EP207: Full-Bodied Discovery – Breathing Space for Truth
Discovery calls are typically auditory-only affairs, but this episode of Market Dominance Guys reminds us that we are physical beings having a full-person experience. As Chris emphasizes, you don’t converse with a brain in a jar, so why disconnect your body from the persuasive power of discovery? From micro-prancing, to miming props, to the hepatic value of gestures and pauses, your physical presence profoundly impacts connection, emphasis, and revelation. Body language not only expresses what pure words cannot, but it heightens the musicality and truth-emergence Chris describes as “letting the silence breathe.” So start envisioning your prospects, get your blood pumping, and bring your whole self into alignment with the call. It’s time to let your full-bodied discovery create breathing space for truth. What non-verbal techniques will you incorporate next call?
This is a continuation of last week’s discussion with Henry Wojdyla and Shawn Sease. You can listen to the previous episode here.
EP206: Mastering the Art of Silence How Pauses Can Improve Discovery
Links from this episode:
Shawn Sease on LinkedIn
Henry Wojdyla on LinkedIn
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
Corey Frank (00:00):
Chris, I know you and fetching Ms. Fanucci got back from a recent trip to the wine country in the south of France, and I think you told me a few stories about how certain wines need to breathe after they’re open differently than others. And Henry, it sounds like what you’re trying to teach us here is that there are certain questions that you can just let, is there a French term for that, Chris, that breathing? What’s the wine?
Chris Beall (00:24):
My French sucks, but it is ironic when you think about it, right? I think this actually is a pretty APTT analogy you’ve brought up. The wine is corked so that it almost doesn’t breathe. It actually breathes a little bit. This why real corks are considered to be important in some kinds of wines because there’s a little oxidation that needs to go on over a long period of time. There’s a little breathing, but then you went a lot of breathing reasonably fast. I have no idea what that is called In French, my French got better after 21 tastings one morning before lunch, and then we climbed a mountain together that it was really quite fluent, I’m sure at that point. But I don’t think I knew how to talk about this, but it is really something. I mean, this is true in music also. The silences are where the music has actually heard, so to speak, when you’re learning to play.
Chris Beall (01:13):
Henry is a musical person. He’s been involved in this sort of stuff too. When you’re learning to play as a little kid, the rest don’t mean nothing to you. And when somebody’s a virtuoso, the rests are everything. It’s the timing of the silence and the precision of the silence that allows the listener to become part of the music. And that’s what you’re really looking for in discovery is you want the other person to become a producer of the music of these truths that are coming out and you’re working together on them as shunts. I love that. We’re going to do this together. We’re not going to do it. I think that’s not so much of a command, like I’m setting up a set of conditions. Either you do this with me or we’re not going to do it. It’s a statement of fact. Either we’re going to do it together or we’re not going to do it, as in we’re not really going to get it done.
Chris Beall (02:02):
We’re just going to kind of sound like we’re getting it done or act like we’re getting it done. And getting to the bottom of stuff is quite difficult with folks. It takes pregnant pauses. I mean, pregnant pauses give birth at some point, and sometimes they give birth to stuff that’s pretty magnificent to something new and it’s the hardest thing we love to fill in. You imagine a podcast, say we ran the podcast like this, Corey, you ask a question. We all just sit here and look at the audience for, I don’t know, 30 or 40 seconds.
Corey Frank (02:34):
Yeah, yeah. Take off the glasses once in a while, right? We’ve talked about that here at branches is the world of hepatic and NLP, and I know we have to cut you loose here in a minute, Henry, for a seven or eight, nine or figure deal here that you’re pursuing. But can you use those verbal disfluencies, the hepatic, the pregnant pauses to take off your glasses and lean forward as if we were together where there’s a figurative me reaching out just slightly touching your knee as I take off my glasses and leaning forward a good doctor would like a good therapist would, and tell you what I think. And with the deep baritone with the late-night FM DJ voice that our friend Chris Vos talks about, there’s a musicality of that glorious bastards, right? One of my favorite scenes is towards the end when they’re trying to impersonate, they’re an Italian film crew.
Corey Frank (03:25):
We all remember it. Christophe Waltz knows that they’re not Italian, but he has them introduce themselves name by name, and he says, what’s your name? And is his Antonio Margarita or whatever his name is? Well, say it again. Let the music flow. He says, let the music of your name flow. And I just thought that was incredible that there’s certain words that you can enunciate and Henry’s got a great tone. I could listen to Henry read the phone book Vincent Price, and you have Christopher Lee and there’s one that will post to this that I tagged Yuan, a LinkedIn post from a gentleman who I thought had, what an incredible novel way to introduce himself. His name is Andrea Kliman. Chris, I don’t know if you saw that. Ronan a good friend, Ronan Ssar, but his intro, the gentleman, and you remember this call Shawn. It was all pushed forward by his tone.
Corey Frank (04:19):
It was very novel, it was very serendipitous and it wreaked of authenticity because of that and the trust he had me, and I’ve never heard an intro like this before. We’ll link it to this podcast here so people can hear of it. Then I did while you were talking, Henry and Chris, I think my French sucks too, but the appropriate term is eon, I guess to aeration. And so I think we said Eon de latia. So the Wtia method is to ask a question and to just let it breathe and let it aate. Let ruminate.
Henry Wojdyla (04:56):
You’re making it sound far more eloquent than it probably really is since you’ve mentioned a few names. Someone for me is a more recent discovery. I’m sure you’re been aware of him for some time. And Corey, he’s in your neck of the woods there in Scottsdale that really I think has some good thinking and training around this is Jeremy Minor. I’m assuming you’re familiar with Jeremy. Don’t know what your thoughts are there. Not really tremendously get into it, but I’ve just found some of his thinking around it. Helpful. At least for me.
Corey Frank (05:20):
He uses hepatic a lot where he’ll use the props, right? Henry of take it off his sunglasses and emphasizing, and we have Chris and Shawn Miller. We have a lot of standup desks and I’m Sicilian, so I have to talk with my hands and I have to have a prop in my hands at all times. And so I think maybe the last thought, Chris and Shawn and Henry for you, certainly as you’re dealing with high stakes deals is things and props and pacing mechanisms. You do the micro prancing, Chris, which I’m sure keeps you on pace for your phone calls, but maybe we’ll put a bow in it and go around the horn between Henry and Chris and Shawn here on your go-to techniques. If I’m a new sales rep and I don’t employ just fluencies or tonality or I’m not aware of my tonality or I don’t use props or micro, give me your one go-to that I should have in my arsenal as a new sales rep when I’m doing discovery. So Shawn, let’s start with you.
Shawn Sease (06:12):
I got here. I’m afraid if I say something, I’m going to steal Chris’s thunder because I’ve been mentoring under him for so long that I might say something that I learned from him.
Chris Beall (06:21):
Don’t worry, Shawn, I ain’t going to run out of thunder anytime soon.
Shawn Sease (06:24):
Yeah, yeah, go ahead Chris.
Chris Beall (06:28):
Well, I was on somebody else’s podcast yesterday and we’re talking about language thinking and speaking. What happens when we speak and we tend to be very abstract about these concepts. We act as though we might be chat GPT, and it’s just one word after another coming out. We add the disfluencies, we add the tonality, we start to sing, and we think that we’re doing that with our brain and maybe some little part of our voice box or something like that. I truly believe that we think with our whole body and we’ve never walked into a room none of us have, and there’s a brain and a jar and we have a conversation with it, right? The person is a whole person. When I’m micro prancing, I’m a whole person in motion. I realize not everybody in our vast audience will know what micro prancing is. Just so you know. It’s a technique I accidentally developed to train for a very difficult marathon, the Mount Lemon Marathon in Tucson in a room in India, that in which I had 10 meters in which to train, and I’m getting ready to run 23 miles uphill, one mile flat, one mile super uphill, one mile, very down. So that’s what micro prancing is. For those of you who want to learn more about it, there is no place you can go to learn about micro prancing. It just is what it is. Well,
Corey Frank (07:47):
Actually, sorry, Chris. There is a place you can go see the old Monty Python Ministry of silly walks. I think that’s probably the closest that people will get to your microprancing. But go ahead.
Chris Beall (07:57):
Yeah, that was Michael Prancing too, which is a special thing. But to me it’s like when you’re bringing your whole person to be helpful to somebody else, you are a whole person. You’re actually a physical person. You’re not just a bunch of words streaming out. You’re not a recording of something. It’s not a trick. You’re there to be authentic. You have to also be in your physical self, and it’s fun to play with people like that. I do it on calls all the time. I’ll do a thing where I do this. It’s like we’re talking about cold calling us. I hold up the flight school shirts. I see flight school, right? Because it’s real. And that’s how we think about others too. We think about what we’re hearing from other people with their bodies also, and that’s why you have to be highly respectful of the late great Stephen Hawkin.
Chris Beall (08:47):
Can you imagine having that little control of your body and being able to think and express thoughts that big? It’s one of the most amazing bridging of a gap that’s fundamental that we take for granted. However, he had a wonderful physical struggle, which was actually physically communicating. So without that, the game can’t be played at all, so to speak. So anyway, my advice to folks about this is you and the other person are both real people. Zoom didn’t make us into anything else. We’re still physical bodies and references to that. My story about my first conversation with Helen of substance where I said, use the word blood. There are words that invoke physical reactions in us or evoke them that allow us to get closer to the truth with each other, that break down some barriers that offer opportunities for silence that’s productive, and it’s smart to learn how to use those words fluently so we can use them fluently when appropriate. You cannot be disfluent on any words that you can’t emit fluently. It just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. Your body has to be capable of executing the language in a way that works for the other person all the way through if you want to execute the language in a way that works for them even better.
Corey Frank (10:09):
It’s not mere words that matter. It’s not just belief. As we’ve talked about right now, you have the triumvirate of your words, your belief and your body, it sounds like. That’s great, Henry, thoughts on that?
Henry Wojdyla (10:21):
My answer is going to be a little bit different. In fact, in some ways it’s not necessarily contradictory, but I think you use the term hepatic. Is that correct, Cory? Just to show how little I know about this.
Corey Frank (10:30):
Yes, it’s part of this. When your aunt grabs your cheek, when people touch your elbow, they touch your knee just naturally at the base of conversation.
Henry Wojdyla (10:37):
I think when it comes in the context of discovery call, and if I’m really getting into a deep, I almost might go to the other direction, meaning I will often close my eyes, sometimes I’ll even rest my head on my hands, whatever. Again, these are telephone-based, so I’m not mostly on a Zoom. I’d probably conduct a little bit differently if I was in that format, but somewhat like I was saying, shut up to allow them to speak. I’m also shutting up in blocking out all of their sensory perceptions. So I’m really truly listening, very simple, not necessarily the most elegant answer, but it’s the truth, and I’m finding that it’s actually really helping. Nothing else that’s going on through my mind. I’m not looking at all the multiple screens that are in front of me, any distractions. It is 1000% focus on that prospect. The words that are coming out of the mouth, the what they’re saying, the way they’re saying it, what they might not be saying. It allows me to really, really just drill down, distill things, and I kind of get that mental image of the confessional that Chris and you talk about. So that’s probably the mental imagery that’s going on, but that’s how I try to physically manifest it.
Corey Frank (11:38):
Yeah, I can see that. I’m sure, Shawn, when you close your eyes, you still see and feel and hear the drill instructor from when you were 17 years old. But what other advice would you have for somebody jumping onto a discovery call in this world? What’s the one technique you would give to them as we round out this version of the market Dominus, guys,
Shawn Sease (11:58):
Earlier today, I shared another phrase with you that I believe, I think it’s universal truth and it’s kind of self-evident that the truth is curative, right? The truth is curative. And I mean, if we’re going to actually be able to share secrets with each other and have real confessional-type conversations that it has to be genuine. And then you bring up the concept of how to listen, right? How do you listen? And just one technique that I have found, I picked it up along the way from other psychologists people before me again, is to say things back to people, to say back to somebody what they said to you, right? It requires that you listen. And I think another important add-on to that is to say it back to them. If you can have the acumen and experience and so on, to say it back to them in a way that maybe fortifies or even improves what they said.
Shawn Sease (12:41):
And from a discovery and sales perspective, if you want to build, truly build trust, say it back to, even if you disagree, if it doesn’t fit with where you need them to go, which would be persuasion and convincing and things like that, which I am just not a fan of, I’d rather have a conversation with somebody, say it back to them and they say, you know what? That’s interesting. Or say it back to them in a way that fortifies their argument, especially if you disagree. And then when you hand that baton back to ’em, my experience and what I’ve learned from trying it is that they’ll continue to talk or they’ll say, that’s right, the gvo thing. Right? Negotiation. That’s right. Great. Okay. Next, let’s move on to the next thing. So that was a lot in there, authenticity, listening. The truth is curative all outside of the scope of very popular things like persuasion and bending people to your will and being crafty and things like that. It’s just simply not my way. I prefer to go that other route that is genuine and authentic, and those are some of the tools I use to get there.
Corey Frank (13:34):
Beautiful, beautiful. I love that. Especially that word you do it effortlessly is certain words that resonates in the language for me. And I have a list of ’em, but the one that you just mentioned, you said fortify. That’s a very underutilized word, wouldn’t you say? Think Chris and Henry. That’s a good word to use earlier. Chris Henry, I think you and I peaked up when Chris used the word longitudinal qualities. Things have longitudinal clients. It’s that’s a good one. But the last question, lightning quick here, Henry. And I know you’ve been very gracious with your time, but I’m curious, do you screenplay and script out your discovery calls? Do you have the first X amount of questions? Do you have a goal in mind? You’ve done this so many times, the hundreds of millions of dollars in worth of properties and assets that you’ve sold and helped a broker through. But for your discovery calls in this new era over the last few years or so, do you screenplay them or script them out, or how do you structure them to make sure that they’re replicable?
Henry Wojdyla (14:32):
I do have the euphemistic playbook I talk about, which is literal. I’ve got the copyright here in my desk in front of me. The discovery call is structured and scripted and thought through. I will tell you I’m using it less and less, and it’s partly for the reasons of the topics that we’re discussing here. Some of it’s perhaps just having gotten the reps now so many times that some of it’s just getting ingrained. But I’m finding that if I’m truly discovering and truly letting the prospect, more importantly, it becomes less and less reliant upon scripts. There’s still a basic framework in place. Obviously, you have to have a certain objective, and we have a little bit of benefit perhaps because we’re in a very narrow niche. It’s very well defined. We know who we’re speaking with. There’s not really much in the way of qualification that needs to go on.
Henry Wojdyla (15:16):
They’re definitionally qualified if they’re in our tam. So that’s a separate topic. So there’s certain freight that doesn’t need to be carried in our particular discovery context that might be in others. So with all those caveats in place, I’m finding that I am moving further away from a kind of regimented discovery call. If I had to guess, just take the long view here, I’m going to probably cycle back. But when I get back to the more structured approach, it’ll be a re-engineered, reconstituted approach that’s going to be much more heavily reliant upon tonality and sub-concepts we’ve been discussing here.
Corey Frank (15:48):
I get it. I am more of an advocate myself, Chris, and I’ll give you the last word as we round up this episode on screenplay Out, every pause and in the Discovery, the Cohen Brothers from Big Lebowski. Every “dude” was screenplay, was scripted, was written in there on purpose. David Fincher from, I think, Fight Club. Every nuance is written in there. And there are certain directors that are just adamant that what they write, they want the actor a pause, an “er” alike to be in there. And I find that helps replicate because we have a larger team, Henry, obviously with your team there as a contributor with your practice. But we’re trying to scale it up, and I’m trying to look for the factors that would diminish the opportunity in that discovery call. And so every nuance or word matters, but Chris, give the last word to you on this episode of discovery and tonality in the world of discovery calls.
Chris Beall (16:50):
Well, I love the point you just made. I mean, we practice as professionals at anything so that we can improvise based on what’s happening without the practice. We have no foundation for improvising, without being willing to improvise. We can’t adapt to reality. So reality, that’s where the truth, the truth is out there somewhere and everybody has a plan, as they say, until X, Y, or Z happens. But you better practice your plan, so to speak, so that your speech can be ballistic, so to speak, right? It’s like you can’t throw a ball or you can’t do anything that’s athletic, a little tiny piece at a time. You’ve got to get to the point where you can do it smoothly. And then having learned that you can do it in reality, where there’s going to be things that interrupt the smoothness, you can riff safely
Corey Frank (17:41):
For sure, or right. When in doubt, just let it aerate. Just let it breathe.
Henry Wojdyla (17:46):
Let it simmer. Let it simmer.
Corey Frank (17:48):
That’s beautiful. Well, excellent. Well, thank you gentlemen. Thank you, Henry, for jumping on this episode of Market Thomas. Guys and Shawn, thank you for having, it was a pleasure, the professor, professor of Prospecting, stop on by the studio.
Henry Wojdyla (18:03):
I’m glad we could. So it’s good to see everybody, Shawn and Snake to make your acquaintance been a fan of yours on LinkedIn for a while, so it’s nice to thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely.
Corey Frank (18:12):
That’s beautiful,
Chris Beall (18:12):
Guys. That was really cool. I love it
Corey Frank (18:16):
So far. Chris Beal from Connected Cell. This is Corey Frank. Until next time.
