In the past you’ve said that market leaders think, act and communicate differently than the rest of the population. What do you mean by that?

David:                   Hi and welcome to the podcast today co host Chris Templeton and I will be talking about communication, how market leaders do it compared to the rest of the population. Welcome Chris.

Chris:                     Hey David, thank you very much for having me back. I sure am enjoying these conversations. I’m super excited about this one because leadership is something that is so important, so missing in business, and when you say that leaders think and they act and they communicate differently than the rest of the population, talk about what that means from your standpoint.

David:                   Okay, well first of all, when I talk about leaders, I don’t necessarily mean presidents of organizations or chairmen of boards, things like that. When I talk about leaders, I simply mean people who other people look at as someone that they want to pay attention to and people who lead tend to communicate differently. They tend to be more focused. They tend to be more authoritative in a lot of cases, generating good ideas, engaging people, all that sort of thing. And most people don’t really think about it, they don’t focus on it. And as a result they end up meandering around and just having sort of boring conversations and hopefully every now and then they’ll hit on something that moves people.

Chris:                     So how do you make that change when you switch to really becoming a leader? What do you think are some of the more important characteristics around that?

David:                   Well, in terms of communication, I think it really begins with the idea of wanting to, once again, as we talked about previously, help other people and how can I get to that as quickly as possible? You know, a lot of people today talk about content like this podcast is content. A blog post is content. A social media post is content. It’s all content. And what some people do is they just go out there with a whole lot of words and hope that occasionally some of their words will connect up in a way that means something to someone. And I find that rather inconsiderate of the listener. One of the reasons that I’ve hesitated in the past to have the kinds of conversations that we’re having now is that I wanted to make sure that it stayed focused, that it stayed on track so that people are able to get something from it.

Chris:                     Right.

David:                   And if we started wandering off on crazy tangents, then it loses its value. And so I think that from a leadership standpoint, it means really thinking in terms of what is going to help the other person, what’s going to help this prospect? What’s going to help this client? What’s going to help this person that I would like to be able to establish some sort of business relationship with? And if my communication can then reflect that, then it’s going to be better all the way around. I’m sure you’re familiar with the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Chris:                     Dale Carnegie.

David:                   Yeah! So, the basic concept of that book is that if you talk to other people about themselves, they’ll think you’re the most interesting person in the world. And what I think leaders do and salespeople who are leaders certainly do this, is that they make it about the other person. They make it about the prospect, they make it about the client, and then figuring out based on what that person needs, how they can help.

Chris:                     And I think there are a couple of things that really help to push that along in the nicest of all ways. You and I have in the last two podcasts have talked about fit quite a bit and one of the th...