Episode 229: Joe Ingram – Unleashing the Power of Edutainment in B2B Sales and Content Creation

Joe Ingram  00:03

Making sales social to me when I listen to it takes me back to the fact that you can’t ask for a commitment you haven’t earned so it’s the courtship. Okay? So it’s literally art. Have you invested anything in the other person before you start that sales conversation or before you ask for them to purchase?

Intro  00:23

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast featuring the Top Voices in Sales, Marketing, and Business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show! 

Bob Woods  00:23

Joe Ingram of Ingram interactive is joining us today in the social sales link virtual studios for this episode of Making Sales Social. Now Joe is a sales genius and he’s got the numbers to back it up. He’s a highly accomplished 30 year sales innovator with over 1.7 billion and yes, that’s with a B billion dollars in sales. He has extensive knowledge in human psychology, which is crazy in my opinion, sorry it’s a bad joke. Communication styles, buying triggers and E-commerce conversations.

And he transformed sales within months, not years. He is the personification also of “edutainment”, and this is something that we’re going to be getting into because he purposely a perfectly and I guess purposely to fuses education with entertainment to ensure maximum absorption and ease of implementation that should be catnip to anyone’s ears who is in social selling. A great quote of his is, “Never be normal, because normal people get normal paychecks.” Exactly. Yes. And could not agree with that more. So let’s go beyond the normal with Joe Ingram. Welcome, Joe.

Joe Ingram  02:02

Thank you, Bob. I’m so grateful to be here truly.

Bob Woods  02:05

I’m so glad to hear that. Let’s have some fun with our first traditional question, which is always what does making sales social mean to you?

Joe Ingram  02:15

So making sales social to me, when I listen to that, it takes me back to the fact that you can’t ask for a commitment you haven’t earned. So it’s the courtship. Okay, so it’s literally art, have you invested anything in the other person before you start that sales conversation or before you ask for them to purchase. And I think as long as you realize social interaction is what’s going to funnel us into whether or not my four steps to the sale are really basic, like listen, believe and buy, and you can’t, you can’t jump past the like part.

If you do, it becomes about price or the fact you’re the only person that has that product, right? And so then you won’t have customer satisfaction, you won’t have the buy in. But to me, if you’re going to sell, it has to be social, it’s typically, even if we go business to business, like a lot of us do. It’s still a person to a person, or now it’s a person to a gatekeeper that’s going to allow you to come in, and then you end up having to do what you have to if a company has more than 100 employees. Now, the minimum people it takes to make a decision on what they do is seven. And so now I gotta win over seven people. 

Bob Woods  03:32

Okay, yeah, you do? You absolutely do.

Joe Ingram  03:36

Yes. And most of the time, you’re not going to be able to be in the room with those seven people. Right? So how do you go about that? And that’s one of the things that to me, again, a presentation that you just email somebody that’s not social. That’s not anything that’s going to get me to go, “Oh, this looks great.” When I put together a presentation and send it, it’s all about numbers. So I’ve always sent presentations as videos. I like to tease the business to business when you go there. I always wonder how many people do they have to show this to before they give you an answer. 

So I’ll put it up on YouTube as an unlisted video. So you have to have the link, right? Yep. And I’m only sending the link to that contact that I have. And so and then I tell them, You know what, you don’t have to present me to the other people. Just give them this. And this will explain my, my actual proposal, go through this stuff. But it allows me to be social, animated, and be the person that they know, that goes, that’s who we want in our company, or they go, “That’s not who we want,” in our case, right?

Bob Woods  04:44

Exactly. Yeah, definitely. So it’s interesting you say that because one thing that we’ve done here, sometimes a social sales link, and I’ve always told myself, I’m going to start doing it again. And you actually reminded me to start doing it when you send over the actual contracts, or at least when we send over the Extra contracts. Also have a video with it explaining what’s in the contract and point out some things that you think that they should know about as well actually in the contract along with, obviously actually sending the contract, whether it’s a PDF or DocuSign, or whatever. 

And then if you’re like us in your LinkedIn geeks if you have Sales Navigator and you have smart links, you put it in a smart link so that you could also see who accesses it within the company who’s, who also has a LinkedIn account, too. But I like, but I like doing the actual earlier step with the presentation when you’re trying to socially surround everyone so that more and more people can actually see the presentation and you’re not waiting on a sales champ within the organization to speak for you.

Joe Ingram  05:45

Yeah, because that’s where it all falls apart. Because I believe Bob, no one’s gonna sell Bob like Bob would sell Bob. no one’s got a belief in you more than you do. And if you don’t have that belief, stop it you’re not selling. And when you look at it, like I sent one to one client, who had seven different companies within the organization, and the contact I’m talking to my champion is they’re going, “It’s all me, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it. I’ll push it through.” 

And I’m like, “I have heard this so many times.” And I get ghosted afterwards, because I’m entrusting my business to that person. So when I do the video, and then I look at it and come back, and I’m like, “It has 12 views, maybe three of them, were that person looking at it going,” You know what, after the third time, they’re like, “I’m just gonna send this out. Send it to everybody else,” I get to sell myself and go out there and make sure that they understand who I am and what my company delivers. So

Bob Woods  06:47

Yep. yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So speaking of presentations, and things like that, it’s the perfect opportunity, I think, to get into the concept of edutainment, because besides everything that we just said, having to do with the specifics of of actual presentations within companies, it’s perfect for social selling, because as social sellers, we use content to build authority, and to start genuine connections and conversations with our audience or prospects while they’re scoping us out as well as what you just said to. 

So I mean, there are all different ways to use edutainment, and they’re scoping us out both as our company and us as salespeople as well. So while I think we all know what edutainment is in general entertainment and education together, let’s bring it down into how we can use it and how you use it. For b2b sales. What is that? Like? Exactly?

Joe Ingram  07:42

So entertainment? First thing I need everybody to understand, because you just said about education and entertainment. It’s not tame and edge you. Right? Yeah. So it’s not and that’s where most people when you sit back and go, Well, come on, make it edutainment. And so I have a friend of mine who is an actor who’s been in Hollywood for 40 plus years. And one day we were doing the show, and then he stopped and said, “I want everybody to understand.” And I hadn’t heard the word before. He said, “Joe is the personification of the word edutainment” because, and I was like, “Okay, and I, as soon as I heard it, I kind of knew what he was talking about.” And he goes to Joe’s gonna have you laughing all the way until you realize you just learned a whole bunch of stuff. 

And so I was like, “Wow, I’m gonna run with that.” And then I started breaking it down, like you were just saying now. But the bottom line is that how can you take the stuffiness out the overall, I’m better than you persona, okay? And that’s where most of the time we break down business to business sales. What am I doing, I’m sitting down going, I am so great. This is going to benefit your company. This is whatever and people, right? I have a lot of friends in the sales industry. And they go, you got to come in and just rock their world, and you got to get in their face, and you got to you know, 10x everything. Yeah, and so yes, I did mention you. So, but when you look at it, I say “That’s not that’s not my approach. My approach is much more casual.” And can you infuse humor into what you’re doing? And that’s where I look into it. 

Because again, everybody thinks edutainment means I gotta have jokes. I gotta have a whole script with me behind me. “So I walked into a bar,” and you’re like, “No, none of that is anything we’re talking about on edutainment,” we’re saying, add fun into what you’re educating them on. And so as we had mentioned before, you and I were talking and I said, I go into companies and I’ll go in and I’ll sit in front of them like I sat in one they had the CEO sit down at the end of the table to say do we want Joe to train all of RCEP. And there’s like one of the largest brokerages out there. And they said, “Do we want 16 executives sitting around the table for me to go in and sit with them.” And I’m like, “Okay, so as I sat down, I went, and they sat me in the middle of one row, and the TV’s on the other end.” 

So it’s not even like the TV’s behind me. So we all have to look. And I was like, “I’m like, hopefully, you know what, guys, I’ll just give you permission to stare at the screen, you don’t have to look at me to actually talk because I don’t want anybody with whiplash going back and forth.” Right? And everybody stops, They giggle a little because they’re like, “Hey, he realized he just called out what is happening in the room.” Okay. And then as I said that the sea goes, “Yeah, that’s kind of lame.” Why can’t we move the stuff over? There I go, next, next presentation, you won’t need to hear them, because I’ll just knock it out of the park right here. But should you ever need it later down the line? It will probably be better at that end, right. 

And so everybody goes, yeah, we’ve and then they all started talking about that. But it doesn’t matter. I just got in on the like thing, because I called out the obvious in front of everybody. So now I just have to make sure I don’t, you know, subtract myself out of the like, right after I get it. And so then I just sit there and start talking to them about what it is. The key thing to get someone to like you is if you can joke with them about their pain. And so when I sit down and look and I say so basically, what, let’s just say “I’m fantastic.” Okay, guys, and I put up a slide on the screen. Because we are fantastic at converting our virtual prospects into sold products and services. And I put it up on the screen. 

So now as soon as it’s up there, and you read it, you had to on your own every listener here had to when I said it had to answer that question. I didn’t say, “Hey, you suck. And you need help.” right. But I said, and I look at the next slide that has answers on it. And I go, so I said, “Just read this, and I’ll pop it up there.” And then I click the page. And as I click it says, “That’s my current situation, right?” I wish it was my current situation, or this doesn’t apply to me. And of course, no one’s gonna say this doesn’t apply to me. That’s what we’re all in the meeting for. “Okay, and so sitting down with him.” So even if I’m doing a phone call with somebody, I will go in on LinkedIn, it’s a fantastic platform for this, and shoot him a video, shoot a video and go, “Hey, we’re gonna be meeting up in a few minutes.” 

Just want to make sure you know that. It’s not just like an old Rylander picture that I have on LinkedIn. This is actually what I kind of look like, kind of thing. But see that right there? Everybody goes, I totally get it. Yeah, and those of us that are older, go bust benches, the person never looked like it. But your website has a picture from 25 years ago, and then you show up and we don’t know who you are. Yeah. And things like that. So those kinds of things are obvious. And they are entertaining to people. Because all entertaining is finding a similarity and highlighting if you find that similarity that you both have experience with that becomes a connection point. Everybody goes, that’s the report. I’m like, “No, that’s entertainment.” Because you stop and go. Ha all of a sudden endorphin hits you just like me. 

That’s great. “Oh, yeah. Which shows do you like the most with the people that are absolutely not like you?” Are the people that remind you of you on the screen? Yep. So that’s what I look at now. I’ll do it. As soon as I put that second slide, as I went to click the second slide, the CEO at the table goes, “Yeah, I wish. That’s why you’re here.” And then when I flipped the page, letter B, option B was what I wished, and I looked at it when I went, it’s almost like I knew, and then he starts laughing. And I said, Now is anybody here daring enough to say that it’s letter A, this is your current situation? Just let y’all know, the CEO just said he wishes you’re gonna have to defend yourself with the CEO, not me, right. And so everybody starts to laugh. 

They’re like, “No, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying it.” But the environment became fun and laughing and became much more casual for us to have conversations. As opposed to if I said, “You guys aren’t doing very well here. That’s why I’m here. This is what I do for you.” And I literally threw the presentation in front of all these executives, “I said, Hey, click, I click the button and go see this one.” This is the page where I tell you how great I am and how great my company does all this stuff. But do we care? I’m already standing here click click click and I went through the three pages so they knew it was there. But I just gave you back time. 

And I poke fun at me by saying “You don’t want to even hear that. You’re judging me already.” And then click through and they were like “You right I am and so it just went through and yes, I landed the account when I was done.” So they said “Okay, good good, everyone.” it would have been a horrible story if I didn’t, yes. We ended up having a two year long relationship. And it was, it was a credit for both. So good.

Bob Woods  15:10

Good for you. So now we’ve kind of established I think like the overall thought process behind edutainment and basically saying that you don’t have to have a Saturday Night Live skit in front of you to do edutainment. Let’s talk a little bit more specifically about content and how you use that more for content. So in other words, not in those individual meetings when you’re trying to grab that audience with your education, and yet you want to put that edutainment spin on it, what are the types of things that you can do there?

Joe Ingram  15:46

So I will tell you that there is not a video that I’ve put out that is perfect. Not to think about it this way, there are people that watch all kinds of comedy shows like the improv shows, what would compel you to watch an improv show, because they’re gonna screw up, because they’re gonna stop, because partway through, they’re gonna go? Well, I thought I had an answer, but I don’t, and then you get to laugh at them, because that’s relatable to you. And how many times have I had an idea that I couldn’t get out of my mouth when I wanted it.

 And so all of those things, where if you put together a video, and you’re gonna say, “I want to get out there and do it, I always make sure there’s some kind of mistake in it, it’s not an intentional one, it means I’m not going back to edit it out.” And so I will put it out there so that everybody sees, because if everything I do is perfect, then all I get is the well, I can’t love, I can’t go to that level, I don’t want somebody who’s perfect, because I’m gonna make mistakes, right, and infotainment. At the same time, when you look at that when I put it in there. 

It’s entertaining for someone to explain a story to you about a problem you’ve had, right? And what we tend to do is go, it’s really difficult trying to get people off LinkedIn and over to your website to submit a form. It’s really difficult to get somebody when you’re on social media to reach out to you and say this. That’s not what I want to hear, right? Because we all go Yeah, we know that. We and go look, one of the biggest problems I had was trying to get somebody to click on that message button. Okay, in LinkedIn, this is what I did. I went in and sat down, because instead of pulling my hair out, go, how stupid can I be on social media, that they would say, “Oh, I want to do this.” 

And then I realized I was really stupid on social media, which means they don’t want to bring me into their company and go through what I did. I put this like you have a great one. But that little video that pops up where your actual profile picture is. Yeah, you hit that and you go, “Hey, Blah,blah  let’s talk about social sales link and you give me an explanation,” that right there something like that would generate me more people because they saw I was a real person and that I was somebody they could relate to. And now that video is entertaining. At the same time. 

It’s giving you an action step and a solution with the frustration. But you can’t go, it’s really frustrating. trying to convert people from Social. Nobody wants to see that. It’s yeah, okay. Yeah. Like, “How many librarians are watching.” Okay, now, I’m an electrical engineer by degree. So I got the nerd part. But guess what, even engineers, we want some kind of entertainment and, you know, emotion that’s involved.

Bob Woods  18:30

Right? Yeah. So I need to, like break the train of thought just for a second, because if I don’t mention this, I’m gonna forget about it. So Joe mentioned the LinkedIn profile videos. Unfortunately, you can’t upload those anymore. LinkedIn took those away. So if you’re like, “Oh, I want to make one of those videos.” How do I do that? Unfortunately, you can’t do it anymore. You had to have a video up before the cut off. So I just wanted to make sure that people knew about that. And if you do have a video up and you like it, don’t get rid of it. You can’t change it. But it’s better than not having anything up there. In fact, in it.

Joe Ingram  19:06

And I took mine off, so I could redo one and then couldn’t put one back up. But notice, notice how that was entertaining right there listening to Joe screwed up on something. But Bob saved you if you have one. Say yeah.

Bob Woods  19:22

So yeah, and that’s, and that’s interesting about the script thing, because I actually did a video about a month ago where I kind of kind of questioned myself on video about what I just said. And I’m like, “Yeah, sure. Well, let’s keep it in there.” I decided to keep it there. I got a lot of feedback about “Oh, yeah, I thought that that was funny.” You know that you kind of question yourself and like yeah, I’m gonna keep that in there. And as you know, it’s and then But then at the same time it started a conversation or it continued, I should say a conversation about what was actually in the video as well. So I do think that that is as powerful.

Joe Ingram  20:00

Right and again, it’s if you again, I’m not saying manufacturer mistakes are saying, but as you go through every time you mess up, it becomes more relatable, which means you’re gonna pick up another one to two minutes worth of viewing on a video. If you have a long form video, they’re like, “Oh, boom, because everybody’s looking for that relatability point as they go through if the first thing” you say, because everybody says “It’s the hook, it’s, well, the hook gets me to click on it.” 

Yeah. But after you get in there, I mean, you’re literally going to have to keep hooks going all the way through, which doesn’t make any sense in video format. So just make sure the mistakes stay there, or the inner dialogue. Well, you just did right now you’re like, I have to break into this and say this, you could do that on your own video. And you go, ah, you know, hold on, what just hit me right now, was that I need to say this, this and this. I’m sorry. But if I didn’t write, it would be gone.

Bob Woods  20:56

Yeah. Well, well, yeah. And especially in my Swiss cheese and brain nowadays. And he was probably the biggest reason why I did that, because I just didn’t want to forget about it. But still, I’m actually glad I did that. Because that brought out a really good point. So um, how do you think infotainment differs from traditional education, educational or informational content? And obviously, you know, educational, informational and entertainment? We’re looking at those things separately at this point. So I mean, do you? I think you kind of mentioned a little bit more about how just straight educational content almost seems like you might be talking down on people, do you think that that has a lot lot to do with it?

Joe Ingram  21:43

I think a lot of what education has become is talking, Okay, so I have my script here with me. And I’m going to just say it to you. And then I can check off the boxes as I go down. To say “I covered everything,” right, as opposed to did anybody engage? Right? I don’t believe in a lot of education, the teachers, right, the educators that are out there, the trainers, the coaches, whatever it is, those individuals that have somebody with them, that’s talking, I did a mastermind group the other day, and I was sitting there, and there was 20 people on a zoom. I had my camera on. Okay. The other 19 guests did not have their camera and.

Bob Woods  22:28

I knew where that was going.

Joe Ingram  22:30

Because I had so and the speaker that’s there was brought in by the mastermind person to come in and talk and he’s talking sales, and he’s talking stuff. And I’m like, “Yep, yep, yeah, yeah, that’s right. But blah, blah.” So then when he goes, question and answer first thing, Joe, thank you for being engaged. Thank you for being, you know, in here, and I said, “I’ve been in the room where there’s no camera, and you can be, dropping gold nuggets.” And you know, you won’t know that because there’s nobody there.

Bob Woods  23:11

Yeah, or in webinar format. And you can’t see anyone else rather than the meeting thing, which is why we generally don’t do webinar format, because we want to see people.

Joe Ingram  23:21

Right, we need to get some kind of feedback. You don’t know if you’re hitting the mark. Right? So, but that’s where a lot of people mess up and it gets painful that way, right. And so, but I believe a lot of times, when it comes to just straight education, I talk at you, I don’t care what comes back. I’m throwing it out there. And it’s like, “Well, if it sticks on one of the people in the room, it’s great,”  where when you go to infotainment what I’m going to give you information in an entertaining way, right, edutainment is this same deal. I’m just going to educate you on something. And I think a lot of times if you can educate somebody through the information, right in and out of the way, you get a much better sale than me just giving you information. And so I look at it and say “It’s all in delivery. And it’s all in interaction.”

Bob Woods  24:19

Yes. So that actually brings up an interesting question, in that a lot of people don’t think that they’re funny, a lot of pn and they probably are, but yet they don’t think like that. And I can imagine that a lot of people out there are hearing what we’re talking about, and they’re just going yeah, that just that ain’t me that just There’s no way that’s me. How can they, for lack of a better phrase, how can they become that person, especially if they really want to be that person, but they’re just like, “I don’t see me doing this.”

Joe Ingram  24:51

So those individuals, okay, and I’m challenging all of your way of thinking. For everybody out there who says “That’s not me.” You Okay, you have friends and family where you let yourself your guard down. And they look at you, and they will laugh at one thing you said, because you just dropped it. And you said it and it was so onpoint. And it was so there, right? You just believe in your head that I’ll save it till I have the right audience that I can drop it at that one time. So you think less is more, okay. 

And then what you realize is that if everybody was sitting, think about the people you don’t want to be in a room with, okay? Don’t be one of those. Right? You don’t want to be the one at the end of the table going. This is not the place for me to say anything humorous. This is not the place, right? If you put a whole room of people like that, now think about it. Most of you are sitting in the room going, “Wow, that would have been funny if I said that.” Right. And I’m not saying we’re doing stand ups.

I’m saying brighten the monotony and break the monotony with reality. And that’s what you get. Right? What happened to TV is scripted TV and everything else the rage? No, let’s go live and show what’s going on. Right where you can’t the element of surprise potential is what gets people to tune in. So my show I do live every week. I have no idea if someone’s going to mess it up. I have no idea if somebody’s going to do something crazy and what have you. But most of the time it’s me. I gotta worry about doing something crazy or saying something. But yeah.

Bob Woods  26:28

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we actually do so this is obviously the recorded version, we actually do making sales social live, generally speaking, every Monday where it’s me and actually, Brynne Tillman going live. Talking about different subjects, taking comments from people on LinkedIn and the other channels that we’re going out to and and you’re right, I mean, I used to produce TV newscasts. I’ve also done talk radio and stuff like that before. 

And it’s it’s, it’s exciting. It’s fear inducing. I mean, it’s all that stuff. But most of all, it’s exciting. And I mean, if you can do something, live like that. And that’s something that we do teach in terms of doing live things and getting feedback from people and answering questions and things like that, if you can laugh through that you can do this, you know, scripted, quote, unquote, scripted stuff, without any problem, because you just got to be in that same mindset. 

Joe Ingram  27:27

Yeah, authenticity, right, relatability, all of those things happen live. they don’t happen when I have the chance to go back and cut out everything that I need to cut out where I was actually human. And we need to be able to relate to people and a lot of infotainment is showing that vulnerability of not being perfect.

Bob Woods  27:50

Yeah, that’s, you don’t hear it. Because I have talked to other people when it comes to like, especially producing video content and things like that. And while no one’s actually explicitly said, “You have to be perfect.” Nobody says that you like, and I wouldn’t say you shouldn’t be perfect, but don’t be afraid to show when you’re not perfect. I think that this is probably the first time that I’ve really heard somebody say that. And I think it’s really, really powerful. Because not only does it show that you’re human and everything else, I think that as the presenter, it would take pressure off of you to try to think that you have to be perfect. 

Joe Ingram  28:28

Well, I challenge everybody to go look at restaurants on Yelp. Okay, go look at restaurants on Yelp. Look at one that says there’s 1005 star reviews. What do you think of the second you see that they’re perfect with 1000 Reviews? Do you say to yourself, “Wow, it must be great there?” Or “Do you stop and go?” Someone bought reviews.

Bob Woods  28:51

Exactly, exactly. It’s funny, because I actually knew some people who were in the local review kind of thing and getting good reviews. And they would always say you don’t want five, five points you want like four? You want 4.7 You want to have some of the blemishes out there so you can show how you respond to them. And make the situation better for when you do screw up because you’re going to screw up.

Joe Ingram  29:13

Yes. And so think of that. When you go to do your next meeting, your next meeting with a client that’s going to be the business you’re trying to close, stop and say, “Do you want to go in and go?” I’m perfect. I know you’re not because the person on the other side of the camera is not perfect. And so don’t don’t separate yourself from them. It’s about getting them closer, Right?

Bob Woods  29:38

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, definitely. So. So before we move on to probably the other big subject that you and I like, let’s just talk really quick about successes that you’ve had from either your clients using infotainment or you know, obviously you practice what you preach. So you probably had some successes too and maybe Even a not so successful one too, because we’re talking about kind of screwing up sometimes too.

Joe Ingram  30:05

When I go in, my company goes in and trains individuals within the company, right, so I have to sell to the business. And then we delivered it to their staff to go in. So I believe in sales like, I always start every training, all my trainers go in and start with a funny video, to break the monotony of I have to be in training, right? There. If you have somebody that comes in and goes, I’m so excited to be in your training and they’ve never met, you never do anything. They’re lying. Okay, the sales department believes I should go back out and try to sell something more, not come back and sharpen my saw with somebody else and get a different take on what we’re doing. 

So I play when you play a funny video, it drops the ego. And I’ve done this before where I’ve walked in, I played a funny video and I watched the room. Because at the end, I will tell you, I tell everybody when I started to go just so you know, everybody watching this video, I’m Judging You just letting you know. You know, no, no pressure, but I am judging you right now. And then we watched the video, and then you watch somebody start to snicker, then it makes it okay for everybody to laugh and they start laughing. Right? And they’re like, “Wow, this is not a traditional way of somebody teaching us something.” So it automatically breaks the ice. 

Now I had one person sit there like “I don’t think that’s funny.” I think it’s mean, I don’t think this and I don’t think this and I’m like absolutely okay guys, talk about what happened in the video and talk about your reactions, what made you laugh the hardest, and I walked back out. And I go right up to the CEO. And I said just, you know, this person might think you can go ahead and get rid of them. Like what? And I said, “This person does not have what it takes for sales.” Right? We deal with so much negativity, we hear no more than anything else, this person can’t laugh it off, this person can’t stop and separate themselves from that outcome. So instead of watching the video and laughing, they put themselves in the position of that person in the video. 

And they chose to be the one that was the victim in the video of a prank. And you could have watched it and said, “I’m the person who pulled the prank on the other person, you can do this.” And so I just watched it. And again, that’s where you start looking at human psychology. What is it? That’s there, you realize that the prospects you’re presenting to I hate the word pitch. So you’re presenting to, “Okay, those are people and you’re trying to find the triggers to make them buy.” And we all know it comes emotionally. Right. Okay, emotions are what get people to do things. Okay? The logic, if logic is all it took to do something, we’d all be fit. We’d all be eating right? We’ve all been you know, there’d be no vices. Yeah, but I gotta get you emotional and emotional doesn’t come from facts and figures. And so it’s got to come from something better than that.

Bob Woods  32:58

Yeah, it’s a great way to put it. It’s a great way to put it. So hearing about all this stuff about infotainment, just just just tell me really quickly, what inspired you to focus on infotainment in so much of what it sounds like that you do.

Joe Ingram  33:13

So I went into a company, then the owner of the company came in and stopped me in the hallway. And I wasn’t training that day, I had a trainer in the room. And he comes in he goes, You know what, we brought another trainer in, like, like a month ago, we brought another trainer in to go against you guys. And I was like, “Well, okay, I didn’t realize that.” He goes, That person came in an hour after their training. I went up to them. And I said, “So what did you learn?” And he said, “I couldn’t get anybody to give me an answer.” This person taught them demos, taught them this talk to me, he goes, they did things with this person they couldn’t answer.

And he said, “Now he goes, and he goes,” the reason why you’re going to stay with us is that as soon as that guy left, I said, “Well, what about the other trainer? What did you learn last time, and it has been three weeks.” And he said, “And they all just started spitting back information to me.” They were like, we learned this, we learned this. So and So taught us this and then later so and so came in and taught us this, and that and he said, Everybody remembers what you are actually training them on. Your trainers are leaving them with actionable information. And I’m like, “My information could have been the same way.” Same thing the other person hadn’t done. But he talked to them instead of entertaining them to get them through the process. And again, it’s just being real.

Bob Woods  34:38

Yeah, so I really liked that because when it comes to the so now let’s kind of transfer that a little bit over to the sales process because a lot of times what you do with the sales process is that you’re training people.

Joe Ingram  34:51

That gotta give you enough information, right infotainment. I gotta give you enough so that you can make an informed decision. Imagine, but if I deliver it in a way that makes you and I relate with one another, then you like me, you like what you heard. And now it’s easier for you to make a decision.

Bob Woods  35:10

Ding ding. Exactly, exactly.

Joe Ingram  35:14

Sales is providing your prospect with a logical explanation to justify their emotional decision.

Bob Woods  35:21

That’s another quote for you right there. That’s a a t shirt quote, as I call them, you know, put on a t- shirt and walk around and nobody will know what the hell you’re talking about. Except for you. But that’s okay. Because t-shirts. So um, let’s change gears a little bit here, you’ve got a new guide coming out on Amazon, which I think by the time this podcast actually hits, it’ll probably be out already. 

It’s called the AI cheat. Mo, say this three times fast the AI cheat sheet for car sales. Yeah. This tells me among everything else, that you’ve done the old deep dive into AI, especially for sales. How do you think that AI can be helpful for sales in general, and also for infotainment? Because we actually do a lot of that here at social sales link when it comes to using AI for like content and things like that. I’m just curious to hear your thoughts about that.

Joe Ingram  36:14

Absolutely. I absolutely love AI. Right. And again, that’s maybe it’s the inner nerd. But to me, I just look and say there’s so much that we could actually utilize from other people’s brains. Right, that’s all been put together in this, but it helps to, for me, I don’t use AI to write out everything. I mean, I’ve literally embraced every part of sales with AI. And the way I do that is I will sit down and I will come up with ideas for videos. I use it as a sounding board. And so AI to me is what if you had okay, like one of my one of my favorites, Alex are mostly right. If you could get Alex to coach you one on one, right? He paid 100 grand to go spend a year with Him, follow him around to learn from him, I don’t have to do that. 

I can go in and say “You are this person, this, this and that and have him coach me back on a particular situation.” And so, to me, if you remember again, it intimidates a lot of people, a lot of people are intimidated. Because we don’t know how you could utilize it. Let me tell you how you can utilize it. You can grab an email from a prospect, paste it into a Chat GPT, a BART or somebody that you’re using. I use Chat GPT. He’s my business partner now. So I will go ahead and paste that in and say could you write me a professional reply that says this? And then it will spit out a professional reply to me now I go back in all the time, guess what all you non funny people, okay, you can go and rewrite in a humorous tone. And then it comes back. 

And what you’ll see is that it’s much more conversational. It’s much more conversational than if you say make it conversational. But when you do that, now you have a coach that sits with you, right? I’ve created AI chatbots. That is like, “Oh, would you like Joe to be in your pocket?” You can pull up this bot and ask any question. And it’s built off of all of my training, all of my stuff. So that, you know, you’re not going to get an answer from some screwball, who’s never sold anything. But you can go in and ask any kind of question. And so I have one for car sales for any sales. I have one for if you’re purchasing. If you’re a purchaser, what do you do? I have one that’s called personal growth, where I’ve combined all of this stuff to make yourselves better. AI is fantastic. 

And it can be the biggest helper, but I have clients all over the United States that log in and ask a question that they’re embarrassed to ask a co worker or their manager about how to proceed forward. And so if you could do that now, I have been, you know, disc trained for personality types. I created my own personality typing system that goes through, but I’ve incorporated those into the sales thing, so that you can go in and ask a question about this person. Right? If the person, what if you’re too direct? Yeah. Right. So can you go put, this is what I want to say. Can you make it softer? Right, and then list everything you’re trying to send out? Yep. I had one sales guy that was absolutely phenomenal. 

His name was Jose. Jose would sit down and he’d be Fanta. You get them on the phone, who he’d slay. Right? Put them on video. He’s great. Give him an email, and you were so embarrassed. And you would say okay, I’d pull up the email. Do you see what you sent to the customer? I’m like, read this. So we pulled it up on his screen and he would go read it, but he would read What he wanted to say not was actually typed, his brain worked faster than his fingers. “Oh, there were key pieces of information missing.” Yeah, you’re like, “You didn’t even mention the product”.

I don’t even know what you were asking for in this thing, right? And he was like, “What? Where if I had this,” I could have this rewrite every email for him. And make sure that the key things are there. And that’s where a lot of people miss the boat is that they’re, they’re too busy saying, Well, I don’t know if I can use it, but I’m not gonna go play with it. And you’re like, “Why wouldn’t you play with it?”

Bob Woods  40:39

That’s exactly what it’s there for. That’s precisely what it’s there for. I mean, when, especially when it comes to creating content, I always think of Chat GPT, Bard, whatever, as, like a writers room in Hollywood, you bounce stuff around, you come up with the best thing. And then, you know, at some point, you do something with it even. And even when you do something with it, I always tell people, and you know, this can maybe help with Jose type people, I’m not sure just read it out loud before you send a boy before you do anything with because you’ll catch that type of thing. If there’s something missing. If it sounds like a chatbot. You know, like that type of thing, basically. So, you know, AI is definitely not something to be afraid of, because the only way AI will take control is if we let it take control. Agreed.

Joe Ingram  41:27

But what if you could go in, right, so now I’m one of those individuals that I learned through my ears. So I’m an auditory person. Podcasts, and I love podcasts. That’s why I love being here. Right? But I understand a lot of people are really visual. That’s why we have to do video too. But when you look at that, what if you could cut down your learning cycle? Right? By 80%? Okay. And that’s great. But how would anybody do that? Okay. So I would go in and say to the thing, I would go, hey, you know what I want to learn about this topic. So if you’re looking at it, and say, “I want to learn about Personality Typing,” I could go into Chat GPT. And write, I want to learn about personality types, identify the most important 20% of the learnings of this topic, that will help me to understand 80% of it, and use your Pareto Principle. Right? 

You hit that button, it will give you a cheat sheet of what you’re supposed to be learning. Now I study the 20%, that gives me 80% of understanding, do I have to be a master? No, but if you find a passion for it, now you can go after the other 20% that you’re gonna go look at, to get through. I don’t want to read a book. I want to listen to a book. But I can go in and say, Could you summarize this book, and I put the book title in and give me a list of the five most important things I should take away from this book. Yeah, right. Now I’m doing what using AI to make me better. What happens when I’m better? I sell better, I relate better. Yeah. When a client sits on the phone right now. So if I said, Bob, one of the most impactful books I read, I think it was Dan Sullivan. 

With who not how, right, I could sit over here after you said that, Bob, you could pull up Chat GPT in front of you, and say, right, “Give me three key points” from who not how, by Dan Sullivan, hit the button. And while we’re on this, this call, you could turn around and go exactly. Because find the people whose passion is the stuff you don’t want to do, right in your own element all the time. And I’d be like, exactly. And then all of a sudden we have a report. Yeah, that’s hot. But you’re you’re literally you can live doing it. Right?

I have. I have people that are sitting with clients, people that we’ve trained with the bots because it’s for a specific industry, they will sit down, they’ll sit with the customer customers in front of them, they have a monitor in between them, they’ll move the monitor to the side, when the customer gives them an objection. They let me update this hold on. And they could type in the objection and say, “Could you help me overcome this customer we’re face to face,”  this is what they said. “And it pops up.” They read it and then they come back and handle the objection. I’m like, “Not the smoothest transition, but a lot better than trying to scream help by letting me get you over to my manager.” Yeah.

Bob Woods  44:23

Yeah. And then now especially when, and this gets a little bit into the future. But now that AI is open AI, I think I remember hearing about this where they’re going to start something like their own implementations and things like that. And two, I have two in the Chat GPT they can like stock that stuff now.

Joe Ingram  44:43

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So you have the ability to search for it or use your own profile data that’s in there. Right now. You have profile data you can add and then they’re adding to it to give you a stockpile of information, but I am about a program that actually creates specific bots. And you can tell it to use this chat bot with this data and you can put up to 6 million characters of data into one chat bot.

Bob Woods  45:13

Yeah, it’s just amazing. It’s absolutely just amazing. So if people want to learn more about you and your offering and all of the wonderful stuff that you do, where can they go online to do that?

Joe Ingram  45:26

So the easiest place where I put the links to the rest of the social media gamut, right is on the geniuslinks.com The genius links.com Okay, to the genius links.com you click there, you’ll see a link tree type page of everything that’s out there.

Bob Woods  45:43

So, Okay, great, very good. So, Joe Ingram is a sales genius and infotainment expert extraordinaire, the personification of info. Thanks so much for joining us. And thank you for streaming this episode of Making Sales Social. So remember when you’re out and about this week, be sure to make your sales social. 

Outro  45:43

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