Reading the Room: Mastering Body Language and Non-Verbal Communication

Intro VO  00:05

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello, hello hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Mark Raffan. Mark is an award winning negotiation trainer, Speaker podcast host and well known negotiation expert and entrepreneur. He has coached executives and teams in some of the largest companies on the planet and has been featured in Entrepreneur Forbes Thrive global supply and demand chain Executive Magazine. And additionally, Mark has appeared on dozens of podcasts including Make It Happen Mondays, the brutal truth about sales and the Insiders Guide to finance. Welcome to revenue rehab mark, your session begins now.

Mark Raffan  01:26

Thank you so much for having me, Brandi. It's a great pleasure to be here.

Brandi Starr  01:29

I am excited to talk to you it is not often that we get a negotiation ninja here on the couch. But before we dive into that, I like to break the ice with a little whoosah moment that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Mark Raffan  01:53

Oh, my least favorite is circle back. circle back on this idea. Oh, I hate it.

Brandi Starr  02:01

So no, no circling for you?

Mark Raffan  02:03

No, no, we don't need to circle anything. Let's just address the issue.

Brandi Starr  02:08

Yeah, I recently learned and you know, I haven't validated this myself. But I had someone tell me that that term comes from circle the wagon, so having something. Um, so yeah, it was like, you know, it's interesting where these things come from? And then I always wonder like, how did it get from that into like corporate lingo. But we will make sure not to circle back on anything. I want to make sure to address everything today. So there's no need to circle back, regroup or take it offline or any of the other common buzzwords. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab today.

Mark Raffan  02:55

I'm here to address the atrocious state of corporate body language, in meetings in sales in conversations. It is outrageous and ridiculous. And we need to talk about it.

Brandi Starr  03:09

Awesome. Well, I am excited to talk about it. Although I can say like knowing that you're one of those people who's good at judging body language. I'm kind of like, what is my body language saying I'm almost a little nervous here. But no, I think this is a really important topic, especially, you know, for our audience who has to navigate working with their peers in the C suite, talking to the board, and you know, all those sorts of things. And so before we really dive in, I believe in setting an intention that gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. So what are your best hopes for our talk? What would you like people to take away from today?

Mark Raffan  03:55

Yeah, my best hopes for the talk is that people will start to recognize their own body language, it's easy for us to judge the body language of others, because we can look at a camera or we can look at someone in a meeting and go, I would have handled that differently. Wonderful. Let's talk about how you could handle that differently.

Brandi Starr  04:13

Okay, I love it. And I like to start by kind of grounding in the why should we care? So, you know, we've all been getting along thus far. You know, our audience is mainly VP level and above, so very seasoned in our careers. And so why is this something that we really need to pay attention to now?

Mark Raffan  04:38

Because we've fallen into a false state of security with regards to where we are virtually the virtual environment. Working from home remote work in general has made us complacent about the body language that we give off. And for whatever reason, on camera, we think we're more protected, but act Usually the opposite is true, we are actually under more scrutiny now than we ever have been before. And the camera is telling us that we can relax around our body language and how we interact with others. And that's just not true.

Brandi Starr  05:16

Yeah, and I definitely see that because you think about when we were all in person for all meetings, and you're sitting around a table, you're not looking at every person all the time, like, generally, whoever speaking everyone kind of, you know, shifts their focus to them. And nobody's looking at the facial expressions and body language of the others. But when you're in a web meeting, a zoom, you know, teams, whatever you're using, and you have all those grids right there next to each other, it's really, really easy to focus in on, you know, facial reaction, and body language, and even what's happening in the background of all of the people, and not just the speaker. So I do see your point in that this is more important, because even though some people have gone back into the office, largely most companies are, you know, having meetings that are virtual in some capacity.

Mark Raffan  06:17

Yeah, it's the default way we do business now. And if the vast majority of us are doing these kinds of meetings online, then we need to make sure that we're showing up the right way online, I think we're more attentive in person, because we're like, oh, I'm going to meet this person, there's going to be a physical interaction, they're going to shake my hand, we're going to have a formal greeting, I've got to look my best I got to smell good. I got to show up, well groomed. But for whatever reason, in a virtual environment, we sometimes forget those things.

Brandi Starr  06:48

That is a really great point. Um, so let's dive into some of the like, what we're getting wrong. So what are some of the things that you see in terms of body language or nonverbal cues that are actually hindering you know, the the outcomes,

Mark Raffan  07:06

I think the single thing that we get wrong is not actually the body language first, but it's our setup. Actually, that gets it wrong. Because people are often doing meetings from their laptop camera, when poor lighting with bad sound quality. And obviously, when your setup is incorrect to begin with, or is not conducive for you to show up in your best way, then, obviously, the outcome isn't going to be as good. So the first thing that I really want people to figure out and to work on is the setup, which sounds super boring and even may sound obvious. And yet, so few people actually do it, you figured it out, because you podcast for a living, right? This is a big part of what you do. It's a big part of your marketing strategy. And so your meeting setup is probably your podcast setup, most people don't podcast. And so the result of that, of course, is that their camera is probably facing upwards, because they're looking at their laptop camera, which means it's catching all of the less attractive parts of the angles that we don't want to catch, right, and the lighting is probably poor. Because we're doing it maybe from a dimly lit room or from the basement, the sound quality isn't as good because we're using air pods or something like that, that doesn't maybe transmit sound as well. And so even if you're showing up your best, you're not going to show up. Well, if your setup isn't good.

Brandi Starr  08:36

And that is a great point. Because I do you know, and not that this is definitely not right. But I do recognize that when someone has poor sound quality, or even where it's, you know, hard to see them like it is that that poor setup you're referring to? I do subconsciously almost dismiss what they have to say. And recognize. And I don't think I realized I did it until I was listening to you talk. But I do you know, I can think of a couple situations recently, where it was just like, oh, I don't want to even hear what they have to say. It's like it's choppy. It's this and, you know, it's almost like judgy and, you know, non judgmental person, but it is a little bit of like a subconscious, almost like a bias, technology bias. If you can't get that piece, right.

Mark Raffan  09:27

Yeah. And that's perfectly normal and natural, right? Like we all have these subconscious things that come in. So if someone's not showing up the right way, they don't sound professional, they don't appear professional, they don't talk well. Because of the things that are impeding that like the sound and the lights and the video quality naturally. We're more predisposed to be like, this is actually punishing to me to listen to I don't want to hear this anymore. And so we cast judgment and that sounds like a terrible thing. Like, whenever I say that to people, they're like, well, people shouldn't judge me. Hey, reality check, they do. So if they do, we need to fix that. And they do. So let's fix that.

Brandi Starr  10:13

Okay, so that's our number one is our setup, what else should we be conscious of

Mark Raffan  10:18

be conscious of how you're using your hand gestures, and how your expressions are going on your face, as well as your posture. Let's talk about posture. First, your posture speaks volumes about the confidence level. And the experience level that you have. What I find, especially in a virtual setup, is a lot of people because they're talking down into their cameras on their laptop, they're kind of hunched over, right. And when you're hunched over, you don't really look as confident as you probably should, in that kind of scenario. So once you've got your camera set up properly, make sure that you manage your posture, well, my favorite default strategy is to move towards a standing desk. That's what I'm at right now. It's what I recommend for most people, because for most people, they just fall into bad habits when they're sitting at their desk, unless you're really good at managing your posture. Most of the time, I believe you should be standing in a virtual environment to have that kind of a conversation.

Brandi Starr  11:16

Okay, so so far, I'm feeling pretty good about myself, because good, posture is great. And although I am sitting right now, it is a standing desk. So I do stand the majority of the time. So I'm like, Okay, I'm like checking the boxes. Hopefully everyone listening is and I totally recommend standing desks for so many reasons. And this definitely is an addition. So talk about the hand gestures, because I know I am very animated, and do tend to talk with my hands a lot, probably more than most. So what are you looking for their

Mark Raffan  11:54

hand gestures are incredibly important in a virtual environment. People think that because you're on camera, you should be actually less animated, the opposite is actually true. Because you need to maintain the engagement of the person that you're interacting with. Because there's so many competing ideas, there's so many competing interests, that they have emails going off, messengers going off, they've got slack going off, all of these things are competing for their attention, which means that we actually have to be way more engaging than we were before, which means we actually have to overly dramatize the way that we're interacting with folks in a virtual environment. Now, some people may be more subdued, and they may be thinking to themselves, okay, I'm not really an extrovert kind of person, I'm not asking you to change who you are, internally, I'm just asking you to change some habits, so that you can become more persuasive. And a big one for us is using hand gestures. But the key here is not to get stuck on the same gesture, you'll notice throughout the conversation that you and I are having that my hand gestures have changed significantly based on the words that I'm saying. So if I'm taking you through a process, for example, I might say, the first step to do this is the second step to do this is the third step to do this is or I take you through a visual representation of that on screen, or I say how big or how small something is. So you can utilize your hand gestures, to very accurately convey the message that you want, and utilizing your hand gestures properly, really speaks volumes for your ability to communicate and makes you significantly more persuasive.

Brandi Starr  13:39

I love that. And, you know, per i mean, marketing in general is, you know, it's, it's a role of persuasion, in terms of persuading the buyer. But I think, you know, there's a lot of conversations around marketing, not having the proper seat at the table, you know, marketing being seen as the make it pretty people getting the, you know, the least amount of visibility when it comes to engaging with the board. And so, this persuasiveness is kind of the next place that I really want to dig in. Because, you know, reading the room is where we went with the title for this episode. And I think that is so important. Because sometimes, and I've seen this, where you go in and you've got your pitch, or whatever it is, you're trying to communicate, ready to go. But you don't totally know if you're nailing it or if you're losing them. And so like that's important to be able to pivot to figure out how to, you know, dive in or what the reactions are, what objections you may get to be able to control that conversation, and that narrative. And so let's talk about reading the room. We talked about what we need to do, but is you know, as a leader and going into some of these community conversations, what should we be looking for in being able to understand how verbal communication is actually going over.

Mark Raffan  15:03

Yeah, the way that I'd like to separate this is in, are we getting them interested? Or are they disengaging? So let's focus on the are we getting them interested? The key body language cues that you're looking for are people leaning forward into the message, when you can get people to lean forward into the message. And you can see this on camera when this happens, because someone's going to lean forward, they're going to do this, they're going to be more person, they're going to be thoughtful, they're going to be pensive, they're going to be thinking about what it is you're doing. That's exactly what we're going for. So I want you to focus on the big movements. And in body language, we think of things as cluster movements. You may have heard, for example, the term before Well, if they're looking up into the left, therefore, they must be lying. That's not actually all that accurate. What we're looking for in the vast majority of nonverbal communication are cluster movements, meaning they could be looking up into the left, their voice may have broken, something else may have happened. And that cluster together may indicate keywords may indicate some deception. But what we're looking for when we're getting people interested is those big cluster movements that cause interest. So if you were to think about it logically, what are some of those things where, you know, if you've got someone's attention, they're going to be engaged, right? They lean forward, they're interested, they may actually do this in the conversation, they're nodding their heads, all of those kinds of things are indications that someone is listening to what you're saying, if you're on a track that shows those things, do those things.

Brandi Starr  16:37

Okay, and that that makes sense. And you know, even thinking about my own body language, I know that I am that way. Like when I am super engaged, I tend to lean, you know, like, I am a person who looks up when I'm thinking, I'm nodding along in that affirmation. So I definitely experienced that and do see that in other conversations when I'm talking, what are the signs of disengagement?

Mark Raffan  17:06

Yeah, the opposite. Basically, when people pull back, and they start doing this, they're not like interest, you can actually see it on screen, right? When someone leans back in their chair, and they're doing one of these, and they're like this, they're probably not engaged in what you're saying, they're not actively thinking dinner's on the mind, something's else on the mind. So watch for signals where they pull back from the message, that means something hasn't landed, or they are disengaged in that sort of a situation. Now, when you get into these kinds of situations, especially in a virtual environment, what I asked people to do, and this is a little bit different than in person, because in person you can, you can be more impactful in your body language and your tone and your messaging. But what I would ask is at the beginning of your presentation, whether it's a pitch or a meeting, or whatever it is you're doing, I would ask that you tell the listeners, whoever it is, that's engaging with you in this meeting in a virtual environment, to interact with you, because we're on a virtual environment. And this is one of the key things that most people miss in agenda setting at the beginning of the discussion, if they're going to be speaking. And the lines are as follows. Hey, Brandi, I know that we're going into a virtual meeting in times like this, it's really difficult for me to make sure that I'm maintaining the engagement of those folks that are in the meeting with me, because they have so many competing interests, right, their emails going off their phones going off. While we're here together with each other, let's just make a commitment to each other, that we're going to be here together with each other. And if something doesn't strike you as something that you'd like, or something that you're not interested in, let me know, so that I know how to adjust during the conversation. Likewise, if you like something that I'm saying, also, let me know, use your emojis, raise your hand, give me a clap, whatever it is you need to do to make sure that I know that these things are landing for you. Now, once we've done that, at the beginning of our conversation that sets the expectation on how we're going to be interacting with each other. But the other thing that you also need to be doing is throughout the conversation, taking regular poses probably more than you would in a physical environment. And ask, ask how this is landing. And ask people to use especially if you've got a large room with you know, 100 or more people, ask people to use their emojis to make sure you are getting that feedback from them to know that it's landing.

Brandi Starr  19:38

Okay, and I know one of the things that I naturally do that I am trying to stop doing is the question that I use to see if things are landing is Does that make sense? And that has so you know, I've read and heard different podcasts and all the reasons why that's not the greatest question. So what are Some ways to get that pulse check of if something is landing. That is not saying Does this make sense?

Mark Raffan  20:08

I use intentionally contrarian statements to create radical positions in what I'm saying. So I might say, do you hate this? Right? And I'm going to force a an answer. Yes, I hate this or No, I don't hate this. And I might use a poll to be able to do that. So I'll set up a poll prior to the conversation. Do you hate this? Or would it be crazy for me to ask you? And then I would ask that statement, because I'm trying to drive towards a big, big answer. Because if I don't emotionally put you in a state where you like, Well, no, I don't hate it. But if you don't hate it, then I'm going to ask, Okay, what about it is striking you is interesting, use the comments to let me know, what did you like from that previous conversation? Where are we going in the right direction? If I say, does that make sense? Now I'm forcing you to go? I guess so kind of, not really, maybe I'm much and now we're forcing way too much cognition. With the counterparty. I'm just trying to drive radical answers, so that I can start narrowing down what it is they like about it. 

Brandi Starr  21:16

I really liked that, because it promotes engagement. So even if you've lost someone, it sort of forces them to come back, at least in that moment. But then it does give you that, you know, that I do like radical questions, because, you know, it gets people to react versus the, you know, kind of in between, it's like, do you like this? Well, I mean, I kind of like it, I kind of don't I mean, you know, it's like you get those that kind of in the middle middle of the road, whereas the extremes force you to either be on one side or the other. So I really liked that. I'm going to start trying that. And I like the using the comments, because I think other than large meetings, I probably rarely use the chat functionality, unless it's let me send you this link, or you know, those sorts of more administrative things. But I do think that that's a great way to do that.

Mark Raffan  22:12

Yeah. And I think the thing to remember is, you've got to be ready for the radical answer. Right? So if you're going to ask the radical question, be ready for the radical answer. Because if people hate it, and they tell you that they hate it, that's really good. Actually, I know it doesn't feel good. But it's really good feedback. Because now you can be like, Oh, well, I'm glad I asked. And then you can start asking, Well, what do you hate about it, and then it's going to be a bit of a feeding frenzy where people are like, I don't like this, I don't like that. I don't like that. Cool, let's readjust. And then you can readjust your conversation.

Brandi Starr  22:46

And I think that is so important, like thinking about the places where, you know, marketing leaders need to read the room and need to, you know, exercise that influence, in some cases, getting someone to say they hate it, and allowing them to kind of pick apart what they hate, gives you exactly what you need to come back with something they'll love. Whereas I do think sometimes it is difficult to get to, you know, because there's a bit of, you know, there's a bit of massaging that has to happen with anything. Yeah, marketing wants to do in a lot of companies. And I'm generalizing, of course. But I do think it does help you to when you come back with whatever your, you know, revised approach is, is you now have all the things and it's like, Okay, I've ticked all your boxes, you know, we really shouldn't have to have any more conversation and negotiation perspective, then you win. Big.

Mark Raffan  23:48

Yeah, exactly. And people want to feel involved, right, they want to feel like their input has been listened to, they want to feel like they have an impact over what it is you're doing. Give them that opportunity.

Brandi Starr  24:01

Okay, and so for the people listening who were, you know, nodding along, and they're like, Okay, I've mastered the basics. What is that next level? So what is it, you know, really being able to master it's and to really be effective, you know, in being persuasive and in negotiations, like, what does that look like?

Mark Raffan  24:22

It comes down to how you utilize your voice. And we talk about voice and four big building blocks, pitch, pace, tone, and volume. So first pitch is how high or how low your voice will go. If you come from a singing background, you sort of get this intuitively. And it sort of makes sense, right? Because Beyonce could sing one song one way and make you feel a certain way. And then she could sing the same song another way, and you feel completely different. How you use your voice generates different emotions, and forces people to respond in different ways. So first, thank you About what pitch you're using, if you're trying to sound more serious, use a lower pitch. If you're trying to sound more excited, use a higher pitch, then let's move to pace, how fast or how slow, you're speaking, the same is also true. If I'm going to see more excited, I'm going to speak faster. If I want to see more measured and focused about the steps we want to take on something, it's going to be slower pace. Right? So the key here is to make sure you're thinking about the kind of emotion what is the intention that I'm setting for this message? How do I wanted to learn? I think about the pitch, I think about the pace next, I think about the tone, how you say something is often more important than what you say, in fact, a bunch of research has suggested that that's actually true. For example, my wife could say to me, Oh, sweetheart, you did this. Or she could say, Sweetheart, you did this. Those are the same words. But they mean very different things. So your tone matters. And that's especially true online. So if we come off with a demeaning tone, when we're asking a question, when we're saying something, it's gonna make the person feel worse about themselves. But if we want to lift them up, and we want to get them excited about something, then we need to change the tone that we have. And then lastly, is the volume, you can increase the volume to get someone's attention really quickly. But you cannot sustain that increased volume for too long. So vary the volume that you have throughout the conversation, so that you can get better responses throughout what you're doing. For example, if I was to speak a lot slower, people would start to wonder if there was something wrong with this podcast volume. But if I was going to speak at a normal volume, then people would be realizing, oh, okay, Mark was just doing that for dramatic effect. So depending on how you want to get someone's attention will determine how you increase or reduce your volume. So pitch, pace, tone, and volume, all very, very important for modulating your voice. So you can get a different interaction from someone.

Brandi Starr  27:13

Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, I, I've been a speaker since middle school, I think I started competing in public speaking. And although I had not heard it broken down this way, these are still the same principles that you're taught in being able to speak on stage and how you keep an audience. And you know why you see a lot of motivational speakers, their tone is like, really fast. And, you know, they're like, varying everything else. But even preachers, like a lot of times it like when they're in the heat of it, it's very fast, and you get to that, you know, key message, and they're gonna slow it down, and they're going to be more focused. And so that is something that it makes me think about, like I was a Toastmaster for a lot of years. And, you know, some people only think about joining organizations like that, if they, you know, have to do a lot of public speaking. But based on some of these things, it's like some of that coaching and training is really effective and important just in, you know, being in meetings and day to day conversation, and really being able to master some of these things. Yeah, it's

Mark Raffan  28:23

absolutely critical. And I love the thing that you said about there about preachers and motivational speakers as well, because you'll hear them they'll get really excited about something, the volume of their voice will increase. And then there'll be a pause. And then they'll lead forward with a message. And that power, just creating that pause, dropping the pitch of their voice, dropping the pace, dropping the volume, immediately causes such a switch in the person's mind that you're speaking to, they're like, whoa, okay, I'm with you. Now, we're engaged in the conversation. So you can use that you use that you should be using that in your meetings, especially online, because you've got so much more to compete with.

Brandi Starr  29:04

Which is really interesting. And so that's a lot of the verbal, anything that's sort of that you know, next level of mastery when it comes to body language and nonverbal communication.

Mark Raffan  29:17

Yeah, body language, I would say, especially in a virtual environment, be very cautious about the facial expressions that you're giving, because your facial expressions are often the true indication of how you actually feel and your facial expressions betray you. And if there's not congruence, see between your facial expression and the words and the tone that's coming out of your mouth. There's now an incongruent message. And if there's an incongruent message, we're creating confusion with the person that we're speaking to. So if we're rolling our eyes, but we're saying, Yeah, that should work. Right now. The person is like, Wait, are you are you agreeing that this will work? Are you not sure that it will work? And we're Cree meeting that confusion. And now the message isn't landing, we're not really sure how to proceed from there. So we want to make sure that there's a lot of congruence with what you're doing. The key advice that I give to people to practice this is to make sure that when you have your virtual meeting, you've got yourself view turned on. So in teams resume or whatever platform you're using, it doesn't matter. A lot of people turn their own self view off, meaning they can't see the return camera footage of themselves. This is a mistake, don't do this, make sure it's on. I know that many of us are anemic to the idea of looking at ourselves on camera, but you get to see your facial expressions live and real time, which means you get to adjust live and real time in and this is something that we don't have in the real world, right? The only feedback that I have in the real world of my own performance and how I'm doing is your facial expression of me. But now I get to see that and I get to see my own feedback. So keep yourself view on so that you can keep practicing that.

Brandi Starr  31:05

Yeah, that one is so important. For me. There's, there's a meme that's like, I've learned to control my words, my face is a whole different situation. Like, that is so so me, like my face is always telling what I'm thinking. And, you know, especially in a virtual world, the self camera has really helped with that. Because in some cases, my facial expression isn't even actually telling what I really mean. Like, sometimes I have a negative reaction to something when it's first said, and then it kind of sinks in and so I'm able to proactively, like actually explain my face like I was thinking I was digesting, like, Yes, I am in agreement, like, you know, ignore this, essentially, because that that does happen. And I do think that that is a challenge for a lot of people and is you know, once you master the basics, being able to master controlling your face and making sure that your face does align, I think is really important. Or at least turn the camera off.

Mark Raffan  32:14

Yeah, and if you're gonna turn your camera off, make sure the counterparty turns their camera off to or whoever you're talking to, turns their camera off. Because otherwise, it's just rude. Right? Like we don't want to make we want to make sure that we're both on uneven ground.

Brandi Starr  32:27

Yeah, I agree. Especially if it's a one on one conversation. It is weird when you know, I can see you, but you can't see me.

Mark Raffan  32:36

Yeah, and try your best to keep your camera on. Right. So I'm not saying that turn your camera off should be the default, by the way for those listening. Camera on should be the default. But if look, if you're having a rough day, you are not camera ready, you're not in a position to be able to persuade as best you should. Okay, camera off, but then also tell the other party. Hey, I'm not looking so good right now. Can you turn your camera off too, so that, you know we're at least on an even playing field, I don't want you to feel like you have to overly perform in this.

Brandi Starr  33:07

That and I think that is fair and extremely considerate. So I'll ask I was like to, you know, the I don't know what I don't know. And this is such such helpful information, understanding that to persuade, and negotiate when it comes to, you know, C suite counterparts, and working with the board is a really key part of effectiveness of a CMO. Is there any other advice that you would offer that I hadn't thought to ask about that you're like, you know, burning, if you've got a nail this, here's something to do not do keep in mind.

Mark Raffan  33:48

We've hit all of the major things, the one thing that I would make sure I leave with the audience is to ensure that they're actually practicing. Because your body language and your development of that skill set is exactly that. It is a skill set, which means that you can practice it, and you can get better at it. And sure, there are some people that are maybe more predisposed to better communication than others because of how they grew up. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't get that good or better. Because if you practice you're gonna get better. And we view body language Negotiation Communication as a practice, there is no end state of perfection. It's just continuous improvement. So, practice, practice, practice. That's the biggest piece that I'll leave you w

Brandi Starr  34:34

Awesome. Well, Mark, I have enjoyed our discussion thoroughly. But that's our time for today. But before we go, how can our audience connect with you and I know that you also have a book and a podcast, so give us the shameless plug for those as well.

Mark Raffan  34:51

The book can be found on Amazon it's called Nine secrets to win deals and influence stakeholders. And for anyone in a revenue position it It's almost essential reading in my mind of how you can do that both internally and externally within the organization. The podcast is called the negotiations ninja podcast available wherever you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, etc. And if you want to connect with me, the best place to do it is on LinkedIn.

Brandi Starr  35:18

Awesome, uh, we will make sure to link to the podcast, the book and your LinkedIn. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, just check the show notes so that you can stay connected with Mark. Well, Mark, thank you so so much for joining me.

Mark Raffan  35:34

Thank you so much for having me. It was a great pleasure.

Brandi Starr  35:36

Awesome, and thanks, everyone for joining us. I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation with Mark. I can't believe we're already at the end. We'll see you next time.

Intro VO  35:48

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue we have dot live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.