Speaking and Communicating Podcast

At the time, it was probably, you know, a newer product, so it didn't have that built up trust over time. So therefore, it would need to prove its value far more than a well-known and trusted brand.

And it sounds like with $400, that was communicating something they didn't intend.

Welcome back to The Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with today's guest, who is, wait for it, a biologist. Dr. Chris Gray coming from my favorite city, Chicago, is an influence customer behavior expert.

He helps us to be able to sell without feeling gross, which I know a lot of us have a challenge with that. And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show. Hi, Chris.

Hi Roberta.

Thank you so much for having me on today. I'm excited for our conversation.

Thank you for being here. It's my pleasure. Welcome.

I'm looking forward to it as well. But before we get started, please introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure.

My name is Chris Gray.

My company is The Biologist. I've been a consumer psychologist for 30 years. Basically, the story in a very short form is I realized just before I finished my doctorate in clinical psychology, that I didn't love being a therapist.

So I needed to find some other outlets for my love of psychology, because I realized it wasn't psychology that I wasn't thrilled with. It was really the illness side of it. What I'm more interested in is how do people make decisions?

How do they think? How do they form perspectives on their lives? How do they use their cognitive abilities to shape their lives?

I led my first focus group many years ago, and I fell in love with that process. That was my entryway into the business world, and in particular, sales and marketing world. I've also been a qualitative researcher for 30 years as well.

So I am a very curious person.

I ask lots of questions, and I just love being able to parachute into someone's life, and just ask questions, and get to know them, and understand what's going on in their lives, and how do they think, and how do they make decisions.

And that's been the bulk of my work for a long time. And what I do now, I started the bike college about five years ago. I branched out on my own.

And I do speaking engagements, workshops, master classes, and consulting as well.

So you went as far as PhD level to realize, ah, this is not where we're going to go.

Yeah, yes. You know, it's interesting that I was in a clinical program. So it was specifically aimed at training you to be a therapist.

You know, that's the kind of job that if you don't absolutely love it, it's really difficult to do it every day. You know, it is a heavy emotional burden. It is a lot of responsibility.

You really have to love it. And I had this realization that I just didn't love it as much as I thought I would. Fortunately, I found an avenue that I absolutely love.

And as I mentioned earlier, I've been doing this for 30 years and I've never been bored a day in my life. People are endlessly fascinating.

Absolutely a dream, especially when you think about how many people are not particularly excited with the work that they do. So you seem to have found exactly what you're looking for.

Now, when you talk about being curious, which is something we encourage, being curious about why people make the decisions that they do.

When you work with your clients and their businesses in the company and they say, Chris, we are thinking of putting this product out into the market.

How do you then convince that, hey, this is the psychology behind why people are going to buy it or not?

Yeah, it is something that when I work with clients is always kind of the foundation.

Anytime if a client is looking to bring a new product to market, if they're looking to develop a new marketing campaign, if they want to build their audience, I always say the foundation.

When we think about communication or an area that people don't often think about necessarily is curiosity. Curiosity, I think, is the foundation of being effective in communicating. It is the foundation for being effective in sales and marketing.

Frankly, I think it's the foundation of being successful in life.

Absolutely. We do encourage it, especially with leaders. You know, be curious about your team members and why they do what they do so that they become more productive if they know you care, things like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I actually just read a study that leaders that are curious with their teams actually experience an increase in psychological safety, in innovation, in productivity, because people feel safe to explore and try new things.

And if they fail, they know that there's going to be questions, not accusations.

And that really creates an environment where people can thrive and bring forward ideas, maybe ideas that seem a little bit out there at first, but maybe they spark other ideas. And so curiosity can be a way of being very effective at work.

Yes. And now, you started this 30 years ago. What have you noticed have been the shifts in how bio-psychology has transitioned over time?

Well, it's interesting.

I get this question a lot about how does psychology change over time. The thing is that psychology itself is a fairly stable concept. We go deep into why somebody does what they do, why people are making the decisions they do.

We can often get to a place that just gives us timeless truths. So for example, if you think about, okay, why today does a parent go to the grocery store?

They go shopping at the grocery store because they want to feel secure, like their family has what they need to be successful. They want to stock up and make sure they're prepared. They want to have that sense of security and well-being.

And that's why we keep our shelves stocked. That's why we go to the store to restock when we need to. If you think back to like the time of the Romans and Greeks, the reasons that parents went to the market are essentially the same.

Now, the way that we achieve those things has changed radically. Let's talk about shopping, for example. The way that we shop has changed dramatically in the last 20, 30 years, right?

But the reasons we shop are often very similar over time. They're often very stable over time. It's just a matter of how we go about achieving those.

And so, I think when you are grounded in in-depth psychology of your customers, what you're doing is you're developing that foundation of knowledge about them.

That is deep, gets to their motivations, it gets to their needs, their perceptions that will enable you to be very agile when it comes to understanding, okay, why are they doing this? How can we help them do it better?

Because when you know that someone is going to the grocery store because they want to feel secure and stocked up and prepared, well, now you can think about, well, how can my brand or my retailer help them feel better about that and do that more

easily, more effectively, quicker, faster, more enjoyably? And that's where great innovation comes in that really sticks and really is effective with people.

So it sounds like, yes, the psychology is the same more or less, but the methodology is what's different.

The way of going about achieving those needs, those deep psychological needs that we have, those change rapidly. And it's important for us to keep on top of those. But it gives us grounding when we understand the why beneath it.

When you sit with your team and you're coming up with a marketing campaign, I've always wondered because sometimes ads, they really irritate us and we've channels just to avoid them.

Is the ad supposed to make me feel a certain way about the product? Even if I don't think I need it, what is it that in the ad may make me change and think, huh, maybe I should consider it? Is it a feeling thing?

Is it a, I want to be like my name. What is it that in the campaign, you guys target for me to have a certain perception about the ad and the product?

Well, you know, one of the things that's very important is, and this is what I tell my clients, emotional responses are inevitable. We respond to things as human beings. We respond to things with emotion.

In fact, our emotional responses are much, much faster than our sort of logical responses or our rational responses. Those come later. But our emotional responses are almost instantaneous.

So what I tell my clients is, look, your target customers are going to respond with emotion to any kind of communication or message that you put out there. And this applies to all of us. This isn't just a business thing, right?

So even thinking about your personal life, the relationships that you have when you're speaking or communicating with someone, people are going to have an emotional response to what you're saying or what you're communicating.

And what I say to my clients is, you can either be strategic and intentional about that. So be thinking about what is the emotional response we want people to have, that we want our customers to associate with our brand and our products.

And then kind of work backwards and say, okay, if I know that's what we're aiming for, what are the steps that I need to take based on my knowledge of these customers, how that is going to lead them to respond that way.

And so you can either be strategic that way or you can leave it to chance. Whatever response they have is the response they have. That can lead to some serious problems.

You know, history is rife with examples of marketing gone badly because people didn't think it through, right? So I think it's really important to be thinking about what is my end goal here from an emotional, from a feeling standpoint.

How do I want this person to feel? One of the biggest questions I get when I tell people I'm a consumer psychologist, usually goes something like this. Oh, so you trick people into buying things they don't want?

Right?

And I used to hate that question, but now I love it because it gives me an avenue to talk about what I do and what I don't do.

Unfortunately, especially in the last 10 years or so, psychology and marketing has kind of gotten a bad rap. Sometimes that's rightfully so.

I think there are a lot of marketers out there who really don't have the training in psychology or the experience in psychology who think of psychology as a bag of tricks that they can just throw out to get people to buy stuff.

And that is not how I approach my work. In fact, I am very adamant about ethical, effective psychology. The purpose of my entire company is to elevate the role of psychology as a force for good in the business world.

And the way to do that starts with being curious. Because when you're curious, it's that naturally leads us to be more empathetic with people. When we're curious about people, we want to know more about them.

We want to understand their lives. We want to know how they think about things. And that is very powerful in marketing.

Very ethical marketing doesn't use psychology as a bag of tricks. And it's also more effective. Because here's the thing, as marketers, we're sophisticated.

We've got amazing tools. We've got so many things that our fingertips can help us to get people to buy something. And we can use tricks.

That is a strategy people use to get people to buy something once. Once. Here's the thing.

Think about your own experience. When you feel like you've been coerced or tricked into buying something that you really didn't want or there was a pushy salesperson, you don't walk away from that experience feeling good.

And you don't walk away from that experience feeling good about the brand or the retailer or the store, the product, whatever that may be.

When people realize they've been coerced or tricked, the first reaction is usually some kind of frustration, anger, resentment. And when that continues, if a brand gets a reputation for being coercive, that leads to avoidance.

And if you're a brand and your target customers are responding with avoidance, you're in a lot of trouble.

So it is much more effective to use psychology as a way to build relationships, authentic relationships with your customers based on trust, based on authenticity, based on adding value.

Because when you do that, what you're creating as a response are customers who trust you, who love your brand, who will be advocates for your brand, who will come back and buy again from you. Maybe they'll buy more from you.

And that is far more efficient. It's far more effective than always having to find new customers to trick. That is expensive.

We know customer retention or acquisition is very expensive, but having people come back again and again to buy your product because they trust you is much more effective. It's a much better way of thinking about long-term profitability.

Yes, I'm a person who very much wants to be able to sleep at night and look at myself in the mirror in the morning, but that's not my only reasoning.

My other reasoning, and I think in the business world, probably even more important, is that it is simply more effective.

So customer retention, I'm thinking two parts to this. You have a brand like Coca-Cola where, whether they ask Chris to come up with a marketing campaign or not, people are still going to buy it, right?

So it's almost like they don't have to work that hard. And also, you have this loyalty programs. You get points if you keep coming back and buying.

Do people, first with the Coca-Cola example, do they still hire somebody like you? Do they even feel the need to do so? And then with the loyalty programs, are those effective even when people feel like they don't need the product as often?

Good questions.

Well, as a matter of fact, I have worked with Coca-Cola. So I can answer that in the affirmative for sure. And I've worked with many of the big brands.

I've worked with Coca-Cola. I've worked with Pepsi. I've worked with companies like Walmart or the North Face, Adidas.

And these are big brands. People already like these brands. You know, why do they need it?

It's because you have to think about your relationship with your customers is something that is ongoing. Once you start to become complacent, that's when you start to lose opportunities.

And so the work that I do is to help them continuously learn more about their customers. The thing is that customers are always changing. People are always changing.

The situations are always changing. So there's always more to learn. And I think that when you are curious, you're learning.

When you are incurious, you're no longer learning. You know, if you think you know everything already, there's no reason to learn, right? That learning takes effort.

And when you stop learning, you open yourself up to blind spots, to biases, to missed opportunities.

When I work with the larger companies, they are often very interested in learning more about their customers and what they care about and what their needs are and how they can differentiate. For many of these brands, they don't exist in a vacuum.

They have a lot of competitors who would just love to, you know, peel away customers from them.

And so it really does become about not only how do we bring new people in, but how do we serve our customers and provide value in a way that they want to come back again and again. And I think the great brands don't take that for granted.

Again, history is pretty full of examples of companies that have sort of taken their customer base for granted and made some kind of boneheaded decisions that have turned off their customer base. And that's always a recipe for disaster.

And definitely a lesson learned. And speaking of knowing your customers and being curious, I know this because we put from Chicago, Little Caesars. I don't know how often you went to get the pepperoni, but years ago, it was really good.

Somebody, I don't know, decided to change the recipe and the crust is a little different. Which customers did they ask? Because I don't know, it's definitely not us who are big fans of it.

Which customers did they ask and thought, great, this is a great idea. Let's change this because it's not as good.

Did they even get somebody like you to find out from their customer base, if this change is something that is still going to retain us as customers?

Yeah. Well, as a Chicagoan, as you well know, I don't get to Little Caesars very often because we have our own plethora of wonderful pizza choices. But I get the question.

Yeah, it's interesting because I think there's a zillion reasons why companies change their products or, you know, many times those are just financial decisions, you know.

Maybe they decide to use a cheaper ingredient or, you know, try a process that is, they think, more efficient and that ends up hurting their customers. And then it ends up hurting their bottom line.

I can't speak for Little Caesars, but my guess would be that those decisions were made for some other reasons than customer demand and that they had a negative impact on the recipe.

An interesting kind of parallel to that was, I don't know if you remember a few years ago, Domino's came out with an ad where they said, yeah, we know, we screwed up. Our pizza isn't as good as it used to be.

And now we're going about totally retooling the recipe and making sure people love it. And they actually had like, their commercials were amazing. They had like people talking about Domino's in really negative way.

Like their crust tastes like cardboard and their sauce is non-existent and their cheese is bad and everything. And then they said, we get it, we hear you. And I thought this is a great example of a brand developing some awareness, right?

Developing some self-awareness and the ability to say, got it, we hear you.

And that kind of empathy that they're able to kind of set aside, like how dare you say our pizza is bad and say, no, we're listening to our customer here and we're going to make changes to make it better.

And I think that's a really pretty amazing example of a company really deciding to make a change based on the feedback that they were getting based on customers telling them like, this just isn't what we're looking for as it should be.

I mean, at the end of the day, why would I go back if the pizza isn't as good as I know it to be? So, would you like to tell us about the 700 sales and marketing professionals you did an experiment with?

Yes, you know, this honestly was one of the highlights of my career. So, many years ago, I was asked to create some kind of experience, and I had free range.

I was working with a small company, and we had some very important clients coming in, or potential clients coming in, and they had asked us to kind of showcase the importance of understanding your customers, right, and their experience.

And I created basically a role-playing game.

We called it Shopper Passport, and essentially, the client would come in and we would assign them to teams of three or four, small teams, and they would receive a packet of information that was about a target customer.

It included their profile, so it had the shopper's profile. It had their demographics, it had their family situation, it had their likes and dislikes, it had any medical conditions or allergies or things like that that were important to them.

Then, they received a shopping list with about 10 items, and we actually gave them money to go to the store and go shopping. It was kind of so they would have to work together as a team.

So we did that purposely so they would have to talk out loud and talk about and discuss their decisions of which products am I going to buy, and how am I going to spend this money. And we did some really interesting things.

We made sure in one case that the particular profile, she was a single mom, she had two teenage kids, and she did not have enough in her budget to pay for everything on her list.

So they would have to make decisions about where do we make exceptions, what do we buy, what don't we buy, and then they would have to justify that.

So they spent about 30 minutes in the store shopping their list, and then they came back and we had them unpack their shopping bags, and then talk to us and explain why they purchased the items they did, why they made the decisions they did based on

their character. It was always amazing to me, one of the questions that I would always ask, because we'd always make sure there were like two or three items on their list that actually their brand had made, it was their product.

I would always ask by show of hands, how many of you bought either a competitor's product, or a store brand product in a category where you have a product?

And you'd see all these people going like, the purpose was not to shame them, but to understand, okay, well, tell us what happened.

Well, I didn't have enough money to afford our brand, so I had to make a choice that was less expensive, or it didn't meet the needs of my character, so I couldn't justify buying my own product.

And it led to these really rich conversations about the challenges people face in the grocery store. I was so honored to lead these, I've led dozens and dozens of these, because they were very eye-opening for people. People were very touched.

They had big insights and thoughts and ideas about how to rectify these situations, how to help their customers and add value, realizing that if I can't justify buying my own brand, then how do I expect my customer to do that, right?

So typically we would do this with groups of 20 or 30 people.

And then one day, a very large brand said, hey, we're having a sales and marketing conference, and we have four days, and we'd like to give you a full day to lead this Shopper Passport program. And we said, great, great, that sounds really exciting.

How many people? Well, there's going to be about 700 people. You should have seen my eyes just bug out, right?

Like, okay, wow, all right. And then what was great was I was at an agency and I had a great team around me. And without question, everyone was like, let's do it.

You know, let's make this happen. It literally took months of planning. We had 17 different stores.

You know, each team only went to one store, but we had to have a lot of the different stores to go to. We had, I think, like 15 or 20 buses. I think one of the things I'm most proud about is we didn't lose anybody.

You know, party people around, right? We were able to lead this in such a way that they all went shopping. They all completed their shopping experience.

They came back, we had multiple breakout rooms for them to discuss and kind of share their experiences and what they took away from it. It was very successful. It was very eye-opening.

Later when they polled their people that attended, it was considered the number one activity of the entire conference that led to insight and would change the way that they did their jobs. It was a great experience.

It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun. To have that kind of impact where you're really encouraging empathy, and you're really encouraging people to dig deeper into understanding others, is something that I'm very proud of.

The empathy, as you said, they understood why somebody wouldn't buy their product. So they see it through that other person's eyes.

And then that creates opportunities for them to make improvements, to add more value, to make sure that they're communicating with their customers in a way that is is compelling and relevant and meaningful to them.

One of the principles behind that is experience is undeniable. It's one thing to talk about things in theory, as hypotheticals, like, oh, people struggle with this or that.

When you put yourself in that position where you have to make those choices and you have to solve those problems, that's an entirely different experience. You can't deny it any longer. And so that creates more urgency for change.

Right.

I was about to ask you how price affects those decisions, but you did mention it while talking about the experiment. Yeah. Yeah.

Price is always important.

Like price is important because clearly budgets are important. People's financial well-being is important. It's also important because price is very tangible in the moment that you're shopping.

So if one product is a dollar more than another product, and that instantly, it's much more difficult to try to explain value and the benefits of something. Those are more hypothetical until you use them, right?

And so a tangible beats a hypothetical almost every time if you're not strategic about it. Price is very real in the moment. A benefit of a product is not real until you use it.

And so the price becomes very important. Now, that's not to say that people aren't willing to spend more for value. They absolutely are.

But they need to know that this is going to be valuable. This is going to add value to my life. It's going to help me achieve something that I want to achieve.

It's going to help me solve a problem that I need to solve. And when people are clear about that and that you've built a trusting relationship with them as a brand, you have now enabled them to focus on the value versus just the price.

Yes, an example would be a vacuum versus stripping. Because if you strip the dust is in the air, everybody's going to breathe that, whereas a vacuum sucks the dust. So nobody's going to inhale that, even though it costs a hundred times more.

Exactly right.

I had a project once it was, and I won't name the brand per se, but it was for a quick cleaning mop, right?

It had initially sold very well, but then sales started to really level off and start to drop a little bit, and they couldn't understand why that was. People liked the product.

You know, when people actually used it, they loved it, but they were having trouble selling it. And so we said, well, let's take a look at a number of things. Well, one of the things that we looked at was how it's being presented in the store, right?

When people have to make that decision. At the time, this product was just came in like boxes. It was just a box.

It was like a mop in a box. There are very few opportunities for a shopper to understand the product, to see it in action, to know that this is actually going to work.

And one of the things we found was that when it comes to cleaning products, people don't have a lot of time. They don't have time to do things over, you know, something that's supposed to be a shortcut.

I don't know, you know, what if it doesn't work as well? Then I'm going to have to go and do it again, you know, all those things. And none of that was really being addressed by this box, right?

So we actually advised them to redo their packaging, put the mops out, assembled and out so that people could see what they look like. And they could see the different heads that go on them and what they're for, and they could touch and feel them.

We even created a demonstration place where they could use the mop and on the floor. And that rectified the situation.

When people were able to see the proof points that this is going to add value, this is going to work, it's going to make my life easier, and not more difficult, that had a dramatic impact on sales and people's willingness to buy.

Just the packaging changed the game.

Yeah, just the way it was presented, they didn't change the product at all.

Wow. I don't know if you know the story of Peloton, the exercise bike, and you can correct me on this. I think it started at $400, and it wasn't selling that much, but when they raised it to $1500, suddenly it sold.

Do we sometimes, as buyers, have this idea that if something is more expensive, it's better quality?

We do in certain circumstances. Now, this is an example of where context is everything, right? So context really shapes our understanding of the world.

There are certain categories of product where if it's too inexpensive, we start to question it, right?

And so I think in that case, that's probably part of what was happening, was people started to question, is this really going to work because it's very inexpensive, or $400 isn't very inexpensive, but in that market, that's fairly inexpensive.

So then instantly, people are going to go to, well, what's missing, what's wrong, what am I not going to get here? And that skepticism can really have an impact.

So I think whether you're $400 or $1,500, if you communicate and prove the value, and you are considered a trustworthy brand, they will focus more on the value than on the price.

But anytime that those things are uncertain, people will go to price because it is tangible. It's not a hypothetical. It's right there, here's the price.

This is what I have to give up to get this thing.

So it means they were comparing the potential value it could give them versus the other exercise bicycles that were already in existence in the market.

And looking at their price range and thinking, okay, if it's more than a thousand dollars, this is the kind of value that I get out of this. Why is this much lower than a thousand? That means there's some stuff here that I'm not going to get.

Is that how they-

It tends to be the thinking. There are a lot of different cases where that may be different. But I think in this case, that was probably part of the issue was that Peloton was a fairly new brand at the time.

So it wasn't, as we know it now, we know what Peloton is, we know how it works, we know the value of it. At the time, it was probably a newer product. So it didn't have that built up trust over time.

So therefore, it would need to prove its value far more than a well-known and trusted brand. And it sounds like with $400, that was communicating something they didn't intend.

Yeah. Any last words of wisdom, Chris? If a business wants to be curious and communicate a message that shows that they really understand their customers and they don't want to sound gross in their sales pitch, what would you say to them?

To me, I think curiosity leads to empathy.

And I think that is the key.

Because when you're empathetic, what you're doing is you're setting aside your own perspectives, your own goals, your own biases, any of those things, you're able to set those aside and look at this person through fresh eyes and actually see and

understand the experience from their perspective. I think a big mistake that many of us make, and I make it in certain situations, whether you're a brand, a person, a product, a retailer, a business, what have you, is we assume people think like us.

If I like this, they're going to like it. But most of the time, that's not the case, because most of the time, our customer base, or our audience, or whomever, isn't exactly like us.

So they may have different needs, different perspectives, different interests. And the more empathetic you can be, the more you can start to understand what they care about.

And that's key, because relevance is the golden ticket when it comes to communicating. When you communicate to someone in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them, you get their ears, and you get their minds, and you get their hearts.

And so when you practice empathy and you show, one of the things I learned from being a therapist was, it's not enough to be a good listener, to be a good listener. You have to demonstrate that you are a good listener.

And you do that by the way that you respond, by the questions you ask, by the way you reflect back what you heard.

So, active listening, making sure that you are hearing them correctly, you are understanding their perspective before you go forth and innovate or create communications.

And those types of things, that's what demonstrates that empathy and that sense of, oh, they really get me. And we are drawn to people, brands, products that get us. It's very important.

We are attracted to that. We feel more trust when someone shows that they get us, and they understand or are willing to understand our situation.

And so we think, and speaking to anyone who's interested in influencing customer behavior without feeling gross about it, curiosity and empathy are your foundations.

Curiosity and empathy are your foundations. Words of wisdom from Dr. Chris Gray, the biologist who helps us to sell without feeling gross.

Thank you very much for this very educational conversation.

Well, thank you. I've enjoyed it very much. And if anyone wants to learn more, they can go to my website and check me out, thebicologist.com.

It's B-U-Y-C-O-L-O-G-I-S-T. You can learn about me and my offerings and what I do, as well as I have a monthly newsletter that dives into a certain topic within consumer psychology once per month. So you'll only hear from me once per month.

I won't send you any spammy stuff. It will be a deep dive and it's really designed to give my audience an unfair advantage when it comes to sales and marketing.

And we love unfair advantage.

Right. We all do.

Thank you so much, Chris. thebicologist.com for all the resources that Dr. Chris Gray is offering when it comes to this topic.

We appreciate you being here today.

I appreciate you, Roberta. Thank you so much.

My absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us on The Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

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