Why Effective Communication Is the Lifeblood Of Business With Oliver Aust [Episode 159]

Why Effective Communication Is the Lifeblood Of Business With Oliver Aust

Welcome to another episode. I have Mr. Oliver Aust coming to this interview. He is a communications expert. We will talk about communication and why it is so important. How do you communicate with a CEO? If you’re a CEO, how do you communicate with your talent? How do you communicate your message to market? How do you communicate in the middle of a crisis? How do you take communication and sell more? Especially toward the end of what we’re talking about, he gives a formula for creating a message to a market match. 

We talked about one of the key factors. That is you must understand who your right-fit buyer is. If you don’t understand your right fit buyer, we are running a program called CORE. CORE is teaching you how to create your right-fit buyer. What is that ideal client profile? Not only is the profile there, but what does the buyer want, need, fear, and all of the business ROI and the personal ROI about what the buyer is looking for, as well as the influencers. If you’re interested in that, go to www.CEOSalesStrategies.com/CORE. Let’s go talk to Oliver and let’s up your communication skills because you will sell more when you communicate better.

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Oliver, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here. 

Doug, thank you so much for having me.

I’m excited to have you here because the concept of communication is so important in everything, including selling, whether it’s the CEOs or whoever we’re selling to. Why don’t you tell everybody what you do and let’s set the frame for this?

My name is Oliver Aust. I’m based in Berlin, Germany, but I’ve traveled widely. I went to the UK. I went to Brussels. I have been to the US many times also in business. What I do is communication. I help CEOs, founders, and people who aspire to be great communicators in their communication. That is both the interpersonal communication, as well as the communication of their businesses.

I host a relatively popular podcast called Speak Like A CEO. I have written several books about this. The last one is called the Message Machine. The previous one was called Unignorable, about personal branding. To cut a long story short, in the last 25 years, I’ve studied, lived, and breathed the topic of communication, in particular, leadership communication. 

The Lifeblood Of Business

Communication is the lifeblood of a business. A lot of people think it’s marketing but it’s not, because marketing is communication. Let’s say that we want to speak to our customers, investors, and the talent we have, how do we communicate with them? Let’s say we’re the CEO of a company or we’re a leader in a company and we want to convey leadership because in selling, we have to convey leadership in that capacity.

It starts with taking communication extremely seriously. It is still sometimes referred to as a soft skill, which is mad because it is essentially the hard skill of a CEO. As a CEO, what do I do except communicate with my talent, with my team, with customers, with potential investors, and so on? As a CEO, I don’t think about what I should do.

I think about who I need to talk to, to get this fixed or to move this forward. Essentially, you hardly think about yourself anymore. You move others forward. You persuade others to go with you on the journey, whether that’s customers, talents, or investors. Those are usually the three big groups, internal, external, and financial. 

How do I position myself as a leader? First of all, you need to have that clarity of who you are, why you do what you do, and for who you do what you do. Think through what that means for your customers. What does that mean for your internal audiences? What does that potentially mean for your investors? Have that narrative of your own leadership about the company, and communicate that in very clear but also compelling terms ideally as a story and in a way that takes account of the audience.

That’s often where the disconnect happens. Someone in the leadership position talks at people rather than discussing or persuading others. Often the missing part is also not particularly pronounced. Instead of talking to people, we need to listen. We need to take on board what their expectations and interests are to sell and persuade.

Who You Are

There’s so much to unpack on what you said, so I’m going to start unpacking. Who you are, why is that important?

It’s important because you need to have that clarity for others to be clear whether you like it or not. People think in relatively simple terms. I think of Doug as someone I associate with sales, and you think of me as Oliver and associate me with communication. That clarity needs to be there, whether we like it or not. Everything I do is related to communication when I project to the external world, and everything you do is related to sales. 

We both have that clarity in our positioning and that clarity you find in the podcast, the title of your podcast, the title of my podcast, our LinkedIn profiles, our books, and everything we do. That clarity is a big bonus in a world with a short attention span. Others will not stop, pause, and reflect on who you are as a person and how you might be able to help them. It needs to be very obvious. 

I also believe and teach that when we’re selling. Communication is selling in a lot of ways. If people know who we are, there is a certainty in that which breeds trust. It breeds a position that somebody can rely on and build upon because they know who they are. Also, when we know who we are, we don’t take things as personally as we would if we don’t understand who we are. 

In the case of getting an objection in selling, I’ve seen people take it personally versus saying, “There’s a challenge here that this person is uncomfortable with.” It’s not me they’re uncomfortable with per se. It’s the actual challenge, but they’ll say, “No, it’s me.” They don’t know who they are. If it’s coming to them and it is them, then they can handle it differently. I have to ask a ridiculous question. Do CEOs ever get challenged within a company by their investors and their talents?

The answer is sometimes they do and in some companies, they don’t. Some companies don’t have that culture where the leadership is openly challenged or even one-on-one. People just go along. I argue that’s not an ideal company culture. To me, an ideal company culture is a company where everyone can constructively challenge everyone because everyone is focused on the goal. We get to our goal if we are all open and honest with each other. 

That’s what I promote in my company. My team does challenge me. I’m sure it’s the same with you. What does it have to do with sales? Essentially, if the CEO, the chief sales officer, or the chief communication officer does not take feedback on board, it undermines the message because not everything can be solved by one person. We need that outside reflection. 

In terms of communication and positioning, I often liken it to someone being in the bottle. You’re in the bottle and you’re trying to read the label. That is very hard to do. In a way, you need that reflection. I would encourage anyone at any level in any company to be open to feedback and see it as a gift. As you said, do not take it personally because it’s usually not meant in a personal way. It’s made as constructive feedback. I asked for feedback. I’m sure you do and many in your audience do. It’s a great precursor to growth. I cannot grow as a leader or as a CEO if I do not take feedback on board. 

Be open to feedback and see it as a gift. Share on X

That’s a great point. Also, taking into account that the other person validates the other person. I don’t think there’s a human being on this planet who hasn’t violated that rule, including me. When we violate that rule, how do we make it up? How do we balance the energy or the scales so to speak?

Do it better next time. If appropriate, you may even want to say, “I’m sorry, I overstepped, or I got that wrong. That’s on me.” There’s a lot to be said for leaders who are open to admitting their mistakes. That sends a message throughout the organization. It’s very helpful. You’re the role model. As the CEO, the way you communicate sets the tone. 

There is a lot to be said for leaders who are open to admit a mistake. Share on X

When your stated values and company culture are in conflict with what the leadership does and says, people believe what people do and say, not what’s on paper in a company culture memo, for instance. That’s why it’s important that CEOs behave and speak like role models, and set that tone for their company. I even test this in job interviews. 

You probably interview quite a few people to see if they fit the team and they always test this. They always give feedback and push a little, give them a task, let them present something, and call. They’re great communicators, but let’s see how they deal with feedback. Always test that. Push back and say, “Are you sure about this?” Give them something they may take on board. Sometimes they’re good at that and sometimes they’re not so good. 

For me, that’s an important test. For us and the team, having a growth mindset is not negotiable. It’s non-optional. You need to have a growth mindset because what we do and what any CEO does is fast-moving in this day and age. You need people who are open to feedback but also open to change. That requires a growth mindset in my view. 

It’s a human need.

Some people want it. They come to a job interview. They come to meetings because they want to grow. “I’m looking for an environment where I can grow,” and you can see that they’re sincere, and others are maybe saying that they’re not sincere. Those are the best people. Those are the people you want to hire. Those are the people you want to work with, and also as customers. 

When we advise people, CEOs, large organizations, and founders, they need to be open to feedback. They need to be open to me saying as their communications coach, “You do something there that we should look at. Let’s record this and see what you think.” You package it and you’re not too upfront about it, but if they’re not open to feedback and they’re not interested in feedback, then coaching doesn’t have any effect. Communications consulting doesn’t have any effect. For me, it’s important in any working relationship, also with our customers in the sales process so that we can grow together as we are looking for a transformation. 

Constructive Vs. Destructive Feedback

You mentioned the word constructive feedback. There’s constructive and there’s destructive feedback. Do you want to expand upon that a little more? The first time I learned this active constructive or passive constructive versus active destructive and passive destructive, my mind was blown. There was a whole new world that opened up for me in communication. 

We all grow and we go through parts in our life. I realized I was using more destructive patterns in my language patterns than I was using constructive ones. The more constructive feedback I am giving, the better the conversations. If people don’t understand what we’re talking about, I’d like you to explain what the difference is because it was like a whole new world opened up when I got the concept between the two. 

I would separate that into two parts. One is the intention and the other one is the words we use. I would say it’s constructive if my intentions are positive, like if I want to help a person and we have a common goal to reach a certain objective with our company or relationship. That’s constructive in my intention, then there are the words. 

Even if I have those positive intentions, maybe my words aren’t chosen wisely. Maybe I’m on Slack or email and it’s a bit short and coarse. You lose certain emotions when you type something and maybe on the time pressure. Intention is one thing, but you want to make sure that the message mirrors your intention. If you have a constructive and positive intention, and you choose constructive words in a constructive context, like sitting down, looking at someone, listening to someone, that’s very important, and taking the time to have that conversation for feedback, then I would argue it’s constructive feedback, not criticism. 

What’s destructive? First of all, my intention isn’t positive. I want to take someone down. Maybe I see someone as a competitor or I don’t have a positive view of someone. My intention may not be positive. Potentially, my words aren’t positive either. I play the person instead of talking about the argument or talking about the issue at stake. It becomes about the person and it may be accusatory, “You always do this,” or “You never pay attention to this,” or “How could you make this mistake?” It goes downhill from there. It’s not constructive. It will not help the relationship. 

The way I see it in a high-performance team, there should be ongoing coaching in all directions. That one-minute coaching here. That one-minute coaching there. That was a big mental shift for me years ago to move from boss to coach. You need to hire people who thrive in that environment, people who don’t need handholding. For me, that was revelatory. In that environment, feedback is welcome. We are all careful that it is always constructive and is perceived as constructive. 

I love this boss versus coach because I’ve had to make the same transition. For those of you who are tuning in, it doesn’t happen in a second. You’ve got to make some errors. I’ll come back and explain. I made one yesterday. That’s why I asked you that question I asked. I did what you said. We’re speaking with Oliver Aust. Oliver’s company is EOIPSOCommunications.com. How did you come up with the name of that company? 

I’m a bit of a letter nerd. There’s this tale, at least on TikTok, that men like to think about the Roman Empire at least once a day. That’s probably where it came from. I like the ancients. There were a lot of interesting thoughts, also some terrible, but some were interesting. I chose the letter name and I thought it was conducive to our mission. EOIPSO means out of itself. For me, it’s the opposite of bullshit. It means substance. 

That’s why I came up with it. I like it. It works in different languages. It’s probably not something you put on a consumer product, but for communications consultancy and the things we do, it certainly works. Speaking like a CEO goes a little easier off the tongue and is certainly a bit clearer about the mission we have. That’s what we use for the podcast and the newsletter.

It’s easy to remember too. It’s unique. 

It’s a nice alliteration. 

We’re going to go into messaging to market in a moment. I want to come back to what you said, the intention, and then the words. I grew up in an environment in a family where it was top-down communication consistently. To survive in that environment, one had to become very quick-witted. It was about verbally taking somebody to the mat always. As I grew older, it served me in certain situations, but in relationships and other things, even though my intention was good, my wording or the words that I used were off.

I want to bring this forth because I’ve worked with multi-billionaires, and I know you’ve worked with very high-end people as well as far as their net worth and things like that, but even they screw up and I’ve seen it. Yesterday in a meeting, I did the same thing. I reverted back to the quick top-down thing and I did what you said. I apologized because I realized I got triggered. Knowing who we are and constantly working on those triggers are important throughout our lives because we’re just big kids. That’s the way it goes.

Knowing our own triggers is such a game changer and to use that moment after the trigger to pause and reflect is so useful. I would add too that people are different. If you lead a team, you clearly know about the preferred communication style of your members, but also when you talk to customers. 

Some customers give it to me straight. With others, you need a bit more sugar-coating, and others need that small talk at the beginning. Experienced salespeople are very good at detecting how this person takes it. Should I talk about sports first? Should I talk about small talk or do we get straight to it because that person values time? That’s extensive to your private life. You mentioned relationships. We probably all learned a lot from our relationships because that’s where people tend to be very honest and spend a lot of time together. 

You can take feedback on board and you can grow together, whether that’s a spouse, children, or parents, but I can relate. I’ve been on a similar journey where there’s a softened language and I had to learn how to understand the whole spectrum of communication that’s possible. In a way, it is relatively easy to bark orders when you’re in charge, but it doesn’t help you in the long term. 

That is very true. I’ve seen this in action and lived this in action too.

You were in the armed forces, for instance, which is a very top-down environment. Business works differently. Especially with young people now, it doesn’t fly anymore. What we came through twenty years or so ago was slightly different. It was more hierarchical, but today it’s very flat and that’s a good thing. I like it and I like that twenty-somethings give me feedback. That helps me avoid blind spots because we’re dealing with different generations all the time. It helps to have feedback from them.

The fact that you listen to young people now, the young people now are not as money-motivated as our generation was. They’re more impact-driven. That is a great thing. Money is a motivation for some of them but when we’re on one side of the spectrum because we grew up in a certain environment and they’re on another side of the spectrum, that can in itself cause conflict because what I realize as an older guy now is I think an older guy is primary.

You had said earlier that it’s taking into account what they also want as well. We’re dealing with different generations and people right now are having a difficult time hiring. They’re not quite understanding it because a lot of people who are hiring are in the Millennial or the next generation up my generation so to speak. 

Gen X, yeah. 

We must adapt. What I’m hearing throughout our conversation is this is a continuous communication and adaption process. Otherwise, we experience conflict. If we experience conflict, sometimes we even go into crisis. This crisis opens up, and then as a CEO or a leader within a division or manager, or even a father or mother, we’re in the middle of a crisis. How does a CEO handle that and how does that affect sales or revenue growth?

Handling A Crisis

Any crisis has an impact on sales to the detriment of your revenue. That’s the definition of a crisis in a way. It is a situation or event that has a significant negative impact on the business. It’s not a minor issue. It’s not a speeding ticket. It is something very serious and therefore by definition, it impacts sales. What do I do? We need to distinguish between a crisis, something that affects my company or myself, and a time of crisis. COVID was a time of crisis. That means the attention isn’t on you or your business. The attention is everyone for themselves. 

If you’re in a crisis, the attention is on you. Boeing is a good example in the U.S. There’s a lot of attention on Boeing, which has been for some years because there are some safety issues. How do you deal with a crisis as a CEO? First of all, I use this rule of thumb. It’s called the three A’s and the three D’s. You should do the three A’s, and that’s Acknowledge, Apologize, and Act. First of all, you send the message to everyone who’s concerned that you know about what’s going on and you take it seriously and you care. 

It’s important that that’s a message of empathy, not a stiff corporate statement. I need to send the message that I care. The second A is Apologize. An apology does not include an admission of guilt in the legal sense. That’s important to understand because lawyers may tell you otherwise, but we know how to craft apologies that do not admit guilt in the legal sense. If I step on your toe, I want to apologize. It doesn’t mean I agree to charges or liability. I say, “I’m sorry, I stepped on your toe.” That’s a bit similar to the crisis.

Acknowledge, apologize, and then act. People want to know that you take measures to mitigate the crisis and that you want to ensure it never happens again. Let’s say there has been a data breach and your customer’s credit card details have been stolen from your company. In a way, you are the victim, but you’re also under pressure to not become the villain because you’re not handling it well. 

What you want to do is acknowledge it happened, inform the customers, apologize that it happened, and tell them what you’re doing to safeguard the data now and in the future, and what safeguards you put in place so that it will never happen again. That’s the key to managing a crisis at a very high level. 

Secondly, the three Ds are the things you shouldn’t be doing. That’s Deny, Diminish, Deflect. Deny it happened. Diminish is like, “It wasn’t that bad, was it? It’s not a good idea.” Deflect is to say, “It wasn’t my fault. It was someone else’s fault.” These things don’t fly. If you consider that a crisis is a morality tale in the world or an emerging story that people tell themselves, you will see why that cannot work. The bottom line is you have to face the music and do essentially what you would do in private life. Say, “It happened. I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to get this right.”

That’s a great formula that anybody can follow. Here’s the thing. Human beings sometimes are a little fluid. We wave in and out of certain patterns. For the most part, it’s usually consistent. That’s what I found with the repetition. Acknowledge, apologize, and act is easy to remember. If you didn’t write that down, I would because you can use that every time. Every time you screw up with your lady or your significant other, use those three A’s and you’ll be okay. 

It works. 

Do not use the three D’s. Warning. I thought it occurred to me when you were using the second A, apologize. When you step on someone else’s toe, you apologize. What happens when we step on our own toes and we have that inner communication with ourselves? How do we utilize the power of intention or the power of communication with ourselves? I find most people beat themselves up way too much. They are their own inner critic for the most part. If they can have that inner dialogue in a positive way or in an active constructive way versus an active destructive way, wouldn’t that be a much better way to live? 

I agree. If anyone has a silver bullet for that one, that would be awesome. I would be curious to hear that. Self-talk is so important. I think about this a lot because this is often what holds people back. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy to say, “Just change a negative talk to a positive talk.” That doesn’t work for most people because it feels phony. What always works is to put in the work and prepare.

Self-Talk

Let’s say you’re facing a big presentation. You’re on stage and you’re nervous. You’re beating yourself up for not being a better public speaker. The one thing that always works is to be well-prepared because that will help anyone. Beyond that, it is very individual. I think about this as the BMW. It stands for your body, your mind, and your words. You prepare your words. You’re well prepared. You may practice how to cut out filler sounds and filler words. That is totally possible. You can talk about that if you like, but that’s totally possible.

Get the words right and be well prepared. The body and mind are interesting things. Often if we feel off, the body has a physiological reason. With breathing techniques, for instance, we can alleviate that. If we feel less confident, our posture plays a big role. We can feel more confident by improving our posture and pulling our shoulders back. I like to have the warrior pose. You have an open heart, but a straight back. The warrior pose. Superhero pose is well-known as well. These things help. If you understand your body, it helps you to calm your mind. That usually helps you with active self-talk, specifically almost thinking about communication situations. That was the body, the being, the end.

The mind is how you talk to yourself. There are certain things you can do. I like to tell this to myself if I’m nervous. Let’s say I’m speaking at a great podcast like yours, or I’m speaking on stage, or something high stakes is happening. That’s why we do the work. That’s why I put in twenty-odd years of practicing, studying, and understanding this so I can hear and share this with others. I come from a position of value. I’m not here to get. I’m here to give. That helps because once you’re in the spirit of giving, what would you beat yourself up because I’m bringing gifts?

I prepared. I have some interesting things to share. There’s no reason to beat myself up. Maybe it’s for the audience and I thought about the audience, and maybe it’s not but I’m doing my best. There’s no reason to feel bad about this. I will stop with the body. Get your body in order, breathe, be in good shape, and stand straight. With the mind, we’re here to give. We’re not here to get. Everything we do is a bonus. Enjoy the experience. Athletes go to big games and I’m sure they know this and they will tell themselves, “That’s what we’re trained for. That’s what we’re here for. Let’s enjoy this experience,” and then the words. That’s the basic. You need to get those right.

I love BMW. 

That’s easy to remember.

They’re fun to drive too.

That’s good. Good job in engineering. 

I have a theory based on what you were saying and based on everything. On this inner conflict thing or the inner dialogue that we have, we’re trying to serve our own needs that we haven’t come to grips with when we were a child. People sometimes beat themselves up internally because it gives them clarity of certainty or control.

If we’re trying to serve whoever our temple in love was when we were younger, and we had to control it to survive – I grew up in a very witty family, it was very top-down – you had to be certain about your words. We’re trying to serve our needs that we haven’t resolved as when we were trying to survive as a child or whatever might have happened. We all had some type of level of trauma, whether it’s been positive trauma or not. 

That communication with ourselves especially goes back to us trying to serve those needs. I would encourage anybody that if you’re having that talk within yourself and it’s not going in the direction you want it to, ask yourself the question, “What need are you trying to serve at this moment?” The second question would be, “Is this true or are you making it up?” Those two questions will start helping you be able to reframe out, and then use the body. As you said, Oliver, you can change your body positioning and your motion. Get it moving and that will help change the mind state and start breaking some of these patterns. I know it personally because I get into that place where I don’t break the pattern. My words to myself are going to keep coming back. 

That’s interesting what you say. That’s probably something to it. Maybe I would add the idea that “I’m not enough.” That is something that bothers people. How we can reframe this internally is to say, “I’m giving this presentation because I’m the expert and other people put me on the spot to share my views. I am enough. That’s why I’m here. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” That could help as well. I agree that the body is often a good way to calm your mind. Calming your mind with your mind itself is hard. Hence the BMW starts with a B. 

That makes a lot of sense. I heard Oprah Winfrey one time say that in all the interviews she has given to presidents of the United States, presidents of other countries, or whoever they have been, the first question that most of them asked her after the interview was, “How did I do?” It goes back to what you said, “Am I enough?” They want validation. 

It’s so true because when I work with CEOs, they are very self-assured and confident people, but some freeze in front of a camera and they play this weird act. Some will say, “Just act naturally,” and it doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Because it’s an unnatural situation. Admitting to ourselves that being on stage or being in front of a camera or microphone is unnatural. Let’s not pretend it’s natural.

That has helped me and helped me in my coaching. It’s totally fine that you feel weird because it is weird. This is not what we have evolved to be, in front of a camera. It shows that we all have these feelings. There’s a number out there. Studies said that 85% of people feel nervous in public situations, or public speaking makes 85% of people nervous. The other 15% are probably lying to themselves.

It is super common. That’s why we shouldn’t feel bad about it. We should maybe learn some of these tools and tactics that help us, get better with the practice. What does make it more natural for us is practice. If I’m in front of the camera every day, like Oprah and a TV presenter, they don’t feel unnatural anymore in this situation. We can simulate this with practice. Any speaker or any CEO who has been exposed to that kind of public interest will attest that it’s a lot about practice. It’s not about getting feedback from people and then applying that and getting better step by step. 

Steve Jobs is up as well with his first TV interview. You can watch it on YouTube. It’s terrible. He said, “I’m going to be sick. I have to go to the bathroom.” He was the best business communicator of his generation. You see the journey someone like Steve Jobs has taken. That’s the same journey anyone can take with enough time, practice, and energy to become that master communicator. 

Message To Market

Last question. A lot of people have challenges with message-to-market fit. I would attest that they don’t know their right fit buyer in the first place. That’s part of the challenge, but we’re going to communicate a message to our market to have the right market fit. What is some of the advice that you can give as a communications expert for people to do? 

That’s a great observation. We all want more sales. What holds us back? It’s either the product or the service itself. Maybe it’s not good, but often it’s the message. As you said, we’re not reaching the right person with our message, but let’s assume I’m reaching the right person with my message. It can either resonate or it doesn’t resonate. What happens today is that companies are driven by performance marketing. They throw everything at a wall and see what sticks, and then they tune their messages to that. 

I don’t think that’s a good idea because brands and companies become very commoditized. If I only do what people on Instagram or Facebook respond to at this very moment, where’s the identity of my business? I would start with the identity of the business. I would start with the positioning. That’s where the message market fit method starts. What’s the positioning of the company? Before I think about wording, what category am I in? You’re in the CEO, sales, and strategy business. 

That’s probably a subcategory from sales, and then there are different subcategories. You’re very clear about the category you are in. That’s the first step. You answer all these questions. What would people do if we didn’t exist? What alternatives do people have to our business? You answer these questions to help you with your positioning. Only then do you move to the messaging. You don’t skip the first step. That’s a mistake people often make. They go straight to marketing and sales, and they don’t go through positioning and messaging before.

If you go through positioning and messaging and then to marketing and sales, then your marketing and sales give you great feedback for your positioning and for your messaging. It becomes this virtuous circle or what we call the message market fit because things move forward. They were never stagnant. Your messaging has to evolve.

Let’s look at messaging. What can I do to ensure my messaging resonates? I need to go out and talk to people. This is what the great Steve Blank said recently on my podcast, “Entrepreneurs leave the building because the customers aren’t here.” We have to go and test our hypotheses and what we believe our messages are with customers, but not in a completely digitalized way. We should talk to people. Let’s say I have a hypothesis about my messaging, share it with people, and talk to people about what resonates and what doesn’t resonate, but always come from a position of knowing who you are and why you do things. 

You have to have that center or that positioning where that’s not negotiable. “We are that kind of company and we’re not going to change it for a slightly better return on ad spend. This is our core. This is what we believe. This is what we as the founders or the owners of the business value.” Out of that, the messaging will be born. 

It will be successful if you follow this sequence and don’t skip from product to marketing or sales. Let’s say you develop a new product, you have to think about the messaging and the positioning from the beginning, and the product and the positioning and messaging develop in tandem, not one after the other as often happens. That’s a mistake.

Connect With Oliver

Thank you for sharing that. Thanks for being on the show. I’m sure that there are some people right now with their heads down in their hands thinking, “I’ve got to get better as a communicator.” I’m sure that some of them are going, “This reaffirmed some of the things I’m doing correctly.” I know you have a newsletter that you put out. How do people get a hold of you to learn more and connect with you? 

The best place to start is LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. I see my messages personally. If you connect to LinkedIn and follow me on LinkedIn, that would be awesome. From there, explore the newsletter. It’s called Speak Like A CEO. Of course, the podcast is also called Speak Like A CEO, which you can find on the platform on which you’re tuning in to this.

I interviewed many globally leading communications experts, as well as CEOs and people like yourself, Doug, who have interesting ideas and thoughts to share about the whole spectrum of communication from sales and marketing to interpersonal as we touched on here. There’s so much to explore. I would invite everyone to take it very seriously and consider it as the skill you need to have or the skillset you want to have as a leader in any business.

It’s not a soft skill. Those terms were developed by the US military in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the military abandoned them in the ‘80s. Businesses picked up on it. For some reason, we’re still using those in business, which I don’t understand and I don’t think makes a lot of sense. Think about those as people skills. People skills versus technical product skills. Both are important and the leaders of tomorrow who are successful master both. They understand the product and the industry, but they’re also great at communication. 

Cher did a song one time in which she said, “Words are like weapons. They can wound sometimes. They can also heal.” If Cher is saying this, we ought to like it.

I should listen to that. 

The reality is that communication is the lifeblood of selling, whether we’re selling to ourselves or we’re selling to someone else. If you’re going to work with CEOs or sell to CEOs, we better understand that messaging to market fit. As you said, the positioning needs to come. We better be positioned as a person of confidence and a person who can communicate on a CEO level because they have their own language as do all different levels of influencers and decision makers. 

Communication is the lifeblood of selling. Share on X

Communication is the number one thing. If you think about it, it’s the only thing you learned in the beginning as a child. As an infant, you learned to communicate with your caretakers, whether that be mom or dad, and they communicated with you. You were so cute and lovable back then, but then you learned how to speak. Take it to the next level. I would reach out. Speak Like A CEO, that was the podcast, the newsletter, and the LinkedIn address. We’ll place that for people as well here on the show. Oliver, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you very much, Doug. I had a blast and I appreciate it. 

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I have a lot of notes here. I hope you got a lot out of this. I did as well. First question then, if you haven’t figured it out, who are you? If you want to be a communicator and a great communicator, how about figuring out who you are and coming from that position of who you are so people know consistently? You always have those people who are a leader in a company. Today they’re like this and then next week you’re like, “That’s not what I thought that person to be.” 

You have somebody trying to sell to you that’s doing the same thing. What happens? Immediately, trust drops. Immediately, you don’t like that person as much as you did. This goes for business or personal relationships. We’ve all had that happen. Who are you? Go through that exercise and understand who you are. That’s part of the way you can create positioning. 

Constructive versus destructive communication is so important. There’s active constructive, there’s passive constructive, there’s active destructive, and there’s passive destructive. It’s a four-quadrant system. If you don’t know much about it and want to know more about it, then reach out to us at YouMatter@CEOSalesStrategies.com. We can send you a matrix on this. It’s so important to understand because active constructive communication is the best. That’s where you’re actively giving feedback.

One of the things that Oliver said is what is the positioning that they’re looking for. It takes into account the audience you’re speaking to, and what’s important to them. We talked at the beginning of this episode about knowing your ideal client profile, knowing what motivates them, what they want for business return on investment, and a personal return on investment. When you know this, you can actively speak your communication to those challenges or those opportunities that they seek, and you will have much better communication going on.

This works awesome on a personal level as well. Those of you who have significant others or are dating or whatever, use active, constructive communication 80% of the time. Stay out of destructive communication all the time, but you can use some passive constructive communication as well. What’s your intention? That is a huge one. Remember, you can have a great intention, but if your words are not following that intention in an active constructive way, your intention is going to have a blight on it. It’s going to not resonate the way you want.

Have you ever had that conversation where you’re having this communication with somebody and then all of a sudden, you’re getting into a communications loop where you’re asking the question, “What are we actually talking about?” What’s happening is the intention and the words are mismatched. What’s going on is you’re going to have this more of a passive process going on in your communication where you’re not giving clear feedback. What’s happening is you’re saying, “I agree with that,” or things like that. It’s very surface-level communication that’s going on, and then conflict arises.

You’re always going to have conflict but I thought he did a great job on conflict. I thought Oliver did acknowledge, apologize, and act. The three A’s. Stay away from the three D’s, deny, diminish, and deflect. At all costs, stay away from those denied, diminished, and deflected because then you’re going into the destructive communication loop as well. I love BMW, Body, Mind, and Words. Going message to marketing match is extremely important. Understand your positioning before you create your messaging because if you’re violating your own positioning, you will tend to go back into conversations that are not of conversion. 

There’ll be conversations of selling and you’re going to get far more objections coming into you. Communication loops as well as destructive communication patterns will creep in. If you love this exercise, do it, please. If you like this episode, my ask, please go up and give it a review. I’d be very grateful if you do. If somebody thinks they ought to be on the show or have a subject they want to be heard, reach out to us at YouMatter@CEOSalesStrategies.com. 

If you want to know your ideal buyer, you want to know your ideal influencer, and you want to know that ideal market-to-message match that you’re looking for. I will tell you if you’re getting more objections than you want if you’re not closing enough sales, if it’s like you’re getting in front of people and it’s not happening, or if you’re not even getting in front of enough people, but you’re making the effort to do that, I will tell you that likely your messaging is not resonating because you do not know the right fit buyer.

You might think you do, but I have seen this amongst all spectrums of companies, whether they’re very large brand names or they’re new companies or smaller companies as well. If it’s something you’re interested in, go to www.CEOSalesStrategies.com/CORE. Check out what we call CORE and we’ll teach you how to do this. It doesn’t take that long, but once you have that, your messaging works way better than it does today. Till next time, this is Doug C. Brown saying go out and sell something, sell a lot of it.

Play win-win, preferably win-win-win. They win, you win, someone else wins. Help people resolve their problems. Help people undercover what’s going to happen in the future and capitalize on opportunities. That is selling, folks. They reward you by paying you and you reward them by delivering your product or service that helps them move forward in life. Till next time, to your success.

Important links:

• Oliver Aust – LinkedIn
• Speak Like A CEO
• Message Machine
• Unignorable
• www.CEOSalesStrategies.com/CORE
• https://EoIpsocommunications.com
• https://EoIpsocommunications.com/newsletter/
• https://Drive.google.com/file/d/11U5j4op7MZOnFepuFY-zIkIo27yt5unD/view?usp=sharing