zero future, and the other 33 is on process, so you can keep it,

but you're gonna have. If you have a big audience, you need to

talk to everyone and keep them interested and engaged. So, how

do you do that? It's not putting on every slide or every anything

you write. Well, for the data people. This is what I want to

say. No, you just sprinkle in a little bit about what's

important to those people. So, what's important to them? Data

people like what? They like numbers. They like information.

They like to analyze. Process people, their language is how

they like sequence steps quality. If you have a

relational people person, they like to know who who's involved,

who's this going to impact, who's this best for, who should

we get involved in it. They're focused on the people side, and

the future people, their language is well. What if? What

if I did this? What if we did that? We could try that. We

could do this. We could get this market. So, in a slide

presentation, you want to have on different slides some

numbers, some steps, some what's the people outcome, and where

can it take you? And that allows you to keep them interested

enough to keep listening. If you write it all for one, you are

potentially losing 75% of your audience without even realizing.

But it sounds great to me.

Well, I guess we tend to write towards our own

type. We do because

it's easiest. It's easiest. I don't have to

think so much. And if I had to write to my other thinking

style, I would really be hard pressed to come up with some

good examples and something that sounded authentic.

Yeah, yeah. So Ask ALEX will help us craft messaging.

Yes.

What kind of what kind of content can we create

with

it? Oh, anything. You can LinkedIn

posts. You can do website text. You can do articles, white

papers. You can put in video scripts. Anything that you can

write or say, you can put in and have it analyze. You can also,

if you're in the sales process and you're recording calls, you

can take the transcript and it will analyze the transcript and

give a. It looks at it from several different areas, but it

will also say, you know what? I'm starting to see this bias

popping up on the receiver side, the buyer side. If we're talking

about sales, we might want to start course correcting because,

especially if you have a string of conversations, it's like

maybe you didn't notice, but I'm seeing that the person on the

other side is not talking as much as they used to. Now, that

might be nothing, or it might be that they're not yet as engaged

as they used to, which then can lead us to, hmm. So what do I

need to do? Because I don't want to keep pushing, or else I'm

going to start getting ghosted. And when I get ghosted, we there

are two agents in Ask ALEX about how to get unghosted, or how to

stay away from getting ghosted. So it takes that information and

and looks at it from this is what was said, and these are the

patterns that are starting to to manifest themselves.

So we could use it to improve the conversions on

our conversion events. Like if we're having a webinar to sell

program, a lot of coaches in our community are doing that, and

they always come back with, "Oh, I didn't get the sales I wanted

to. And what usually they find out is that they've been

teaching too much and not creating enough. Enough value

around the program, or or you know what what's the

transformation, or get them to feel the pain. Yeah. So we could

we could upload our transcript from the event, and it would

analyze what we did wrong. Absolutely,

and and the you said something really important

there. The whole premise of Ask Alex in the book that it's

based. So, Ask Alex instead of saying just go anywhere on the

internet and find information. It has guardrails on it and says

we're going to give you the information you're going to pull

from consistently, and that is the book I wrote, "A Crocodile

Brain Can make or break your sale, and in that book there is

what we called the co-author and I the problem-solving sales

process, the PSSP. And so we, as sellers, changing our mindset

that we are problem solvers, not sellers, and we're trying to

solve the problems, not give them all the answers to buy from

us. Because if you give them everything, then they go, "Why

do I need you? You just told me everything. But if you focus on

the problems and challenges, situations, any word they use

that they say, you know, I don't like this, and I'd like to

change it. That's where we start. And if you once you know

what you're offering and what your solution is, what are the

problems that you see or the situations that they're going

through, and it's that focus on the problem. It's not my sales

process; it's their buying process. How do we guide people

through their buying process to solve their problems, quote

unquote?

Now, I know you base part of your your book on

spin selling. We've talked a lot about that at our neuroscience

course, where we actually you know work through the science of

what's happening in the brain when you are reluctant to sell

because a lot of us don't like selling. You know, we'll talk a

little bit about you saying that somebody you know was telling

you like it's almost like we've been hypnotized that we we we

don't want to sell, right? It's in us. Yeah, we don't we don't

feel comfortable with it, but we we work on the brain part of it

of how because that's a bias we have that we we shouldn't be

selling we shouldn't be pitching ourselves we shouldn't be

promoting ourselves and how do we overcome that using how the

brain works and then practice and then we went through the

spin now how does spin become part of your your book and and

can you describe what spin

is? Sure, absolutely. So spin is really

interesting because it is a started off as a research

project that Neil Rackham did in the '80s with some graduate

students, and he said, you know what? For a year, we're going to

study why some people sell better than others, and they

started to look at sales calls, which could be meetings or

listening to calls, and they started to look for patterns as

to what the best salespeople who ended up with closing the deals

were doing compared to the people who weren't closing. Now

it started off as one year, and I think it went seven or eight

years. And what they did is they looked at and analyzed over

33,000 telephone calls and sales meetings. And what they found is

that the best salespeople, and they maybe didn't even know it;

it just seemed to be their intuition. But they first

started. So, spin is an acronym, and it stands for situation. So,

they go in and say, "What's going on? And that you are not

happy with. Okay. The P stands for problems. Oh, well, why is

that a problem for you? Tell me about that. So, all this is

having a conversation. It's not a checklist. It's not a

interrogation. But why is that a problem for you? Why are you

concerned about that? Why are you unhappy with that? I mean,

so what? And they tell you, and you say, oh. And a lot of people

stop there and say, well, I've got the best solution in the

world. It's best thing since sliced bread. But the I is where

people, in their head, they don't want to go, and the I

stands for impact or implication. So, what impact is

that problem having on your business, on your life, on your

whatever? What? And people don't like to go there because they

don't like people to feel uncomfortable, but that's really

how you get them to internalize. I just don't have a problem. I

have a huge problem,

and then

the N stands for the need payoff. What do you

think you need? To solve this problem, and they have an idea,

and you always talk about the problems that you can solve. So

for me, I would never say, you know, start someone down the

path of, you know, brains, the need for brain surgery, and I

go, sorry, I can't help you with that. You always guide them in

things you can help with, and in that need payoff, there's

something really clever that they found with the best

sellers, is that they would say to the prospect, "I know as a

seller that I can help you, but they would say they would ask,

"So if I were hypothetically, if I were able to help you with

this, would it be of interest or of help to you? Now, we know

what they're going to say. They're going to say absolutely

yes, yes. But part of this is a little bit of theater, and we

say, oh, okay, that might be really obvious, and I but I

don't want to assume. Why do you think it would help you, or how

would it help you? And when they express that, their brain is

already convincing itself because the brain doesn't know

present, past, or future. It hears that, oh, you would help

me with A, B, C. Their brain is saying, "I want A, B, C. So they

are already convincing themselves to do something. And

then when you go back and talk about another problem before

getting the solution, and you go through the whole thing, it's

kind of like this roller coaster, and you're bringing

them like, okay, you've talked about three things. When are you

going to tell me my solution? That's what you want them to be

so anxious and in a good way about doing something that

they've already articulated as this is impacting. So using that

need payoff to say, this is you've already said what you

need, and you've said why. So unless you're bipolar, you can't

say this isn't for you because you just said it was for you.

Okay, so that is spin as it is, and in the book we created other

frameworks for for how do you measure first meeting? How do

you justify the business case after that using the brain? How

do you present to them a quotation, a proposal? Because

we have to bring all those other pieces to it, so we put the the

frameworks in that spin selling as a book didn't didn't have or

doesn't have because that all that research just went into a

book. It was never designed to be a marketing tool like a

program, never, and that was a different mindset than the other

companies were saying. How can we make this really slick,

polished names, and they sound cool? No, this is just let's

document what people do that get results. So for the data, he's

done research that

they did without AI to analyze all that. So

that's a lot of work.

Exactly, that is a ton of work. A ton of work.

Yes,

I did my thesis, and I had-I think there was 1000

results in my survey that I had to do, and I did it by fax

machine to all these companies. Oh my god! That was about

thermal paper all over the floor. Anyways, it was-it was

quite an endeavor. Nowadays, oh my gosh, it's so easy for those

students. They just whip off something and go my little or

wherever and send it by email. It's done and analyzed, huh? I

was going to ask you

if you're if the fax machine was the onion paper

or the plain paper. You answered that.

Yeah, yeah, the thermal paper. Yeah, no, it was

it was painful, and all night long, these answers are coming

through, and you know can't even sleep. Yeah, the world has

really changed with AI, and having a tool like this that

you've built can really help us craft messaging that is based on

selling the way the brain works for selling, and make it convert

for us better, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, at all steps of the way. I mean,

it's not just the sale, because that's the end result of a lot

of activities. It's everything that you do from outreach. How

do you get them focused on what you can do and where you, your,

you know, for me, it's helping or coaching solopreneurs and

people who don't like sale selling. Okay, so I'm not. I I

need to start with that message. Are you facing this? Are you

struggling with this? Are you upset with that? Do you get

tired of this? Okay, that gets them onto the radar. But

everything you do. After that, the first meeting, the next

meetings, the if there are other people you have to get involved,

everything needs to revolve around the same story, because

the brain on their brain, if you start changing the story, their

brain is going. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Threat, threat,

danger. Will Robinson, danger. This is not what you said. So

you can't do bait and switch. You can't just change the topic

because they will look at that as you're pressuring.

Well, I can see this working with dealing with

the children or young adults in our lives too, and family

members. How you can absolutely

yeah, or leadership with your team that you're working with as

well,

absolutely. Because so, in the in Ask ALEX,

there is the the thinking styles assessment built in, one that I

created, and you can understand yourself and your own awareness.

And once you know where you are, it's much easier to see or to

talk to the people who aren't like you wiredly takes me a lot

of takes a lot of effort on my part to get real emotional,

relational, and in a conversation, and I'll do it.

But man, when I get done, I'm just like, I need a nap. But

someone who's all data, I'm in it for the long haul. So once we

know who we are, it makes it easier for us to connect with

others. And it's not my thought in communication is if I'm the

talker, it's my job to connect with the receiver. It's not

their job to connect to me.

So you talk about receiver and sender and how

marketing isn't being done in the right way. Can you explain a

little bit more about that?

Well, especially in the world of AI, and even if

without AI, I mean, we write to ourselves, and it sounds great

to

us because

we wrote it. It should sound great to us, but

many people don't take the time, or they don't have the way to

look at it from the other side. And so, in marketing, we either

need to have a broad audience, or even if and even if we have

the broad audience, we need to make sure that what are we

trying to communicate at this moment? Sales is nowadays sales

is a team sport; it's not an individual sport inside a

company. Sales is almost never, unless you're selling a bottle

of water on a 90 degree day. You know, you can sell it as a

transaction. Everything else is multiple iterations, and how do

we walk people through those iterations and those

interactions, Guiding them to their buying decision, which

maybe you may not be, but it's not how fast we want to go. They

could care less. They don't care if we have our quota. They don't

care if we make our sale for the month. They don't care. They

don't care. They're focused on them or themselves, and that's

the thing that we have a really hard time communicating to

people. We write something and we want to tell them five things

in one in one document. When they all they want is one, but

well, if I just give a little bit more, if I just explain a

little bit more, if I just share a little bit more, if I show my

passion a little bit more, they're gonna get it. That's not

how their brain works.

Yeah, we give too much information. We talk too

much. I I'm still doing it wrong.

It's really hard, especially depending on

how long you've been doing it. You we have built the habits and

behaviors, and that's really hard. Number one, it's hard to

break if you have a good alternative. Number two, if you

don't have a good thing way to get the alternative text or

approach, who likes to say to yourself means like the low

voices in our head. I think this is good. No, this is not going

to be good. But tell me why. No, it's not. I mean, I have many

voices in my head, but we all agree with everything. So I

don't have those competing voices, but we need those

competing voices because if not, we're just stroking our own ego.

I like that idea of being able to practice things

out, especially sales and enrollment calls. They're

they're a challenge. I have I have had somebody tell me in my

life many times that you just talked yourself out of a sale.

You talk too much. They're ready to buy, and you kept on talking,

and then they were left confused.

Yeah, I. That's because everyone needs to know

something at the moment they need to know it, but as the

seller, and putting that as even as a marketer or as a seller,

the sender. Well, if they liked what I said now, then they must.

They're going to love what I say next and next and next, but they

haven't processed what you said now, so they're really not ready

for the next and the next and the next.

And I remember part of spin is understanding

the buyer's journey, right?

Yeah. Well, it's all about guiding them through

their buying process and creating the experience-a

different experience from other salespeople who talk about the

situation. They ask questions. What's going on? Oh, you know

what? I've got internet problems. Hey, you know what?

I've got the solution. I have the best internet in the world,

and they jump the solution. But that change means, wow, do I

really want to change my system and providers? And that's a pain

in the butt. And this and that. So we don't. We just jump to

solution. Tell me your problem. I've got a solution. But their

brain is not ready for the solution yet. They haven't

convinced themselves that the problem is severe enough to

actually do something about it. So

that's where it comes back to the implications.

They really need to know the implication of not having your

solution, and then what the what did you call it needs payoff,

right?

Yeah. Well, I would say it's not because at

this point they still don't know your solution. The implication

of of just staying with their situation as it is, yeah. And

what does it cost costing you? Whether money, productivity,

risks on your business, emotional drain-all of those are

costs. And so we have to work with them to understand what

does this really mean. What is the implication, or what are the

implications of one problem that could have lots of impact? And

when you start putting tangible things to that problem with

them, you now they look at and they say, "No, I thought I just

had a problem, but now that I talked through all the numbers

and all of this and all that, and you say, 'How much do you

think this will cost you? I have one solopreneur. His one problem

was, I'm used to referrals. I don't have a sales process for

when I am going to prospect. That was his problem. That's

what he said, and I went through a framework that we have in the

book and had him really understand how this impacted his

business. And at the end of it, he said, "This one problem,

which he almost discounted, just as like, damn, I wish I had a

sales process. He said that was costing him half a million

dollars a year. Yeah, and when he gave that number, I said, "So

what if I could help you with building a sales process? What

would that mean to you? Okay, where do I sign up? Because he

didn't, he already knew the problem costs a lot. But before

I went through that, the implication-it was just, you

know, I just don't have a sales process. Oh, I'll wing it. I'll

figure it out. You know, I'm a smart guy. I'll, you know, we we

just kind of write it off as not so important.

I was just thinking about implications. A

lot of our coaches in our community are dealing more with

helping people heal or overcome obstacles. How do you put a

number or an implication to that?

Well, it's the same thing. So, and yes, the

four the four things I rattled off. They are kind of like

apples, oranges, pears, and bananas. Okay. However, I worked

with a woman who did. She trained yoga, and she wanted to

give some, you know, $5,000 yoga classes over time for people who

had really bad joint pains and things like that, and she's

like, "How does this fit here? I said, "Well, let's just talk

about. You got really bad joint pains, so how often are you

going to the doctor? How often are you going for prescriptions?

How often you going to physical therapy? That all is money that

you're." Spending. How many books have you done? How many

seminars or webinars or whatever? Okay. Productivity.

How many hours? What's the cost? So you can't go up and down the

stairs that easily. Okay. Well, how fast did it used to take

you? Five seconds. How long does it take you now? 10. How often

do you go up and downstairs in a day? Like 20 times. So right

there, you do the multiplication in in a week and in a year. Now

think of all the hours you're using because of your situation.

Risks. What if you bend down the wrong way? I could like lose my

knees because that's emotional. What's the impact if you can't

sit on the floor with your grandkids? Yeah,

when you can get them to feel that pain.

Yes,

very. So,

so those are those are ways to put this

framework that in the book I call it, and in Ask ALEX, it's

investment, productivity, risks, and and

emotional toll. And that's what people. That's how you

tangiblize it. And yes, it is apples, oranges, pears, and

bananas, but productivity hours turn into money. Risks if they

happen. If I blow out my knee now, I need a knee replacement.

Well, that will be money. And emotionally, if I'm stressed

out, I might be going for more therapy, talking to this, and so

I'm spending more money there. So you can, in some ways bring

it all back to the money because that's what people focus on.

Yeah, but that's what gets them to move. People do not change

unless there's pain and urgency. And spending a lot of money or

having a cost that's very elevated creates a lot of pain,

which then drives the urgency to do something

with AI coming out now. I'm feeling the world is

moving very fast around me, and I actually feel a little bit of

anxiety around this and pain. I would say I feel like I have to

keep up. And you've developed a tool using AI. How has Ask ALEX

helped you become more productive in your day?

Well, number one, because when I give it good

information, it can write things a lot faster than I used to. So

yes, as a productivity tool, you know, an article or a white

paper that used to take me days or over a week to really feel

like I got my message out and all that. What was actually

happening with that is that I was re-reading it and rereading

it so much that I was falling in love with my own work. And then

if someone were to read it and say, you know, I think you

should shuffle it around. Like I just spent a week on this. I'm

not going to spend all that time redoing it. Okay. When I give

all the information and the outline and the guidelines to

AI, and it gives me a first draft, I have not fallen in love

with that document. I look at it very differently, much more

critically, and I'm not afraid to say to AI, "Hey Claude, you

know what? I thought this was going to be a good approach, but

now reading it, it feels way off. And I think we need to

totally revamp and rethink and redo and and let it do the hard

work based on my guidance. So I think I can be more critical. I

can go faster. I can create more. Now the question is, I

love creating content, but I think I love creating content

for me, and not everyone wants as much content as can be

created. And I think we're getting saturated with so much

content because it's so easy to do,

yeah.

And so it is, it is a double-edged sword. It

cannot replace, but it also needs a lot of coaching and

guidance. And I talk to a lot of people who say, "Well, I have an

agent for that. I created an agent for that. Okay, and that's

really good. But those agents, do they automatically kick in,

or do you have to remember to engage them? Because if you have

fallen in love with something, you might not engage it. In Ask

ALEX, the agents are there, and based on the context, it just

comes up. You don't have to say, "Hey, could you please start the

ghosting? When you say, "You know, this this prospector used

to answer me in two days, and now it's taking five, I wonder

if something's going on. That context says, "Hmm, let's check

for red flags." Ghosting, and because something might be going

on behind the scenes, so it doesn't rely on us to trigger

and remember. It automatically does it, and that's why it's

more of a thought partner because it will think of things

that we hadn't thought about because we get fixated in one thing.

Well, this is interesting. Is there a way that

people can check out Ask ALEX and see how it works?

Absolutely, it is Ask ALEX Coach, and there are

three versions. One is just a communication auditor, so that

has the has the crocodile brain review. It has the balance check

balance and the perspective. Then, if you are in a sales

role, there's a sales basic, which is really for getting the

foundation of a sales process, getting used to what is the

first meeting, what does that look like, what about other

people, you know that that basic understanding, and then there's

an Ask ALEX Pro, which is all about prevention and diagnostic.

So there are three different versions, and when you sign up,

you can get a seven day free trial. Plug it in and play with

it. If it's not right for you, you can cancel at any time. And

if it is for you, then it's just a subscription model. And I

have-I say this with the data to support the people who use it

really love it and use it. I have some users who, in one

month, they tap into agents six to 700 times. That's like more

than twice an hour in working hours, they're using it. It's in

their processes. They're they're not just saying, you know, oh,

do this. It's okay. I've got this idea. Let's think it

through. Okay, now I'm preparing this. Give me your opinion on

now. I mean, they're using it over and over, and so once

people get into it, they really love it because they go, "I

never thought about it that way.

We have a member that's using your your tool, and

that's where I I think I might have first learned about it

through her. Could have been through Cal, who runs the Grand

Martech group as well, and she she was she brought it up at one

of our events, which the conversation was on how to sell

better. I think because a lot of people struggle with sales, and

she said, "I'm using this tool. It's called Ask ALEX and it has

changed my world. So she really has found phenomenal results,

and just increasing one sale, and it it's going to help on

many sales. It's it's worth the cost of the two whole 10 2050

times full. So

absolutely, absolutely. And I hear those, I

hear those every time. And for all the people who who join the

community, if Ask ALEX, every Friday morning I have a one hour

community call roundtable. Learn about how you're using it. I

send out information on the different the different agents

that it has, so that people can go. I never knew could do that.

Oh my gosh! Now I'm going to use it, and then I see a spike in

those agents being used. So it's it's not complicated, but it's

very Complex, and us

who don't haven't had. I I look through the world

from the world of marketing because that's my lens. My life

partner looks through the world from the world of sales. You

look through the world from the world of sales, and it can take

decades to learn how to become good at selling, and you can

learn it, and you can be a lot faster with the right tools in

place. This is really taking your brain, Patrick, and putting

it into a little tool that we can tap into our CRM or into our

AI tool, and use what you've learned over decades of sales

experience, and bringing in the neuroscience research you've

done into one place, I think that's just really, really cool

and a great opportunity for us to become better at selling. And

what this member had told me too is, I asked her, I said, "Has

this changed the way you are as a salesperson, as a person,

authentically? And she says, "For sure, I have learned so

much, and you said that yourself earlier in in a conversation.

Was you've become a better critical thinker because of the

tool, and writing the book, of course, right?

Yes, abs absolutely, and in essence, the

people who say I'm not a good sales. Person, I've never been

in sales. To me, those are the best salespeople to use an Ask

ALEX tool because they don't have habits and behaviors that

they need to undo and redo. Someone who says I don't know

anything about sales, good. Do you know how to talk? Do you

know how to ask questions? Yes. Do you know how to read? Yes.

Okay. It will give you questions. Go with those, and

it's you're not going to feel like selling. Ask ALEX is all is

built on the premise of it's selling without selling because

you're problem solving. That's really it, and it sounds so

simple, but for a lot of people, it's-I mean, the vast

majority-it's really hard because we love what we do so

much, and we become so passionate about it that we want

to share so much about it, and that in the other side of the

other brain is selling. You're pushing something on. That's not

our intention, but that's how it comes off on their brain.

Well, at the Grand Connection, we believe, and this

is in relationship building, because you're really you're

you're you're creating a relationship with someone, but

you're selling the the value of that relationship and the

opportunity that after we build trust, we can collaborate

together, and we are good. We'll be good collaboration partners,

and from that collaboration, we both can grow and scale. And I

love collaboration because it's win-win. I just love a world

where win-win supersedes win wins, right? Yep. So value

first, sales second is is kind of what we our philosophy is,

and I see that that's a lot in how your selling process is

working too, and a question I have for you is: you know, using

your your book and yourself and and and the tools you have, how

can we guide and support a buyer's decision without

manipulating or pressuring them?

Well, it isn't manipulation to begin with, if

I'm here and I can actually help you solve your problems, I don't

need to manipulate you. the the the The buyer's brain is very

quick to see manipulation. When you start pressuring, if you

start pushing too hard, they will the their brain will

automatically start pushing back. So this isn't about

manipulation. If I can't help you, I can't help you. I'm not

here to inflate your problem. If you really don't have a problem

that I can solve that's worth solving, Then, good. Just keep

doing what you're doing. This isn't about manipulating, and

it's not about pressure, because when you pressure, they push

back. That's a lot of, and you're hitting a lot of the

topics in the book, but you know every almost every traditional

sales training talks about the need to manage objections. Oh,

you have to do this. There are whole courses on

it.

Okay, my philosophy is you don't you

don't need to manage objection. What you really need to focus on

is how to how to not get in situations where you are getting

objections, because when you're getting objections, that's a

pushback from the buyer that you're out of sync with them. If

you start pushing the solution and they're not ready, say yeah,

yeah, well wait a minute. If you say, "Well, here is the pricing,

they're going. Wait a minute! I'm not ready for that.

Objections are nothing but the seller is out of sync with the

buyer because if I can show that they have problems that I can

solve, I can help them understand how severe their

problems are, and they want to solve them. I can then involve

other people, if needed, into that process and build a

coalition. Then they see that their problems might be costing

them millions of dollars a year. The ones that I can solve. So if

I even if I were to give a solution at $100,000 compared to

a million, they want that. That's not. What

if they're evaluating multiple vendors?

They know they have a problem. You're selling. You they got the

implications in place. They know the cost of the problem, but

they're comparing now you with someone else. What do you do

with that?

Great, great question. Now, so there, the the

brain. If they in the book actually is two competing

companies. They're both selling the exact same CRM. Are there

two companies that sell it? So you can't differentiate. Shade

on features, functionality. You might be able to do pricing, but

what the brain is looking for is who made me feel better, who

gave me a better experience during the process, and a lot of

it comes back to what you said on trust. And what I found is we

kind of glob trust into one big bucket. Oh, we need to earn

their trust. Yes, yes, I agree with that 100% But what put what

we it's in the book, but it what most people don't realize is

that there are two kinds of trust. There's character trust,

and there's competence trust. So I like you as a person, but

you're really incompetent. I might not buy from. I really

like the company, and it's very competent, but you're a real

jerk, so I might not buy from you. So we need to know when and

what kind of trust we're trying to build with the with each

person we interact with, not just sponsor, but every person

who comes into the process, down to the decision makers, or up to

the decision makers. How do you or you want to look at it, so

it's when everything is an even even playing field, they're

going to look at the feelings because the Maya Angelou quote:

"People will not remember what you said, people will not

remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them

feel. So, when we-and this isn't you know placating to them and

all that-but when they feel listened to, heard, they had a

say in this. That's going to build a different experience

than another vendor who's just going in saying, "Yeah, oh, you

want a box of apples? Here, the box of apples. Here's the price.

There's no real connection there.

Well, people do business with people they know,

like, and trust, and this is definitely a great place to end

our conversation, Patrick. This has been absolutely lovely. So

much more we can talk about. We're going to have you back at

another Grand Connection where you could demo Ask ALEX for the

community. What would be a tip that you could leave our

listeners with who are kind of reluctant to sell? They think

selling's a bit icky. What could they start off with as the first

action they can take away with today,

the first and I think probably the most

important is a mindset tip. Okay, when you're going in,

well, I'm going to give two. When you're talking to people,

fall in love with the problem. Don't fall in love with your

solution, and when you fall in love with their problem, it will

guide you to whether your solution can work. You need to

fall. We need to fall in love with our their problems, not

fall in love with our solutions. And the the other one is

remember that nobody likes to be sold to. Nobody, even in our

personal life, we hate being sold to. But everybody loves to

buy.

We do love to buy. We do,

but we don't like to be sold to.

Yeah, no, that's so true. So, where can people

pick up your book and connect with you

on Amazon? It's very easy. You put in crocodile

brain, and it's gonna show up, and it has a very distinct cover

of a crocodile head with the suit, and it's green and okay.

Very memorable. Very memorable. the The artist did a really

great job with that. So that's on Amazon, and for me, I'm on

LinkedIn, and there aren't a lot of Patrick Seatons out there

that you know in my space, and I have several brands, but you can

go to the decodedmind.com or Ask ALEX coach.

Patrick, thank you for sharing your insights with

us. My biggest takeaway is that better marketing is not

necessarily about producing or sending more, it's about

becoming more aware of the human being on the other side of the

message. When we understand how people respond to stress,

uncertainty, clarity, and trust, we can create communication.

That invites conversation instead of resistance. Here's

your grand connection action step for the week. Before you

send your next marketing message, pause and read it from

the receiver's perspective. Ask yourself: Will this person feel

understood, respected, and clear about what I am inviting them to

do next. Use this as a prompt too, and ask your AI to be

brutally honest. And if you'd like to meet more heart-centered

entrepreneurs and learn how to communicate, connect, and

collaborate more effectively, join us at an upcoming Grand

Connection event, and you can claim your complimentary guest

pass and Grand Growth Bundle at GrandConnection. Ca forward

slash gifts. Please subscribe to the Grand Connection podcast and

share this episode with someone who wants their marketing

message to create more trust and better conversations. Until next

time, keep creating something grand.