The Now, and Future, of Impactful Selling and Presentations

Rachel Cossar: Welcome everyone to conversations in the future of work. I am your host, Rachel Kosser, and in this talk show, we welcome thought leaders coaches, facilitators, scientists, technologists who are all leaning into the future of work. And today, on the show, we are very happy to welcome Julie Hansen. Julie, I would love to pass the torch over to you if you wanted to share with our audience a little bit about your work and your background. Absolutely. Great to be here with you, Rachel.

Julie Hansen: And, yes, I’m Julie Hansen. I’m the author of look me in the eye using video to build relationships. With customers, partners, and teams. And I’ve worked in presentation skills training for, for many years after being a salesperson myself. And, also worked as a professional actor. So I use a lot of those performance techniques in my skills and in my training. Wonderful.

Rachel Cossar: And I love I love that you have the acting background, you know, as a dancer myself. I know we connected early on with that. So Yes.

Julie Hansen: It’s been very, very helpful in this new virtual world, which is sometimes as close to being as an actor as most people will get. Totally. Totally. So let’s let’s get started.

Rachel Cossar: First first question for you, how are I mean, there’s been so much evolution over the past 3 years, right, when it comes to the way people communicate and How are your clients looking at video as a channel of communication and impact today?

Julie Hansen: I think for a long time they’ve thought it was going to go away or, not be as prevalent. And for most people, it’s been as prevalent, if not more prevalent, because they’re having most of their serious high stakes conversations virtually and we’re interviewing virtually now. Even if your company allows you to travel to be in person, you often have customers that are working at home or they’re dispersed across the world. So you have to, you have to be virtual anyway. So that’s that’s one way they’re looking at. The other way is a lot more companies and industries in particular are embracing video recording. And using it as a means of staying in touch with customers, staying top of mind, the mortgage industry, the real estate industry, for example, of really high user of, recorded videos just to keep up to speed and top of mind with those referral partners and is down market that we’ve had. Right. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And, have you found because one of the things that I observed around the time where, you know, the the crisis of the pandemic lifted and organizations were very much dealing with this, like, calling people back in or not. Have you found that even for companies who are calling people back into the office in a meaningful way, people are still spending a lot of time communicating on video, even in the office, I I do.

Julie Hansen: I think it’s it’s often faster than trying to physically get together with someone even if they’re in the same office. And we’re used to this, getting on someone’s schedule and you just show up. You don’t have that. Oh, I’ve gotta been 15 minutes finding this person getting to their office or getting in the car and driving. So it’s just been a very efficient way to meet And I, I think it’s interesting that even, you know, companies like Zoom who asked their people to come back to work had a lot of resistance there because people like that flexibility. And so it’s, it’s, it’s sort of a tough battle right now in terms of people that wanna stay in the office and people that want to have that flexibility at home. Right. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And This brings us to our next question.

Julie Hansen: If we focus specifically on the last few months, so there’s been obviously this cataclysmic shift with having video come online as such a primary channel of communication, but in the past few months specifically, what have you found has has changed most when it comes to conversations with your clients and the way that you are, the way that you’re executing on your coaching and work I I think when we first started out on video, there was some fundamentals that we try to get and and, you know, turn your camera on. Say what you need to say. Do it on camera. And 3 years into it, a lot of folks are finding that is not sufficient. And there are people that have really learn to excel in this environment and go beyond. Can you see my screen? Can you hear me into I can see you. I hear you. I I understand you. So they’re starting to see the value in how do we make those connections to the camera, not just show up, especially in a world where there’s more AI and there’s more artificiality, how do we make this somewhat artificial environment as personal and authentic as possible. So that’s what I work with clients on because that is one of the few remaining differentiators, I think, in a lot of businesses, there’s been very few areas where companies in a, in a saturated industry can differentiate. And how you show up is is a huge opportunity because there’s such a disparity between people who have just never changed their behavior much since they turn the camera on to people who are trying to really connect through the camera.

Rachel Cossar: Right. And and going a little further on that note of showing up with authenticity and really being able to build a rapport on video. Some some companies, you know, really just think that it’s impossible to build trust in the same way you can build in person on video. Like, what is your response to that?

Julie Hansen: Well, it is if we don’t do some things differently. I’ll tell you that. And, certainly, that’s, research has held early on that is harder to build relationships virtually. And and the one of the reasons why is because there are certain qualities that need to be in place for someone to want to enter into a trusted relationship with you. Right? Whether it’s personal or business, you have to be credible. You have to have some level of confidence. You have to be authentic and empathetic and interested. And those happen to be the most difficult qualities to convey on video. Just because of how the camera distorts certain things, or the fact that we don’t adapt to this this space that we’re given. Have 80%, 85% of our body language is gone. All that all that additional context that used to add to our presence in our our communication is gone. And most people have no idea what their 20% says. And very often, it says something very different than they intend. And so until we get a hold of that and, understand how our audience perceives this on their screen, We often do things that damage our credibility. Right.

Rachel Cossar: It’s like communication misfires are happening Right.

Julie Hansen: I mean, if you think about it, I mean, the the one of the one of the biggest things you can do to build trust with someone, and this was a question that was posed to, 1000 executives. The biggest thing you can do is to be, is to actively listen. Well, if you think about what does listening behavior look like on video? It looks like this. There’s no eye contact. There’s no there’s no nonverbal cues that you heard what I said. And people will say, well, they know I’m looking at their picture. And that’s a logical response to something that is very emotional. Trust is not necessarily just based entirely on logic or relationships aren’t either.

Rachel Cossar: So we fit ourselves by saying, well, that doesn’t really matter. It does matter.

Julie Hansen: Those, those little things not so little things add up to do I feel like I could trust this person? And so we have to pay attention to that, understand what we’re what we’re doing that might be keeping us from building this trusted relationship and shooting ourselves in the foot because we can do all those other things. You know, we could be a good listener, but if, you know, it’s like if a tree falls in the forest and you don’t hear it, did it, you know, did it did it fall? We have to make sure that what we think we’re communicating is being received, and people have very little understanding of how their their customer, their audience experiences them on their screen.

Rachel Cossar: You touched so many, I think, critical points, right, to this new channel. And it’s really interesting to just watch the evolution of the pandemic hits, video comes online, people just, you know, almost physically transport themselves to this new method of communication without support without enough support from a training, building new awareness, building new skills to adapt Specifically, to your point, I think one of the biggest differences between in person and virtual communication is that in person, we’re sharing a space. We’re sharing the same physical space So we were a little more aware of what the other person is probably seeing. Mhmm. On video, like my my physical space is so different and far away from yours. You know? Right. Right. Yeah.

Julie Hansen: You look away. I don’t know if you’re someone else entered the room. I don’t know if I if you were bored with what I was saying, you’re reading an email. I I don’t we don’t know, and it’s this disconnect. And we underestimate how that impacts the other person, even if it’s even it’s just subconsciously. So the, I I think we had a we we let people experiment with video kind of it was enough to get on video, but when I saw that happening during the pandemic, as an actor that went from stage to trying to work on camera, and understanding, there’s a whole different skill set there. I thought, why are we not helping these people, giving them some guidance on this? Because It is not the same thing. It’s a new medium, and it requires new skills. And and now people over several years have reinforced a lot of that habits that are even more difficult to break. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: And, not that it can’t be done, but, you know, that that’s why I went I wrote my book right after the pandemic to help people understand that there are I mean, there are proven techniques from Professionals who have worked on camera trying to connect with an audience, they can’t see for, you know, 50 years.

Julie Hansen: And we’re we’re here like, well, I don’t know. I guess this works. It’s like, why? There’s a whole industry that that has developed skills and exercises and techniques to help you do it. Right.

Rachel Cossar: And the amount of time that people will willingly spend to be so engrossed and entertained by a screen I feel like really underlines the fact that it’s not the screen itself that’s disengaging. It’s the way the screen is being leveraged by whoever’s showing up on the other end. Right? Exactly. It’s like it it’s like spending all your money.

Julie Hansen: If you were if you were, producing movie, spending all your money on the lights of the technology and the costumes, and you just got someone off the street who’s never back in front of a camera anymore to be your lead actor. Right. It’s not gonna be a big hit. Right. Right. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: Fascinating stuff. So moving on, and this you hinted a little bit at this previously, but when it comes to video, AI, tech, deep fakes, like, it’s kind of all over the place. Right? So how how have you best leveraged if at all, you know, tech and and AI in as as an enhancer to your coaching. Mhmm. Well, I think AI plays a very important role there.

Julie Hansen: The one thing that we do not have enough of is that awareness of how we come across to other people. So from that aspect, it’s absolutely such a great addition because it can do that pretty efficiently, as you know. And the and that’s great. That’s a really important first step. But if it was just awareness that was enough, we’d all be a lot better on camera right now. We’d all be making great eye contact. It this is not the first time you’ve heard you need to look at the camera more, but people don’t do it because it’s hard because it involves changing some old habits and in developing new muscle memory. So AI is great in helping us identify that awareness and then also some practice on our own to continue to to fine tune, but I find that when I work with people, I I I’ve got a video course. I’ve got a book. I do training. I do but until I get with them on a coaching call, they’re like, oh, I didn’t know I was doing that. They they can’t break those those old habits as easily without outside help. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: When some, you know, kind of and and redirecting and, like, do here’s what we need to do.

Julie Hansen: We need to develop this skill to overcome that. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: I think there is such an interesting partnership between having AI be able to reflect certain behaviors that are occurring and then having a coach in an ideal world to help you integrate what some of the other options of behaviors might be and and how to do that in a way that, again, to your point earlier, feels authentic. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Julie Hansen: The one the one thing I am not bought into on on AI and and helping us in this area is using it during a live call. For for live coaching. Mhmm. The the goal of being, of having virtual presence, having virtual executive presence is being present. Right? When we when we meet with someone, we expect to meet with them. We expect to connect. We don’t expect perfection. Yeah. But we expect a real person. And with all the AI that’s being thrown at us and the the the doubt as to is is this person using AI and using AI for their eye contact? We don’t want that seeping into our audience. It’s also very inauthentic to get a cue that says you need to smile and go. Oh, yeah. No. Paced on a funny smile has nothing to do with what you just said. It’s your audience is gonna pick that up and it’s gonna be a disconnect. Totally could not agree more.

Rachel Cossar: I mean, as you know, we’ve experimented with in a certain amount of in call coaching at virtual sapiens and, you know, we’ve evolved from there to giving people the choice to just like, sure the call can be analyzed and you can get feedback after the fact. But especially, I think, The other thing that I think everyone really needs to be aware of with AI is that con context component, right, if if the AI is looking for specific behaviors, you wanna be sure that they’re looking for those behaviors when they make sense. Right. Right? So to your point of, like, like, we don’t look at specific, expressions and call them out and make suggestions to use other specific expressions. Right? We look at the variation of facial expression, whether that’s happening or not because specifically to your point of, like, it would it would be pretty dangerous, I think, to try to influence someone to smile more if it’s just completely not appropriate. Serious conversation. Yeah. The it’s all all the AI, you have to, you know, you have to take it with context.

Julie Hansen: That’s why I sort of use parts of AI and and there’s things that just humans are better at noting those nuances that in context, that, give it give it the full picture. Yeah. Totally.

Rachel Cossar: And this actually feeds into our next question, which is just in your opinion, you know, what are the biggest risks that we face today in in this new world of work as professionals?

Julie Hansen: Well, certainly there’s Back to AI, there’s a lot of AI choices being thrown at us and being thrown at managers. Should I have my team do this? Would it make it easier? The decision to to use AI to replace some of our more human qualities needs to be really thoughtfully considered. There are tools that will make it look like you’re making eye contact all the time. That’s not natural. And if there’s one glitch in it, that person on the other end of the cough knows, you know, and they feel betrayed. Right? And eye contact expression. These are things that are they make us human. Right? And and we connect human to human. We trust human to human. And so what is dangerous is trying to replace a lot of those human qualities and those human connections, just because it’s hard to look at the camera, or we don’t want to have to change And and I think that’s a poor excuse, and it’s not gonna pay off in the long run because with the the amount of AI and artificial technology that’s that’s being used and continues to develop This genuine human nature and qualities that we bring has this authenticity really goes up in value. And I I think the more we can embrace that authenticity, which again doesn’t mean being perfect. In fact, it means being a little bit imperfect. Mhmm. But making sure we are not doing things that that shoot ourselves in the foot in terms of credibility and confidence in how we come across.

Rachel Cossar: Mhmm. Right.

Julie Hansen: Are going to be, are going to be even more valuable in a in a world that has more AI in it? I would a 100% agree.

Rachel Cossar: I think there’s, this fantasy almost around like completely scaling the that yourself or the the way you show up, you know, like, imagine if you could send out, like, thousands of personalized videos or whatever. Right. Right.

Julie Hansen: But I mean, we’ve already seen where, like, email campaigns have gone.

Rachel Cossar: Like, it’s just nobody’s opening anything anymore because so annoying and invasive, and it’s not like personal.

Julie Hansen: Yeah. Like, exactly.

Rachel Cossar: And Sorry. Go ahead. Well, no.

Julie Hansen: I was gonna say to that point too, like chat, GPT, or any of those, the other tools that will write a blog for you. We’ll write a personalized message. There’s so there’s doubt now that those even the emails you get that seem personal, are actually done by a human. And so there is so much uncertainty and distrust And to add that to what could be a really powerful human connection, I I don’t see any upside to it. Right. It’s almost like we need a, like, certified real human.

Rachel Cossar: Bad. Right. I mean, maybe that’ll be what they come up with, but I tell you how many blogs I read.

Julie Hansen: It’s like they when it’s AI, they they they sound a little similar in, just the tone or the word short there’s some word that you go that person wouldn’t say it like that if you know the person, or that sounds like a, you know, the 10th grade paper that someone wrote. Right.

Rachel Cossar: Oftentimes I find it’s, some like, really fancy words. Like, some sometimes it’s like, yeah. It just takes you out of it.

Julie Hansen: It’s like, hey. Wait a minute. And that’s what and that’s as humans, that’s what we do. And the same thing virtually, if suddenly you’ve got perfect eye contact all the time, it’s like, what? Right?

Rachel Cossar: Or, you know, you’re smiling for no reason or, you know, anything that just indicates you might not be In fact, who you say you are is just gonna work against you. Totally. I mean, and that’s such like a weird Man, that’s like it. Talk about uncanny valley. Right? Yes. Absolutely.

Julie Hansen: We’re, you know, at the precipice of some interesting interesting things. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: So, I mean, what’s what’s next for you? I know you’ve you’ve done so much in this space already, but do you have an idea of where you’d like your coaching to go, or maybe you’re working on some some other projects that might be publicly available soon? Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Hansen: I’m working right now on, a course. It’s actually live. I’m doing it, with the team right now. On virtual executive presence. So a lot of people have found, even, you know, leaders or sales teams that, you know, They have such great presence when they were in person and they get on camera and they’re like, I don’t know. What’s what’s happening? Why can’t I communicate as effectively? And he’s seen as, and not in a formal way, but polished and confident and credible and empathetic and all the things that we expect in, in someone who has good executive presence. So working on, teams and leaders with that and also working, with teams that are using video recordings more as to, you know, they’re spending all this time on, oh, okay. I gotta get the right tools and the right technology again, and not by, the perfect subject line and cadence. And and if the video is if you don’t connect with your audience in in 5 seconds. Yeah. Like I said, it’s as close to being an actor as you’re ever gonna get talking to a camera when you can’t see the other person, and very few people naturally do that well. Yeah. They always sound like, hi. This is Julie. How I wanna talk to you about, you know, it just it’s not it’s not conveying who you the best of you, who you can really be. So I think that’s a real game changer because right now, just sending out video has been an a differentiator because not a ton of people have done that, but more and more are starting to send video. So if the quality and the connection isn’t there, the fact that you’re sending a video isn’t gonna make that much difference. Totally.

Rachel Cossar: I 100%, a big part of what we do at virtual Sapiens is about helping professionals send those engaging and authentic videos, right?

Julie Hansen: So that so that if you are like you can see it’s interesting.

Rachel Cossar: You know, we’ve measured the viewership of a video if it’s done well with elements of presence versus if it’s, you know, bad lighting out of frame, like not connecting and it’s it’s powerful stuff. Yeah. It really is. Absolutely.

Julie Hansen: It makes a big difference. Yeah. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: Well, that is All we have time for today, but, Julie, thank you so much for being here for sharing your insights. If, what is the best way for our audience to either connect with your work or connect with you. Sure.

Julie Hansen: You can go, email me at julie@actingforsales.com. Or connect on LinkedIn, Julie Hansen Sales Training. And, yes, connect I’ve also got a website with lots of videos and blog articles on, many of the things that we talked about and all the different specific behaviors that we are trying to communicate much the, virtual Sapiens measures and how to work on those and improve those. Because, again, we wanna, we’ve wanna go beyond awareness and start to change those behaviors. So try to support people in that area. Awesome. Well, a veritable Treasure trove of resources.

Rachel Cossar: Thank you again, Julie, for being with us. Thank you, Rachel. My pleasure. Alright.