AI-Powered Seller
Forget the theory. This is where real-world applications of AI in sales take center stage.
Join AI and sales expert Jake, as he delivers cutting-edge insights into the future of sales - powered by AI.
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AI-Powered Seller
Breaking the Pattern: Why 90% of Sales Messages Fail
Chris reveals why your sales outreach isn't getting results: the shocking truth is that the bar for effective sales communication has never been lower. While most sellers obsess over volume and automation, they're missing what truly captures attention: pattern disruption.
Studying the world's most persuasive communicators led Chris to develop "eloquence formulas" – strategic combinations of literary devices that make your messages impossible to ignore. Your brain filters out 90% of the patterns it encounters daily, which explains why most sales messages go unnoticed. The key to breaking through isn't just being different – it's being eloquently different.
Dive into powerful rhetorical devices like anaphora (repeating words at successive beginnings), sententia (universal truths), and the rule of three that have influenced audiences throughout history. These aren't just academic concepts; they're practical tools that transform forgettable outreach into compelling communication. Watch as Chris demonstrates how to turn a generic email into three distinctive, high-impact messages using his formula approach.
The conversation also explores how to leverage AI tools effectively by creating custom projects loaded with buyer persona details and prompting for specific literary frameworks. Unlike basic AI users who simply ask for generic outputs, sophisticated communicators push these tools to explore thousands of rhetorical devices and test combinations for maximum impact.
What separates mediocre sellers from exceptional ones isn't just persistence – it's having a bold point of view. Too many sales professionals hide behind permission-based language instead of confidently presenting insights and solutions. Ready to elevate your sales communication? Start breaking patterns, embrace eloquence, and watch your response rates soar.
People ask me like well, jake, you know our outbound or something isn't working. And I'm like the bar is so low today, like people are just, like we're so obsessed with like volume, and so it's like we want to look for these very simple, easy mass volume things. And it's not that you can't do some amount of pattern disruption, like at scale to say, but I just feel like the bar is so low right now.
Speaker 2:And it's like if you trust her a little different.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like if you can actually just show like you did a little research or again some type of a video or something, it's like you know, send a voice note on LinkedIn or something right now for anybody listening. If you're like a top two or 3%, you're like I'm just going to do pattern, disrupt stuff.
Speaker 2:There's two different types of people who use AI. There's the people who open it up and use it to get answers to things and maybe craft tons of cold sales emails, whatever. And then there's the people that build custom projects and load it up with a bunch of knowledge about who the target audience is and the problems they're solving for them, the problems they're facing. Who they are as a person. Maybe you know are they a dad? Are they not a dad? Like who is your target audience as the most important thing, and creating sales messages with GPT, having all that information in a custom project and then repeating in your prompts.
Speaker 2:Leverage, like specific documents in the project. Knowledge, because it helps to have a project knowledge, but getting really good at prompting and making sure that it's using specific documents that you want it to in the project knowledge is really, really important to get the right output. Ask Claude and GPT what are some great literary devices, rhetorical devices and storytelling frameworks that I can use to speak to this audience. It'll give you a list and the thing is, what I found, especially with these literary frameworks, is GPT and Claude. They only go as deep as you go.
Speaker 1:AI-powered seller. All right, chris, welcome to the show man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, Jake. Super excited to be here.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, this should be fun. Chris has this eloquence formula detail that we're going to dive into. And look, you've studied the communication and language patterns right of a lot of you know what people would consider some of the most effective communicators, right, people are able to get their persuasive communicators. Tell me you know, in particular, like what were some of like the common themes and particularly for all my sales, you know people out there what are some of like the big takeaways when it comes to sales outreach today and you know ways that people can utilize what you've learned in outreach and sales in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, when it comes to, uh, sales and using the art of language, you know I've read over a dozen books on communication and language and, hands down, you know the people who change the world, who make an impact. Those are primarily throughout history, what you have recorded are usually presidents, world leaders and people like that are usually presidents, world leaders and people like that, and so a lot of these books that I've gone over really dive into the psychology of why what they said worked. Because, for example, you know, when we had to go into World War, two people had to be very persuasive as to why we had to join it. Obviously, there was a US ship that was attacked and shouldn't have been.
Speaker 2:But no matter what goes on in the world, people react in different ways and a leader always emerges and says something that persuades people and gets them on board with what their ultimate goal is. When you think about sales, your ultimate goal is more than likely, building a relationship, but also conversion. By doing so, providing value. The biggest theme that I've seen recurring throughout history and there's a lot about proven psychology around this is pattern interruption. So every single day, your brain is filtering through everything it sees, whether you're driving down the road and looking at billboards, listening to a podcast, whatever it is, your brain ignores 90% of the patterns that it sees Right, it's just filtering through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and say, for example, there was one day I was it was funny I was back from vacation looking through my emails and I said, how did I just get 500 unread emails? This is insanity. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to run through this for an hour and just delete everything, right, basically, but I do need to make sure that I don't miss anything important. And that's when I was like, okay, well, well, this is also pattern recognition. How good am I at recognizing cold outreach emails, deleting them versus emails that are important?
Speaker 2:And, as a salesperson, that, I feel like, is the most important thing, is if you can break patterns. That's what gets the mind to pay attention. And it could even be starting off an email with a subject line with something different that you don't usually, for example, because ABC, usually sentences don't start with because so anything that you can basically hack. If you want to hack the brain's attention, you have to break a pattern that it's used to right. So back to you know, throughout history it's pattern pattern eruption has always been, uh, a winning formula. But then, on the flip side, there's, for example, the rule of three saying three things successively can be extremely powerful. So there's different patterns that the brain does recognize and responds to.
Speaker 2:But for the most part it's pattern interruption.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, I think it's so applicable today. I feel people ask me, like you know well, Jake, you know our outbound or something isn't working and I'm like the bar is so low today, Like people are just, like we're so obsessed with like volume, and so it's like we want to look for these very simple, easy mass volume things.
Speaker 1:And it's not that you can't do some amount of pattern disruption, like at scale to say, but I just feel like the bar is so low right now and it's like if you just are a little different, you know like it's like like if you can actually just show, like you did a little research or again, some type of video or something, it's like you know, send a voice note on LinkedIn or something Like I just feel that right now, for anybody listening, I really feel like everybody should. If you're a top 2% or 3%, you're like, I'm just going to do pattern disrupt stuff. I'm just going to send a personalized video. I'm going to do this thing I'm going to start a subject line with because, and as a part of this, you develop these eloquence formulas.
Speaker 1:This is a very Chris thing, which is pretty. It's a pretty interesting topic. So why don't you just talk a little bit about, like, where did this come from? Like, so again, so, pattern disruption, you know, is kind of this kind of core theme that you had, you know, took away and I think it's just, I think it's more applicable today than ever. But where did this eloquence formula kind of concept come from? And maybe just explain a little bit about the different, you know, formulas?
Speaker 2:we have to go into each one, but just maybe at a high level yeah, so at a high level, what I've created as eloquence formulas, what they are, are literary devices, also known as rhetorical devices, stacked on top of each other. So, for example, anaphora is a literary device, and when I say stack them, you say, for example, anaphora in the first sentence, followed by a euphemism in the second sentence, followed by. So basically, you're stacking different literary devices, and a literary device is basically an English literature method or a way of writing that is proven to persuade, engage and convert.
Speaker 1:Okay, For all that's out there, what is anaphora? I'm sorry I will, as my sales brain break it down for me.
Speaker 2:Funny. You ask Jake Anaphora. It's the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, and what it does is it creates rhythm and reinforces a core message. So an example would be your brain has potential, your brain has power, your brain has a story waiting to be told. So you're beginning each set. They're short sentences. You're beginning each set. They're short sentences, but you're beginning each one with the same word.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right. And there's also like anaphora paradigms, which shows contrast between choices while reinforcing the core value. So it's like we build strategies that grow brands, we build campaigns that inspire loyalty, we build futures for businesses like yours. So it's like slightly different from its Anaphora versus Anaphora paradigm, so you can add different words to, for example, a literary framework and expands its capability even further.
Speaker 1:All right, you've learned something now today An Fora as a part of this, and so so talk a little bit about like how you know cause I want to talk about in the sales process and other areas too. I mean, look you're, you're deep into the. You know kind of this new. You know the new, I'll call it the new SEO, right, which is the. You know how do I show up in LLMs, right, that's like you're kind of jam too, because I want to talk about that.
Speaker 1:You know, if we're talking about like cold outreach, right, and you know getting in front of people, I think it's too, it's you know, it's like you don't want to sound marketing messaging, you know, and I think what you just mentioned, like that I don't see a lot of people doing that for cold outreach. You know that's like boom, boom, boom or doing some type of like relevancy base. So you know what does it look like for cold outreach? So this type of you know kind of using these patterns, using this disrupt, what are the things that if I'm, you know, a seller, I'm listening to this. How can I apply this to kind of cut through right, so, using this, and maybe we can get into some like practical examples as well, too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I use GPT and Cloud a lot for breaking down which rhetorical devices will work best in specific messages. Personalization is extremely important, so understanding who you're speaking to, what problems that you're solving for them, what issues they're currently facing. Timing is extremely relevant as well. So really understanding your target audience, your target customer, and we always you know a lot of people will. There's two different types of people who use AI. There's the people who open it up and use it to get answers to things and maybe craft tons of cold sales emails, whatever. And then there's the people that build custom projects and load it up with a bunch of knowledge about who their target audience is and the problems they're solving for them, the problems they're facing, who they are as a person Maybe are they a dad, are they not a dad? Who is your target audience?
Speaker 2:that is the most important thing and when creating sales messages with GPT, having all that information in a custom project and then repeating in your prompts, leverage specific documents in the project knowledge because, it helps to have a project knowledge, but getting really good at prompting and making sure that it's using specific documents that you want it to in the project knowledge is really, really important to get the right output.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then how do, when you think about so, for those of you who don't know or aren't using projects and we can talk about maybe quickly, you know your take on using like assistance or custom GBTs versus projects, I think there's kind of like use cases for both. You know, I have a project. It's like my personal nutritionist, like health plan doctor, so it's got my blood work, it's got my food allergies, it's got like you know, I'm doing keto, so it's got like all the things. So every day I upload the vitals, it says this this is the kind of day we're going to have, this is the workout. And I think it's the exact same idea where it's like hey, with a project and I was talking to the head of enterprise sales at OpenAI and they do projects on every new account, so like basically, it's like okay, so we're trying to penetrate ABC, so they're uploading the documents, et cetera. They're uploading. You know, here's who we're meeting with, call transcripts, you know all of that. And so for those of you who haven't been using projects, I would highly recommend using projects.
Speaker 1:Claude's also really good projects around, like content writing I've found, in particular, like LinkedIn posts and blog posts and things like that. So if I have a project that's got my buyer persona and I'm a sales rep and again we'll kind of like walk through the sales process, so for cold outreach, how should I think about that? Right? So, using some of these eloquence formulas coupled with okay, I created a project, I've told it, okay, here's my buyer persona. I've said, here's the products that I sell. I'm trying to get a meeting with Chris, right. Then how can I use it? Or how do I think about if I'm somebody who wants to apply this to cold outbound, using some of the eloquence formula structure, to then use the project to generate the right type of messaging?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you're building out these custom projects, the first thing you want to do is ask Claude and GPT. You know what are some great literary devices, rhetorical devices and storytelling frameworks that I can use to speak to this audience? It'll give you a list and the thing is, what I found especially with these literary frameworks is GPT and Claude. They only go as deep as you go. So you'll probably get the 10 most basic rhetorical devices that you probably heard and it'll be like these are great. And then you'll test them and be like what are you even talking about? Right, because the thing is literary devices and rhetorical frameworks. They've been used for thousands throughout centuries, primarily in political speech, writing and poetry, not so much in marketing.
Speaker 2:So that's where you have to kind of dig deeper and say okay, give me a list of 15 that start with A, and then it'll start to pop up with new ones that it never gave you before and you're like, okay, that's good, give me 15 that start with A-N, because there's thousands out there.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting.
Speaker 2:And just asking it for rhetorical devices and storytelling frameworks. Every time it's only going to give you the most basic common ones. That's when you have to start digging deeper and asking more questions and getting a very specific okay, give me more with A, b, now give me some with Z, now give me some with Y, and we have a library of thousands of them, so you can get a ton. And then what you want to do is test a specific one with say okay, now use those 15 that you gave me to rewrite this first sentence of the sales email. And then you can pick out and say, okay, well, that one actually. Wow, that did a really good job. Wow, that rewrote very well. Okay, I'm going to store this one. And then you start building your document on all the ones that you've seen.
Speaker 1:That are winners.
Speaker 2:That are winners correct, and out of the thousands out there, there's probably 500 that I use on a consistent basis. I know it's a lot, but 500 that I love. No matter how I use them, they work wonders. But, like I said before, it also does have to do with who your target audience is, Because you don't want to use a device that's demanding. If you're, say, in healthcare and say it's B2C, You're reaching out to people who need to reschedule an appointment, Well, you don't want to say you know your health is at risk, like right off the bat, that might scare somebody.
Speaker 2:Like sure it can grab their attention, but is that really how you want to speak?
Speaker 1:to somebody.
Speaker 2:It really depends on who your target audience is. When you're testing these different devices, you want to take all your favorites and then start stacking them and say, okay, now give know 20 pairs out of these 200. I just need pair sets of two for two sentences, and so once you start doing that, then you can start building, and an eloquence formula are multiple devices stacked on top of each other, right, so it could be anywhere from two to 20.
Speaker 1:Right, are there go-tos? So you got Anafor. Like what are your two? What have you seen? Like, what are your go-to literatures? Like you know, like are there some?
Speaker 2:I mean there's obviously 15. So semiotic triangulation and Sententia.
Speaker 1:Okay, please. Okay, let's go one by one here. Okay, tell me, semiotic triangulation Is that what we're going? Okay, all right, you guys are going to have to chat to me to do that, yeah, um, and then sententia, and sententia is basically like a universal truth. Okay.
Speaker 2:So, for example, um, I have in my marketing example. Here's the truth Referrals are relationships, seo is relevance, Trust is built at the speed of search. So any of the devices that you stumble upon that have anything to do with truth are always really powerful, because we also, you know, we come across a lot of patterns every day. We also come across a lot of lies every day. Right, yeah, there's a lot of lies in marketing. There's a lot of patterns. Every day, we also come across a lot of lies every day.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of lies in marketing. There's a lot of lies coming from politicians. There's a lot of lies coming from everywhere. So your brain is also wired to see something that stands out when it's truth.
Speaker 1:Or somebody says it with conviction Truth-based conviction, or conviction-based truth where well, they said it with that much confidence. It must be true. The truth-based conviction right or conviction-based truth where well, they said it with that much confidence, like it must be true. Yeah, there's that.
Speaker 2:But in a sales email, obviously you can't hear the way someone's saying it. So that's why sentential is really great, because it's a universal truth, so it's one that you'll see and recognize and say, yes, that's true.
Speaker 1:That's true. You're not going to say no.
Speaker 2:referrals are not relationships, they're cold Like what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is intense.
Speaker 2:But if you want to play with some pattern interruption there, imagine starting an email line with cold referrals, like your brain's going to go what Right? What are you talking about, right?
Speaker 1:I love how your brain you're immediately like, ooh, now I can actually mess with this and like now let me do it like cold referrals as a part of this as well. All right, so those are two of your favorites. This idea of like this universal truth, this kind of pattern create where you're starting with, like you know, every sentence, what are a couple others that you're you know you consistently see, are able to be you know kind of put in different places to generate the outcome you're trying to engineer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So another one is a semantic reframing and CSIS. Uh, if I stumble CSIS on a maton, Okay, all right. A lot of them are going to be like. You're going to read them and be like what, what am I?
Speaker 1:trying to read Well, this is great, I've, I've, seriously. This will probably be the first episode of this podcast where I'm like I have absolutely no clue what this is. The funny part is, maybe just subconsciously for being in sales for 20 years, different techniques and things like you know, unconsciously competent, right of like. Using some of these. I'm like, okay. Universal truth I'm like, okay, I see some of that. All right, so let's talk about these two. So give me these two. What are these?
Speaker 2:Okay, so semantic reframing. I'll give you an example. Right? So this isn't SEO, this is selective visibility, it's strategic discovery, it's patient intent made actionable. You're not just showing up on Google, you're becoming the answer, the destination, the decision. So you see how you're reframing what SEO is, okay, got decision. So you see how you're like reframing what SEO is?
Speaker 1:Okay, got it.
Speaker 2:And tying it into the customer.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then CSIS automaton is basically it's using a set of words to kind of reframe. So the example is so call, call it what you want SEO strategy, patient acquisition. When done right, the result is always the same More of the right patients, fewer empty chairs, no more hoping someone else sends them your way. So at the beginning I started with SEO strategy, patient acquisition. So using a set of three things to define one thing and then saying, when it's done right, the result is another three things.
Speaker 1:Three things. All right, so that's where the three comes in. Yeah, the rule of three. Yeah, interesting. Let's do a real example. Let's take some of this anaphora. I've got to be honest. The other ones are like there's a non in there or something a systemic which is exciting. I'm actually excited to like go like nerd out into this world, but why don't we do a live example? Why don't you take like a generic email? And again, we're. If you're watching or if you're just listening, we'll have it on YouTube where you can see the screen record. But let's just talk through it. So me an example. What's a generic email here?
Speaker 2:All right, so here's a generic email. The subject is reducing friction equals revenue lift. So, hi, jake, retail marketers are under pressure to reduce drop-off at login because every abandoned session has lost revenue. Backmarket used Auth0 to deploy adaptive MFA and unique login across channels and saw a major improvement in signing, completion and return frequency.
Speaker 2:Honestly, you've already lost me, but if you're working on conversion or loyalty metrics this quarter, I'd be happy to share the flow they used. Would that be helpful? Best, chris, all right, now let's take it and I'm going to reframe it with these two devices called problem-centric positioning, plus a barrier busting promise. So the subject is now going from reducing friction equals revenue lift to your login page is hemorrhaging money, hey Jake, every abandoned login cost you $47 in lost lifetime value. Multiply that by your daily sessions. That number just made you uncomfortable. We fixed this in 14 days without touching your existing infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Market went from 34 percent login abandonment to three percent. You can, too, want their exact playbook. And then there's another one. Let's do interrogative, interrogative cascades plus impact projection. Okay, so the subject now is going from reducing friction equals revenue lift to why are 34% of your customers giving up? Hey Jake, how many customers tried logging in yesterday? How many give up? How much revenue vanished in those abandoned sessions? Backmarket asked these same questions. Then they eliminated the friction. Now they capture $2.3 million in previously lost revenue every quarter from one simple change making login invisible. Ready to stop the bleeding?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the interrogation, you're hitting them with the questions and then at the end you know, you're, I guess, like framing it back in a way that's like well, what are you going to say? No, like yeah, I don't want to do it.
Speaker 2:Yep. And then here's one I like a lot. So antithesis is definitely one of my favorite devices, so this one is antithesis plus commitment signals. So the subject is goes, like I said before, from reducing friction equals revenue lift to now bad news about good metrics. That's a pattern. Interrupt right there. Yeah, hey, jake, your marketing team drives traffic, your login page drives them away. One builds, one destroys, and you're paying for both. Back market shows building over bleeding. One decision, unified login. One result 31% more completed sessions. The companies that commit to frictionless experience own the market, the ones that don't become case studies about what not to do. Which story are you going to tell?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I just feel like maybe just salespeople today, man, are scared to be bold you know what I mean or to like have an opinion, like you know, because it's interesting, like a consistent theme in there that I hear is a point of view, right Like, across all of those the email has a point of view on good and bad, right Like, and again I'm not, I'm kind of overgenizing here, but across each of those it's like it's this very permission like well, I've like blah, blah, blah, like I don't want to like have a point of view, etc. And I don't mean, you tell me, is like is that cause that kind of like a common?
Speaker 2:yeah, I get emails that was like, hey, I know you're busy, but oh gosh, that's my worst man, oh yeah when people say that like, like, if someone calls you, you calls me, hey, do you?
Speaker 1:do you have a couple seconds? I answered the phone. Like nobody on the right mind answers an unknown number If I don't have like two minutes, right, you know? And it's like one of my biggest pet peeves. So, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what my takeaway is that like, look, too many sales reps are unconfident in their emails. They don't have a point of view. There's not, you know, I can deliver this outcome or it's not metrics based.
Speaker 1:Like, again, even some of the subject lines. I really liked that second subject line in particular. We found that, like, using percentages and stuff like that, again, you just don't see that, you just don't. And again, like, that's why, going back to the very beginning of the episode, it's like the bar is so low, like again, any of these things, and all of you now are going to go and set up your project, you're all going to drop in your favorite. You know one of Chris's eloquence formulas. You know slash these like new devices that you're learning to do this, chris, this is fun man. You answered a lot of questions. I got schooled in like storytelling Anafora will be the name of this. Maybe it won't be the name of this episode, but I mean, I think what I love too is like it kind of we're bringing back this idea of creativity and, you know, being smart in the way we communicate, and I think that's something that I think anybody could take away from this. So, chris, appreciate you joining me on the show, man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Jake.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks everyone.
