Sales and Presence - Developing Your Authentic Communication

Rachel Cossar: Welcome to another episode in conversations in the future of work. I’m your host, Rachel Cossar. Thrilled to be here as always. And in today’s episode, I’m really excited to put presence and sales front and center and understand some of the different ways that that people are communicating or miscommunicating, within that context. And so I’m very excited to welcome a very good friend of mine, in this space. Amy, over to you. Hi, Rachel. Hello, everyone. I am so honored to be here.

Amy Reczek: My name is Amy Rizek, and I run sales and presence company that uplevels your communication techniques to have success overall. So thank you for having me. Thanks, thanks so much, Amy, for for joining us.

Rachel Cossar: So I think we can get right into the first question here. But, you know, I think it’s really interesting to hear different coaches and facilitators perspectives in terms of, like, some of the main misconceptions you find people have related to communication and presence. Oh, goodness.

Amy Reczek: One of the misconceptions I would say would be their awareness around it. I think most people think they have awareness around it and and they’re highly lacking the the awareness. And one of the big reasons why is because we’re not taught, some of those awareness things. If we think of communication, we’re always thinking speaking. And then I think if we if we advance that into an a listening skill, which is communication, you know, back in in the day when I was learning things, I was learning to be quiet. I was told be quiet, don’t speak, not learn how to listen, just be quiet. And so I think we’re skewed in some of that just in the the awareness around what goes into communication when we actually are doing that. Yeah. Interesting.

Rachel Cossar: There there’s a few things that that makes me think of, especially with presence work. I think people sometimes confuse this concept of presence, which is very much at the very least, a two way street, sometimes multiple, you know, four way stop with the different vantage points that are participating in any dialogue, with something that’s more, like, charismatic. Right? Like, a charismatic leader who just commands an audience and everyone’s paying attention to them. Like, that’s actually very different from developing this ability to communicate and listen and build a conversation that’s like that has active parts. Would you is that something that kind of you see too? A 100% agree. And I you they are they’re both very different. They’re all they’re also both learned.

Amy Reczek: So I think, you know, back to, I think, the awareness of, oh, that person just has that. That is inaccurate. They have they hone in on that and they work on all of those different things that we don’t even realize they’re doing, consistently. And the same with a a group setting or a one to one where you’re actively listening or you’re actively being engaged or you’re actively staying present. It’s a very difficult thing to say to even stay present today, on meetings or when you’re talking to people on one to one. So it’s a it’s an active engagement that doesn’t get enough attention. Right. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And the other thing you said that, earlier your your, earlier the earlier part of your answer to this question, we see a lot at Virtual Sapiens. Like, we’ll actually do demos with people, and they’ll see the tool in action. And they’ll be like, oh my god. This is great. I know so many people who could use this. Yeah. And then I’ll be like, what what about you? How about you? It’s like, oh, no. I mean, you know, whatever. I don’t need this. Yeah. But that’s that’s a challenge. That’s a real challenge when you’re then trying trying to sell this training. Yeah. And it’s emotionally tied. And it’s right?

Amy Reczek: We it’s oh my gosh. I do that? I don’t do that. Or, that makes me uncomfortable. I you know, why I don’t wanna react to that. I think it’s a very emotionally charged center that sometimes happens with that. We have to get uncomfortable to to grow in anything that we do. And so really being able to actively sit in that uncomfortable and and analyze that. I know I’m I know you do this. I do. I was just watching a a training of mine back, yesterday, and I was, one of the things I do is I turn off the sound. And I’m watching what I do and how I’m reacting and, what my face says and where my hands are and all of the things. And there’s always something always something. I’m like, wait a minute. That was that was about misaligned and I can work on that or I can upscale that. So it’s it’s a continual thing. It’s never, oh, I have it now. It’s done. Similar to to verbiage and how we’re communicating, speaking wise as well. But I think it’s definitely an ongoing and it’s something that we can take little by little to to get more comfortable with it. But I do think in that beginning, if you’re like, oh, great. I know 10 people who need this. Yeah. I’m wonderful. It always saying, well, hold on. You know, we can always 1% it up. And so what what can you do if you think you’re great at it now? What are those things that that maybe holds it still? Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: Can you actually say more about because I haven’t I I used to do this a lot. I haven’t done it in a while, but watching a presentation or some kind of recording muted. Like, what can you say more about that as a technique for learning more about some of maybe your nonverbals? Yes.

Amy Reczek: So it’s it’s such a it’s such a powerful tool to do, you know, because we are we always go back to hearing ourselves, or to what we’re saying or to listening to others actively listening within speaking. And so if we turn the sound off, there’s 2 things there. If you do have other people in the room, you are witnessing their reactions as well. That’s another thing that you could be doing, but really focusing on how are you communicating without saying a word. You know, what is that transparency that’s coming through? Maybe you’ve had an off day or you didn’t sleep at all the night before and and now you’re recognizing with no sound that that’s coming through very apparently. So you’re just tired, you look tired, your energy’s off, those type of things. If you’re slouching a lot, you know, what are those things that are coming up for you? The flip side of that is also true. Keep the sound on and turn the camera off and listen to how you’re speaking. So you can, you know, I would say do both. Definitely do both. There’s there’s different aspects and ways of speaking, especially if you’re presenting. I know that I’m a little bit more, or I’m very fluid when I’m when I’m presenting. When I’m in things like this, it it’s more off the cuff and and thinking live. And so it’s it’s more casual. So I will place myself in my too casual in a presentation. I need to to uplevel that within so you can do both. I would definitely do both. And and most people are recording these days, so you have it. Use it to your advantage. Yeah. That’s such a good, like, concrete takeaway.

Rachel Cossar: So I hope people really take note of that. It’s such an unusual way. Like, it’s already hard enough to watch yourself on a recording, but to have a more focused approach to, like, okay. What am I actually looking for here? Because there’s a lot. There’s a lot that’s going on, and it can be hard to like, one thing that AI does really well is it can analyze hundreds of behaviors at the same time, but that’s not really how we like, our brains might be processing a lot of information, but then to analyze each piece and understand what’s going on with what takes a more focused approach. So that’s such a great reminder. It’s also great too.

Amy Reczek: I would say test it out when you are not the center of the room too. So if you do have a recording of of you being in a meeting, but maybe you’re not running the meeting, you’re you’re attending, watch that back and see what you’re doing as as you’re attending. I guarantee if you have something like this close to you Yeah. That popping up. You know, that you’re you’re you’re looking down all of a sudden, you’re checking your phone, and you’re not even the awareness again is not there of all the distractions that are happening for you to to not be present. Totally. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: Along the same lines, and evolving the question a little bit, I find one of the things that does come up. So you mentioned earlier that you’re giving feedback on presence and communication can be a very personal thing. Right? And we do we develop these habits of communication in a specific way, and then it starts to feel like that’s our authentic way of communicating. Right? And I know, Amy, you and I talked about this last time we met in person. But, like, how do you encourage clients to develop habits that maybe feel new or awkward or not like themselves while while staying authentic? Mhmm.

Amy Reczek: The first thing I say is if it if it feels uncomfortable or if it feels, inauthentic to you, throw it out. We all know what inauthentic feels like. Throw it out if it’s completely inauthentic. Now if it’s just uncomfortable, that’s where I would love for you to do that. Get uncomfortable with it and do it in a safe space. So if we’re talking about business as a whole and and we’re trying to up level our communication through business, I would say don’t start there. Start in a safe space. Start with your friends. Start with your family. Really start practicing these things where where it doesn’t matter how how it ends up and you can be completely awkward and uncomfortable in your own safe space. And then start working that a little bit towards business. The other thing with habit is that we can recognize what some of them are. So starting with what are some things that you naturally do that are okay or neutral or are things that are lessening your credibility in in spaces. One of the things I’ll give you an example that I do that’s a habit. Very weird, but it’s something that’s genetic. My grandmother did it. My my mom did it. Is that I hold my thumb, in in between. This is this to me would be a neutral. This isn’t something that’s taking away from anything. Something that I naturally do. However, if something was habit of mine, if I get a little nervous and I start bringing my hands and they start becoming different colored. You know, that’s something that could take away and detract my worth and and value that people could see. So that’s something I wanna change and be aware of. So I I would say with habit, we have to start with our baseline of of, okay, what are some of those things that we do? I had, a gal that I was working with a couple months ago, and she said, you know what I finally did? I finally took, I don’t wear earrings anymore or rings into a room because I cannot fit with them. Right? She plays with them and plays with them. Yeah. Such great awareness around, do I need to shift this habit? And so we just all she did was move the problem out of the way. Right. So sometimes it’s that easy. Right. Another simple way to do that, if I’m presenting on stage, my hair will always be up. Why? Because it always ends up falling in my face and then I’m messing with it. So I’m like, I gotta move it just completely out of way. So it could be as simple of that as that to really start that that habit progression. Right. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And having that recording to review that or or using a platform like virtual sapiens, right, shameless plug, to to reflect some of those behaviors back can be really helpful. Because it is, you know, you’re wrapped up in a conversation. You’re presenting. You’re thinking about your content or whatever, and then you’re gonna forget that you’re doing something. Right? And so having having the reflective opportunity can be really helpful in just identifying because, you know, you just rattled off a number of examples for people, which I’m sure a lot of people in the audience would be like, oh, actually, you know what? I wonder if I do that. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I will add one more to that.

Amy Reczek: You had me thinking about so if you are doing a presentation, I would say have that so down that that you can you can move that any any way, any format. You could rattle it off in your sleep and it’s completely fine. Because then that gives you the ability to say, okay, I have this so locked in. Now I can really look at my presence and what’s going on there. If I am in a room, where do I wanna move to? How do I wanna walk? Those are the things, you know, that that level up that we can start working on that are still so powerful. They get completely away from the the content and into how you are actually showing up. Powerful, powerful things, but we need to have that core down first. I think that’s where that misused a lot is that we’re still still focused on the agenda or we’re focused on what we’re gonna say and how we’re gonna say it. Yeah. To the point if if we have someone in the other room in the room that derails that a bit, then all of a sudden it’s a struggle for us. So we wanna make sure that that’s still locked in, that it doesn’t matter which way it goes. We we’ve got that covered, and then we can really show up with things. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: It makes me think of, my time as a dancer because, you know, there’s, like, the choreography. You just have to learn the choreography. I remember, like, if we were learning a new piece, we would spend, like, a week just learning the choreography and the steps. And you would just be learning material and dancing it, like, horribly. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. To get the steps. Right?

Amy Reczek: Like, to get those words, you have to note, like, this comes after this. And, oh, I have this, like, sticky spot in my mind.

Rachel Cossar: And, okay, so let’s go over that part, la la la la. And then once you have the choreography under your belt and you don’t have to literally, it’s critical what you said, Amy. Like, almost not even have to think about it. Yeah. Then you start adding those elements of quality and and intentionally deciding how you want to show up and deliver those words. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So we we we touched on this a little bit or at least I did. How do you see technology amplifying and kind of interacting and intersecting with your work? It is a wonderful support system.

Amy Reczek: So it levels things up completely. I actually just said the other day, how did I get through my entire career and up to this point without chat? You know, it it’s it’s such a a level up, so it’s not ever going to completely take the place of of things. We all have still have to have that human connection, and we have to really recognize that. You know, if I if I threw something in chat today and then word for word dumped it into an email, that would not work. It wouldn’t it would not come through authentic. But it does spin it in a way to be like, oh, I I just leveled that up in a way that my my brain did not do naturally. And now I can put that in and really reference that in that human connection and reference it back to what’s important to them. And I think it’s just it’s it’s a support. It’s like anything else that we are using technology wise. If you are in business or in sales directly, you use a CRM system. That’s a lifeline for salespeople. This is the same type of concept. So we’re we’re bringing in this really exciting new technology in a way to, again, support and expand how we communicate. If we look at it that way, I know that sometimes companies are like, no, we don’t, you know, we can’t I don’t know about that. Mhmm. It it is a tool for advancement. It is it is a tool to help with that communication. We’re seeing this time and time again in the in this virtual world now, in this such fast paced world that that human connection is so fleeting, but it’s also vital. It’s not going anywhere. That’s how humans are designed. You know, we we’ve talked about that. We know that. So how do we then level that up to make sure that the time that we do have with them matter and how we are we’re bringing ourselves to the table? Yeah. I think it’s Right. Yeah. Those are really great points.

Rachel Cossar: I think the way we think about it because, like, virtual Sapiens is interesting because it it’s, like, built by coaches to be used by coaches and facilitators. And, like, we’ve sat with this, like, I this notion of, like, what does the AI, like, do better than humans. Right? And it’s like those those repetitive tasks that would be great if we could scale, or that would be great if we could empower the user to be able to do more of that on their own in their own time. Because we know that as facilitators and coaches, like, you want to have that thread that connects from one session to another. Right? You want to know that, like, people are practicing and that, you know, in an ideal world, they’re still getting some encouragement along the way that’s in line with what you would be coaching and teaching them. Yep. And then you get the benefit of being able to see the progress and comment on it. And and those things now with technology, actually, for the first time are are really possible at any kind of scale. Mhmm. Yeah. When we wouldn’t be without the technology be as nice as it would be, right, for Right. One of your clients, maybe, Amy, to have you on every call being, like, oh, you did it again. Like, it’s just more feasible. Right? Yes.

Amy Reczek: Yeah. It’s it’s so easy and it’s on their timeline and then we can have some back end engagement and and lifting it where we need to lift it. But it’s also a to your point, the follow through is vital. I So many trainings I’ve been on were, we’ll cover things in communication or present. They’re like, okay. Got it. And then we’ll come back a week later. I’m like, who did what? And nobody did anything. Right. So it’s so easy to go fall back to fall back into what’s comfortable. Right? Oh, right. So to really have that to where it’s like, oh, okay. Now I get it. Now I know how to practice this. So I saw it, and I got all this engagement back. Now I know. It’s it’s it’s it do it levels everything up, including the end result for for everyone involved who’s who’s trying to sorry. Dog No problem. Who’s trying to to to really think of things in a different way Yeah. And and how they communicate. Yeah. Right. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: So let’s switch gears a little bit because I’d love to hear more from the entrepreneurial side of your business. Right? Like, how what are some of the biggest challenges that your that either you faced recently or or currently that you’re facing?

Amy Reczek: So some of the things that I’m really I think that are challenges right now are thinking around how we can bring the the communication base within presence into mainstream business. You know, some of these some of these entities have been around for a long, long time. Programs have been around for a long, long time. So if we’re thinking of how to bring in training or how to bring in things to uplevel teams Mhmm. It goes back a lot to, things that are tangible in the past. So, hard skills type of training or, you know, some sort of methodology within that. What stats and analytics are showing is that the most important actually right now are those soft skills or power skills within that environment. How do you get teams to engage on that? How do you have the analytics behind it, which is beautiful program? How do we, you know, how do we offset that so we know that it’s valuable? I think that’s that piece is coming. It’s coming quicker, but it’s it’s one of those things that that I find as a solopreneur to try to get companies to engage in that. Some are really on board and and ready for it and then in summer, it’s that learned behavior that we’re changing of, you know, it’s moving into this this timeline now.

Rachel Cossar: How do you, like, do you get the question around, like, specific ROI for training like this? And how do you answer that question?

Amy Reczek: So my thought on that and I I’ve thought this forever, especially being in sales, is if you have some sort of training company that promises an ROI, that’s that’s a hard thing to promise. Because it it’s an end result of the person that that’s your staff. I I am not able to do to do that, to promise an ROI for you. What I can promise is movement. So if we you know, those analytics behind all the movement is what we’re going to show. So if we have someone who has a real struggle with follow-up or with a cadence, let’s say, or prospect, let’s put that into play. That’s the easy part. That’s that hard skill part over there. But then let’s figure out the how within it. How are we doing that to connect and engage? That’s where we’re gonna see that lift of of connection communication. Definitely, the close rate will go up, but, that ROI part is is tricky. Right? It’s it’s a tough one. And I I don’t promise that due to the fact that there’s so many elements out of a a consultant and coaches, realm Yeah. You know, from a business standpoint, that I can’t control. So if it was a one to 1, I could do that. But For sure. Yeah. Within a business, that’s tough. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. No.

Rachel Cossar: I completely agree. We get that question all the time, and and we don’t have, like, close close deal increase percentages that we can, like, quote consistently and then promise. Right? I Mhmm. There are companies that do that, and I’m always like, aren’t do people believe you? Like, how are you doing this? Yep. I know. I’m with you. I’m with you. I’m like, how? Tell me how to know that how. Yes.

Amy Reczek: I wanna know that how. Totally. So yeah. No. I’m with you.

Rachel Cossar: Contract line, it says, you know, we’re not we’re not guaranteeing any ROI.

Amy Reczek: So I think yeah. It’s a tough one. I I but I would say for companies out there that are like, but we need that. We need we need to know what that ROI is gonna be. I would say that the guarantee from this side of things is the feedback you’re gonna get. So we can track that. Right? So as soon as we start doing a 6 month program with you, we will be doing surveys and analytics around what is the engagement with your team, how are they engaging, what are they doing differently. That’s gonna show you that movement that you want. It’s not a dollar ROI, but it’s definitely an ROI. You are engaging your team at a at a higher level than most companies out there. And that’s what you want. That’s what you want. If you get them to that 1%, that ROI is gonna come. Right. Right. Absolutely. No.

Rachel Cossar: That’s a great answer and and a great way also to just deal with that, like, in that the inevitable pushback that you might get when Mhmm. You know, when you answer honestly. Right? Yeah. Mhmm. Yep. Wonderful. Yeah. Well, Amy, I I feel like our we could keep going, but, thank you so much for sharing such concrete takeaways with our listeners. Where like, what’s the best way if people want to follow your work or get in touch? Where where should they do that? Yeah. You can follow me on LinkedIn.

Amy Reczek: I also have a LinkedIn newsletter that goes out that you can you can attach to, which is great, or my website sales and presence.com. Happy to connect with you. There’s a connect button there and and we can we can connect and and meet up. Happy to Awesome. Great. Well, thanks again, Amy.

Rachel Cossar: And, of course, as always, thank you to our listeners for, coming back for more. We’ll see you next time.