Building Trust, Not Ego: Winning Client Relationships Through Better Questions

let the other person off the hook. They're feeling as emotional in that conversation as you are. So when your son's friend was giving feedback, if he's human, he's gonna know that that feedback wasn't well received when he gave it.

Well, you know, I, I'm really— I'm excited about this book. I'm excited about this topic today because nobody likes to work with jerks. Really, this spans industries, it spans From professional to personal to just about everything that we do and how we show up and how we relate to people. But I'm really curious, you know, can being really good at what you do or being really smart, book smart maybe, can that get in the way of having you win people over? Are we too smart for our own good sometimes, Scott?

Oh, Rachel, what a great question. And yes, being smart is a real enabler, but the process of growing up, going to school, going to college, getting your first job, all of that teaches you to constantly try to prove how smart you are. Like, think back to school, right? Who gets rewarded at school? Think about your experience.

Yeah. The people who, the hand raisers, they have to prove they're the smartest person in the room, make it known, the alpha complex comes out and it's the talkers and the ones that, very good, Jimmy, very good, Joanie, that get the right answer.

That's right. And they don't get rewarded for, in fact, asking a follow-up question or slowing down and listening a little bit harder. And the early part of your career often rewards those go-getters when the job is a little bit less sophisticated. But as your job becomes more sophisticated, as the conversations you have with clients or coworkers or stakeholders become more sophisticated, it's actually not your answering skills that matter. It's your asking skills that matter, which is why the book's called From Asshole to Ally. But the company's called Win the Question. And it's about trying to do a better job on the questioning side of the ledger because you've already been really well trained at answering.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you're not intrigued already, I don't know what's going to do it because I'm hooked. I'm in. Welcome to Lending Leadership, everyone. Scott Armstrong, I'm so happy that you are here with us today and talking about a topic that I really think spans generations. It spans AI. I mean, it's getting back to the core of what we do is, and that's relate to people. And I'm so happy that you brought this up because this is something that we talk about a lot, not just on this podcast. But I always say the person who asks the best questions is the one who controls the conversation.

And how funny is it that so many times when you're in a conversation with someone and you really haven't offered that much about yourself, you're just asking really good questions. The person on the other side often says, wow, thank you. That was such a great conversation. And you're like, I didn't add anything. I just asked really good questions. So true, right?

It is so true and such a big insight. They walk away thinking that you're smarter. They walk away thinking that you're interested in them. And most importantly, they walk away with enhanced trust. And that's why I talk about trust a lot when it comes to question asking. You know, trust is a value. Are you a trustable person?

Are you ethical?

You I can't really change that. But there are also trust skills, the way that people perceive you by the way you have a conversation with them or interact with them. And listening is in fact the best way to use, to execute trust on a practical level, because you're going to learn more if you stay curious. And if you learn more, you're going to understand the person you're talking to better. And if you understand them better and they feel heard, they're going to trust you more.

I love that. Stay curious. It's that childlike faith almost of just staying excited, staying intrigued in that. Stay curious. I love that. So, where did this all come from? How did this— was this birthed out of an experience where you weren't trusted or you did not trust someone? Or are you just a curious person? Take me back to The beginning, how'd this all start?

Yeah, thanks for asking. So the book's called From Asshole to Ally, and I can put on the record I was the asshole and I am the asshole.

No, I don't see that from my initial gut. Well, you must have just really done a lot of introspective work because you don't come across that way at first meeting.

Well, thanks. Well, and it has been a lot of work. I mean, I was never a jerk. But the way that I was behaving at work was what I thought was needed to succeed. And it became the opposite. And I'll be forever grateful to my president at Y&R Chicago. So I'm an ad guy. And advertising folks are often not trusted to start off with.

They're often seen as salespeople selling things that you don't need. David Ogilvy Vee in the '60s started all that off with a book called Confessions of an Advertising Man. And it's not true about the profession or what you need to do. You really need to get to know your clients and their objectives and their strategies really deeply. And you need— you work in really deep partnerships. But the relationships start with the stereotypical advertising pitch. where you think that you're selling advertising to a client. And so that builds a real big stakes Mad Men style culture.

And if you keep this up, no one is going to want to work with you or for you or get anything that you need done, done. And the worst part is she was right. And it, it hit like a knife. No, I literally felt almost slapped by her with that comment in her office. Not because she was wrong, but because she was generous enough to say it out loud to me. And so that started a 30-year journey in how do I go to work differently? How do I show up differently? How do I ultimately build senior relationships and trust? And I'll be forever grateful for that.

Wow. It's those moments that hit you like a freight train where you have a decision to make in that conversation, or you had a decision to make in that conversation where you could have said, Forget you. Oh, look, my husband's bringing me flowers. I'm on a podcast. Thank you. Thank you, sir. See, in that moment, I could have been mad and said, excuse me, I'm in a podcast. But no, you don't do that to someone bringing you flowers.

Flowers.

Thank you. They're my favorite too. But in that moment, you either fire back with some sharp tongue and just defensive attitude or Or you receive it. So she probably had a magical way of delivering that, that hard information, but that also, that made you receive what she was saying.

And it took 10 years before I really had fully received it. It took a little bit more failure. It took losing my job for a year and no one wanting to help me because I hadn't gone along the journey. Yeah.

Isn't that so interesting, right? And here you are, full circle moment, kind of paying it forward. Oh, sometimes we need to learn those hard lessons the very hard way where we can't get out of our own way. And yet here you are. So, you know, I want to back up to something that you said that really struck a chord with me. You said what you thought you needed to succeed, you were acting in a way That you thought was appropriate? You thought that's what a successful person did? And where do you think that came from? Was that really what you thought, or was that something internally that you had constructed? And how has that changed in today's workplace?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think it's a little bit of all of the above. You know, I started out as a small-town kid who had great parents. They really wanted to hear from us around the dinner table and And we lived in an environment of questions and discussion and answers and respect. But then you go to school and you do well at school and then you do well at college and then you do well early on in that job and the imposter starts popping up on your shoulder, right? You don't really know why you're doing well yet. You're not sure when your streak is going to end. And the smarter you are, you mentioned this earlier, the more you suffer from something called the curse of knowledge. Right.

It's directly connected to that curiosity that you talked about earlier. The more you know something, the harder it is to teach it to someone who doesn't know it. The harder it is to get really curious to learn more about it. And the more tempted you are to be helpful. From all the right reasons by sharing your expertise. But when you share your expertise, once you're really smart and know something, you tend to share it in a way that someone who doesn't understand it or know it can really hear it and understand it and internalize it. So whether it is how the financial process or banking process or lending process works, or how the advertising or marketing process works, or, you know, the The number— I run workshops around trust all the time to help people pull their teams forward. And the first thing I need to do is to teach the challenge of what I call self-orientation or being an asshole unconsciously to the people in the room.

And so instead of calling them out, which is a really hard way to teach anyone, I ask them about their doctor, their medical relationships. So I'm going to ask you, tell me about your doctor. Do you like your doctor or do you not like your doctor?

Well, let's see. I don't go to the doctor that often, but it's been the same doctor for a long time. So yeah, I generally like him. Sure.

That's a very interesting off answer because it's actually generally a more polarizing answer. People will either say, I really love my doctor, or actually, I'm pretty frustrated with my doctor.

Oh, okay. I'm the anomaly.

And the— well, maybe let's explore a little bit more. The difference is how much they feel heard when they go in for an appointment. Mm-hmm. And so if you feel like you are prescribed before you're diagnosed, if you feel like your doctor sort of has you into the office, doesn't spend enough time with you, doesn't really hear all of the issues that you're trying to do, says, look, this is probably a general course of antibiotics. Take these pills, go away for a month and come back. You often will say, look, I don't love— I need a doctor. My doctor does a good job, but I don't really have a great relationship with my doctor. But some people will say, I love my doctor because they take the time to sit with me.

They take the time to hear my questions. I feel like they really understand me and my health and my family. And the difference between those 2 professional relationships, one that is, they're both experts. They both know what you likely need. But the approach of one is they, they take the time, they ask the right questions, they listen to learn about you. And they actually help to work on a joint diagnosis with you, builds a lot of trust and relationship in the exact same medical context as a doctor who shows up, gives you 15 minutes, prescribes you pills, leaves again.

That's eye-opening. I really, I like that approach. I like, because sometimes those qualities in ourselves, it's very hard to point out. But when you can, when you can flip the script and have them, you know, everyone's had that experience with a doctor before.

Yep.

I'm, I'm probably the crazy person because I just don't go to the doctor because I just don't trust the medical field in general. So we can psychoanalyze that. But when I do go, I, you know, I value the opinion, but I just don't go that often.

Wow, there's a trust issue that you highlighted right there. And that same professional relationship shows up with your accountant, with your lawyer, with your ad guy, with a consultant, with your banker, with your finance team. It even shows up at home in your personal life as a parent or as a spouse, right? The number one criticism I used to get before I got divorced was I was just terrible at listening. I wanted to jump in and solve the problem as opposed to really sit with the moment. And that's, you know, it doesn't matter where you hear that feedback. I heard it from, from my president in Chicago. Took a lot longer to learn it than it should have. And I wrote the book so that people can learn that faster and even more importantly, help their teams learn it faster.

But in every profession, you suffer from the curse of knowledge because you have professional expertise. And so it means that that unconscious self-orientation is there by default. It's not that you're a bad person. It's just the structure of this, the setting that you're in. So you really need to identify, wow, you know, I have habits that are constantly trying to prove I know the answer. That's That's, and then that prevents the conversation, right? Because you want to be able to ask a question, just like when we talked about your doctor. It's not that you had the right answer or the bad answer. It's that I learned a lot more about you.

Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, it's funny. I was actually just having a conversation with my son on the way to school this morning and, uh, he plays basketball and, um, they, they stayed after him and his friends stayed a little bit later at practice and, um, He was saying that his one friend kept giving him, like, as they were warming up, kept giving him pointers. And I don't think they're gonna listen to this podcast, so it's okay. Like, he's a little bit shorter of a, of a player. You know, they're freshmen in high school, a little bit shorter of a player, like not as, not as strong of a player. You know, my son, my son's a good player. He's not, he's not incredible.

He's a good player. But so his friend was giving him, giving him pointers and, and he was like, I, Thinking to himself, he's like, Mom, I don't know why he was giving me pointers. And I was like, well, take that, store that away. Because a lot of times when we see something in someone else, we want to call it out in them. We want to say, hey, do this. And we think we're being helpful when that other person never asked for advice. They never asked for anything. And I said, you know, take that to heart.

And maybe next time when you're in that situation, don't give someone a pointer. Maybe just give them encouragement. And say like, hey, you got it, keep going. But all of a sudden, when someone who you feel might not be as knowledgeable or skilled in a certain area, when they start giving you advice or pointers or unsolicited advisement of any kind, you're like, I didn't ask for that. Leave me alone. And then all of a sudden, the defenses come up, right?

And those defenses are the barrier to learning at the end of the day. So, you're right. First, give encouragement. Second, be curious. So, when I get feedback now, I slow down and I say, look, the feedback might be right or wrong. But they're clearly seeing something right now that I'm not seeing. And so, let's slow down and think about it. One of the— I have 4 skills that I teach people who have to build trust in personal professional relationships.

And the 4th set of skills I call moments of trust, which is how do you react when you get feedback or input or something goes wrong? It's so hard. Your son's reaction was a bit emotional as well. Like, hey, I wasn't asking for feedback. I don't want the criticism. They don't even know what they're talking about.

Right.

Part of that is your fight and flight reaction showing up. And emotions, think are really powerful ways to understand what's going on in your head and your body. Like, I lean into emotions, but I also know how hard it is to think and react and be curious when you're feeling emotional.

Sure. Sometimes people's faces say it all. And before you say a word, your face has given up how your emotions are going.

That's right. And in my business, it shows up when the client says, I don't like the work. Or, wow, this is expensive.

Yeah.

Or the big one, you're fired.

Well, that's a hard one to hear.

Right. And the way to manage that is to, to stay in trying to win the question. Someone says you're fired, you're not going to convince them on the spot. That you shouldn't be fired. And your mind immediately jumps and races to, how's this going to affect my numbers? How's this going to affect my team? How's this going to affect my family? How's this going to affect my job being fired? Those are huge emotional questions. So, you slow down, you take 6 to 10 seconds, and you just absorb it. And what I teach my teams and people that I work with is to say, let the other person off the hook. They're feeling as emotional in that conversation as you are.

So, when your son's friend was giving feedback, if he's human, he's going to know that that feedback wasn't well received when he gave it. And so, the first reaction is to say, wow, thanks for taking the time to tell me. And you'll start to feel better. They'll start to feel better and say, this is a total surprise for me right now, this feedback. I don't know where it's coming from, or it wasn't expected, or it's not what I thought we would be talking about right now. So help me better understand it, which sounds so simple on the surface, but is so hard to do when you're feeling that emotional reaction.

Sure.

But there's always something to learn, you know? So if you're, and if you react that way, often your client will say, wow, maybe I've made a mistake. This conversation isn't nearly as bad as I expected. I really trust and like this person. And so worst case, you learn more about why you got fired. Best case, you help them question the decision that they've made themselves.

So reaching for that tool of taking a beat and saying, Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me that. That can probably apply to just about any situation. It can apply to the situations that you just exemplified there. And then do you advise to just be quiet then? Or are you just listening? Or are you giving more context?

One of the most powerful tactics is called awkward silence. You're a master, right? If you stay quiet, the person that you're chatting with will leap in to fill the silence so often. And they'll tell you a little bit more, often more than they intended to tell you when they wrote the script in their mind originally. And you want to use body language to let them know that, you know, you're receptive, that you're still listening, that you're engaged, but you don't want to rush in and fill that void ever.

That is so hard in our society now. I mean, people, they can't stand an awkward silence. I mean, even I think most of the time people are texting and emailing and it's just this immediate response. But then when actually engaging and people have anxiety around actually having a live conversation or doing something like we're doing right now. So to have that pause, that long pregnant pause where you're like, I should be saying something, your inner monologue starts to take over. But to just be quiet, ooh, that's an art right there.

And it, it layers on top of the thought that conversations, Particularly professional conversations are really hard. They take a lot of thinking and a lot of thinking on the spot. And so when you say something, the first thing I have to do as the person who hears it is to think about what you just told me. And I'll have a first reaction, but I'm still thinking. So you're, you're not only is awkward silence It feels like you should jump into the conversation. But if you're jumping into the conversation and you realize, wow, I just cut that client off. They were going to say something else. The something else they were going to say was the thing that was even more thoughtful than their first reaction.

Hmm. And it's really easy to make it work. Count to 5 when you ask your question, and then they do their answer and they've finished their answer. Go. 1, in your mind quietly. 2, 3, 4, 5.

Forever.

Smile at them a little bit. And right, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna jump in. You know, think about— so you know lending professionals real well. Right? What the best ones in the industry, what do they do right?

Well, they ask a lot of great questions upfront, that's for sure. You know, they don't just give a blanket, here's how we can fix, because they don't know what the issue is. They don't know if they're buying or selling. They don't know if they need a gift from a family member. They don't know if there's a divorce situation and things are sensitive. So, you can't just come into any new relationship blindly. You have to ask leading questions.

And you have to leave room for the answer. And when you're asking questions, like, for example, the, the, the example you gave, there's a divorce, right? You know, there's a lot of emotion in that conversation. You know, they have the thing they tell the world as their armor. That's their first answer. But you know that there's going to be fears and questions and worries and problems that are listed underneath that, that maybe they're not even telling themselves yet.

Yeah. So giving time for those answers, that's huge. Now, what makes, I mean, yes, being a good listener, but what makes a great question? Is there a formula for devising the greatest question or helps that— or let me rephrase a little bit too, that something that really helps get below the surface so we can get through that armor that you just talked about?

Yeah, there are definitely great questions and I'll share a methodology I use to try to get to a great question. But for almost everyone I work with, they don't have to have the best question to get to the deepest trust-building conversation, to get to the best discovery. They need to leave more room for the person they're talking to to share where they're at and then react with a little bit of empathy, but not a big overreaction. So if someone says to you, look, I need to do this because I'm really, I'm working through a terrible divorce. Instead of reacting with a, oh my God, divorces are the worst. I had my own divorce. It was terrible. It was a long fight.

You know, no, you just say, yeah, that's, that's normal in my business. I understand. I get that it's hard. Tell me more. Which is probably the most powerful follow-up question you can use. Tell me more. And there are dozens of different ways you can say, tell me more. So, it might even be the only question that you use in the conversation.

If you want to get more sophisticated, you can ask them to go up a level. Tell me why. You can ask them to go down a level. Tell me how. You can ask them to go sideways and say, tell me what else. You can ask them to go forward. Tell me what success looks like, what the future looks like. Or you can ask them to go backwards.

Give me a little bit more context about the past. And I think of those as directions that I want to go in the conversation. But the most important learning I've gotten over the last 20 years is that I should not be pushing the direction too hard. I should really be leaving lots of room for the other person to tell me what's most important to them, because that's why they're talking to me in the first place.

That's very helpful to frame a conversation. You know, I really like that, that context of the direction, because I think, you know, if you're someone that has never thought about something like this, Yes. To have some kind of a framework to work within, I, I, that, that conceptually makes a lot of sense to me. Um, I'm a big tell me more, you know, obviously as a podcast host, I'm a big tell me more or, oh, let's go deeper on that. Or, um, but I like some of the other, uh, context clues that you gave there. I think those are, those are something that someone could keep in their tool belt and really fit a lot of different scenarios. That makes sense.

And a lot of— it totally does. And a lot of people feel pressure about asking more than one question in a row as the person asking the questions. You know, we don't want to invade someone's privacy or we don't want to be too pushy. But typically, if you leave lots of room for answers and you're asking follow-up questions based on what your person has just said, the person who's answering the questions loves a guiding follow-up question because they know that they have more to say and their brain's trying to catch up. One of the things I say to senior managers, CEOs, managing partners, when they're evaluating their team in trust conversations, so a sales conversation or a relationship conversation or a moment of trust, count the number of questions they ask before they try to turn it back to themselves or provide a solution. And if it's under 3, you haven't gotten to any more discovery than your competitor did. Wow.

3. So what do you advise to get to?

Until the person who is answering your questions is starting to collaborate with you on a vision of where they want to go or what they need. And I call that process trust framing. So when you're problem solving, framing up the problem is a really important skill. There's a famous Einstein quote. It's probably not real. It said Einstein was asked, if I gave you 60 minutes to save the world, What would you do? And Einstein said, I'd spend 55 minutes trying to figure out what the actual problem was. That from one of the best thinkers in the world, right? So framing up the problem is a really great skill. The challenge with the curse of knowledge and professionals is they've seen so many frames before, it's really easy to jump To the solution, to make too many assumptions in that conversation.

And so trust framing is a much more vulnerable way for a professional to frame up a problem. They'll say, look, we've been talking for a bit. I think what your challenge is, is you're, you're, you're struggling to put the paperwork together to get the financing in place. This is a really important deal or structure or moment for you. And there's a lot riding on it, but you're just not sure what you can do to make the origination happen faster. Did I get that right? I'm sure I haven't gotten all of it right. Help me understand what I'm missing from what you've told me so far. Yeah.

And as soon as your client or the lawyer or accountant, whoever you're dealing with, starts collaborating with you on articulating the problem, A, you are within that trust window. You are learning more about what they need and how they would frame it up as the right solution for them than anyone who's not asking those questions. And you're helping them feel smarter about the situation that they're in without having to tell them anything really, except helping them come to the realization themselves that that's what they need. Do you want to playact this for a little bit? Do you want to do a little role play? Are you brave enough to try this?

Sure.

Okay. So let's do one where I am, and I'm not going to get the lending side of it right. I'm an ad guy. I'll get the trust side of it right. So you be the client and let me be the professional in this situation. Go ahead and explain to me your problem, what you want.

So, hey there, Scott. Get on my phone. Ring, ring. Hey, Scott. So my issue is that I need to, we need to move. We're having a new addition to the family. We need a bigger home. We currently own our home and we want to buy a new house, but we don't want to necessarily sell our—

Yeah, I get that. Sure. Yeah, yeah. That's easy. We can make that happen for you. No problem.

Okay. So we're interested in keeping our existing home as a rental property because it's a townhome, but we We don't know if we have enough in equity to pull out and then put towards a new home. And, you know, we're looking—

I must have done this deal 100 times, and I can get you a really great rate, the best rate in the marketplace.

Okay.

Now let me stop the role play for a second. I want to explain to anyone who's just listening what happened to your body language over the last couple of minutes. How do you feel right now with me jumping in like that?

I mean, I definitely— that was good. That was a really good example. And articulating the way that you did, because I didn't feel heard at all. I was like, well, hold on a minute. I didn't finish. I didn't tell you what the scenario was. And actually, I didn't even really know where I was going to go with the scenario yet, to be honest.

So— Which makes you more like a real client. They don't really know either, right?

So I was kind of like thinking it through. And then, and then when you're like, you know, I was like, well, how do you know? The trust, the trust really just dropped. And you exemplified that perfectly because I was like, well, you don't know what I'm going to say next. So now I'm going to throw you a curveball.

You're, that's right. I want to test you and your body language immediately went both first shocked a little bit. I'm reacting and then I'm leaning in because this is now getting adversarial. It was a perfect example. It's so easy to get into that conversation because I probably do know the right rate and have seen your situation before and have helped hundreds of people in the same way. But until you tell me your story, it's not yet your solution. Let's try it again. Go again.

Should I use the same one or should I trip you up?

Okay. Sure.

Okay. Hi, Scott. I was referred to you by my realtor. She said that you're great and we need to sell our home. We're looking for something a little bit bigger. Our family's expanding and, you know, we're looking to get into a really good school district, but we want to keep our existing townhome as a rental property, but we're actually not sure if we need to do if we can do that. That's ideal. That's a dream situation that we'd like to do.

But we don't know if we have enough equity in the home to pull out to put down for a down payment. So I'd really like to explore some options and look at what that could potentially look like, you know, payment-wise.

Wow, those are great questions. And I'm glad we're in the conversation. Before we even talk about those pieces, tell me a little bit more about Why you want to keep both properties?

Well, in our area, we don't have a ton of rentals. We have a great townhouse that has a really good location. And it's something that we wanted to just keep in the family. You know, we— my mom owned it before us and sold it to us. So we'd really like to keep it in the family if possible. And start, you know, building that wealth from an investment portfolio standpoint.

Smart. And in doing that, what are the things you're worrying about right now? What are the questions that you're carrying?

Well, we're curious about, number one, we want to make sure that we can afford this, that we have enough in equity, like I said, to put towards the other, the new home. And, you know, we don't, we don't want it to be a huge mortgage if we were not putting as much down. So maybe selling would be the right way to go because obviously we would have more of a nest egg to put towards the new home. But like I said, there's sentimental purposes to keeping the home since it was my mom's. So that's kind of what we'd like to discover.

You've got a really unique and interesting situation. And let me just play back to you a little bit of what I heard to make sure I'm understanding it, because you did a real good job of explaining it. But there's some nuances that are very different than everything else that you see normally in the So you've got a property, you want to get a new property, but because it was your mom's, you've got to— there's some emotion and sentimentality connected to the first property. But it sounds like there's also some value creation opportunity that you're exploring. It's not a unique transaction. Sorry, it's not a very typical transaction. It's a pretty unique transaction. So you're not sure if it's smart, how it would come together, and And the question I heard you just say over and over again is whether you would have enough equity or maybe even how much equity will it take to do that.

That's what I've heard so far. I'm not sure I even have it all right yet. Like, what else or what have I missed in the way I framed that up for you?

No, that was a really great way to pull it all together and summarize. Thank you for giving that framework. That's pretty much it. I mean, It really comes down to we definitely need a new home and we need to make sure that payment meets our needs and is not, you know, we're not house poor. But ultimately, we'd like to have an investment property as well.

I love it. I think that's smart. How could I help? And we can end the play acting right there. You are sold.

Yeah, that's great. Wow. Like, such a difference between the two, just jumping on, I felt like, you know, I know we're role-playing here, but right away I was like, I had my guard up because I was like, hold on, you didn't let me finish. But this, it was like, I really felt like I had more time to explain and it wasn't that much longer.

When I run trust skill workshops, training workshops with people, it's amazing. You're right. It's just play acting. It's role-playing. But it is amazing how powerful it is to model the differences in those conversations. That's right. And that conversation reaction that you had, you know, your body language in the first one immediately turned adversarial. We've all been into conversations like that with clients.

We've all gotten ourselves into conversations like that with clients. And often, you'll have a new prospect conversation where they already show show up on the defensive because they've been through one or two conversations before. Your body language in reaction to the second one, you would have told me everything about your life.

Yeah.

Once you realized I understood how important it was for you to both try to keep your mom's house and try to do best by your family by creating value without having to have too much down that's going to be a problem going forward. And as soon as you lean into that conversation of what, what I call trust framing, we're now sitting on the same side of the conversation together as allies.

That was awesome. I mean, that's, that goes back to, you know, the business without the ick selling factor where I feel like the first one, you just wanted to get to the sale. You just wanted to close. You thought you knew what I needed. And it probably goes back to that doctor mentality of like, okay, I've seen this before. Let me just write this script. And you're like, hold on a second. I want to, it's more about the perception of the client, making sure that they, they feel seen and heard.

That's right. This is a valuable set of skills in any sale or relationship building that requires trust. That's based on knowledge instead of something tangible. You know, if you're buying a pumpkin for Halloween, You're not having a big trust conversation. You can see that pumpkin. You've bought a pumpkin before. You know how that works. But if you're doing financing or you're dealing with legal documents or you're doing a transaction, right? We all exist as professionals because that takes knowledge that your client or customer doesn't have and they don't do it all that often.

And so, those trust relationships need trust skills to kind of build them. And there's, there's 4 that I try to— there's 4 that I can teach anybody. I can take anyone on your team so long as they're willing to recognize that they have an unconscious self-orientation problem. So they need to recognize, hey, I could do this better. Then there's 4 skills. The first is called, um, ask, don't answer. So spend more time asking questions than trying to provide an answer immediately to that question. You'll get to the answer, but the better you understand your client's question, the better your answer will be.

The second skill, we played with that just a little bit now in the role play, and it's called listen to learn. Listen to better understand. I know lots about the business that I'm in. I know less about you. And so, when you shared, look, I'm not just looking for a loan. I'm looking to keep the family home, build some equity and value, and minimize its impact on our cash flow right now. I've learned a lot about you that you care about your mom. Right? And you know that I know that.

And then the third one is trust framing. Let's work together to make sure you actually understand the problem that you need to solve. And we didn't get to that in that exercise.

Yeah.

But in anything that you don't know how to do, you get really insecure when someone says, this is the easy way to do it, or I've seen it before, because it's new to you. So you frame it up together. And then when it goes wrong, so the rate comes back wrong, or there's extra conditions, or the deal goes sideways. How you react in that moment of trust is to realize both the client and you are emotional. If you can slow that conversation down and still stay curious and learn more, then the deal, you're going to keep building relationship and trust and possibly save the deal or maybe get the next one or the referral. And all of these skills are margin-building skills for any professional business. So let me, let's just get into the, the, the, CFO side of this conversation. In the last few years, there's a measurement called NPS.

It's a Bain measurement, Net Promoter Score. And it's really a measurement around loyalty in a relationship. And in professional services across the board, it's been dropping over the past couple of years a It's been dropping over the last few decades, but the last 24 months have seen a really significant drop until we're more likely to go to a new professional instead of back to the one that we've used with or spoken with previously. Hmm.

Why do you think that is?

I have no diagnosis at all. You know, we're in an age where trust is a big question for everybody. AI is affecting it. Politics are affecting it. Uncertainty in the world and the economy is affecting it. So trust is a really big question in all conversations. But the effect of that trust conversation, whatever's causing it, is that it is harder to retain business. It is harder to get referrals.

And it's harder to grow revenue. And I call those the 3 Rs of trust. And they're direct outcomes about having yourself or your team do a better job of building trust with your clients. Because if you trust someone, they ask good questions. They listen to me and understand me just like that doctor we love. I'm gonna say to my friend, you really ought to talk with Rachel about this. And so, although trust is an amazing thing from a conversational perspective, you know, you'll be able to measure it within your firm against the 3 Rs, right? Retention, referrals, and revenue growth.

I am taking—

And you'll be nicer. You'll be nice and your job will be more fun and you'll learn more and you stay curious and you'll be really helpful. And you won't feel like you have to sell anybody. You'll feel like you can just say yes and say, okay, if that's your situation, you want to keep your mom's house and you want to build some equity, how can I help you solve that problem? It's so much better than I've got the cheapest rate for you.

Yeah, this is great. I'm taking ferocious notes over here, jotting a million things down. I think as sales professionals, and especially in what we do in the mortgage space, you know, whether we're talking to realtors, whether we're talking to a new buyer, this kind of information is really, really good food for thought. And I think people— anyone can get better at anything, right? Some people may be naturally really gifted in this area, but I think to kind of test themselves and present these kinds of scenarios to their sales teams and It's really interesting. It's fascinating stuff.

I run 2 tools. You tried one. So I run a trust skills quiz where you can evaluate your own reaction. And there's no right, 100% right or 100% wrong in the trust world. But there is a, I'm building trust or I'm eroding trust. And so you can do a little online quiz to do that. And if that's interesting to you, then A, I'll give you a free copy of my book and you should read the book anyways. But the second I do is I built a little AI analysis tool that you can input the transcript from a client conversation and it will evaluate your conversation from a trust-building perspective and give you specific tips about what you or your team members could do to improve the outcomes of the conversations you're having with your clients.

That's pretty cool. What's, um, has there been anything that has been surprising to you that people have uncovered?

So everybody uncovers something with it. The, I think the most The first surprising piece was to make sure that people were feeling comfortable about the confidentiality side of both of those tools.

Right. Okay.

On the first tool, the quiz, it's really easy. There's no form or anything like that. You can just take it. And if you want to ask me for my feedback on your results on that quiz, then we can have a bit of a conversation. And if not, you just get it right there. Nothing's recorded. It disappears forever. On the trust audit, you run it with your own transcript within whatever AI toolset that you're already using.

So if you've got good AI policies within your company and you're using a tool where, you know, privacy and confidentiality is well managed, I never see the results of that test. It only sits within your own systems. What I provide through the kit are the instructions and the best practices and how to apply them to the conversation that's that the tool's going to see within those. So, the first thing that really surprised me was people saying, hey, I don't want to use AI because I'm nervous about the confidentiality. And the answer is, it's not my tool. It's actually just instructions for your tool. And then the second is everybody who takes it says, okay, I want to know more. I can see, I'm recognizing that we have an opportunity.

to build more trust with our clients and our partners or whoever we're working with or our team or whatever situation you're in. And so how do I bring this to my team in a bigger way, which is why I started doing the workshops in the first place. All of this methodology started over the last 20 years as I tried to teach the teams at my firm, Brainwriter, which I still run, to be better trusted partners with their clients. And so we did workshops and like there's been lots of learning and iteration on how to teach these skills and what's most valuable. And now I'm really trying to help the world build a little bit more professional trust and sort of counteract everything else that we're seeing with the erosion of trust.

Well, this has been a very eye-opening conversation and I've been excited to talk with you for quite some time.

Me too.

We'll link everything below. So I double dog dare, if you're listening, you know, to take a stab at this. It's a quick little quiz. It is. It's fascinating. And to see where you fit on the spectrum of ally versus ass. And it's like, well, who do you want to be? Nobody wants to be on the asshole side of things, that's for sure. But if you are, take it with a grain of salt, take it with some grace, Don't react.

Go back to everything that we talked about in this podcast. Reach out to Scott. And Scott, what are some ways that people can get in touch with you? I guess through the website, through the book. Tell me when the book's coming out. Tell me all the things and all the places people can find you.

Yeah, taking this to the world's been a really fun adventure. So people can go to winthequestion.com. You can get a pre-pressed version of the book. You can take the trust skills quiz. There's lots of learning that's right there on the site. I've been wanting to interview professionals about their trust practice and their team's practice. And I've been writing up some blog posts about those conversations. So, you're going to find some content that's relevant.

But if you think you've got some content that you'd like to share or have a longer conversation, I'd love to interview you too. So, that's winthequestion.com. The book comes out later this fall. And the title is From Asshole to Ally. But what it really is, is a guide for smart, ambitious professionals to learn where they're currently losing trust and what they can do to better earn trust. The bad stories are all about me, right? It's my learning over the last 30 years. And hopefully, they're entertaining. I've done some really dumb things.

And I I just stayed true to those stories and then I link it to the learning so that you can shortcut your journey there. I'd love feedback on the book. I've never written a book before. It was a fun project. It only got good once I started telling stories.

Best way to share information.

Yeah. And I learned a lot about myself, but I also really enjoyed reaching back to all of the characters that were in those stories to get their permission to use them within the stories. And that president in Chicago, I phoned her up a couple months ago and I said, hey, Kara, I've got this story. You might not even remember the moment where you pointed out that I was acting like an asshole. And I tell that story in my new books. I wanted to get your permission to tell that story in the new book, but I also wanted to say thank you. And we had so much fun chatting, we could hardly get off the phone after that. And she said, you know, you weren't really an asshole.

You were just acting like an asshole. And I said, your generosity in sharing that direct feedback with me has made a career's worth of difference. And I hope the quiz and the audit and the content, the book, but even straight conversations with me and the ability to run workshops with your team to improve them will help everybody skip through that process so much faster so we can create value for each other and have fun along the way. And Rachel, You're a master at this. I've done lots of podcast interviews. You ask great questions. You leave lots of room for the answer. And you've built trust immediately as we got on the phone.

You played along with the role-playing as a good sport. I've learned a lot in this conversation. You've got me talking more than I like to. I love to ask more questions myself. And so, I just have to give you a compliment.

Thank you.

And probably your listeners a compliment. There's lots to learn on your podcast.

Well, thank you. I receive that and I graciously appreciate that feedback. It's always good to hear. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, don't forget to like and subscribe to Lending Leadership where we bring you great conversations like this. Follow Scott, follow everything that he's doing, go buy the book. And Scott, we're going to have to have a conversation because I think we need to get you at our HMA sales rally coming up. I think you'd be a great, great speaker and something that's a little bit different that everybody needs to hear. So we're gonna keep talking, my friend.

But until next time, thanks everybody.

Thank you.