EP227 Laughter Lost in Translation – Navigating Humor in Global Sales
You know what they say about humor in sales? It’s like playing with fire. You might warm up the room or burn the whole deal down. In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Richard Rabins, Chris Beall, and Corey Frank get into the weeds about using humor across different cultures.
Can you just translate your best one-liners and expect them to land in Japan or Germany? Think again. Richard has some stories about navigating the global sales landscape and is not afraid to admit where he’s crashed and burned. But he also has some serious wisdom about how to build trust with prospects, no matter where they’re from.
Tune in to hear about the importance of noticing the little things, playing the long game, and always, always doing your homework. If you’re in B2B or SaaS sales, this episode is no joke – you’ll come away with some practical tips and insights that just might help you dominate your market. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get into this episode, “Laughter Lost in Translation – Navigating Humor in Global Sales.”
About our Guest:
Richard Rabins focuses on strategy, accelerating global growth and scaling the organization. Richard also served as CEO of SoftQuad International from 1997 to 2001, when it owned Alpha. In addition to his 30 years with the company, Richard played a key role as co-founder, and served as president and chairman of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council), the largest technology trade organization in Massachusetts. Prior to founding Alpha, Richard was a project leader and consultant with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), and a management consultant with Management Decision Systems, Inc. Richard holds a master’s degree in system dynamics from the Sloan School at MIT, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and master’s degree in control engineering from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served on the boards of Silent Systems, Legacy Technology and O3B Networks, and is co-founder of Tubifi www.tubifi.com.
Links from this episode:
The full series with Richard Rabins here.
Richard Rabins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-rabins/
Company website: https://www.alphasoftware.com/
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
[00:43:33] Corey Frank: Well, you had said many, many times that outbound is about playing the [00:43:40] long game. To be good at outbound, it’s about the long game. And I think part and parcel of that, Richard, is what you’re talking about is, if I’m going to be immersed in this craft, in this profession, I’ve got to be an expert noticer of the residue.
[00:43:58] Corey Frank: We always talk about the false [00:44:00] negatives that happen. And the sales that I didn’t get. Not necessarily the sales I did get. What are the nuances of why I didn’t get that sale? All of us, if we had a DeLorean, especially if you’re in our profession. We would immediately make hundreds of stops at all the sales calls [00:44:20] we blew early in our career to right the wrongs, to tweak the pitch that we know now, and Chris, especially you and Richard, that you guys do so effortlessly, I think.
[00:44:33] Corey Frank: And that concept of playing the long game , where your [00:44:40] confidence is. is accelerated by knowing that there’s nobody that’s going to take the hook and take me out of my profession if I don’t want to. I know I’m going to be in chemistry, , the gal, the situation that you had mentioned, Richard.
[00:44:57] Corey Frank: So whether it’s Caltech or [00:45:00] MIT or Scottsdale Community College. I’m going to play the long game and I’m going to do an end around or a flanking. It doesn’t have to be a full frontal fast track to the top.
[00:45:11] Richard Rabins: Yeah. Another thing that Chris said is, it’s kind of off topic, but you can’t tell somebody that you’re smart [00:45:20] and on their side.
[00:45:22] Richard Rabins: That’s not credible. And you’ve got to earn it through your actions. And what I’ve found in life. The minute somebody’s telling me about something and they use the word, trust me, that’s the last person you should trust. Anybody who has to [00:45:40] enunciate that, it’s, it’s, it’s something you’ve got to earn.
[00:45:46] Richard Rabins: You can’t tell somebody to trust you. And I speak from experience. I’ve been, I’m basically, I like people and I like to assume that people are good and [00:46:00] most people are, but not everybody. And just so I think with a lot of prospects for good reason initially, or there’s the barrier and it’s a defensive barrier.
[00:46:14] Richard Rabins: And it’s totally legitimate on their part. The, the art [00:46:20] of penetrating that barrier, it’s not trivial. And the other thing humorous grade and whatever, whatever you’re selling, you’ve got to do your homework, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about, because you’ve got to assume that most people are pretty smart.[00:46:40] [00:46:40] Richard Rabins: I mean, I found that from the days when I, we did market research in my first company and we were sending consumer products typically to young girls like shampoo. But the minute one of the consumer product companies try to pull a fast one [00:47:00] and start making claims that were not accurate or, or the advertising, didn’t treat people with a sense of intelligence.
[00:47:12] Richard Rabins: People are actually smart and people are instinctive. They pick up on BS and, [00:47:20] I mean, that’s got nothing to do with humor. That’s just a general observation, but I guess the lesson is you don’t want to game the system. You’ve got to do the homework. You’ve got to, you’ve got to know about your product, especially if it’s a somewhat technical product.
[00:47:35] Richard Rabins: If you can’t answer some core questions, it’s [00:47:40] you’re not respectful of the other person’s time because they’re not, you’re not able to impart any useful information. And, and so each, if you expect somebody to talk to you again, if they got nothing out of the first call, why on earth would they want to talk to you [00:48:00] again?
[00:48:00] Chris Beall: We just had one of those actually, Helen and I took a meeting. I took a meeting from a cold call on a topic that would have been of interest to both of us, given her business, Pipeline Power and the one that I run, ConnectAndSell. And so we sat next to each other kind of like this. Richard and I are going to [00:48:20] limit how far that goes, but, and and we, we were on with this very, very pleasant young guy who had been a seller for another company that I know.
[00:48:31] Chris Beall: And now, he’s selling for this particular company, telling us some stuff. He knew the answer to exactly zero of the questions that we [00:48:40] asked. He was very pleasant. He was personable. And he said, he’d go find out, but after the fourth, I’ll go find out. It’s I don’t even want to hear from his boss.
[00:48:48] Chris Beall: Because what it’s like, why did you put somebody in the front lines who literally doesn’t know anything except the simplest script about what it is that your product supposedly [00:49:00] does a little less than I could have read on the website in 11 seconds. You have it’s it’s a delicate dance. I mean, getting trust.
[00:49:09] Chris Beall: This whole podcast is about one thing. I’ll just remind everybody, gentle listeners, well, those of you who aren’t so gentle, you can go over there. [00:49:20] Gentle listeners, I’ll remind you, Market Dominance, this podcast is about two things. One, paving your market with trust. Two, harvesting that trust over the 12 quarters that it’s going to take.
[00:49:37] Chris Beall: For everybody in that market to make a [00:49:40] decision about replacing what they do now that you could help them with, with what you could help them with. That is the replacement cycle for everything in B2B is about three years. Some things longer, if you’re selling commercial real estate, or you’re buying office buildings medical office buildings like, Henry does.[00:50:00] [00:50:00] Chris Beall: Anybody who wants to catch those episodes, those are good ones. Then you might have five years, six years, seven years, but it doesn’t get much better than three years. You’ve got to play the long game, not because of some moral reason, it’s because it’s the only game. In the perfect scenario, only one twelfth of your [00:50:20] market is in the market this quarter.
[00:50:21] Chris Beall: In the perfect scenario. That’s with no false negatives. That’s with no blown chances. That’s the perfect scenario. So what are you going to do in the other 11 quarters? Well, you better do something this quarter, which is get somebody to trust you. And then [00:50:40] as Chris Voss said, when I asked him, how long will they trust you?
[00:50:43] Chris Beall: He said forever until you blow it. So don’t blow it. It’s actually, this is pretty simple stuff. So the humor part of it is. It’s somewhere between a technique and bedrock. [00:51:00] That is, if you’re confident enough because you’re studied up enough, and you’re honest enough to tell somebody what’s wrong with your product, which is actually the key to being seen as an expert, is to tell them what circumstance it won’t work for them, honestly.
[00:51:15] Chris Beall: Experts do that. Charlatans don’t. You might notice [00:51:20] charlatans very rarely tell you what’s gonna go bad okay, if you’re studied up enough to do that, and you’re humble enough to recognize that you don’t know all the things even about the application of your own product, you can afford to be funny when it makes sense to be funny.
[00:51:38] Chris Beall: And I [00:51:40] know that’s what? I’m going to study to be funny by learning my product deeply and then getting the confidence to actually be an expert who even tells people what might not go great? Yes, that’s the groundwork of being able to use humor. If you use humor from a surface perspective, as a trick, [00:52:00] as a magic trick, you will be strung up by serious people in your audience.
[00:52:07] Chris Beall: They’re the ones they really care about. They aren’t going to go with it. And so it’s, it’s a delicate thing. I was at General Electric once, when I was called by a very senior person there, who just called me out of the blue and said, it was [00:52:20] Friday. Said, Chris, I’m so and so from General Electric Company.
[00:52:25] Chris Beall: We’ve heard about your product. It was an electronic catalog for parts, like engineering parts. Heard about your product. We want to see it. Please come here Monday and present to us at 11 o’clock. This was at their headquarters [00:52:40] in Connecticut. And send somebody who can speak for your company. That’s a pretty interesting thing to hear, right?
[00:52:47] Chris Beall: We’re a very young company, we don’t have a lot of cash, we have something we’ve just built, how did this guy hear about it? A dumb thing to do would be to say, how did you hear about our product? Smart thing to do, it turned out, was say, yeah, [00:53:00] I’ll be there, right? So now the question is, well, how does a meeting go?
[00:53:04] Chris Beall: And would you dare be funny in a meeting like that? So I walk into the meeting, got my VP of sales with me, I’ve got my, my boss with me. And they go around the table, and these people are deadly serious. It’s boom, boom, [00:53:20] boom. This is the General Electric Company, right? Mouse traps are snappin mice are dyin it’s a, it’s a thing that’s going on, right?
[00:53:28] Chris Beall: And I play right along with a very quick introduction, and then get up to do the presentation on the product. Now, what would have been [00:53:40] normal? What would they have expected that’s not funny? That’s a PowerPoint presentation. So I stood up and I said, Well, I have to confess something that I think is rather sad, and I’m hoping you’ll forgive me.
[00:53:53] Chris Beall: Now, they’re not expecting that, and I said, I’m so incompetent at PowerPoint that it made no [00:54:00] sense for me to come to you with a slide presentation at all, but I did take one of your division’s products, all the parts that I could find, which is about 137, 222 of them, and put them into our parts catalog so we could have a look.
[00:54:17] Chris Beall: Are you interested in seeing that instead of PowerPoint? [00:54:20] Now, that is unexpected, and some of them were uncomfortable, and some of them, but a couple of them it was a little laugh, right? And then we did it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, went through it. It was a 55 minute presentation. It was done in 37 minutes.
[00:54:36] Chris Beall: And I said, well, I have to apologize to you. I don’t have any more material. [00:54:40] That’s it.
[00:54:42] Corey Frank: And
[00:54:42] Chris Beall: then they were like, and we did a deal on the spot, literally did a deal on the spot. It went like this. It was like, okay, which one of your divisions wants to actually take this pilot? Boom. It’s you. Do it. You talk to you.
[00:54:57] Chris Beall: We’re done. Oh, look, we saved 9 minutes. [00:55:00] Meeting’s over. They’re out. Was it humor for the sake of humor? Or was it a trick? No, I was really confident that I’d change the entire world of finding parts. By the way, every time you find one of these parts, it’s worth 50, 000 to the company that finds it, just for finding it, not making a new part number.
[00:55:19] Chris Beall: So I knew what [00:55:20] the value was. But then later, another funny situation, years, two years later, the Corporate Counsel of the General Electric Company calls me and says, Get out here! I’m in Colorado, they’re still in Connecticut. We gotta talk. Now, I wasn’t going to say, Gary, what are we going to talk about? I could tell by his tone of voice, we’re going to talk about something [00:55:40] serious.
[00:55:41] Chris Beall: Hello again, jump in a plane. I go on the inside of the plane, so I don’t really jump on the outside. It’s uncomfortably cold at altitude, and, and, and, and, and, and Windy, Richard pointed out, I take you up to 7, 000 feet inside the plane, more than if you’re 39, 000 like I was yesterday.
[00:55:57] Chris Beall: So go out there. Now, they’re, [00:56:00] it’s the conference room of the General Electric Company. It’s the one right under Jack Welch’s office. It’s huge. It’s imposing. for listening. The table itself made me a little bit uncomfortable. I sat there by myself for 45 minutes. Why? Because they teach that kind of stuff, right?
[00:56:16] Chris Beall: Cool your heels. Fortunately, I can entertain myself in my mind [00:56:20] easily because I do have a condition that needs to be treated. Guy walks in, sits down, starts literally pounding the table. Boom! Boom! Boom! I’m thinking, this table sounds great. I wonder where I can get a table like this. This is really, this is probably worth more than my house.
[00:56:38] Chris Beall: Boom! You [00:56:40] are destroying the General Electric Company. And I said, Well, Gary, certainly there has to be some amount of, and the General Electric Company is worth a lot, right? He just looks at me, billions. There has to be some amount of money you would like to pay me so I would stop [00:57:00] destroying the General Electric Company.
[00:57:02] Chris Beall: And he just sits there for a moment, and finally he cracks up laughing, and it’s Okay, now we can have a real conversation. Now we’re peers. Yeah. So that kind of, I don’t know how you teach that, but sometimes just knowing, and the purpose isn’t to do this and [00:57:20] you’ll win deals. I think
[00:57:22] Corey Frank: it’s those little, you’ve iterated those benign violations.
[00:57:29] Corey Frank: that in this case provokes laughter because it was wrong, right? It could be, it clearly, it would have been unsettling, it was borderline threatening, [00:57:40] right? But it’s also acceptable. I mean, it, this is like tickling or teasing or that, that little mix up or that, that, that funny thing that happens after a joke, right?
[00:57:53] Corey Frank: But it’s also a thin line, right? Cause I think it’s, we all agree that it’s easier to, right? to fail with honor than succeed, [00:58:00] right? And it’s a delicate operation, which you described, both of you, where it’s built on layers of shared knowledge and, and a lot of innuendo. And but you know your crowd, you know your audience, but if you do that, that benign violation, I [00:58:20] think, think, thing works.
[00:58:22] Corey Frank: There is a, there’s a quote I’m trying to dig up here, and I think this is it, it’s from an anthropologist, Edward Hall, who I think came up in one of our episodes a while ago, because he was quoted a lot in Sapiens, and he says, I’m quoting from Edward Hall, the [00:58:40] anthropologist, If you can learn the humor of a people, and really control it.
[00:58:46] Corey Frank: You know that you are also in control of nearly everything else. And we talked about this yesterday when we talked about cultural differences of selling to the [00:59:00] Japanese. Richard, you’ve tried, you’ve sold all the real differences in South Africa, certainly the differences in Europe or, or etc. And but I think what, what Edward Hall was saying is that and even the example you gave of of of the, the English coming in and negotiating [00:59:20] with Gandhi and Nehru, et cetera Richard, is that if I know that this is acceptable in a culture to laugh, poke fun, be nuanced, innuendo about, then I almost have this little unlock code, this cheat code that I’m in the know and that it’s [00:59:40] okay to, to, to, to laugh at.
[00:59:43] Corey Frank: So let’s end with, with your final thoughts on that.
[00:59:49] Richard Rabins: Well I think it’s interesting, the cultural stuff is fascinating. And I think there’s two [01:00:00] opposing themes. One is, I think there’s some core human behavior that just has to belong to all eight billion people. But, I was mentioning last night that, in the English language, [01:00:20] the concept of somebody being responsible for something and potentially being at fault for something is well established.
[01:00:29] Richard Rabins: So if there’s a vase on the table, you knock over, you are at fault and you say to your host, [01:00:40] terribly sorry, I did this. Can I replace it? Or something like that. But you are at fault. In, in the Japanese language, the concept of being at fault like that doesn’t exist. What they would say is the vase fell over.
[01:00:56] Richard Rabins: without any assignment of who was responsible for the [01:01:00] bars falling over. And I think that probably translates into stuff that people find funny. So I guess the point is, if you are going to use humor in a different culture, say and I’d say largely, US, UK, Australia, It’s, it’s more similar [01:01:20] than, than different that’s fine, but if if you’re going to use it, say in Japan or some other place, you really have to do your homework because as you said, there’s some level of risk in, if you use humor, not using humor as a straight path, it’s a low risk path, [01:01:40] using humor is somewhat riskier, but also often necessary if you’re trying to penetrate it’s if, if you’re facing a immovable brick wall, and everything else isn’t working, humor, but, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to do your [01:02:00] homework.
[01:02:00] Richard Rabins: Okay. and understand that it may not always work.
[01:02:05] Chris Beall: Yeah. I got a rule for you. If you’re traveling, I used to do a lot of business in other places, right? India, China, Japan, Europe, all over the place. When you’re in a, in another culture and every company you go [01:02:20] into is actually another culture and you’re going to make fun of something, make sure you’re making fun of yourself.
[01:02:28] Chris Beall: Don’t presume that it’s safe to make fun of anything or any person. other than yourself.
[01:02:36] Corey Frank: Yeah. Other than myself or yourself. Because everywhere I go, I seem to have a [01:02:40] good traction when I make fun of you or you’re talking to myself.
[01:02:44] Chris Beall: Yeah. Well, I mean, this is what it means to be a sidekick. I am your sidekick.
[01:02:48] Chris Beall: You can make fun of me. That’s why the kick part is in there. Otherwise I
[01:02:53] Corey Frank: thought I was the foil. I thought that’s the role that I play. So
[01:02:58] Chris Beall: since we’re confused about [01:03:00] our roles. I really don’t know how we’re going to get through this, but we hope for forgiveness from the audience and from Richard, who has to show up and have a laugh with us.
[01:03:10] Corey Frank: Absolutely. Well, Richard, final thoughts on your inaugural appearance on the Market Dominance, guys, man, the wisdom. [01:03:20] The tips and it’s,
[01:03:23] Richard Rabins: I’ve had a lot of fun just listening to this and, I think if you respect people, you like people, and you wanna engage with people, you’re gonna, you’re gonna [01:03:40] learn something, always gonna learn something.
[01:03:42] Richard Rabins: And I, I, I certainly didn’t come up with this, but whoever came up with that’s why human beings were given. Two ears and one mouth and that’s kind of the, probably the ratio of stuff you really got to listen to and, and everybody’s [01:04:00] interesting, everybody’s got a story.
[01:04:01] Richard Rabins: I, I love, like when I go to a restaurant and one thing that’s interesting, the waiter will come up to you and ask you how you’re doing, et cetera. Invariably I’ll say, I’m doing fine. Thank you. How are you doing? And it’s surprising how many people are taken back [01:04:20] by that because it’s not that common.
[01:04:22] Richard Rabins: And it’s like you, you actually asked me how I’m doing. I’m serving you. It’s yeah, how are you doing? I wanna know how you’re doing. And I’ve had wonderful conversations with them. Waiters in restaurants and stuff like that. And, [01:04:40] everything’s just a learning experience. But it does come, I really like your comment about noticing.
[01:04:47] Richard Rabins: It’s, it’s little details, can make huge differences.
[01:04:57] Corey Frank: Absolutely. Well, that’s, that’s just great. Well, I tell you [01:05:00] what Chris, we, we could have got to get Stephen right on next, I think maybe Conan and Brian, because I really think that It is a secret weapon. As we were talking, the three of us were talking offline yesterday and today, and I think there’s something to deconstruct that and putting folks folks through the [01:05:20] crucible in a safe environment about how to test it.
[01:05:24] Corey Frank: And much like you gave, James Thornburg does it over and over again, till his timing is just impeccable. That’s something I think we should look forward to in future Market Dominance podcasts is this how to leverage humor for for success. [01:05:40] Final thoughts to you, Chris.
[01:05:44] Chris Beall: Well, I just happen to know something about Richard, and he’s not gonna confess it, so I’m just gonna say it, which is, he keeps saying he loves he likes people.
[01:05:52] Chris Beall: Trust me, he likes dogs better.
[01:05:55] Richard Rabins: It’s true. I mean, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll end on, on one thing [01:06:00] is often you say to somebody what, what your end ultimate dream, what do you want to do? And if I could open up a dog shelter, I’d be in in heaven, totally. Really? Yeah. Oh,
[01:06:15] Corey Frank: That’s awesome. That’s great.
[01:06:17] Corey Frank: That’s great. I will look for that. [01:06:20] If you need any volunteers, I think I could be persuaded to do that as well. Well as long as we’re in the subject of sharing, my, my, my future endeavor is to be a short order cook at a truck stop, because I like doing things like that. Chris you’re, you’re next.
[01:06:38] Corey Frank: What’s the what’s the, [01:06:40] what’s the, what’s the dream gig? Dog shelter, short order cook, and
[01:06:45] Chris Beall: Oh, the dream gig is being a pied piper of barefoot running in Quail Creek, Arizona. If I can pull that off, I’m in heaven. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough.
[01:06:56] Corey Frank: Well, okay. Well, this has been a multi faceted, multi topic Market [01:07:00] Dominance Guys episode.
[01:07:02] Corey Frank: So Richard, thank you for your time and for Chris Beall and the rest of the Market Dominance crew behind the scenes. This is Corey Frank. Until next time.
[01:07:11] Richard Rabins: Thanks a lot, Corey.